Pakistan’s VIP culture continues to take from the poor for the benefit of the rich.
LAHORE: This is with reference to your editorial of May 30 titled “VIP security”. Pakistan’s VIP culture continues to take from the poor for the benefit of the rich. Its abolition will take more than lip service and can only come about from some fundamental reforms of the system.
For starters, agriculture income should be taxed and the additional revenue so generated can be used to provide more social services such as education, health and drinking water to Pakistanis. Then take our banking system, where institutions lend only to those who are rich and there is hardly any lending available for the poor who want to stand on their own feet. Even in housing, there is a skewed distribution in favour of the rich who get plots allotted to them, many times illegally or after bending government rules. The poor are left to fend for themselves and the result is the steady expansion of katchi abadis in our cities.
One step towards abolishing our VIP culture, could be to cancel all the illegal allotments, sell the land at market rates and use the funds to building low-cost housing for poor urban dwellers. Our VIP culture has created an affluent class which appropriates for itself, most of the patronage of the state.
Salma Tahir
Published in The Express Tribune, May 31st, 2011.
