Our preparations to meet a changing world?

The PDM’s protest demonstration in front of the ECP in Islamabad’s Red Zone was a flop, and gradually like the absence of fizz that makes the Cokes and the Pepsis go flat, the movement of the 10-party alliance is also going flat. If the movement is a political experiment that the opposition has planned to run than like all experiments, it must have been theorised and certain assumptions and predictions must already have been made. What if those predictions are now going wrong? Is the opposition leadership making any sense of this?

In the universities, before any student carries out research, he is made to understand how to develop correctly a hypothesis. Typically, a hypothesis is a prediction you make and create before running an experiment. The entire theory and thesis of a research student stands disapproved when any observations disagree to the given prediction made in the hypothesis. Unfortunately for such a student, his research work and thesis stand rejected. What was the hypothesis of the PDM?

Seemingly, it was built on one great prediction that given the complexity of issues faced by the current government and the ever-rising prices in the daily commodities of life, this ‘fast growing unpopular’ government will not be able to stand the political pressure created by the PDM movement and will lose the public support. I think this PDM prediction has now been sufficiently tested and whosoever conceived this political experiment must give weight to the observations on ground which clearly demonstrate the lack of people’s participation in this movement. If PDM’s hypothesis is being rejected, what is their political leadership doing about it?

An able and capable leader always looks for good ideas. A leader’s clarity of vision is very important. The core of this vision stems from the political vision because if that is not correct the social and economic visions despite being clear will not have the right and suitable conditions for implementation. Today a leader with a clear political vision would know that the most essential need in our politics is the change of our political culture. The political culture will never change unless those representing this culture are replaced and changed. The key men in our politics are failing to read and understand an important political reality — ‘politics today is wasting time and harming this country’. This must change.

America felt the need for change and despite being the leader of a liberal world, the long-established democratic values, norms and a traditionally tolerant political culture its way of politics was also turned upside down by a leader who squandered all the advantages that the US had gathered over the years. But now it will refocus to prepare and confront the coming challenges.

Putting their political rivalries aside I hope our politicians can wake up to see what kind of challenges we are likely to confront in the coming days. Are we prepared to meet those challenges? In about seven decades the number of countries in the world increased from 45 to 200 and according to an established survey two-thirds of these current 200 countries cannot provide basic services to their people without the international help. Pakistan is in the list of such countries. Will we achieve our political, economic and social sovereignty that we have longed for such a long time?

The coming decades will be fashioned by two important global trends: population aging and automation. The burden of carrying the old population, increased number of pensions and job losses due to automation will create new markets and new economic zones that powerful countries will dominate and as the dependence of labourers will reduce there will be huge dip in foreign remittance for countries like Pakistan.

Like the economic depressions and disruption of the 1920s and 1980s and the social disruption of the 1990s the world in the next two to three decades will be facing a demographic and technological disruption. In an ‘older and more automated world’ dominated by artificial intelligence, most countries are likely to simply become irrelevant and if we don’t wake up in time, we might just be part of that list. Why?

In the coming decades of 21^st century, many countries including the US will have to make tough economic choices. The US might again revert back to trying an existing failed concept. Putting new wine in an old bottle, the future US strategic choices may necessarily be dictated by a compulsion of ‘less abroad and more at home’ policy — the recreation of Donald Trump’s failed policy that we all already know by the name of ‘America first’. The US may no longer look at the countries and judge the commonality of its interests with them in how they might help it to solve global problems but how much they may help in lifting the US economy and creating American jobs. It may also partner only with those countries that can help it eliminate the vulnerabilities and threats to its homeland security; only those countries that can act as shields and buffers to check the Russian, Chinese and Iranian expansions. Where would this leave the countries like us?

Countries with weak political and economic structures and leadership that is not visionary but corrupt will have no place in the fast approaching ‘older and automated future’ that will operate in an environment of economic crisis and crunch. Today, a weak economy, lack of energy, poor utilisation of resources and continued dependence on foreign aid, patronage and protection is a recipe for disaster. The sooner countries like us wake up and start preparing and shaping up for the things to come the better.

Socially and culturally at odds with the outside world and economically dependent on the world’s financial institutions we as the people of this country should be more ashamed than proud of what we have done. Even if the world created a G-70, we despite being a nuclear power will struggle to become part of it. So, it’s time that the political establishment, the military establishment and the religious establishment got their heads together in a huddle to see how prepared we are to enter the coming world of a demographic and technological change.

To be part of the 21^st century world we will have to produce more and more people who can live comfortably with the outside world. That can happen only by imparting quality education, by improving the standards of our universities. A more conservative Saudi Arabia spends 25% of its published budget on education. In 2001 there were only 2,000 Saudi students studying in United States. Today because of its scholarship programme, over 200,000 Saudi students are studying in over 40 countries in the world.

What has politics thought about our children, our students, them going abroad and studying on scholarship? We have so far failed our children and I hope we don’t fail in our preparations to enter a very competitive and challenging, demographically and technologically changed smart world.

Can we like Saudi Arabia also have our ‘Vision 2040’ and a ‘Vision 2050’? Defining his Vision 2030, Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman told his consultants and advisers, “Time is our enemy. We can no longer wait to reform our country.” I can only wish that our leadership can also have a similar vision and stop wasting their and our valuable time by organising protests and go back to the parliament where we sent them to sit down, develop consensus on important issues, legislate and finally do something for the country to which we owe so much.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 24^th, 2021.

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