The dream of welfare

Someone once said that if good intentions were enough to heal the world, then we would have done so a long time ago. We may argue day and night about the good in the intentions of Prime Minister Imran Khan and his companions, but ultimately, it is the well thought-out and genuine action where governments past and present have been caught thoroughly lacking.

Just days ago, Prime Minister Imran launched the Koi Bhuka Na Soye — which translates into ‘No One Sleeps Hungry’ — initiative, promising direct food subsidies and free meals for more than 30 million families in the country living below the poverty line. The announcement is not just the latest manifestation of the ruling party’s populist ‘welfare state’ rhetoric, it is also being positioned as an answer to rapidly rising inflation in the country.

Noble as it sounds on the surface, a slightly closer glance makes one wonder just how the government expects to sustain such an initiative. For all talk of welfare, we as a society seem to have little knowledge around the history and practicality of such systems in nations that possess them. Looking beyond our own politics and constraints, one also comes at the stark realisation that welfare around the world seems to be in trouble for the most part.

This is not to discourage us from working out our own policies. But the question does arise: are we putting the cart before the horse? Prime Minister Imran and others in his government may be genuine in their concern for the country’s poor, but such grand gimmicky initiatives are destined to fail without a wider structural course correction. This government or the next, sooner or later someone will have to take on and figure out a way to fix our most deeply entrenched fiscal ills.

Most of us Pakistanis do hope that one day our country can truly be a welfare state. But the road towards it is paved not by grandstanding ambition, but by incremental, tangible and practical progress. Anything more or anything less will only perpetuate the economic spiral that we find ourselves trapped in.

 

 

Published in The Express Tribune, March 15^th, 2021.

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