A new dawn is possible

The predominant debate on electronic, print and social media is obsessively and disproportionately focussed on issues like: Are civil and military on one page? Is the army chief going or staying? And more recently it is the Joyland censorship or the performance of Babar Azam that are the media highlights. It almost seems as if one would not be considered an intellectual, liberal or a progressive individual unless one can push-fit the above themes in every discussion as the most serious problem of Pakistan. Sadly much of this debate has no relevance or impact on the lives of the ordinary people or the real issues that haunt Pakistan today.

Insolvent, unstable and unsustainable — economically, politically and socially — Pakistan faces numerous fundamental problems that are entirely missing from our national debate. There are at least five critical aspects of governance that call for an urgent and collective response. These are failure: to control alarming and unsustainable rise in population; stop the economic violence against 70 million workers by the elite of this country; make our colonial bureaucracy adopt modern digital methods of governance; provide any education (leave aside quality education) to more than half of our children; and collect taxes. Only 1.4% population files tax returns, of which one third declare a zero tax liability. We could learn much from countries like Canada and UK where 76% and 57% people respectively file tax returns.

A prerequisite for progress is willingness to acknowledge one’s failures. Pakistan simply refuses to learn this lesson. It appears to have little remorse, concern or understanding of its crumbling systems, depleting resources and impending bankruptcy. There is no serious urgency, dialogue or plan to rebuild this broken-down structure. There is unmistakable evidence of Pakistan on an irreversible self-destruct course, with only an outside chance of recovery.

The first step for progress and moving forward is to end the cacophony of irrelevance and shed the state of denial we are in. The existing dysfunctional and decomposed governance mechanisms, people and processes have no capacity to handle the nature of crisis we are in. Our bureaucratic and political system has broken down and atrophied beyond belief. We can no longer even sweep our streets — a task well known to Homo Sapiens 5,000 years ago. Pakistan now sublets these tasks to Chinese and Turkish companies. Instead it would be far more rewarding to replace our existing inflated cabinet of 76 clueless ministers by just ten highly qualified and skilled non-political individuals, chosen from across the globe. This could perhaps mean a presidential form of government — a chemotherapy that we must be willing to undergo.

The existing government machinery is a parasite that consumes almost the entire budget for its own maintenance and benefits, adding negligible value to the purpose of its being. Only as an example, consider the Sindh Child Protection Department, which last year consumed its entire budget of Rs73 million on its own salaries, perks, vehicles, fuel, phones, repairs and celebrations — without adding an iota of benefit for the protection of children. With minor variations, this pattern of budget consumption is consistent and self-serving across the board. Thousands of directors and directors general, completely inept and non-productive, suck out the largest portion of budget for their official cars, perks and other wasteful luxuries. Our only escape lies in closing down many of our non-productive ministries, departments and commissions and downsising the rest to half.

It is time that we recognised that our salvation depends neither on the appointment of the next army chief nor the next political government. We have seen them come and go for 75 years. Instead, our survival lies in acknowledging that our state is dysfunctional and imploding. We can begin by harshly focusing on the core issues described above, learning from the rest of the world and restructuring afresh our dilapidated governance and its archaic processes.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 21^st, 2022.

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