Blueprint for a stable and secure Pakistan

As a nation, our challenges evolve and newer frontiers beckon. Of those, the population explosion and its underlying aggravation are what we must turn our attention to. Forget the total population numbers — we would probably be four hundred million by 2050, according to our government's own estimates. That is the worry, but that is not the only worry. The age bands and the population distribution within those bands are the most disturbing.

For example, based on today's numbers, 80 per cent of our population is under forty years of age; almost 70 per cent is under thirty. Between twenty and forty is the age to work, needing jobs, regardless of what strata one is from. That makes a neat 100 million in need of work. And although the government tells us that the unemployment rate is only 7.1 per cent, worse than the six or so per cent that we have generally kept in our annual estimates, these remain approximations.

There is little data to support either contention. We work on estimates only. Forty per cent of the labour force is in Agriculture — an estimate. But thank God, it is better than the sixty per cent that we learnt in the schools many decades ago. Without solid data, there is little planning that will either work or a strategy that can be dependable. At the rate that the population increases, around four million are added each year to the workforce needing jobs. At a six per cent growth rate in the economy, we could cater to at best around half of that number — we are currently growing at 2.5-3 per cent only and even these figures remain speculative; we are so desolately weak at reliable stats. There are thus another couple of million looking to earn a living and support their families.

What is then our magic potion to transform us into a prosperous nation where every able-bodied person will have a job? Just this week we were told we are now shaping the economy of 2050, probably rightly because we seem to have missed the first half of the new century. And the elements of which are Crypto, AI/IT and Mining. In the manner of their identification the timeline is just right, though it may not be us but the rest of the world, developing or developed, that may be the real ones anchoring their economies around those three facets. We do not have the workforce to engage in any of these aspects of the economy.

At least two generations have been left out in the cold without appropriate education and skills to benefit from what are the emerging levers of the new-world economies. Raised on stock educational curricula and poor investment in targeted qualifications, we have raised only herds that are neither of use in the country nor outside. Instead, they are now the easy target of crime gangs and terror outfits. The society has thus crumbled from within. Poor security and sociopolitical instability are the natural consequences. Plus, those looking for work today, and increasingly added every year, are hardly the ones to find relief in the planned economy. It may find prosperity to those few who can indulge, for the rest it remains a struggle to make two ends meet.

More appropriately for a nation of which almost half are counted either illiterate or barely literate, these notions of the new economy are ethereal and other-worldly, especially if the cognitive dependence for survival has been around agriculture, industry and the services sector related to these two. These are the foundations on which the Pakistani economy has sustained itself in a subsistence economy, barely eking out a survival with two square meals. Sixty or forty per cent labour, even if unsubstantiated and exaggerated, is a fair reflection of where lies our bread and butter.

Somehow, the glitz of the modern economy which hopes to transform us notionally into the world of those who challenge the frontiers is a useful chimera for the uninitiated even if patently farcical. One only hopes that the government's recent announcements to prepare thousands to catapult into the age of AI on the back of some training received in China, becomes a reality, or Crypto can really utilise all the extra power that this nation cannot afford or finds no use for, and can explore the frontiers of quantum computing and Blockchain algorithms. Mining is still a brick-and-mortar work and will suit the genius of our people well, were it to finally materialise in some form.

While we await the arrival and success of the new economy in 2050, we must keep the brick-and-mortar economy going. Two elements are important: we should stop adding more debt and retire what we have accumulated over time, even if slowly; secondly, growth is sine qua non in whatever constitutes the economy today. We have little to export which remains at best stagnated, if not depreciated. The only thing we can export substantially and earn some dollars to retire our national debt is manpower. Though it must be skilled to suit the needs and requirements of ageing societies and to keep those economies viable. These skills need basic education superimposed with a targeted skill-set which can fill tertiary levels in numerous professional avenues.

Institutions like NAVTTC and TEVTA will need the necessary impetus and focus to create the manpower that should be exported through G2G arrangements, giving jobs to the needy and earning precious FE to retire external debt. Growth in agriculture which subsumes a wide array of activities from crops to cattle can help ensure food security and pacify any sense of deprivation in basic subsistence among large swathes.

Industry, as it has existed to date, is increasingly unprofitable and remains anachronistic. Hence dying. Instead, agriculture and food-based industry are not only less capital-intensive but can easily attract investments from the Middle Eastern Sheikhdoms to fulfil their domestic requirements. Appropriate and relevant activities in the Services Sector will invariably follow.

Plug wastage, pilferage and financial profligacy; punish corruption and capital flight; collect due taxes regardless of who owes them; and save the billions wasted on Public Sector Enterprises, and the nation and its survival will begin to become viable. These are issues of political will and execution and implementation of existing laws. We will not need debt to barely keep afloat but should be able to finance our security and safety. Earning dollars by exporting manpower can help retire debt. Growth in the traditional sectors must be enabled with better targeted policies and not through subsidies.

With food safety come civilisational promise and hope. The industry based on food and agriculture strengthens the foundational sources of the traditional economy. We need to reinforce it with better and persistent policies, not through handouts. Security and stability are not impossible commodities, but sentiments based on belief, hope and promise. These are also palpable, visible and fulsome compared to ethereal or notional promises that seem empty and hollow to the people.