Austerity's hollow veil

The US-Israel aggression against Iran has plunged much of the region into turmoil. It has triggered wider ripple effects, including geopolitical tensions and rising concerns over energy security and fuel prices. And Pakistan — being no exception to potential implications and already battered by epic misgovernance, inflation and a fragile IMF bailout programme — finds itself at the epicentre of an economic storm it did not start but cannot escape unscathed. The country has proactively responded with a historic 20% hike in fuel prices on existing stocks and a set of austerity measures to navigate the crisis. Though they may have been a necessity, necessity alone doesn't always bring stipulated results unless they are enforced in a transparent and quantifiable manner.

The austerity measures include a four-day workweek for government offices, 50% work from home and a 60% reduction in the government vehicle fleet, as well as closing schools for two weeks, cutting ministerial salaries and limiting or banning new government purchases. Whether the measures are pragmatic or people-centric enough and whether they take into account people's plight and, more importantly, address the trust deficit between the people and the government, will depend, among many other things, on two complementary dynamics: transparency and trust-building.

That is, the outcomes of the measures, however simple or disproportionate, would largely depend on their trust-building among the masses and their transparent, quantifiable enforcement in an otherwise opaque system through which the country's economic, bureaucratic and political affairs operate.

One might wonder how the measures would help people: the 20% hike in the price of earlier stock at the very onset of the war is suggestive enough of the government's "altruistic intents", and therefore needs no elaboration. Does it? The proposed four-day workweek and 50% remote work policy are welcome and reflect a reality where official work is neither that demanding nor that public-centred. However, these closures will likely cost the public more in the long run. Officials may use the limited hours as leverage to extract higher bribes or "service costs" to get anything done. That is, if left unchecked, the ultimate potential costs for people would outweigh the benefits those two steps otherwise promise in saving fuel and energy.

The question of the reduction in the government's fleet, cutting ministerial salaries and limiting or banning new government purchases is least likely to arouse public trust. For instance, cutting salaries is peanuts, as salaries for them are a tip, and allowances, utilities, luxuries, kickbacks and bribes, besides bullying, threatening and oppressing people, are the iceberg. Therefore, genuine altruism and empathy towards people and the country demand the ministers' and bureaucrats' voluntary renunciation of everything but the salary. Something they are less likely to do for people. For people and the country are rarely who they find themselves responsive and accountable to.

Given the institutional and functional obscurity and the historic distrust of the government and its legal, constitutional and electoral impunity, the ministers and bureaucrats might — let alone submit to austerity, in return for a token reduction in salary — seek, in the name of inflation and fuel price hikes, justifications and space for greater silent allowances, kickbacks and concessions, with all that to be axed onto the struggling public in the name of taxes and much higher POL hikes. And the concession would continue even after things get better.

The genuine and workable austerity demands transparent enforcement of the announced measures, including Daylight Saving Time, their practical manifestations in the corridors of power, and renunciation of perks, privileges, kickbacks, bribes, cavalcades and VVIP culture in a bid to relieve the masses whom they have plundered for decades — all in the name of national interest, politics, justice, national security, religion and service to the nation.