The price of incompetence

We pay for a bureaucracy and government that does not seem to do much, and talk goes back to corruption, incompetence.

Akbar Ali is from a village in a remote part of Chitral. He came to Karachi at the age of 16 to find work so he could, like millions of others who leave home, provide for his family. Worried about the future, worried about how will he manage to provide for his wife and child when the money he earns is now not worth much in terms of food, shelter and education. Forget health and other perks, life for the Akbar Ali’s of this country is basic survival. He is just one of a 160-odd million people who wonder what their tomorrow will be like and where it will come from.

As with most things we never stop to think about how or why this, or any government, is so corrupt and able to get away with incompetence. And all this is the face of bankruptcy at a time when we are faced with a natural disaster, compounded by manmade disasters making it the worst disaster in living memory. The world isn’t willing to pay out the sums we would like them to pay out. Pakistan has been told loud and clear that it needs to raise funds itself, a mini budget is being presented in the assembly, and all sorts of money generating schemes are being introduced. The tax paying classes are not pleased as they are the first to be hit, indirect taxes and inflation means everyone pays more for everything and the hardest hit are the poor, the salaried classes and anyone on a fixed income. In all this, we pay for a bureaucracy and government that does not seem to do much, other than resist doing anything. And the talk goes back to the corrupt and incompetent government.

The government may be corrupt and incompetent but what did we do, if anything, to prevent it? We never developed systems of accountability lest they apply to us nor did we stop the military in their march across the political landscape. And for all that we are going to have to pay, literally, for our sins.

No one likes to have budgets slashed. Dr Hafeez Shaikh drives home the truth that there is no money. We must make do with less and some cases nothing and live in the vain hope that the same lesson is being read to the government. Has the good doctor convinced them to swallow some of this very bitter medicine, has he explained the merits of cutting non productive expenditure like the cabinet or at least 80 or so of its members? And while at it the merits of getting rid of some of the tens of thousands of file pushers in the bureaucracy who ensure, in the name of static continuity, that the nation gets billed for all that has been done on paper.

We will pay flood taxes and make sacrifices because we know that our very survival depends on it. We may gripe about it, strike and protest yet we are painfully aware that this something we have to get ourselves out of or the game is over. One just hopes that the silver lining in all this is that the government will discover a similar survival instinct because they certainly cannot afford a lack of vision and sincerity of purpose to drown them. It is time for them to realise that they must lead by example and make a serious effort to cut costs everywhere.

Perhaps they could learn to take regular commercial flights, live in homes befitting the status of an executive of a bankrupt country that depends on aid and loans, cut down on the entourages, stop pouring money in to state owned enterprises, get the state out of doing business and that may also lead to a cut in the mighty military machine. All that money should be invested in the people of Pakistan, the ones with no education, health care or opportunities, the ones that seem to constantly fall through the cracks. If not there will be nothing left and when Akbar Ali goes to cash in his policy in 20 years it may not be worth the premium.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 24^th, 2010.