The writer is an undergraduate student at Harvard University. He is also Chairman Emeritus at Harvard University’s John F Kennedy Jr Forum.
He tweets @ibrahimakhan
The motivation for the conference was clear: that the international narrative about Pakistan is flawed. Much of the discussion about the country centres on security and foreign policy troubles. Although Pakistan currently faces a major security challenge, viewing the country through such a narrow prism is unfair. As a young country of 190 million people, with a substantial endowment of natural resources and strategic geographic surroundings, Pakistan has a lot to offer the world. HCPW 2014 began moulding a new international narrative about Pakistan that focuses on the economic potential of the country.
There were three major takeaways from HCPW 2014. The first one was that Pakistanis should expect a lot from the booming technological space in the country. Our technology panelists were unanimous in their belief that all Pakistan now needs is one $100 million company to announce its arrival on the international technology scene. We should expect this to happen within the next decade.
The second major takeaway was that Pakistan’s private banking sector is ripe for investments. Given favourable capital ratios and recent movements of banking stocks at the Karachi Stock Exchange, the future looks bright for the sector. More broadly, we concluded that foreign investors have to dig deeper than what is on the surface in order to notice investment opportunities present in the country.
The third and final takeaway was a holistic and hopeful one: Pakistan will fulfil its potential.
There are substantial benefits of reconstructing our international narrative. We often hear of soft power — an idea that describes the ability of a country to achieve foreign policy objectives based on its perception around the world rather than the use of force. Joseph Nye most prominently developed ideas on soft power in his 2004 book, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. As the title indicates, his thesis is fairly straightforward: in an increasingly globalised world, the key to international success is no longer force, but is instead soft power. Pakistan currently has a branding problem, which means we have no real soft power to bank on. At the HCPW, we started the process of developing Pakistani soft power.
By welcoming attendees from all corners of the United States and speakers from all corners of the world, we have built a network. We hope this network propagates the new international narrative we have started developing. As every individual returns to their respective communities — whether it is speakers returning to Lahore or attendees returning to California — each individual has to continue the conversation started over the recent April weekend.
In order to ensure that we continue the good work started at the HCPW 2014, we are building a new institution. The Harvard Pakistan Forum (HPF) will be launched in the next few weeks. HPF will have an advisory board that consists of past speakers, faculty members and alumni who will help in the organisation of future conferences. The HCPW had a substantial impact but it is important to ensure that this work is a sustained effort.
The amount of passion and vigour I saw for Pakistan at the HCPW was very reassuring. As I told the HCPW community, all of us must remain committed to Pakistan. Pakistan is a land of infinite potential; the missing link is a source of activation energy for this potential. It is young people like those who attended HCPW 2014 who will provide the required activation energy in the weeks, months and years ahead.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 26th, 2014.
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COMMENTS (19)
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IT is not just through the prism of global terrorism that Pakistan is viewed - although finding Osama safely ensconsed close to your military training school and the man who helped to find him being jailed did not help your country's image.
Some other images are intolerance and plight of minorities with Hindus, Ahmadis, Shias (especially Hazaras) fleeing/forcibly converted; polio workers being killed; suicide bombers in mosques, markets, hospitals, playgrounds; honor killings; nuclear ploriferation; killing of journalists; silencing of liberal voices; women increasingly fading away from the public square.
It's not a pretty picture. Until the reality changes, the image is unlikely to change.
Huh? Let's first improve the product, then we can improve the packaging and branding. Otherwise, it's all just false advertising and most countries will not fall for it more than once.
Huh?
The fact of the matter is that young, bright and intelligent individuals such as the author himself will never return to Pakistan. It is one thing to write about what could Pakistan do and another to really make it happen.
The steady brain drain and the lack of strong institutions has left Pakistan in a state where long term projects can only be undertaken with committed countries like China.
Let's start with facilitating basic education and then look at how to provide opportunities to young and intelligent minds who will not leave our country.
The worst part is that most of the comments on this are not related to the subject of the article, but have still been allowed by the forum admin. Why must you allow your forums to be degraded by these meaningless off-topic arguments about India?
Adding "Harvard" to boy clubs will enhance Pakistan's soft power! .. what can go wrong with this plan?
What next ? "NASA" Pakistan science club? "American" Pakistan democrazy club?
Not sure a religion oriented state that practices self righteousness and exclusion of others not like it can ever weird soft power. One magical law, one $100m company, one conference are not enough. Capital investment seeks an environment of peace and stability. Societies that are intolerant and blame others cannot grow. Confidence is built over a sustained period of time.
i agree with the writer! However, the narrative is controlled by the very powers that have led us to this.... I see no reason why the narrative will change in the near future! (examples being china, iran, turkey, KSA and now russia)
That being said, i do agree that we should strive to improve our political, economic and social conditions. Once, our economic interests are aligned with the western businesses, narrative will change itself.
190 million people is an asset...Its a market which is untapped and too big to resist provided political and security stability prevails.
@Ali tanoli: sure. Even slumdog millionaire did a positive turn to India.... Oscar for ARR, SRK and Anil kapoor on Oscar stage, all the mentions of Frida pinto etc.... All clubs in US were playing Jai Ho.
As for NaMo.... Haven't u heard about the increase in interest of foreign investors in India after the election results?
@Ali tanoli: We are proud not ashamed that a person from such a humle origin and without any patronage can rise to the position of the Prime Minister of our country. Indians have rejected fear mongering about Modi by Congress and soon ghe world will figure out what a visionary he is when they deal first hand with him.
As for poverty and slums - of course we have plenty but things are better than they were 20 years back and they are heading in e right direction. Acche din aane wale hain.
@GP65 Seems like it slumdog chai wala image of india is very powerfull in the world...... and most of all now with redical PM .....
@strategic asset, so what if it did Indian? your comments sound like propaganda for india.
Spoken like the true son of The Pakistani entitled class from the safety of foreign shores!
First of all no doubt this is a good initiative. I hope you succeed. I wanted to point out a couple of things:
1) as far as stock markets go, Pakistan is classified as a frontier market (as distinct from The BRIC countries for example which are classified as emerging markets). Due to the risks associated with investing in frontier markets, there are very few pension funds and mutual funds in US and Europe whose board resolutions permit them to invest in frontier markets. If you want portfolio investments from institutional investors in Europe and US, you have to fix the fragile foreign exchange and security situation prevailing in your country to allow it to be classified as emerging market.
2) Branding requires an underlying product that you can market. What are the sources of Indian soft power- very few come from government. India's soft power was built over decades by a wide variety of things: Iyengar actively marketed yoga in European countries and US. Bollywood fare is widely watched by people in Asia Pacific, Africa and Middle east, all cricket loving countries have their eyes riveted on India during IP, season, ghe IT and backoffice offshoring story is also quite well known and need not be retold. India being one of the rare exceptions in the emerging markets which has consistently maintained its secular and democratic character also is noticed. Students from middle east, Afghanistan etc. come to India to study and India is also fast developing as a center of wellness tourism for the west. Finally last but not the least Indian diaspora is well integrated and productive force in whichever countries it lives. The high dependence on dole and much higher crime rate of Pakistanis in Canada and UK are unhelpful in building a soft image which is favorable.Depending on age old narraives of strategic location will not take you far.
Good luck with your goal. I hope you succeed but there is a lot of work on the ground to be done before the marketing and branding effort can take off.
This reads like an advertisement for your organization.
Disappointing superficial article out of touch with ground realities. how can we have soft power when we have very severe hardcore problems? Did you need a conference to come up with this?
I have some takeaways for you. Without addressing these HARD problems, forget SOFT power.
1) all people living inside the borders of Pakistan should be 100% equal citizens. No one is superior because of their religious beliefs.
2) Primary focus of the country should be economic development and betterment of living conditions of people of Pakistan, everything else should come after that.
3) stop being a warrior state, stop hosting nonstate actors, terrorists.
We cannot expect the rest of the world to give us soft power through propaganda.
The problem with Pakistan, simply put, is the over powering domination of religion. It served its purpose in the creation of the State, but is a tremendous handicap now. When I was a student at MIT, I came across very bright Pakistani students who could not excel because they were busy proving to the world that their faith was superior to other faiths!
Building a new international narrative about Pakistan will always be problematic (Impossible?) as long as the country continues to openly support and provide for your beloved "Good Taliban" Assets of the state in those world famous Safe Havens! Meddling in other countries internal affairs in the search for Strategic Depth, along with CREATING those jihadi groups to "Bleed India from a thousand cuts", does not inspire the world to take Pakistan seriously as anything but a problem child!