The SDPI conference — the seventeenth such event — told us little that is not already known. Inflation is now at 12 per cent, food prices are rising, and poverty is increasing by about three million a year — though still not effectively measured because of political sensitivities. The national census that is an essential forward planning tool is still nowhere near being held, again for purely political reasons. A pitiful 700,000 fill in their tax forms, down by 300,000 four years ago. Tax exemptions are granted to the value of Rs900 billion — a sum that would revolutionise the education system were it recouped and spent wisely. Yet again Pakistan is shown to be its own worst enemy. Failure to invest in social capital — children, health services and education — has now ensured that Pakistan will be in a morass of second-best for generations to come. The policy shift demanded by the conference will receive cosmetic lip service, when what is needed is a wholesale revision of the way Pakistan as a state goes about its business. It is not a failed state but an ailing state, moreover one that refuses to heed the advice of its doctors.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 15th, 2014.
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In America when you ask someone who they are they reply with "I'm American". Then if you ask specifically where they are form they will say, I'm from Texas or California or New York or whatever state they happen to be from. Sometime instead of the state they name the city or town. The point is that people there feel American first. In Pakistan its usually, I'm Pushton or I'm Punjabi or Baloch etc. etc. People don't have a sense of country. The borders are what they are, accept it and grow the county and your minds.