Daily Times

We have no dearth of laughable news at the expense of our political leaders. The latest came from the khadim-e-aala (the high servant), janab wazeer-e-aaala (respected chief minister), Mian Shahbaz Sharif. He made some quick headlines by saying no to ‘foreign aid in Punjab’.

After the Abbottabad operation, our honour, which was in deep slumber, has suddenly woken up. As I said in one of my posts on another forum, any time it involves a gora (white man), we suddenly wake up. Our pains of the past and the narratives fed by our muashrati uloom (social studies) textbooks give us a sudden surge of honour. We perceive the ‘Caucasians’ as the villain number one, thanks to our media, Lollywood movies and half-baked truths.

I posed the same question when the Raymond Davis incident happened. I will repeat the same question by altering the scenario a little bit. Suppose a couple of weeks back in Abbottabad it was not American choppers, but Saudi choppers, coming in and getting rid of their former citizen. Would this have prompted our ‘ghairat brigade’ to be out and cry foul on a ‘foreign incursion’? The truth is that we would have done the job for them ourselves. But even if push had come to shove, we would have dismissed everything by saying, “Our brotherly nation has the right to seek justice from someone who is a fugitive.” So, as the spin-doctors are busy trying to rally up the hypocritical honour brigade against the ‘foreign US’, they would have an entirely opposite opinion in the case of the ‘foreign’ yet ‘brotherly Saudi Arabia’.

In the wake of all this, of course, for the sake of rhetoric, ‘foreign dictation’ and ‘foreign aid’ are being refused. But one has to ask the honourable chief minister, what about ‘foreign treatment’? Why go for a check-up, treatment and surgeries to these ‘foreign countries’? Sir, how about the ‘foreign exiles’ and above all ‘foreign cars’ that we love so much?!

Shun everything ‘foreign’, as it reminds us of the ‘foreign East India company walas’, who came in for trade and did a ‘Raymond Davis’ on us. Our so ‘righteous and honest’ forefathers were fooled by these people and the rest is all crystal clear in our books. No narrative about our shortcomings and lack of control. Conspiracies of ‘evil angrez (British)’ is what you would typically find in our books; add to it what we churn out every day on our own and now you know what our biggest crop is. If someone said wheat or cotton, they ought to quickly replace it with ‘conspiracies’.

It is even more amusing to read our Urdu headlines: “Shahbaz Sharif says no to begging bowl.” The last I heard the province of Punjab was still part of the federation. The federation has a foreign minister and a finance minister. The aid given to the country of course is for the entire country for a certain purpose. Technically, it is not charity. It has certain objectives, or conditions attached to it.

In a broader perspective, it is a plan of development. The critics and cynics who view aid as alms thrown into the ‘begging bowl’ should really re-examine their stance. It is a temporary help to put us back on our feet. The idea is to have our folks chart out a course so that we no longer need these crutches. It is not the fault of donor nations that we are unable to come up with a tangible and realistic plan, which would take us to complete recovery.

When the aid trickles in, it is on a national level. Of course one would hope that there is some mechanism of appropriation among the provinces. If the provincial government decides to pass on the aid, it must have a sound economic plan to replace it with domestic resources. The sound bytes seem catchy and interesting, make good headlines, but in reality do not mean much.

The honourable chief minister sahib did touch on a couple of items, like creating jobs and investment. Sounds good and promising, but how do you attract long-term business and investment from all over the world? Even a novice like me knows that you want the domestic and foreign investments to increase exponentially to get the desired returns.

It boils down to a conducive economic environment. How do you create that in the presence of political instability and terrorism, which is preventing people from the outside to increase their stakes in our motherland? Mian Sahib Junior is an astute politician and a seasoned businessman himself. He knows that in order to boost economic activity, these impediments have to be tackled head on.

The so-called ‘America’s war’ is actually the war to put our country back on track to prosperity and everlasting peace. A progressive, prosperous and developed Pakistan will be in the interest of the entire world, where tourism would replace terrorism. Self-reliance is a good thing, but it cannot happen in a self-created imaginary world. We live in a global village and it is high time we became inclusive and created our niche within this shrinking world.

The writer is a Pakistani American. He blogs at dasgharspoliticalprism.blogspot.com and can be reached at dasghar@aol.com