Daily Times

As a nation, we are facing a perennial threat to our existence. Our economy is on the cusp of collapse and the politics are in disarray. The state institutions are at loggerheads functioning for cross purposes. The Constitution is losing its sanctity. The populace is in misery overwhelmed by poverty, disillusionment and hopelessness. There is no sign of course correction. We don’t have daring minds to rescue the nation from its current torturing predicament.

Henry Kissinger said that “the best determinants of a society’s fate are neither its national wealth nor other conventional measures of power but rather the quality of its people and the vision of its leaders”. We have remained deprived of both, unfortunately. The nation has been systematically reduced to a disinterested crowd by the ruling elite – feudal chiefs, landlords, political and spiritual dynasties, civil and military establishment, industrialists, business and media houses and selfish upper middle class – depriving it of education, healthcare, secure livelihood, social and economic justice, rule of law and equality before law keeping the teeming populace on crumbs in a patron-client political system.

The state resources and national wealth, over decades, were captured and are being plundered by the elite while masquerading as the saviour of this besieged nation. They are found in every corridor of power – cabinet and parliament with their sons and nephews filling up the ranks of the elite and lucrative public services, corporate and financial sectors at the federal and provincial levels.

The nation has been systematically reduced to a disinterested crowd by the ruling elite.

We are an agrarian society. The agriculture sector with 22.6 million hectares of cultivable land (out of a total of 79.6 million hectares) contributes 22.67% to the GDP. The feudal and landlord class clustered in every political party and the parliament since the inception of the country possesses over 50% of the cultivable land. They earn millions and live an aristocratic life with numerous palaces and SUVs with their children receiving education in elite institutions in the country and earning their graduation degrees from prestigious foreign universities. They pay no income tax. They, in the overwhelming majority, are in the legislative Assemblies and influence legislation to protect their vested interests. They have no concern at all for the misery of the common man.

In the last quarter of the fiscal year 2022-2023, the United Nations Development Programme released a comprehensive report on the economy of Pakistan revealing shocking facts. It reflected the callous plunder of the state resources by the elite stating that the country’s resources of Rs 17.30 trillion are squandered on the perks, privileges and subsidies of the elite including the feudal political class and establishment taking 8% of the state revenue. Sometimes, the powerful class takes more than its determined share by exercising its influence and power. The corporate sector’s share is comparatively bigger estimated at 9% of the economy or Rs.7.18trillion as contrasted with the share of the affluent class.

The report further revealed that the feudal and landlords forming 1.1% of the population owned the major chunk of the cultivable lands of the country with a substantially powerful representation in the parliament manipulating legislation according to their vested interests and the middle class was just disappearing leaving the society with the affluent and powerful class at the summit of the pyramid and the teeming millions at the bottom with an unending social and economy asphyxia. The report claims – and rightfully so – that the affluent class never had any difficulty in living an ostentatious life. It is the middle and lower middle class and the teeming millions of the populace that have always faced the brunt of economic hardships and poverty.

It is widely apprehended that the conditions being imposed by the IMF would trigger an avalanche of inflation breaking the back of the populace without affecting the extravagance of the elite and the privileged class. The IMF had given its draft Memorandum for Economic and Financial Policies to the last PDM regime before releasing 3 billion dollars. The regime taxed commodities of daily use and enhanced the rates of utilities. The apprehension of the economists of the country apart, the Associate Director of the International Human Rights Watch was compelled to express his serious concern that the IMF conditions would plunge millions of Pakistanis into social and economic misery simply beyond human endurance. The inflation exasperated by the taxes in the budget of the fiscal year 2023-2024 forced people to withdraw their children from good schools to make both ends meet.

Maybe, the IMF programme would help us overcome our present economic predicament but we shall remain mired in a sick and vulnerable economy sans structural reforms. We have had 14 IMF programmes since 1988 which didn’t help stabilize our economy because we failed to introduce structural reforms.

“A nation is great not by its size alone. It is the will, the cohesion, the stamina, the discipline of its people, and the quality of their leaders which ensures it an honourable place in history”, Mr Lee Kuan had once said. Let us be honest with ourselves that today we lack all these qualities. The recent general elections gave us a glimpse of hope when the younger generation came out in droves to vote for change. Alias, every possible trick was employed to subvert their electoral verdict.

The people of Pakistan have every right to ask their new rulers what they are going to do with the perks, privileges and subsidies of the elite as outlined above, and how they are planning to stem the plunder and pilferage of the state resources by the corrupt mafia and what structural reforms they would introduce to put the economy of the country on a firm foundation

The charade of patchwork we have been indulging in would no longer work. It is time to take the bull by horns at least dispensing with the perks and privileges of the elite; taxing the upper class and reviewing all agreements signed with the Independent Power Plants.

Please no more demands for sacrifices from the poverty-stricken nation.

The author was a member of the Foreign Service of Pakistan and he has authored two books.