Daily Times

Pakistan has never developed a healthy symbiosis of politics and policy which could serve the public, due to the nature of our governance structures. According to economic development theorists, developing countries progress in accordance with four models. The is called the linear model, which is based on a linear progression of savings, investments, and foreign aid that results in aggregate economic progress. The second model is based on structural changes in traditional modes of economy, transforming agrarian economies into industrial and service economies, ensuring the sustainability of those changes through modern management. The third is called the dependence model, according to which countries achieve progress and autarky while aligning political and economic policies with the dominant economic trends of the world. Countries like China and India that aimed at economic autarky through internal policies initially, realised later that opening up to the world was a precondition to progress in the 80s and 90s.

The fourth model, called free market enterprise, relied on deregulation and privatisation reducing the role of the government in economic governance. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were the exemplars of this model. The purpose of public policy planning by governments is to ensure the best harnessing of national resources to raise the national income for spending on public welfare. Policy planning thus spans a wide gamut of fields. The means to raise national income and the structures to deliver public services, therefore form the bulk of public policy. The interplay of politics and economy determines whether the state’s policies will be security centric or focused on development. In 1960, Walt Whitman Rostow postulated five basic stages of growth for countries. These include the traditional society stage, preconditions to take-off stage, take-off stage and maturity stage.

Countries like Pakistan remain unable to realise their true economic potential due to several factors, including poor leadership, faulty political vision, ineffective planning instruments, and social segmentation

A further examination of Rostow’s five stages tells us that the preconditions for the take-off stage are the most difficult to stage, and this is where most of the developing countries face difficulty. Getting to the preconditions stage to take-off includes a willingness to initiate economic change, development of economic surplus, infrastructural investment, and technological progress, changing social structures, and shared economic interests amongst all segments of the population. Pakistan remains stuck at the preconditions stage, unable to realise its true potential due to several factors. These include poor leadership, faulty political vision, ineffective planning instruments, and social segmentation.

What are the structural impediments to Pakistan’s public policy formulation and its implementation that have prevented it from developing basic structures of development as in the second model explained above? The policy bulwarks include a non-inclusive political model, a non-developmental economic model, and a non-egalitarian social model. It is because of all the above ‘nons’ that our national development and public policy remain stuck in the preconditions stage, contrary to our protestations of being in the ‘take-off’ stage.

We have a national political elite, that despite rapid urbanisation, remains stuck in outmoded feudal patterns of thinking. This spawns an extractive political culture of power, pelf, and patronage. Add to this a security apparatus that gobbles up our national resources without yielding permanent solutions to our security dilemma and a religious leadership that lives in medieval ages with medieval solutions to modern problems, and the reasons behind many of our problems become clear. We also have vertical and horizontal polarisations in our population, degrading our national unity. Our ethnic particularisms are trumping economic realities with a lemming like suicidal propensity. Our policy dilemma is not amenable to linear solutions because of the intertwined nature of our social, political, and economic realities. We have our corrupt elite, which thrives on a weak state to loot and plunder in cahoots with common criminals. While plutocracies can amass wealth through any means, a kleptocracy can only steal from the people through cleverly crafted structures of extraction.

This discussion leads us to Pakistan specific issues starting from non-inclusive politics to policy paralysis. At the macro level, our polity needs reforms to yield effective policy prescriptions. The present parliamentary model that constantly keeps Prime Ministers hostage to political blackmail needs to be replaced by a system in which the parliamentarians simply legislate. Meanwhile, the executive under the political head, ought to govern through a cabinet chosen for its expertise rather than politics. The parliamentary nature of the polity relying on the present four provinces need to be changed by increasing the number of provinces according to current administrative and demographic realities. Small and administratively better managed provinces will bury the bugbear of provincial rivalry, duly enabled by devolution of power to the local government. The federation would be strengthened when more provinces possess their own governance apparatus, ameliorating political and economic deprivations of the people across the country. The national resources would then be shared less acrimoniously, based on economic and demographic realities rather than political motives.

The policy paralysis due to political inability to forge national consensus on issues like Kalabagh Dam would be ideally resolved when more provinces with a reasonably strong centre are overseen by a political head unaffected by the avaricious legislators’ political blackmail. After macro-level reforms, there is a need to create and strengthen institutions that help policy formulation. The Planning And Development Division of the government should act as the inter-ministerial coordination body, besides acting as the federal government’s policy generation wing. The National Security Directorate (NSD) should be staffed and resourced optimally to enable it to generate well-crafted policy options for the political head of the government. The Cabinet Committee on National Security should act like an effective link between the political executive, legislature, and the defence ministry, providing effective cabinet oversight over defence services. Some of the examples of policy paralysis in Pakistan include the inability to resolve sectarian issues, extremism, the energy crisis, and water scarcity. Sectarian issues have not been resolved because nobody has confronted extremist clerics, who impose a distorted interpretation of religion on fellow citizens. Timid policy formulation and its implementation are evident by the failed madrassah reforms and financial monitoring of sectarian outfits. The country’s energy crisis is another indication of this policy hiatus. While we edge close to water scarcity with an exploding population, there is still no national energy mix policy through which irrigation and power requirements could be addressed. Lack of planning for development of hydel potential and water conservation has resulted in implacable power shortages countrywide, rendering our industry uncompetitive. We are in the throes of lethal water scarcity and deindustrialisation due to absence of the needed policies.

While Pakistan grapples with depleting foreign exchange reserves, there is slow progress on indigenous oil and gas exploration. Slow allocation of exploration blocks to oil and gas companies, deliberate discouragement of solar and wind energy, and failure to develop electricity evacuation grid commensurate to generation capacity. This is a classic case of policy failure. The evidence for this is that Pakistan has gone from being water abundant to water scarce within just a generation. The trouble with policy making at the national level is that it can’t be dealt with in a half-hearted manner. It needs a holistic view of the problems and an integrated response. Isolated and expedient policies catering to the needs of a corrupt elite will never be able to solve our problems. Plan or perish is our only choice while confronting our looming resource scarcity.

The writer is a PhD scholar at NUST; email rwjanj@hotmail.com

Published in Daily Times, April 9^th 2018.