Daily Times

Prime Minister (PM) of Islamic Republic of Pakistan Imran Khan seeks overseas Pakistanis’ help to build dams. The PM on September 7, 2018, appealed to overseas Pakistanis to donate $1000 each to help finance construction of Diamer-Bhasha dam. Mr Khan further expounded that these financial donations from abroad will help improve the fast depleting foreign exchange reserves of Pakistan. Mr. Khan, maybe you don’t know, that your new stratagem has further debased the worth and value of our green passport and identity of the Pakistani nation across the globe. Welcome to the new Pakistan.

This charity oriented governance and mindset of Mr. Imran Khan is highly inexplicable and it seems Mr. Khan wants to run the whole of Pakistan on charity on the patterns of Shaukat Khanum Memorial Trust or a shrine. The Pakistani embassy in the United States also appealed the Pakistani-American community to donate generously for the construction of Diamer-Bhasha and Mohmand dams. Pakistani embassies in Sweden and Finland have made similar requests to expatriates. No doubt, Khan’s style of governance has started a new kind of ‘dollars for charity’ diplomacy. Actually, Mr. Khan has taken international diplomacy to the wholly new level and I am coining it as “ninth generation diplomacy”.

This charity fund raising campaign was initiated by the Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar in July, 2018, and State of Pakistan notified the establishment of Supreme Court of Pakistan Diamer-Bhasha and Mohmand Dams Fund on 10 July, 2018.  PM of Pakistan Imran Khan is very experienced in the business of charity and fundraising, so now the title of this fund has been changed. Now its title is “Prime Minister and Chief Justice of Pakistan Fund for Diamer Bhasha and Mohmand Dam” which the State Bank of Pakistan notified the public on September 7, 2018.

Mr. Khan’s philosophy of development has raised many questions in the minds of Pakistanis and rest of the world; and it has manifold perennial after maths as well.

First, Pakistan is not a charity based trust; it is a sovereign state. Why should overseas Pakistanis donate $1,000 each to the government of Pakistan, considering how everyone knows the corrupt traditions prevalent here?

So far as donations of native people of Pakistan are concerned; its too embarrassing, when a tax payer is asked for charity in favour of the same beneficiary government. Tax collection is a valid and respectable option for a government but charity oriented revenue collection across the globe and within the country is not convincing enough and it will further mutilate the image of Pakistan. This charity approach establishes, our identify, as one of an impoverished people, hungry people and finally corrupt people, I am sorry to say.

Imran Khan seeks overseas Pakistanis’ help to build dams. The PM on September 7, 2018, appealed to overseas Pakistanis to donate $1000 each to help finance construction of Diamer-Bhasha dam. Mr Khan further expounded that these financial donations from abroad will help improve the fast depleting foreign exchange reserves of Pakistan

Secondly, it shows that while Pakistan has sufficient public finance available for Swiss banks, money laundering and corruption. However when a macro-development project is in the limelight; the Government of Pakistan claims that the exchequer is empty and turns to foreign aid, charity and fund-raising.

Thirdly, there are strong apprehensions that Mr. Khan’s charity school of thought will give birth to an ad infinitum era of documented beggary, corruption, scams and frauds on the name of development in general and on the name of dams in particular. Pakistan is already notorious for corruption and this charity fund raising campaign will provide fresh employment opportunities to the accustomed corrupt segments of Pakistani society.

Lastly, Mr. Khan, charity fundraising is not the working solution of the problem and mega dams cannot be completed in this way. For instance, the total accumulated estimated cost of Diamer Bhasha dam is Rupees 1.4 Trillion or $14 billion approximately and this cost will be double in a couple of years and charity fundraising will not help at all. We Pakistanis even don’t know how many zeros are there in a trillion. Indubitably, your utopian idea is, as usual, just a good public stunt to impress innocent voters and nothing else.

At the end I would like to suggest something in this regard. China and Pakistan evolved good geostrategic relations historically. Government of Pakistan should renegotiate with China and revise the terms of China Pak Economic Corridor (CPEC), which is $62 billion mega project signed in 2015. CPEC is not a divine document and it can be reconstituted. Mr. Khan should try to convince Xi Jinping and make Diamer Bhasha dam part of the CPEC. Otherwise, crowd sourcing the mega dam will take almost 120 years to be completed.

The writer is a lecturer at the Department of Sociology, Government College University Faisalabad. He can be reached at sajidmahmoodsajid@gmail.com

Published in Daily Times, September 19^th 2018.