“This alarming rise of indebtedness has hocked future generations. The most cruel and perverse aspect of this public debt is that all social and economic indicators have simultaneously worsened. The widening income disparity, deepening poverty and spiralling debt is accompanied by crises of public health and environment. The sole beneficiary of these policies is the ruling elite.” I was saying this the other day about the present economic policies of the Boris Johnson Rishi Sunak government here in the UK, when I was reminded that my statements applied with even greater force to the other country.
That set my mind back in time and place. I realised then that I had used these very words— thirteen years back in Pakistan. A bit of context is called for here. The occasion was the 2007 budget. As a professor of business at the Lahore School of Economics, having worked previously in government with both Ministers Shaukat Aziz and Hafeez Shaikh of the Musharraf Administration, and being all-too-well aware of those ‘lies, damned lies and statistics,’ I was pressed into service by a mutual friend of a member of parliament who had become so disillusioned (rather like myself) with the government that he wanted to quit parliament altogether. He was looking perhaps for a kindred spirit to prepare him for his farewell speech the following day from the floor of the National Assembly. I was given only a few hours to draft these hurried comments, on the 2007 budget of Pakistan. Excerpts from it are reproduced below (the text that follows conforms to public record, having been delivered in a speech in parliament and also having been released and partially reported in the national press at the time).
“The military government’s eighth consecutive budget of the rich has been presented by the rich for the rich. It comes as no surprise that the main thrust of this budget, as that of the previous ones, has been progressive maximisation of tax breaks, exemptions and privileges for the small minority of cash-rich investors and profiteering businessmen. Stock exchange bonanzas and windfall gains from real estate remain outside the tax net. Huge capital gains made through stock market speculation and from dubious property transactions (often undocumented and clandestine) will not only continually grow exponentially; they will remain untaxed. In fact, the budget admittedly promotes such transactions and this kind of capital growth that is tax free, benefits only the very rich, and is socially reprehensible.”
There is some evidence that, in recent years, some of these reprehensible measures have been checked. Property transactions, real-estate ‘investments’ provide less cover for unearned income, which can no longer be ferried across easily to Dubai or brought to Mayfair
To be fair, there is some evidence that, in recent years, some of these reprehensible measures have been checked. Property transactions, real-estate ‘investments’ provide less cover for unearned income, which can no longer be ferried across easily to Dubai or brought to Mayfair. However, the fundamentals remain unchanged, even though the ruinous post -9/11 political obligations to the United States, imposed upon President Musharraf by George Bush, are no longer operative (or are they?). These were spoken out loudly in that statement of 2007: “The government should have been ashamed of the fact that it has been unable even to meet its own modest targets of tax collection, economic growth, inflation, social spending or exports. Its tall claims of past years about debt reduction stand fully exposed. In fact the country’s external and internal debt stands at an all-time high. Despite huge capital inflows as a consequence of 9/11 and the mercenary role being performed in the service of the U.S . government, our foreign indebtedness has increased. All this while the government is stripping the country’s assets through privatisation scams! At the same time it is adding to our liabilities through expensive commercial borrowings which it admits have no financial justification and are being resorted to only to register a notional presence in foreign capital markets.
“The widening income disparity, deepening poverty and spiralling debt is accompanied by a chronic energy crises, crippling power shortage and crises of water, health and environment. An elite military industrial complex is the sole beneficiary of this budget. The rest of the populace waits for its deliverance from a rapacious ruling class.” With the critical distance of time and space, it may be worthwhile to consider the relevance today of these comments. How far has Pakistan come since? Neither Musharraf nor Shaukat Aziz are on the national scene, though Hafeez Shaikh still controls the commanding heights of the economy. The military-industrial complex is still dominant— perhaps even more so. The intervening years of the see-saw that rocked the coming into force of the charter of democracy of the Sharifs and Zardaris have further cemented the cohesion of the rentier capitalist class —- that ‘ruling elite’ which Dr Ishrat Hussain so brilliantly and precisely identified back in 2002 (in his first book) and which he so magnificently continues to exemplify. But, perhaps time has not stood still, even though my own views of 2007 have not changed, because there has been nothing to warrant such a revision. Sometimes I wonder whether the views of that parliamentarian for whom I wrote the above comments 13 years back have undergone a change. He agreed with them completely, and spoke them out so passionately, then and ever since, that I still believe that he too still believes them — even though all manifestations are to the contrary. I say this because that disgruntled parliamentarian of yesteryear is none other than the present Prime Minister of Pakistan.
The writer an Oxford-based academic, international management consultant, professor of business administration