On the international front we have the Afghanistan issue with the United States treating it as an “American domestic issue”. Then there is the very real India factor and of course the usual stuff with other ‘serious’ countries. It’s a daunting menu of problems but we need to start somewhere. Steps must be taken, no matter how small or how few. For starters, we could begin with merely five.
1. We need to formulate a national security policy, which shall in turn father the country’s economic, foreign, and military policies. Let’s learn from Turkey. As a state we must adopt a proactive approach rather then merely reacting to events and dealing with eventual fallouts. And this will happen only when a duly thought out policy framework replaces the whimsical and nonsensical individualistic reactions of our political and khaki power lords.
2. The terrorism issue is going nowhere till our tribal population gets somewhere first. We need to expose the tribal population to an alternative and parallel socio-political and religious narrative. The Political Parties Act must immediately be extended to the entire Fata belt. Today, a political worker’s property can be confiscated under the draconian FCR law and he/she can be sentenced to life imprisonment for the ‘crime’ of establishing a political party office in Fata. On the other hand, anyone can open a madressah, funded by unknown sources, and preach venomous ideologies without any reprisal whatsoever. Fata remains fertile ground for terrorist recruiters, thanks to a combination of crushing poverty and blinding ignorance. Peace will not come without awareness and that shall not take root unless we unlock the tribal borders and unleash the tribal mind. The tribal region has been kept out of Pakistan for the past 64 years but now Pakistan must go to it. Certain legitimate concerns of law enforcement agencies can easily be accommodated without allowing such apprehensions to block the direly needed socio-economic glasnost.
3. We have no choice but to sort out our institutional unholy mess and redefine the meaning of strategic depth and tactical offense. We can no longer afford sleeping with the LeT, Jaish, and the ‘good’ Taliban etc and trying to wake up with the rest of the world pretending that nobody is hiding in the bedroom closet. It may have worked in the past vis-à-vis India but the burning issue here is not of securing independence for Kashmir but of safeguarding our own. Nobody is talking about abandoning the cause of Kashmir but only of giving up certain ill-advised habits. The concept of using illegal combatants of war for even legitimate conflicts must be abandoned (and the same goes for the US and its contractors). True to its nature, the beast has now turned its head and is biting the feeding hand. We either kill the beast or prepare to be devoured by it. And here is some unsolicited advice for our American friends who are breathing unnecessarily hard down our necks: the acme of statecraft is to convert your enemy into your friend and not the other way round.
4. Our economy is in a serious mess, to put it mildly. According to the latest State Bank statistics, there is hardly any credit demand for new investment activities; economic growth was a nonexistent 2.4 percent and inflation is clearly running wild and out of government control, rather, being fuelled by its own ridiculous ‘time pass’ policies. The US dictates terms, and rightly so, because we perpetually beg the US for funds. We need to stop doing that and start fixing our own economy. Out of the box thinking is required by our boxed-in leadership. We need to take measures like a flat 10 to 15 percent across-the-board income tax without any exemptions, making tax evasion more of a hassle than incentive. People work harder and create greater wealth when they can keep a larger share of it. This approach will indeed cause an initial revenue dip but shall yield tremendous dividends down the road. Fixing a prudent dollar exchange rate in the seventies range and ensuring State Bank intervention to keep it that way will stop speculation and stabilise currency and export contracts. Freeze runaway government borrowing as interest repayments alone take up 25 percent of our budget. Reign in banks that are earning criminally high profit margins in Pakistan. There is a near eight percent difference in their receiving and lending spread whereas all over the world it stays in the 1 to 1.5 percent range. Offer irresistible incentives to thermal power plants to convert to coal. We have a coal reservoir with 175 billion tonnes of coal which effectively developed and exploited would change our future. Meanwhile, even importing coal remains a cheaper option than furnace oil. Privatise the bleeding state entities and restructure the extremely corrupt federal board of revenue. Build on the strength of our agrarian economy, which is also human capital intensive. Invest in education, and population control.
Enforcing industry standards alone can save billions in energy losses. With electricity appliances working at 40 percent efficiency and gas appliances at just 26 percent, we lose over 2000 MWs of electricity daily just to lousy fans and similar appliances while millions of cubic feet of gas are lost daily to inefficiently designed gas cooking ranges and water heaters.
5. The civilian and military leadership must share a common and voluntarily agreed upon strategic vision of the War on Terrorism, and the definition of Pakistan’s strategic interests. A conflict here would be more disastrous than the damage caused by any outside force.
The list of measures required is endless and warrants a dedicated column but even these few measures, given they are implemented, could transform our fiscal situation and the country.
0 comments:
Post a Comment