Syed Bakhtiyar Kazmi
“Religious warfare and economic chaos threaten the newly born nation of 70 million moslems”, subtitle of the article on Pakistan in Life Magazine issue of January 5, 1948.
The magazine’s cover, featuring the Quaid looking somber and rather determined, together with the related article on Pakistan, recently made its debut on the social media. Suffice to say that the combo provoked patriotic emotions, the Quaid does look amazing, as well as a worrying realization that perhaps we, as a nation, do need to do more. Today, 70 years later, and with 207 million Pakistanis, in a nutshell, we conceivably struggle with the same twin threats that Life magazine identifies in its article. As the case maybe, we probably haven’t moved far from the magazine’s other sub-heading, “Nation has few leaders”.
Obviously there are, and possibly will always be, explanations and excuses, but the crux of the matter is that today, another nation is building our infrastructure for us, which mind you is not for free. On our own, we could also not manage our power shortfall, despite, as the experts point out, huge potential for hydel generation up north. Regardless of possessing one of the largest coal deposits on the globe, we continue to import fuel and energy, and are expected to do so for the foreseeable future. The economy remains agrarian, or at least primarily dependent on agriculture, except, and this a kicker, that we have managed to get ourselves included in the United Nations list of water-stressed nations; despite the nation being blessed with multiple options for water management. Remarkably, because of having managed to politicize dam building, we seem to have built insurmountable hurdles to growth; perhaps far bigger than the eastern unfriendly neighbour could, through all kinds of covert manipulations to subvert the Indus Water Treaty.
With an extremely large diaspora, we have managed to mismanage the national airline. We felt that we could not operate and maintain our nation’s biggest assets, our savings, and hence privatised them. In fact we are grateful to multilateral lending agencies for convincing us that foreigners can run all businesses better than us, and accordingly we are in a hurry to sell everything to foreign investors. Maybe all this makes sense to most of us, except that at least some of us are not sure about how we plan to pay for everything we buy from the foreigners, once we have exported majority of all skilled jobs.
We seem to have bought into western thoughts on consumption, better than their own populace ever did. We seemingly, as a nation, are convinced that saving for the future is absolutely wasteful and borrowing to finance unbridled consumption is the path to being a prosperous nation. Somehow that even sounded wrong!
But there is nothing to worry about because we have a free press, democracy and the bomb! Further, all our great friends, including the IMF, the World Bank and certain foreign publications, are convinced we will be in the list of top 20 economies by 2030, give or take a few years; and to clarify to the sceptics, they, IMF and all others, are most definitely our friends, since why else would we believe them. Notwithstanding the need to revisit whom we think are our friends, why and how of being in the top 20 perhaps remains a mystery.
Playing the role of the Devil’s Advocate, diligently, one might have gone overboard in the above analysis; except extreme critique and views polar opposite to conventional wisdom is the exact role of a Devil’s advocate. Bad news is good news when you chose to play this particular part.
The other, very happy, side of the picture is perhaps best showcased by Gulf News, another good friend of ours, in a very recent, and extremely enthusiastic, write up on Pakistan.
The Gulf News excitedly points out that Pakistan is the first and only Islamic country to have attained nuclear power, coupled with one of world’s best missile technology. We have the best trained air force pilots and sixth largest military force. Pakistan constructed the world’s largest warm water deep sea port, has the world’s largest earth-filled dam, has built the highest paved international road, has the second largest salt mine in the world, has the world’s largest irrigation network, have the highest mountain ranges in the world, have the world’s largest sub-tropical desert, in 1994 held four world cup titles in mainstream sports, is the land of the oldest civilization, are a multilingual country, are 6th most populated country in the world, and have the world’s largest ambulance network.
Dear fellow Pakistanis, without Googling, I am confident that all of what is pointed out in the previous paragraph is correct, including the achievements of Pakistanis in educational fields covered by the article and not mentioned here. Good to know that the seventh largest pool of scientists and engineers come from Pakistan. Except I am not sure how our literacy rate increased by 250% from 5 years ago when it was around 60%!
Curiously, both of the broadly outlined above pictures can and are perhaps coexisting on one canvas, Pakistan. Ultimately, however, it is up to us Pakistanis to decide which one we want to see and on that basis decide what we want to do; we can choose the difficult path to grandeur or the easier path back to the past! You decide which is which!
(The writer is a chartered accountant based in Islamabad. Email: [email protected])
