Perils of Pakistani Politics of Patronage
Pakistan's economy is suffering from stagflation, a very unhealthy combination of very slow growth and high inflation, since 2008. These three years have also seen significant turnover in the nation's top economic management team.
Pakistan is now on its third finance minister, Dr. Hafeez Shaikh, in three years. Mr. Shahid Kardar, the third central bank governor since 2008, has just quit amid serious policy differences with the PPP-led government. Kardar is the second central bank governor to leave in just over a year and the third senior policymaker to quit in less than 18 months. During this period, the IMF has also suspended its loans to Pakistan on concerns about lack of progress on budget deficit reductions through revenue enhancements committed by the government in 2008.
"Differences of opinion on policy actions and on the implementation of certain directions that I, in my best judgment, did not consider to be judicious have compelled me to resign from office," Kardar told Reuters in response to questions about the reason for his resignation less than a year after he was appointed.
"Such differences are impeding the State Bank from discharging its mandate to safeguard its own integrity and autonomy, to ensure prudent conduct of monetary policy and to maintain the safety and stability of the banking system."
In simple terms, the biggest problem Mr. Kardar had with the government was sustained and excessive borrowing from the central bank to fill the large gap between revenue and spending. This has fueled inflation, and made a mockery of the central bankers' tight monetary policy. Rather than accept the advice of his own team of experts, it seems that President Zardari has essentially been following his own economic policy of "print the notes", a quote attributed to Mr. Zardari by the New York Times in a 2008 story.
In February 2010, there were rumors that the ruling PPP politicians, particularly President Zardari and his inner circle, ignored former Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin's key recommendations to address the acute power shortages in the country. Zardari's insistence on pushing rental power projects, rather than fix the huge circular debt problem in the energy sector first, specially frustrated the outgoing finance chief, when he first reportedly threatened to quit 2009.
To put it all in perspective, let's recall how late Dr. Mahbub ul-Haq, the renowned Pakistani economist who is credited with the idea of UNDP's human development index (HDI), explained the corrosive impact of political patronage on economic policy in Pakistan.
In a 10/12/1988 interview with Professor Anatol Lieven of King's College and quoted in a recent book "Pakistan-A Hard Country", here is what Dr. Haq said:
To summarize, there is insufficient revenue collected by the state of Pakistan, and the diversion of this very limited revenue to political patronage fosters dependence on foreign aid and impinges on the nation's sovereignty. It also seriously harms Pakistan's ability to invest in education, health care and infrastructure development in terms of school and hospital buildings, roads, rails, and water and energy projects for Pakistan's future.
Discussing the politics of patronage in Pakistan, Professor Lieven, the author of "Pakistan-A Hard Country", sees a silver lining to it by describing the difference between Nigeria and Pakistan in the following words:
I personally see no better explanation for the boom under President Musharraf in 2000-2007, followed by current economic crisis since 2008, than the prevailing system of political patronage continuing to trump good public policy almost 23 years after late Dr. Mehboob ul Haq described it so well.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Pakistan's Tax Evasion Fosters Aid Dependence
Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin Resigns
Musharraf's Legacy
US Fears Aid Will Feed Graft in Pakistan
Pakistan Swallows IMF's Bitter Medicine
Shaukat Aziz's Economic Legacy
Power and Patronage in Pakistan
Pakistan's Energy Crisis
Karachi Tops Mumbai in Stock Performance
Pakistan is now on its third finance minister, Dr. Hafeez Shaikh, in three years. Mr. Shahid Kardar, the third central bank governor since 2008, has just quit amid serious policy differences with the PPP-led government. Kardar is the second central bank governor to leave in just over a year and the third senior policymaker to quit in less than 18 months. During this period, the IMF has also suspended its loans to Pakistan on concerns about lack of progress on budget deficit reductions through revenue enhancements committed by the government in 2008.
"Differences of opinion on policy actions and on the implementation of certain directions that I, in my best judgment, did not consider to be judicious have compelled me to resign from office," Kardar told Reuters in response to questions about the reason for his resignation less than a year after he was appointed.
"Such differences are impeding the State Bank from discharging its mandate to safeguard its own integrity and autonomy, to ensure prudent conduct of monetary policy and to maintain the safety and stability of the banking system."
In simple terms, the biggest problem Mr. Kardar had with the government was sustained and excessive borrowing from the central bank to fill the large gap between revenue and spending. This has fueled inflation, and made a mockery of the central bankers' tight monetary policy. Rather than accept the advice of his own team of experts, it seems that President Zardari has essentially been following his own economic policy of "print the notes", a quote attributed to Mr. Zardari by the New York Times in a 2008 story.
In February 2010, there were rumors that the ruling PPP politicians, particularly President Zardari and his inner circle, ignored former Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin's key recommendations to address the acute power shortages in the country. Zardari's insistence on pushing rental power projects, rather than fix the huge circular debt problem in the energy sector first, specially frustrated the outgoing finance chief, when he first reportedly threatened to quit 2009.
To put it all in perspective, let's recall how late Dr. Mahbub ul-Haq, the renowned Pakistani economist who is credited with the idea of UNDP's human development index (HDI), explained the corrosive impact of political patronage on economic policy in Pakistan.
In a 10/12/1988 interview with Professor Anatol Lieven of King's College and quoted in a recent book "Pakistan-A Hard Country", here is what Dr. Haq said:
"Growth in Pakistan has never translated into budgetary security because of the way our political system works. We could be collecting twice as much in revenue - even India collects 50% more than we do - and spending the money on infrastructure and education. But agriculture in Pakistan pays no tax because the landed gentry controls politics and therefore has a grip on every government. Businessman are given state loans and then allowed to default on them in return for favors to politicians and parties. Politicians protect corrupt officials so they can both share the proceeds.
And every time a new political government comes in they have to distribute huge amounts of state money and jobs as rewards to politicians who have supported them, and short term populist measures to try to convince the people that their election promises meant something, which leaves nothing for long-term development. As far as development is concerned, our system has all the worst features of oligarchy and democracy put together.
That is why only technocratic, non-political governments in Pakistan have ever been able to increase revenues. But they can not stay in power for long because they have no political support...For the same reason we have not been able to deregulate the economy as much as I wanted, despite seven years of trying, because the politicians and officials both like the system Bhutto (Late Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto) put in place. It suits them both very well, because it gave them lots of lucrative state-sponsored jobs in industry and banking to take for themselves or distribute to their relatives and supporters."
To summarize, there is insufficient revenue collected by the state of Pakistan, and the diversion of this very limited revenue to political patronage fosters dependence on foreign aid and impinges on the nation's sovereignty. It also seriously harms Pakistan's ability to invest in education, health care and infrastructure development in terms of school and hospital buildings, roads, rails, and water and energy projects for Pakistan's future.
Discussing the politics of patronage in Pakistan, Professor Lieven, the author of "Pakistan-A Hard Country", sees a silver lining to it by describing the difference between Nigeria and Pakistan in the following words:
"Rather than being eaten by a pride of lions, or even torn apart by a flock of vultures, the fate of Pakistan's national resources more closely resembles being nibbled away by a horde of mice (and the occasional large rat). The effect on the resources, and on the state's ability to do things, are just the same, but more of the results are plowed back into the society, rather than making their way straight to bank accounts in the West. This is an important difference between Pakistan and Nigeria, for example."
I personally see no better explanation for the boom under President Musharraf in 2000-2007, followed by current economic crisis since 2008, than the prevailing system of political patronage continuing to trump good public policy almost 23 years after late Dr. Mehboob ul Haq described it so well.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Pakistan's Tax Evasion Fosters Aid Dependence
Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin Resigns
Musharraf's Legacy
US Fears Aid Will Feed Graft in Pakistan
Pakistan Swallows IMF's Bitter Medicine
Shaukat Aziz's Economic Legacy
Power and Patronage in Pakistan
Pakistan's Energy Crisis
Karachi Tops Mumbai in Stock Performance
Comments
..Every part of the budget debate in the U.S. is built on a tissue of willful deceit. Consider the Republican Party's double-mantra that the deficit results from "runaway spending" and that more tax cuts are the key to economic growth. Republicans claim that the budget deficit, around 10 percent of GDP, has been caused only by a rise in outlays. This is blatantly untrue. The deficit results roughly equally from a fall of tax revenues as a share of GDP and a rise of spending as a share of GDP.
On both sides of the ledger -- spending and taxes -- part of the shift results from the weak economy ("cyclical factors") and part from long-term trends. Spending, for example, is higher in part because of unemployment compensation, food stamps, and other federal spending to help the downtrodden in a weak economy. That's the "cyclical" component. Part of the higher spending reflects long-term patterns, such as rising health care costs and an aging population, as well as America's chronic addiction to wrongheaded wars and military occupations in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.
Taxation is lower also because of short-term factors and long-term factors. The short-term factors involve reduced federal revenues in an economy with high unemployment. The long-term factors involve repeated tax cuts for companies and high-income individuals that have systematically eroded the tax base, giving unjust and unaffordable benefits for America's millionaires, billionaires, and multinational corporations.
The Republicans also misrepresent the costs and benefits of closing the deficit through higher taxes on the rich. Americans wants the rich to pay more, and for good reason. Super-rich Americans have walked away with the prize in America. Our country is run by millionaires and billionaires, and for millionaires and billionaires, the rest of the country be damned. Yet the Republicans and their propaganda mouthpieces like Rupert Murdoch's media empire, claim with sheer audacity that taxing the rich would kill economic growth. This trickle-down, voodoo, supply-side economics is the fig leaf of uncontrolled greed among the right-wing rich.
The truth is that we need more federal spending to create good jobs and remain globally competitive, not as some kind of short-term "stimulus" but as a long-term investment in education, job skills, science, technology, energy security, and modern infrastructure. I travel around the world as part of my job, and I can say without doubt that America has failed to modernize the economy and is steadily losing its international competitiveness. No wonder the good jobs are disappearing and the pay is stagnant, unless of course you are a CEO who can keep grabbing stock options and profits from the shareholders (who are anyway enjoying record incomes because of stagnant wages and high profits earned overseas).
The Democrats of the White House and much of Congress have been less crude, but no less insidious, in their duplicity. Obama's campaign promise to "change Washington" looks like pure bait and switch. There has been no change, but rather more of the same: the Wall-Street-owned Democratic Party as we have come to know it. The idea that the Republicans are for the billionaires and the Democrats are for the common man is quaint but outdated. It's more accurate to say that the Republicans are for Big Oil while the Democrats are for Big Banks. That has been the case since the modern Democratic Party was re-created by Bill Clinton and Robert Rubin.
Thus, at every crucial opportunity, Obama has failed to stand up for the poor and middle class. He refused to tax the banks and hedge funds properly on their outlandish profits;...
One particularly bad example of privatisation, the KESC (a subject that requires a separate treatment and discussion), is repeatedly brought up not just by vested groups but also the general public to oppose the divestment of a host of poorly managed, loss-making enterprises.
This perception persists and continues to find supporters despite overwhelming information on outcomes following privatisation or the opening up of economic sectors like telecom, banking, etc that were hitherto closed to private entities. An array of stakeholders has latched on to this outlier example (the KESC), contrary to all available proof of the immense contribution of privatisation towards bolstering Pakistan’s economy.To start with, take the case of the banks. The lessons learnt from the recent experience with the Bank of Punjab and that of banks like MCB, Habib, UBL and Allied (the last three with huge holes at the time of their privatisation) until their privatisation began in the early 1990s should be a sobering reminder on the need to protect the interests of depositors and to maintain the soundness and stability of the banking system by saving the remaining public-sector banks from the fate of the Bank of Punjab.
It would be naïve to expect the State Bank as the regulator to be able to initiate timely, corrective measures to prevent such abuse.
Can anyone deny the quality of services and products, the outreach to those outside the banking system and the increased employment opportunities provided by the rapidly growing private banking industry? Add to this the part it has played in the expansion of the country’s GDP and to government tax revenues to value the nature and scale of its contribution to overall public welfare.
From an after-tax loss of Rs9.77bn in 2001 (when they were government owned) the earnings of these privatised banks rose to a profit after-tax of Rs73.115bn in 2007. Higher earnings resulted in increased tax payment by banks to the government from Rs10.8bn in 2001 to Rs33.8bn in 2007. In the same vein, it is instructive that in 2008 and 2009 the average loan write-off per borrower in public-sector banks was more than twice that per borrower in the case of private banks. Therefore, the sooner we privatise the remaining public-sector banks the higher and quicker the economic and social returns to the nation.
Next, let’s take the case of the telecom sector. Does anyone seriously believe that had PTCL continued to have a monopoly in this sector we would have been able to get this variety of choice and quality of services and products and, more importantly, at such alluring and competitive rates? Also, hasn’t PTCL’s service improved since its privatisation? No bribes now needed for new connections and for getting your landline fixed — all seamless with little, if any, human contact. It wasn’t that long ago that we had to suffer all this. Either our memories are short or conveniently selective.
Next, take the case of the electronic media. Could PTV ever have provided such a variety and quality of programmes and also raised public awareness and knowledge of a whole range of constitutional, political, economic and social issues to such heights, and in a society with an abysmal literacy rate?
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... it is this same set of politicians and bureaucrats and their collaborators who continue to oppose privatisation because of the resulting reduced opportunities for ‘patronage’ (an appropriate all-embracing term in our context) or earnings as fees or junket trips as directors of these banks and publicly owned entities.
http://www.dawn.com/2011/08/14/case-for-privatisation.html
The latest perception report from Transparency International Pakistan (TIP) shows a limited number of respondents see centres of corruption in Pakistan in the following descending order, of being perceived as the most corrupt to the least: 1) land administration; 2) police; 3) income tax; 4) judiciary; 5) tendering & contracting; 6) customs, plus state corporations and the last is the army. Once again TIP has expressed its shock at the mounting lack of honesty in public affairs and has listed some of the reasons why the graph of evil is creeping upwards every year.
It is not surprising that land administration is the first among the perceived culprits. It is vastly the domain of the provinces where the politician has yet to begin to take responsibility for sorting-out maintenance and collection. Land record is still in primitive shape and the low bureaucracy that handles the sector is not upgraded and made competitive. Most of the trouble takes place away from the big cities because the writ of the state languishes in smaller districts and abdicates to three power centres: the feudal landlord (often a politician), the police and the judiciary. It will take a long time to sort-out this mess and it will not happen at the same speed in all the provinces. The police has endemic ills that most states in the Third World have failed to tackle. The recruitment of policemen has been pegged to good education only recently, but the provinces — whose domain this is — have been remiss in making the kind of allocations needed to upgrade the institution’s performance. The ratio of policemen to population is abysmal, training standards — though imitative of the army — are nowhere near being practically useful and low status has kept the average policeman tied to slavish behaviour towards the seniors and a brutish one towards the common man.
But the police may not be intrinsically as bad as the circumstances of its functioning make it. State policies favouring non-state actors involved in terrorism on the side have hamstrung the police. Unwillingness to prosecute has instilled in the department a habit of not trying too hard to convict, say, terrorists from a shady jihadi organisation simply because it is being clandestinely supported by the state. Because of this ambience of state-backed criminality, many policemen themselves indulge in crime and get away with it. Many senior policemen live beyond their means and own properties they could not have bought with honest money. As for the tax administration, if one were to look at the statistics, things may be getting better — and that is why it is no longer number one in corruption. Pakistan’s revenue collection is one of the lowest in the world (with the tax-collection machinery believed to be riddled with corruption and inefficiency) and that impacts directly the capacity of the state to spend on development. The reigning theory is to erect a system in which the income tax officer comes into least contact with the taxpayer.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/314181/pakistans-perceived-corruption/
In Pakistan’s diversity lies a measure of its resilience. This was argued by distinguished journalist and author Anatol Lieven during his talk at the Oxford University Head Office on Saturday.
Mr Lieven’s talk basically gave a sketch of his book ‘Pakistan: A Hard Country.’ He began by asserting that Pakistan was not a failed state and said the people who had gathered to listen to him were proof of it. Pakistan was not Afghanistan, Chechnya or Somalia. He maintained that his book was about the sources of resilience in Pakistan, which could be sources of stagnation as well (in terms of development). To explain his point, he said he had used the expression ‘Janus-faced’ many a time in the book, and that the editors had made 18 deletions of the phrase, leaving just half a dozen. The book was an attempt at discussing power in the country, how it is exercised and what are its roots – religious, cultural etc. This central theme was set against the background of the war in Afghanistan and the rise of militancy in Pakistan. He told the gathering that when an American publisher read it he was taken aback because he had thought that it would be about the Taliban and an impending Islamic revolution in Pakistan. He added that it also discussed the role of the military and the four provinces and the difference within those provinces.
Mr Lieven said he had spent a lot of time talking about the diversity in Pakistan. For example, how Karachi was different from the rest of Sindh and how Punjab was an immensely varied region. Also, the important role that kinship played in the country’s politics and power struggles. In his view, a measure of its resilience lay in the country’s diversity, because of which, however, it was sometimes difficult to get things done. He argued that Pakistan couldn’t have an Iran-style revolution because it didn’t have a monolithic culture.
Mr Lieven said that as he was a journalist he got quotes from the Pakistani people in their own words. The problem with the West was that it didn’t listen to people directly and therefore had a flawed understanding of things. If you were to know about the tribal justice system in Balochistan, you had to talk to a Baloch sardar, he pointed out.
With respect to militancy in Pakistan Mr Lieven said that although the fear of terrorism was pervasive, and that it had claimed numerous victims, the insurgency was limited, particularly after the 2009 Swat operation in which militants were driven back. However, he added that insurgency was common in the region and, except for Bangladesh, every country had faced it.
Mr Lieven said sympathy for the Afghan Taliban in areas like Peshawar was similar to the support for the mujahideen in the ‘80s. It did not necessarily mean an Islamic revolution. He argued that up to a certain point the situation did appear perilous but the post-Musharraf scenario proved that if the state and the army made a concerted attempt things could be done. He said his book also took issue with the US foreign policy. The US should realise that Pakistan is a much more important country than Afghanistan and that it needs to tread lightly here. He said however that the Osama bin Laden operation had impacted public opinion in the US, and if there was a terrorist attack in the US or India in future, US retaliation could be severe. It was important for Pakistan to continue visible cooperation against international terrorism, he remarked.
Replying to a question, Mr Lieven said one of the reasons he used the word ‘hard’ in the title of the book was that he would often hear the phrase ‘Pakistan is a hard country’ from the locals. He gave the example of a Chaudhry in Punjab who, explaining the killing of his detractors, commented that Pakistan was a hard country....
http://www.dawn.com/2012/02/05/pakistan-is-a-resilient-country.html
Before March 4, 1829, moderation had prevailed in the transfer of political power from one presidency to another. President Andrew Jackson's inauguration signaled a sharp departure from past presidencies. An unruly mob of office seekers made something of a shambles of the March inauguration, and though some tried to explain this as democratic enthusiasm, the real truth was Jackson supporters had been lavished with promises of positions in return for political support. These promises were honored by an astonishing number of removals after Jackson assumed power. Fully 919 officials were removed from government positions, amounting to nearly 10 percent of all government postings.[4]:328-33
The Jackson administration attempted to explain this unprecedented purge as reform, or constructive turnover, but in the months following the changes it became obvious that the sole criterion for the extensive turnover was political loyalty to Andrew Jackson. The hardest hit organization within the federal government proved to be the post office. The post office was the largest department in the federal government, and had even more personnel than the war department. In one year 423 postmasters were deprived of their positions, most with extensive records of good service. The new emphasis on loyalty rather than competence would have a long term negative effect on the efficiency and effectiveness of the federal government.[4] :334
President after president continued to use the spoils system to encourage others to vote for them. But by the late 1860s, reformers began demanding a civil service system. Running under the Liberal Republican Party in 1872, they were harshly defeated by patronage-hungry Ulysses S. Grant.
After the assassination of James A. Garfield by a rejected office-seeker in 1881, the calls for civil service reform intensified. The end of the spoils system at the federal level came with the passage of the Pendleton Act in 1883, which created a bipartisan Civil Service Commission to evaluate job candidates on a nonpartisan merit basis. While few jobs were covered under the law initially, the law allowed the President to transfer jobs and their current holders into the system, thus giving the holder a permanent job. The Pendleton Act's reach was expanded as the two main political parties alternated control of the White House every election between 1884 and 1896. After each election the outgoing President applied the Pendleton Act to jobs held by his political supporters. By 1900, most federal jobs were handled through civil service and the spoils system was limited only to very senior positions.
The separation between the political activity and the civil service was made stronger with the Hatch Act of 1939 which prohibited federal employees from engaging in many political activities.
The spoils system survived much longer in many states, counties and municipalities, such as the Tammany Hall ring, which survived well into the 1930s when New York City reformed its own civil service. Illinois modernized its bureaucracy in 1917 under Frank Lowden, but Chicago held on to patronage in city government until the city agreed to end the practice in the Shakman Decrees of 1972 and 1983. Modern variations on the spoils system are often described as the political machine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system
PIA (PIAa.KA), like Pakistan, always seems to be on the brink of disaster. But now that seems closer than ever for the national flag carrier, once a source of pride for the country.
The airline is haemorrhaging hundreds of millions of dollars a year while being pummelled by competition from sleek Gulf giants like Emirates EMIRA.UL, Etihad and Qatar Airways.
A quarter of its 40 aircraft are grounded because the airline can't find enough money to buy spare parts. Flights are regularly cancelled and engineers say they are having to cannibalise some planes to keep others flying.
"The situation has worsened to the extent of rendering this airline almost financially unviable," said the State Bank of Pakistan in a report on the state of the economy.
In many ways the airline mirrors the way Pakistan -- a strategic U.S. ally often described as a failing state -- is run.
The same inefficiency, nepotism and corruption that critics say have prevented the government from tackling a Taliban insurgency, crippling power cuts, ethnic violence and widespread poverty also threaten to bring down the airline.
PIA lost 19.29 billion rupees in the first nine months of 2011, almost double the losses in the same period in 2010.
The airline, like the Pakistani economy, has relied on bailouts to stay in the air, and is negotiating with the state for another rescue package.
"Just like PIA has the potential to do well, Pakistan's economy does too. But both haven't because of mismanagement. In the end that is the story -- mismanagement," Salman Shah, a former Pakistani finance minister, told Reuters.
PIA officials were not available for comment on the challenges facing the airline despite repeated requests.
HUGE WORKFORCE WEIGHS DOWN AIRLINE
Over the years, critics say, governments have manipulated state corporations like PIA for political and financial gain, giving jobs to so many supporters that the size of the workforce has become unsustainable in the face of mounting losses.
"We don't have people in the right places in typical Pakistani fashion. It's about who you know not what you can do," said a PIA pilot, who like other employees asked not to be identified for fear of being fired.
Today, PIA has a staggering employee to aircraft ratio of more than 450, more than twice as much as some competitors. In the first nine months of 2011, employee expenses drained 16 percent of turnover.
"Politically motivated inductions have been the major cause of the significant increase in human resource burden in this organisation," said the central bank.
"It cannot be corrected without taking drastic steps for rightsizing and increasing operational efficiency."
That is unlikely in a country where political expediency and interests often undermine efforts to make everything from governments to corporations successful.
Frustrations with those realities are palpable at PIA.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/14/uk-pakistan-airline-idUSLNE81D02820120214
Often they are bursting with enthusiasm for some social entrepreneurship project: making a cheap water-purification system, starting a company that will empower Rwandan women by selling their crafts in boutiques around the world.
These people are refreshingly uncynical. Their hip service ethos is setting the moral tone for the age. Idealistic and uplifting, their worldview is spread by enlightened advertising campaigns, from Bennetton years ago to everything Apple has ever done.
It’s hard not to feel inspired by all these idealists, but their service religion does have some shortcomings. In the first place, many of these social entrepreneurs think they can evade politics. They have little faith in the political process and believe that real change happens on the ground beneath it.
That’s a delusion. You can cram all the nongovernmental organizations you want into a country, but if there is no rule of law and if the ruling class is predatory then your achievements won’t add up to much.
Furthermore, important issues always spark disagreement. Unless there is a healthy political process to resolve disputes, the ensuing hatred and conflict will destroy everything the altruists are trying to build.
There’s little social progress without political progress. Unfortunately, many of today’s young activists are really good at thinking locally and globally, but not as good at thinking nationally and regionally.
Second, the prevailing service religion underestimates the problem of disorder. Many of the activists talk as if the world can be healed if we could only insert more care, compassion and resources into it.
History is not kind to this assumption. Most poverty and suffering — whether in a country, a family or a person — flows from disorganization. A stable social order is an artificial accomplishment, the result of an accumulation of habits, hectoring, moral stricture and physical coercion. Once order is dissolved, it takes hard measures to restore it.
Yet one rarely hears social entrepreneurs talk about professional policing, honest courts or strict standards of behavior; it’s more uplifting to talk about microloans and sustainable agriculture.
In short, there’s only so much good you can do unless you are willing to confront corruption, venality and disorder head-on. So if I could, presumptuously, recommend a reading list to help these activists fill in the gaps in the prevailing service ethos, I’d start with the novels of Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, or at least the movies based on them.
The noir heroes like Sam Spade in “The Maltese Falcon” served as models for a generation of Americans, and they put the focus squarely on venality, corruption and disorder and how you should behave in the face of it.
A noir hero is a moral realist. He assumes that everybody is dappled with virtue and vice, especially himself. He makes no social-class distinction and only provisional moral distinctions between the private eyes like himself and the criminals he pursues. The assumption in a Hammett book is that the good guy has a spotty past, does spotty things and that the private eye and the criminal are two sides to the same personality.
He (or she — the women in these stories follow the same code) adopts a layered personality. He hardens himself on the outside in order to protect whatever is left of the finer self within.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/opinion/brooks-sam-spade-at-starbucks.html
By Shahid Javed Burki
https://tribune.com.pk/story/1998843/6-questions-public-policymaking-pakistan/
Serious public policy work was put on track by president Ayub Khan soon after he took over the country in October 1958. He developed the Planning Commission into a well-endowed policymaking institution. Told that Pakistan did not have the skills that were needed to staff such an institution, he turned to the United States for help. That came in the form of advisers mostly from the Harvard Development Service who were appointed in the Planning Commission in Karachi and in the Planning and Development Departments in East and West Pakistan.
When Ayub Khan surrendered his office in 1969, the Planning Commission began to wither. A series of blows were delivered to the planning process by the government headed by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who ably led Pakistan to recover from the loss of East Pakistan in December 1971 but destroyed much of what Ayub Khan had done for the country. Bhutto, an arrogant man, had much greater confidence in his ability to develop the country on his own and bring about social change than base his moves on institutional advice. He had no use for the Planning Commission.
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What follows is a brief discussions relating to some of the questions asked above. Taking all of them in detail would take up a more than one newspaper article.
One, our leaders must recognise that a negative narrative prevails about Pakistan in the foreign press. Whenever a story appears about Pakistan in the western media, its content and tone are negative. This situation can only be remedied if the current leadership comes forward and presents to the world a believable plan of action that would restore people’s confidence in their future as well the future of their country. As economists emphasise all the time, confidence is an important driver of growth, confidence leads to increase in domestic and as well as foreign investment.
Two, there is an urgent need to strength the Federal Board of Revenue. Those who don’t pay taxes or pay only nominal amounts must be made to fear the revenue collector. It is that fear that has made the Internal Revenue Service the most feared part of the United States government. In America, April 15, the day taxes are due, is by far the most important day on the calendar.
Third, we need to focus on three sectors as the future determinants of economic growth and social change: they are high value-added agriculture, small- and medium-scale industries and modern services. Development of the human resource would be an important part of this strategy. CPEC could play an important part in this endeavour.
Fourth, our policymakers need to recognise that Pakistan is no longer a rural place but an urban country. No single urban policy would serve the purpose. We will need separate policies for the metropolitan areas, peripheral areas of large cites, medium-sized cities and small towns.
Fifth, the government must get closer to the people and this requires the formation of a multi-tiered system of local government on the lines of Ayub Khan’s system of ‘basic democracies’.
And sixth, working with Afghanistan, we should use the local system of government to bring economic and social development to these areas. It is only then that we will be able to prevent the tribal youth from being attracted to extremist causes.