Monday, May 12, 2008, Jamadi-ul-Awwal 5, 1429    

Need of the hour

Mirza Shahnawaz Agha

A country is only ‘sovereign’ today if it has an economic significance without which the rest of the world cannot exist! This is a hard-core reality.
The question therefore is evident: ‘does Pakistan have such significance’? By the further most stretch of imagination, the answer dear people, is Yes! The socio-economic plans, and the economic destination, are only lacking. In this country both these factors have been ignored and highjacked. It has remained such, and is set-aside by an ignoble leadership in succession. It therefore does not exist! This article is essentially meant to pronounce the same, with evolutionary flexibility, seeking its implementation. Remember all, and take notice, that our ‘ideology’ is our strength. Our economic quid pro quo with the rest of the world gets established instantly the minute we revert to our ideology. So does our sovereignty and our economic health.
The Islamic economic doctrine is based on ‘Material Justice’ and under that umbrella propounds the following principal of equity: ‘Consumption’ and ‘Production’ are both by the people and for the people. While consumption has been limited by, ‘need in denial of waste’. Production has been limited for its four factors (Land, Labor, Capital and Enterprise) most judiciously: Towards ‘Land’ free-hold ownership is denied and prohibited; Towards ‘Labor’ captivity has been denied and prohibited; Towards ‘Capital’ it has been recognized as a measure of labor and not as a commodity; and ‘Enterprise’ has been revered and freed from all (global or domestic) conditionality of monopolistic hegemony.
The above template is the destination, the road map and the grand socio economic plan for Pakistan to legislate and adopt in consonance with its ideology. Adopt we should, and right now, to save ourselves from the ignominy, duress and distress of a client state. The personality-based politics in the country is an indulgence of confirmed opportunists, who are playing with the destiny of the entire population of the country. Their vision and mind-set can only be matched with the times and pattern which brought decadence in the Ottoman Empire and or the Moghul Empire. In both cases while the West was inventing, educating and spreading the world over, these empires were redundant monarchies being kept intact ‘by’ and ‘in’ the worship of a single personality – the Monarch. They sealed their own fate to be doomed, which we see as recorded history. The idiocy today is in the keeping of that order intact. We are now regressing from collapse to slavery, and this is a non-deniable reality;
The ‘way forward’ is the subject matter to address. Can we by ‘Reversion to our Ideology’ find our independence and sovereignty? Can we establish our quid pro quo with the community of nations to effectively co-exist? Can we prosper and lead our lot with mutual respect and integrity? The answer evidently, naturally and certainly is ‘yes’! Lets apply the above template to our economic policy, foreign policy, land reforms and judicious governance.
The picture that emerges is clear. On the economic reforms front it manifests as follows: First, we need to head count our population to the last individual. They represent the volume of consumption, and the labor force for production, both. This labor who is the ‘consumer’ and ‘producer’ both, needs to be serviced at a level which matches the ‘the best’. (‘Go for the best, nothing but the best’ - Al-Quran). The best must represent standards, that compare, in our day and age, for the best available in food, education, health-care, clothing and shelter. This act in it-self becomes the economic destination of the country and the road map for enterprise. The government need only regulate ‘standardization’, which has to rely on constant re-search and be managed by a very vigilant Ministry. This implementation has to naturally be done through Urbanization, and that must be based on a core philosophy of fiscal decentralization. ‘Small is beautiful’ is a book that carried the beautiful core thought, of practicality, in such an approach. If we look beyond from the periscope of Federating stability there cannot be anything better because it establishes compulsive inter-dependence. Pakistan has 3403 (approx) areas of population, by count of the Surveyor General of Pakistan, and we should seek to urbanize all these with vertical facilities. The centralized giants we harbor like WAPDA / KESC, for instance are major security risks and incapable of providing quality services to anybody.
To service the creation, up-keep and operations of these cities of Pakistan, no foreign borrowing or foreign investment is required. In-effect, the whole concept is poison. We only need freedom of enterprise, san Public Sector involvement. The ‘police stations’ like the SECP, CCA, NEPRA, set-up to check enterprise, only serve the vital interest of imperialism guaranteeing our slavery and status as a client state. They hinder the freedom of enterprise and must be liquidated in their role as macro / micro managers of enterprise. Next, land has to be mapped to the last inch and its utility defined out-side the urban area allocations. Land has to be categorized for agricultural, industrial utilization, freeways, forest reserves, mining areas, and wastelands, such as Mountains Rivers the like. Free hold property should be buried forever as a form of ownership. Towards the achievement of this objective the only form of taxation should essentially come from ‘land revenue’. Land revenue must cater to the federal need of Defence, foreign affairs, and research in a certain percentage and the rest must go to the cities that produce the revenue.
To promote enterprise and guarantee its freedom all taxes, excise, octroi and Levis must all be consigned to the bin. The goods from Muslim countries of the world must be allowed duty free imports in relation to non-muslim countries so that local (allied) industries can develop and find a captive market in at least 25% of the global consuming population. A variation in land revenue is necessary, to allow for the least burden on the labor living costs in the country. The tiers of land category must vary to keep utilization at its optimum. To quote an example: It is a shame that in Pakistan where 60% plus population work on agriculture, their productive contribution to the GDP is under 30%. Agriculture must go corporate and land must come under a ‘uniform title control mechanism’ across-the-board. The objectives of reforms towards ‘capital’ (as a factor of production) based on our ideology are most crucial. There are three steps identified to be taken. First, we must legislate to only export in the Rupee, and import in the currency of the exporting country. This is necessary to free our bondage from the syndrome of hard currencies. Next we must strive to achieve the goals of a common currency between ideologically common (Muslim) countries of the world. Finally we must retain reserves in gold or any tangible like gold to validate the weight age of the medium of exchange called the Pakistan Rupee.
With these fundamental goals achieved, the population must be then empowered with the buying power to sustain themselves with a life style that represents the highest standards of consumption and consequent production. This is difficult within the norms of a riba-free money management environment. The American experiment of plastic money converted the entire nation, barring an elitist club of rulers, to become captive labor, and this is outside the parameters of the Islamic ideology. There is seemingly one way that comes to mind and that relates to a ‘head start purse’ and ‘old-age-benefit’. Of-course this is a suggestion off-the-cuff, but government revenue can be geared to meet financial objectives for all needs of the population. This only happens, provided the approach is not apologetic (dictated by donors) and labor, in all manifestations (including most, that of homemakers, the house wife so called) is documented to every second for input.
It is appalling to be silent witnesses to a population, like that of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, suffer on all counts of basic human need. It is condemnable to see our natural resources remain untapped; it shameful to retain a bureaucracy that is not part of the civil society; it is ignominious to be a borrower when the wealth of the nation enables lending, free of interest (riba); It is my understanding of economic arithmetic that the world is racing towards a change in the balance of power and a whole lot of disorders will cause a new order to surface. If our socio-economic template is not in place now, and if we remain engaged in the ‘gooli-danda’ of personality related politics and human worship, we will end up worse than the worshipers of the cow-dunk or the peddlers of cocaine. Will the Muslims of the world please take cognizance!