Zaheer Bhatti
I rubbed my eyes a few times while scanning through two major news bytes, if the UN conscience at long last was coming alive; one a vote won by Burkina Faso-led African Bloc for a debate against Trump’s racist policies triggering protests following the murder of two blacks in the United States by its police, and the other, a UNSC rejection of the US requiring extension of economic embargo against Iran, even though through major power abstentions.
Thanks to Shirin Mazari who pointed to a tiny African state carrying a vote at the UN against the US over its racist policies compared to Pakistan’s failure to muster enough diplomatic support over the Kashmir cause, and against appalling human rights abuses by India at the world body. In drawing the comparison in any case, might one ask who was the lady addressing! The Pakistani Human Rights Minister known as a hawk became the second in the Cabinet after Fawad Choudhry shooting itself in the foot, with her exclaiming that had the Foreign Office pursued the Prime Minister’s narrative he built on Kashmir at the UN, results would have been different, without mentioning how. She was lamenting as if the Foreign Office was outside the domain of the Government; which has been a hapless story of lack of direction, control and coordination within its confluence in virtually all fields.
The PTI Government after completion of two years in office like most previous Governments including marking of Ayub Khan’s [in-]famous Decade of Reforms, has recounted its accomplishments through a Press Conference instead of concrete deliverance with a solid trickle-down effect articulated by the common man and reflected in bettering his life. All the rest is selective cosmetics; be it the Insaaf Health Card or Shelter Homes for the poor, or even PTI’s Ehsaas Programme which is only a one-time assistance and that too out of borrowed monies. All this and much more ought to be made available to every individual in a welfare state from which Pakistan gloating over its achievements as a borrowing nation was still miles away.
Self-eulogy and aggrandizement have unfortunately been the story of successive Governments in Pakistan refusing to see beyond their nose where one has yet to see any one of them seriously introspecting to discover and acknowledge areas where they have failed. The economic index of Bangladesh which was carved out of Pakistan although through a deep Indian conspiracy but also because rulers in Pakistan treated the erstwhile Province of East Pakistan as a basket case, shows a stupendous growth compared to Pakistan which is best illustrated by the value of its currency which is priced at nearly double the Pak Rupee today compared to half its value when made independent, because they have worked zealously and honestly to achieve.
There is political polarization within Bangladesh as in several countries of the region struggling to find their feet in genuine democracy, but its exports, particularly of ready-made garments despite hardly any textile base, is a great success story besides its Foreign Policy which has achieved far greater acceptability in the comity of nations. But Pakistan touted as an agrarian economy with wheat, rice and cotton as its cash crops is seen nowhere in the global market and instead of being wheat surplus and exporting, it woefully today imports out of its cash-starved kitty. It is rated as the top country for tourism but seen merely bragging about the placement and doing nothing to attract tourists through which it could earn enormous foreign exchange.
But having said that, someone at long last has taken the bull by the horn in reining in on the International Power Producers and renegotiated their horrendous contracts obtained with what is normally termed as sovereign guarantees; meaning mortgaging your right to alter terms of the contract during twenty years plus of their span in this case. That most of these power producers were front companies of local mafias which managed to exaggerate inputs, is now proven beyond doubt.
This is perhaps the first major breakthrough achieved by the PTI Government on the economic front, which one would like it to replicate next, when negotiating with the IMF so as to remove the stigma of being haplessly compliant to its dictation on tariffs which directly impair the common man. Amid testing times also on the political front, in this breakthrough with the IPPS; renegotiating and lowering their current rates of power generation, a silver lining would actually have been achieved only if and when as contended by the Prime Minister, its affect is transmitted to the common man in terms of commensurately lowered utility bills besides appreciably bringing down prices of consumables.
But this being only temporary relief, one hopes, the Government has made these deals time-bound to be eventually replaced with the time-tested cheapest hydel power so direly needed for the country’s agrarian economy and massive industrialization envisaged under the CPEC. Likewise, the Government ought to build reservoirs through small dams to store water for irrigation which it has in abundance flowing in during the summers with melting snows up in the north and monsoons as nature’s relief every year and to generate cheap electricity. Unfortunately instead, Pakistan’s dismal resource management has turned such opportunities into calamities with poor drainage in urban areas, lack of protection against floods in the hinterlands and inability to raise reservoirs for politically motivated lack of consensus.
The Prime Minister raised common man’s hopes once again by asserting that better days were ahead with the worst being over. But another opportune moment the PTI Government ought to have capitalized with the tumbling oil prices was by immediate storage of cheap oil; only to see it sadly lacking storage capacity in the country, which it ought to have built on a war footing with the help of the defence forces; its antidote for all emergencies, and saved some precious dollars. It better still do it.
—The writer is a media professional, member of Pioneering team of PTV and a veteran ex Director Programmes.
