EDITORIAL: So, another year has passed and Pakistan and Pakistanis are no clearer about when all the threats to the economy, including from the growing insurgency are going to go away. Independence Day is not just a time of festivities but also a moment for reflection, after all.
And as one of the world’s most over-populated, poor, illiterate and bankrupt nations salutes the flag today, many people wonder – and very rightly so – about what lies ahead.
The economy is the biggest problem, no doubt, because there’s no chance for any country, even a nuclear power, to get a lethal fight against terrorism off the ground when there’s nothing left in the bank. It is the reason the government is squeezing the very life out of middle- and lower-income classes to meet tough IMF conditions so we can keep pushing the day of default further down the road.
Some points are very important to note. For example, it makes things much worse for people celebrating 78 years of independence to know the highest offices in the land that issued customary congratulatory notes yesterday morning are in fact among the responsible for this horrible breakdown, not some exogenous shock to the financial system that destabilised an otherwise orderly economy.
They knew very well that the structural reforms that will make people pay many pounds of flesh now were due long, long ago, and were never implemented only because nobody at the top bothered about them. They really seemed to believe – all of them, regardless of any particular party in power at any point in time – that the borrow-to-survive model would last forever, until it didn’t and sovereign default became a very real and imminent threat.
Also, even now, when they are forced to extract extra revenue at a time of acute crisis and unprecedented inflation and unemployment, they have deliberately kept the tax structure skewed in favour of the big fish that have leveraged their power and connections to evade the net since forever.
And, just like the government’s false faith in surviving on loans was so badly shattered, it seems it is about to learn another hard lesson in what happens when you pile more tax misery on a weak, vulnerable minority than it can realistically or reasonably bear.
Let’s not forget that on this Independence Day the people also find the country’s politics more bitterly divided than ever, except perhaps the tragedy of half of it breaking away a half-century earlier.
And letting a few protected, privileged sectors eat off the fat of the land while forcing others, not nearly as rich or connected or powerful, to take their children out of school and reduce their food intake so the country can stay solvent, could turn out to be the policy blunder that has all the portents to finally break the camel’s back.
And, once again, this is also a homemade disaster in the making, because the government can spread the tax burden across bigger, fatter sectors, but it is not doing it so for the same reasons that got us into this mess in the first place.
And then there’s the insurgency, of course. People who wondered why the government was so slow off the mark as TTP clearly regrouped and attacked once again – negotiating a ceasefire with them, even repatriating them in KP – are still waiting to see just how it plans to deliver the death blow to the terrorists when Kabul is not cooperating.
Meanwhile, people continue to die in attacks that are increasing in frequency and foreign investors that we’re desperately trying to lure continue to look the other way.
Should it have been this way? Could it have been different? Ordinary people should be forgiven for wondering if their forefathers perished in the Partition only so their children could inherit one of the world’s most unfair, indeed cruel, social/political/economic systems.
The people know only too well just who turned the dream of Pakistan into a nightmare for Pakistanis. It’s just the state that pretends not to.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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