A glass half full?

This seems to be the season of harvesting hopes. One after another, like manna from heaven - the food that God miraculously provided to the lost tribes wandering in the wilderness - good news is pouring in.
There was the Prime Minister in New York saying it all like never before. Kashmir, Islamophobia, Climate Change, Money Laundering: his speech at the UNGA was substantive in its coverage and delivered with remarkable forthrightness. He matched Erdogan for his boldness and easily upended Modi.
The visiting IMF team gave its thumbs up and a pat on the back. We are on track and the evolving macroeconomic stabilization promises rich dividends. The blanks were tidily filled in by the Adviser Finance and the Governor State Bank.
Tax collection is going up (highest ever, says the PM) and Current Account Deficit down (vindication of policies, confirms the Adviser). Between the two - controlled fiscal deficit and scaled down current account deficit - sufficient space will get created to launch high and sustainable growth.
The Rupee has been holding firm and the stock market gyrations are inching towards greater promise.
We also managed to figure in world's top twenty best reformers in the matter of ease of doing business. Bill Gates was generous with his kudos on our poverty reduction efforts and backed it up with a 200 million dollar grant.
We even got the glad tidings of a Performance Management System being installed. Ministers will have to sign off on 'performance contracts' and Babus will have to meet pre-determined goals -otherwise they don't get any salary increase, or worse. No need now for sterile task forces - PTI's answer to every issue - that are yet to consummate and produce something for us to anoint.
And, then, international cricket returned to Pakistan! If Sri Lanka comes can Australia be far behind?
The cynics, that we have hordes of, and who never tire of nursing what they hoard to an intensity that would appease a Joseph Conrad, are not enthralled. For them the glass is half empty.
So what if IK made a thunderous speech? Would anything change? We ourselves gave proof of 'material interest over humanitarian' by voting against investigation of human rights violations in Yemen, alongside the arch-violator India - not alongside the likes of Iceland or Austria or the UK - even if the benefactors' jet malfunctioned.
In the list of 20 top reformers would we really want to find ourselves in the august company of Togo, Myanmar, Djibouti, Azerbaijan, Kosovo, Zimbabwe and co?
Performance Management System, a cut and paste job, is not going to work - unless, say, Razak Dawood's contract is restricted to slashing imports, and not perking up exports and FDI, or resolving Steel Mills and Utility Stores Corporation. Remember, it took him one full year to fill the position of head of TDAP!
And, pray, who will evaluate the 40-odd Secretaries to the government of Pakistan on a 'forced bell-curve' basis, especially when many of them are destined to retire before the goals can be set and their performance appraised?
Should we really take IMF mission's endorsement seriously? Isn't it a bit premature? Besides, wasn't it the same IMF that saluted Dar's management before the economy suddenly crashed and another IMF programme became inevitable?
The sceptics won't be convinced by controlled exchange rate volatility or a new life being infused into the stock market either. They have serious reservations on FBR meeting its target, and if Hafeez hits his one trillion non-tax revenue target it will be more foul than fair.
With tepid exports, import-contraction nearing its limits and no signs of FDI, the much celebrated reduction in current account deficit is unlikely to be durable. On the fiscal side managing the primary deficit will be a herculean task - the toe-up that debt-servicing gets from an exchange rate that has appreciated from 161 to 156 won't help with the primary deficit, a principal IMF condition.
So what good news is one left with when seen through the cynical prism?
To us the greatest hope is that common man. His fortitude - despite the depth and breadth of his everyday sufferings and our blithe neglect - is truly amazing. He finds happiness in so little and never gives up on hope, unfazed by the stratospheric debates we have in our drawing rooms on the economy and politics. They have such little relevance to his existence.
So what can we give him if giving him a decent living is a distant dream?
He is almost certainly going to be better off with minimum government. Of course we need the policeman and the municipal functionary and the inspector of weights and measures; but to him it means a cost, without getting anything in return. We talk incessantly of ease of doing business but is it only for the organised sector and not the informal?
Less government is not coming any time soon - look at the Federal cabinet that continues to grow, and having run out of Ministries we now see more than one person responsible for the same portfolio. So what can we do for the aam admi in the meanwhile?
Education? Quaid advised spending one-fifth of our national resources on the education of the poor. We spend nothing like it. In the process, we have disincentivised education. You ask your car mechanic why his young son is working with him and not in school and he tells you "have you ever seen an uneducated person unemployed? All the unemployed are the educated ones".
No polemics about education for the sake of education can defy the reality of education preparing one for a 'white collar job'; trained to look down upon soiling one's hands.
Health? Health insurance is a step in the right direction but will have a limited impact. More important is doing something about the causes of disease, the preventive part. After all, there are countries that have been able to get rid of flies and mosquitoes - stray dogs too - and provide clean drinking water, while we continue to struggle with polio and malaria and dengue!
Once the euphoria of the speech settles down the real issues will resurface. Let the government set a minimum agenda for the disadvantaged. Let's not allow hope to fade. Let the glass be at least half full.
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