MQMs wanting economic agenda

With the weakening of PPPs political standing in Islamabad, agendas and ultimatums are in vogue - the latest being MQMs nine-point economic agenda that sets forth a number of debatable arguments.
There is no denying that there is a need to cut non-development expenditure, and plug the loopholes in the Afghan transit trade scheme. There is also zero disagreement with the notion that loans that have been written-off illegally should be recovered. However, the last matter is already sub-judice, so there is no point setting an agenda for the courts.
What is important in any agenda setting, economic or political, is that it should begin with personal responsibility. And it is here that the party has failed to live up to the maxim.
For example, MQM calls on the government to plug the leakages in the revenue department. Yet, it does not support the RGST, which is important to bring the businesses in the tax net.
Similarly, it rightly demands that public sector entities be reformed - a process that will likely entail privatisation, preceded or followed by employee rightsizing. But it was only recently that it erected a major stumbling block by supporting the sacked workers of KESC - a privatised entity trying to undergo reforms - from the forefront in all their strikes and lockouts.
Again, while MQMs demand to tax agriculture income is praiseworthy, the failure to demand the taxation of service sector is noteworthy at the same time. Besides, if the partys stance has really been pro-farming tax, as it claims, then why didn it raise hue and cry when the Musharraf government replaced agri income tax with landholding tax.
Two areas where their agenda is found rather one-sided is its focus on the recovery of manipulated windfall profit from the sugar mafia and from the feudals, without even any mention of other mafia, such as the land and transport mafia in Karachi and other major cities.
Plus, if the manipulated windfall profits are to be recovered, then why leave the supernormal profits, from the undocumented and under-invoiced real estate transactions, unchecked.
But perhaps one of the most factually-questionable stance is MQMs insistence on land reforms. For once, India-like reforms cannot be implemented whimsically given the ruling of the Federal Sharia Court.
Second, according to the 1990 Agriculture Census, some 98 percent of land holders own about 70 percent of the lands with the size of 50 or less than 50 acres., with the remaining two percent owners holding the remaining 30 percent of the lands.
This means that the popular perception that all lands are owned by big landlords is rather ill placed. Besides, as Jehangir Tareen argues, in a soon-to-be published interview with BR Research, "religious inheritance must have further reduced the concentration of landholding in the last twenty years".
So, while handing agendas on economic issues is every partys right, their actions should speak louder than the words.