On 14th August

Pakola’s production troubles of late is more than just any run of the mill corporate or taxation issue. It’s highly symbolic too.
Few people know that Pakola - the country’s first soft drink brand - was created on 14th August 1950 with much fanfare, to the extent that its production was launched by none other than the then Prime Minister himself.
So when a brand with a history like this falls prey to Pakistan’s taxation Hydra, it should really make one pause and ponder over the relationship between Pakistani citizens and the state.
The bond between the state and its citizens usually forms an unwritten social contract materialised through taxation of the citizenry at one end, and delivery of public services by the state at the other. While the debate continues over which of the two ends ought to materialise first, the one thing that is certain is that the social contract has broken down.
The taxation system is corrupt, inefficient and lacks equity. The import-substitution industrialization, the tax exemptions, concessions, et cetera, have created a corrupt society where economic interest in evading taxes and tariffs undermine the enforcement of fiscal rules and public order.
Hijacked by the elites, the state therefore works for the benefit of the few, via what is known as the nexus of civil and military bureaucracy and a certain ethnicity, which given the occasion, should be best left unnamed.
The good thing is that finally military footprint from the society is receding; though it’s another thing that militancy footprint – the illegitimate offspring of the you-know-who-and-who – is sadly increasing.
The other good thing is that ‘that’ certain ethnicity is also gradually loosening its reins on the country. Case in point: the inclusion of broader set of criteria in the interprovincial revenue distribution formula.
The bad thing is that there is still no sight of change in civil bureaucracy. No steps – not even baby steps – have been taken to reform the system; nor does bureaucracy reform form the top agenda of any political party.
The bureaucracy remains corrupt, inefficient and works as an institution that provides political patronage instead of public service. It also remains overrepresented by a few ethnicities, and as a consequence breeds disharmony.
Hopefully, as the fruits of 18th Amendment fully ripen, this too will start seeing signs of change.
Aside from resulting in the creation and strengthening of provincial revenue departments, the 18th Amendment has also triggered a healthy debate on allocation of resources, constitutional rights to natural endowments, distribution of tax revenue and also distribution of power (pun intended).
Sooner or later, the amendment will hopefully make people understand that their fate lies in district headquarters and provincial capitals than in Islamabad – which in turn could trigger a demand for bureaucratic reforms. The media would do well to pick up this theme.
To each province its own, thus was Pakistan envisaged in the 1973 Constitution. Forty years after, the country still seems forty years away from that vision. The good thing is that public clamouring has begun; after all ‘it’s never too late to be what you might have been’.
There is one major hitch though. A federal system thrives on autonomous federating units, united under single identity. And the hitch is that 66 years after Pakistanis are still to decide who they are. It’s a country of millions of whom-am-Is fighting their fellow whom-am-Is since decades.
The question is whether the new-found struggle for change in the Pakistani youth will lead to a creation of unified Pakistani identity, strong enough to keep the federating units in harmony with each other, or whether it will fizzle out. The option is ours.