Vision, vision everywhere!!!

Ahsan Iqbal is a man of big plans. At the launch of SDPI’s sixteenth sustainable development conference this Tuesday, Iqbal said Pakistan’s and South Asia’s “developmental model has to be compatible with social and cultural values of South Asia”. He added that development shouldn’t only be seen from the limited lens of GNP or GDP; instead “we should have a gross national well-being index”.
These are noble thoughts indeed; ideas of well-being-ness or of gross national happiness are not just being followed by Bhutan, but the likes of France and other European economies have also been thinking along these lines. France had in fact commissioned Nobel laureates economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen to devise an index that addresses the shortcomings of the GDP.
But, for a country that has not had population census since 1998; that does not know how many poor people it has to support; that doesn’t have quarterly GDP data releases to date; that has little clue of its provincial GDP numbers or provincial trends in CPI inflation; and whose two-fifth of GDP is actually undocumented—the talk of developing a gross national well-being index is just too lofty of an idea.
Still, ideas matter, and perhaps in a hundred years, when Pakistan will be able to achieve its strategic visions, the government of Pakistan can task the Planning Commission to arrive at such romantic indices. Meanwhile, the government has to do a few earthly things. These include strengthening the institutions of governance so that plans can be implemented and fruits can be reaped.
In the words of Marc-André Franche, Country Director UNDP, who was chairing one of the sessions at the conference, the successful implementation of a strategic vision requires strong political consensus; it also requires sticking to the plans; and it also requires transparency and effective communication for the same.
And speaking of transparency and effective communication, Ahsan Iqbal and his team at the Planning Commission would do well to take a leaf out of Indonesia where they have a periodic performance review of the plans published in the form of a report, which also sheds light on the rationale of any paradigm shift in the plans.
This implies that for the sake of transparency and effective communication, the Planning Commission should inform the public as to how and why the Vision 2025 will be different from Vision 2030 prepared in 2007 and FEG prepared in 2011. And, if it is not different, then what’s the purpose of this exercise. In absence of any such explanation, the whole exercise may be perceived as something aimed to add a star to PML-N’s collars.