The systems that got us into this mess will not be the systems that will get us out of it. They simply cannot be. We have something systemically wrong with us. Not as a nation, as a global community. As an era. For all the rosy pictures we can paint, for all the statistics we can construe, deep down inside, we know that we have failed.
I still remember the times when I would be indignant, only a romanticizeble few years ago, at accusations, hints even, that Pakistan was a failed state. After numerous pushes and shoves, when I found out that the humble local activist who led the Fisherfolk Development Organisation, Abdul Ghani, was murdered by the local land mafia on May 6, this year, and his body recovered from the Sandspit mangroves, I resigned. One too many last straws. I accepted that we, have failed.
From the coastal Kakapir village near Karachi, Abdul Ghani spearheaded and set up the eco-tourism project; a seafood kitchen; a dispensary, a water pipeline and a school - all for his community's uplift. He even convinced the community to send their girls to school for education - the first batch graduated fifth grade in 2009. Yet material interests, petty ones, hold nothing sanctimonious, not even the respect due to a dead body. This is the world we live in - a relatively rosier part of it, in fact.
THE NATIONAL ENGINE: COG-LESS WHEEL WORKS
Where does this fit in?
If you've asked me at leisure, I might've shared with you what sparked my initial interest in CSR: the realisation that the business sector, with all their might and weight and influence must take ownership to address the impacts of its existence - that of course being no small feat. (Besides, who in their right mind had realistic hope from governments anyway? Most governments' strings are being merrily pulled by economic interests anyway - directly and indirectly.)
Hence the focus on the triple bottom-line where an organisation measures its success not only by its financial bottom-line, but also its economic value creation, social impact and environmental footprint mitigation (as defined by the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry CSR Body as well).
Yet, while there will always be a place for ethical business, for responsible corporate conduct, a different realisation has dawned - albeit not without its own set of trepidations. Of all the wheels that work together to form a nation's engine, business behaviour is only one. If the entire direction, or set of cogs is dysfunctional, or perhaps even entirely absent, there is only so much impact exemplary corporate citizenship can have (not to imply that our business sector's behaviour is close to being collectively exemplary!).
There will be no pinnacle of business ethics without an umbrella that facilitates, mandates, enforces it. And right now, we seem to have one that almost mandates unethical behaviour for business survival. If we remove the rose-tinted glasses we've acquired (to camouflage all the blood evident in our daily exposures), we will notice that the wheels of our nation's engines aren't turning anymore. Worse still, the cogs are mutilated, to the extent that the engine seems to have become spastic: more often turning the wheels in regression than towards any meaningful, sustainable measure of progression.
There are children in urban hubs, our 'thriving metropolises' who do not know what fruit is. And those who do not know what the inside of a classroom looks like (>40% of our girls remain illiterate: UNICEF); or who can fathom what three meals a day might feel like. Another 6 million, at least, work as bonded labour - their appalling conditions something few will have the stomach for. And 4.2 million have no parents - ring any bells about the divine rights of the orphan child in our Islamic heritage?
If such is the state of the most vulnerable in our society, those who have the most right to be cared for, to be protected, then other members and sub-communities can only be worse.
We, have failed. As individuals, as communities, as companies - as a nation. Indeed as the highest of creation, whom God blew of His own Self into - we look like total failures, hardly worthy of our divine souls. I condole myself, with uplifting evidential experiences even: It is our children who are our promise, all 80 million of them. From these children arose an Iqbal only a few decades ago. And from whom we can hope for radical, fundamental changes.
INDICATORS OF REGRESSION We've lost the plot: Between our misplaced hope in democracy and groping at the straws that a plethora of 'donors' throw our way, we digress. Stumbling between buzzwords such as job-creation and capacity building (as if there was none to begin with), we don't have a vision anymore. All because we strayed from the only anchor that holds the weight to keep us, well, anchored.
Our tragedy is that we have wilfully left behind, abandoned, our own assets. Our heritage, our Islamic heritage, gives us much more holistic, truer indicators to benchmark our progress by. In a nation that spanned three continents let there be no one to give Zakat (mandatory charity) to. That's a benchmark. Leaders that choose to own only one pair of clothing -tattered clothing- for fear of the onus upon their shoulders. That's a benchmark.
Remember those times? Our very own history. Our very own leaders. We've forgotten that material wealth is a burden. Certainly as an end, and often, even as a means. It carries with it the immense responsibility to honour the trust entrusted via that wealth. For its temporal owners in this world, we, are only carriers: carriers of a trust, of responsibility. Or, of disease: like our current 'leaders'.
Even by current indicators, our intrinsic alarm bells should be deafening. You don't need fancy statistics to drive that home - in your daily life you likely come across one of Pakistan's 1.2 million street children (Asia Child Rights, 2005). With one of the highest global infant mortality rates, and the highest in the region at 63.3 per 1,000 births, Pakistan's health expenditure is now down to 0.23 percent of our GDP (Economic Survey of Pakistan). That's a pitiful Rs 42 billion - in a country where less than 30 percent women receive antenatal care and less than 40 percent women have a skilled attendant available at birth (UNICEF).
DIVINE SOLUTIONS
There will be no answers in any man-made system: at either the capitalistic end or the socialist end - both simply two sides of the coin of liberalism. We're living in arrogant times, we've decided that we're too good, too smart, too educated, too learned, too intellectual, too progressive even, for the divine systems designed for us by our own Creator.
And are hence living -albeit in a fair bit of denial- through the painful consequences, micro and macro: social, economic, political. It is time for us to shed our layers of false pride, un-learn the twisted ways that got us to where we are and take the onus to reconstruct the divine systems that until only a few centuries ago orchestrated all elements of planetary existence so seamlessly.
The writer is among the region's leading Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility Specialists, and chairs the CSR Standing Committee of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry. She can be reached at [email protected]
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