"If you want to brag, climb Everest. If you want respect, climb K2". Such is the reputation of Pakistan’s mountains among adventure travelers. Yet to date Pakistan doesn't boast enough organizational and administration skills to manage foreign climbing expeditions that by the way are generally unfazed by law-and-order situations in case anyone wants to put the blame on that. Nor does Pakistan have enough climbing skills. Consider, for example, that against 35-40 Sherpas from Nepal, there are only 4-6 local high-altitude porters from Pakistan in the ongoing winter K2 expeditions. The positivity brigade, however, would still want people to solely focus on the glass one-tenth full.
There is no denying that India’s propaganda machine has been busy against Pakistan. The recent EU DisinfoLab report is one such example. But the domestic feel-good machinery isn’t helping Pakistan either for it gives citizens a false hope and a bad promise that optimism and good riddance to corruption are Pakistan’s panacea. (See also BR Research’s ‘Is corruption Pakistan’s biggest problem?’ Aug 2, 2019)
As if government’s own propaganda machine wasn’t enough, the central bank too seems to have joined the bandwagon of late. And now, latest from the feel-good machinery are op-ed pieces by current and former government officers/advisors.
This machinery points to growth in remittances without truly knowing the real causes of it, and without appreciating the underlying risks in the wake of Covid-19, and therefore not adequately planning for it. It is the same machinery that claimed victory too soon in the middle of the pandemic, giving the largely uneducated and unsuspecting Pakistanis a flawed reason to believe that Pakistan is an exception to pandemic thanks to the blessed hand of God. Only that the pandemic is back in Pakistan, and it’s perhaps a matter of time before UK’s latest fast-spreading strain makes it way to the blessed land in the ongoing wedding/holiday season.
Some from the positivity brigade get euphoric about power sector reforms, LSM growth, and others – all the while ignoring that the team of governance and technical specialists are still missing from textile, commerce, power, and finance ministries whereas LSM growth, being mainly driven from low base affect, lacks desired levels of breadth. As SDPI’s Dr Sajid Amin succinctly puts it ‘no growth; no deficits’; yet the PM boasts about fiscal and external balances!
The machinery also points to Pakistan’s digital payment systems and technology without comparing its unimpressive performance against peer economies. It also points to growing tech ecosystem and billions of dollars of exports whilst disregarding that those so-called billions of dollars of exports cannot really be officially counted as such, and that Pakistan fares worse than the average of lower middle-income countries in a myriad of indicators that make the likes of Network Readiness Index.
The reality is when tech giants like Apple, Samsung, Huawei, and others have to shop for best software makers their go-to place is India and Israel; and since the best design and test of design is in France so they get their design from there; the best mathematicians are from Russia, so they get mathematicians from there; and since the best process engineers are in Japan so they source that expertise from Japanese process engineers. What has Pakistan got? Basmati rice! Fantastic! That too is debatable now that India played her ‘wicked’ (read: smart) hand.
Then there are those who boast about Pakistan’s hospitality, and generosity of heart as a positive for economy. The greatness of the former can be gauged by Pakistan’s thin share in the UAE’s hospitality and service industry. And the latter, as tax advocates Dr Ikram ul-Haq and Huzaima Bukhari oft argue, is a sign of flawed social contract where people are willing to cheat taxes, and from the tax so avoided give a portion as charity.
‘No one goes hungry in Karachi;’ it is often said. Some even say no one goes hungry in Pakistan. Sure! Voilà! Then how is it that stunting, and malnutrition are the country’s biggest problems in this 21st century. And why is that provision of charity is limited to food and medicine as if just enough charity should be given to keep the struggling class from taking off from work rather than lifting them out of poverty.
There are four key messages for the positivity brigade. First, those who point that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes shouldn’t be labelled as anti-Pakistan or unpatriotic. Cherish them instead!
Second, granted that one should be grateful for Pakistan’s social, human, organizational, institutional, and hard infrastructure in public and private space for not being as poor as Afghanistan’s or Somalia’s. But gratefulness, and the art of being content works for Sufis or meditation sellers; not for Westphalian nation states!
No economic growth and development in modern history ever grew from the soil of satisfaction and contentment over the then prevailing state of affairs. Capitalism as we know it thrives on dissatisfaction. If positive brigade from Pakistan’s Riyasat-e-Madina doesn’t value GDP growth, development, and the reforms to drive it, then it’s another thing, in which case best chase altogether different Bhutan-like happiness economic indicators.
Third, as Zohare Ali Shariff, CEO Asiatic Public Relations Network once shared PR industry’s maxim in his interview with BR Research, that whilst PR's job is to maintain the brand's solidness and trust among the people, there is a need to build a strong product or company first. “No PR company, the ones that have been working for 20-25 years, will ever project what in the Urdu language we call ‘dou number company’. The premise to start with, the company or the brand, has to be solid,” he said.
Lastly, taking a cue from Bradford Veley’s classic philosophical cartoon, at any point in time the glass is both half full and half empty depending which side the fish is (see illustration). The question to Pakistan’s positivity brigade and to all readers alike is to assess which of the two fish the wide majority of Pakistanis are? The fish with gills in the air, or in the water?
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