EDITORIAL: While it is certainly appreciated that the prime minister agreed to the “comprehensive set of proposals” submitted by the austerity committee – formed to save taxpayer money – and duly directed the body to “engage all stakeholders” for its implementation, the fact remains that the document makes no startling revelations. Everybody knows, just like Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif knew very well when he took office, that taking an axe to the perks, privileges and luxuries regularly showered upon the ruling elite – parliamentarians, judges, military brass, civil servants, etc. – is now critical to save the economy from complete collapse.
There was also never any doubt that any common sense austerity drive would begin by restricting the federal cabinet to the minimum number possible, yet here we stand, with the biggest cabinet in the country’s history exchanging ideas about cutting unnecessary expenses. So, at least there’s one point where the government would not need to wait for the austerity committee to “engage all stakeholders” to get the ball rolling; not if it is really serious about setting the right, not wrong, kind of examples. Besides, we’ve been here before.
The previous PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf) government also made a lot of noise about the desperate need for austerity as soon as Imran Khan took oath as prime minister. And the committee he formed, under former SBP (State Bank of Pakistan) governor Dr Ishrat Husain, hammered out similar proposals – cutting the bloated public sector, rolling back privileges, targeted subsidies – and that was pretty much the end of the matter.
That’s because the biggest problem with reforms that require strict austerity is that the people that must green-light them, and the departments that will have to implement them, are also the ones that have grown fat because of the perks and privileges that need to be rolled back. And this inherent, unavoidable contradiction ensures that no such initiative ever sees the light of day. Robbing MPs of development funds, stripping government officials of their SUVs, cutting salaries of parliamentarians and allowing only one plot each to all public servants, along with a number of similar measures, makes a lot of sense to ordinary taxpayers looking at these things from the outside. But when all decisions are made by the people and groups that are responsible for this mess in the first place, and they are very easily able to wriggle enough to avoid the axe, then it becomes easy to understand why this just ends up falling into the one-step-forward-two-steps-back category.
Yet now we have, quite literally, come to the end of the road. With nothing less than the threat of actual sovereign default having over its head, the government has no choice but to cut excess spending anywhere and everywhere it can. And whichever party now comes to power will simply have to implement and stick to these austerity measures, otherwise it will forever bear the blame for the consequences. It would have been much better if these measures were part of a bigger economic emergency meant to divert all stakeholder attention and resources towards rescuing the economy.
The state’s divorce from reality is one of the biggest reasons for the current crisis, after all. Even as debt mounted and people were forced to make sacrifices for IMF (International Monetary Fund) bailout loans, the ruling elite continued to live in its own sweet bubble – full of privileges and luxuries that give the feudal lords and industrial barons that lord over us very different lives from ordinary Pakistanis. If this disturbing and dangerous trend does not end even now, then there’s a good chance that Pakistan will not remain as we know it. Because the state itself has been promoting gross inequality in the country – with one of the highest growth and illiteracy rates in the world, combined with some of the most abysmal growth and poverty statistics. And this time bomb is now all set to go off.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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