EDITORIAL: It’s difficult to understand how the last-minute announcement of a public holiday made the nation celebrate Youm-i-Takbeer with any more fervour that it would have otherwise. Let’s not forget that this year, at least, we are observing this anniversary when the economy is truly on its knees.
And the last thing industry – especially producers gearing up to meet export targets – needed was a snap holiday that was not factored into their calculations. Surely, this would have forced a lot of them to either halt work for that one special day or pay overtime to the working staff to meet deadlines.
Either way, making the whole country sit at home as headlines spoke of the government’s “bold leadership” and the people’s “unwavering determination” was a poor tradeoff that lost billions of precious rupees’ worth of work for cheap, hollow optics.
Perhaps in their rush for fancy headlines our leaders often overlook the irony of a “proud nuclear power” always out with a begging bowl, ready to impose whatever harsh taxes are needed on the middle- and lower-income classes to get enough bailout money to avoid default for a few more years.
May 28 this year was once again a typical example of the ruling elite’s divorce from reality. Because whatever the prime minister was thinking as he ordered a late evening public holiday for the day clearly did not account for some very straightforward facts about this country.
Businesses, already suffering from ridiculous input costs that render them uncompetitive at the very start are looking to get as much work done as possible without completely unnecessary hurdles like shutting everything down for a whole day for no real reason.
Children taking their final exams in the hottest summer on record will have to go out one more day to take the missed tests as schools scramble to revise their cutoff schedule for summer holidays. And the bottom of the food chain, especially, where daily wagers find nothing on the dinner table if there was no work in the day, suffer to no end.
It’s as if the ruling class wants to live in a bubble; even if it offends, insults and hurts the people and especially the economy. Most Pakistanis forced to downgrade their children’s schools and even cut down on their daily food intake because of historic inflation and unemployment that is sure to get worse when the next IMF programme’s “upfront conditions” raise more taxes and cut more subsidies must find very little to celebrate on days like Youm-i-Takbeer, however lucky the country is to count among the world’s few nuclear powers.
These are times when the country and its people must work more to regain their economic and financial health; something the leadership ought to encourage and inspire. Sadly, that is still not the case.
And those at the top still give preference to symbolism that not many people in the country care for or believe in anymore.
The only way to make Pakistan and Pakistanis proud once more is to become progressive and self-reliant, and that is not done by sitting at home and not working for a whole day just because the PM thought late in the evening that there was no better way to celebrate an achievement from almost three decades ago.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
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