Pakistan’s poor economic performance over the past three decades is frequently attributed to a lack of policy continuity. This discontinuity, in turn, is often linked to political instability, creating a vicious cycle that has hindered structural transformation. The argument follows that if Pakistan were to lay down a national economic strategy, complete with a long-term economic planning framework, it might finally achieve the policy consistency necessary to realize sustained economic growth. In principle, such consistency could also help minimize political turbulence by ensuring clear, widely accepted goals.
This rationale underpins Udaan Pakistan, a newly announced post-election economic policy manifesto from the federal government. The Udaan document presents a broad transformative agenda, promising far-reaching reforms in nearly every major segment of the national economy. Yet it suffers from a familiar flaw: like all previous vision statements, its success depends heavily on sustained implementation over multiple electoral cycles.
In a political environment where power-sharing arrangements come with weak legitimacy and are subject to frequent shifts, sustaining any long-term agenda becomes challenging. Pakistan’s history provides ample evidence that, sooner or later, a convergence of institutional, international, political, legal, judicial, and demographic pressures disrupts any government’s best-laid plans. Consequently, if the ruling party’s official diagnosis of Pakistan’s underperformance is indeed the lack of policy continuity, it must acknowledge that no government remains in power indefinitely. The term of any ruling coalition inevitably expires before ambitious multi-year strategies can fully come to fruition.
Hence, any economic program that presumes it will be carried out by successive governments—potentially with drastically different priorities—cannot succeed without securing a broad national consensus, regardless of how thorough a policy blueprint might be, its legitimacy and enduring impact hinge on winning political buy-in across the spectrum. To the credit of the current leadership, the PML-N has long advocated for a Charter for the Economy, precisely to create a shared framework that transcends partisan interests.
Securing such a consensus is not an unattainable fantasy. Pakistan’s political elites, despite often being at loggerheads, have managed to find common ground in pivotal moments—even when the legitimacy of a sitting government was contested. Over the last three general elections, various political parties questioned the credibility of the results, yet the federation successfully achieved consensus on critical policy milestones, including Operation Zarb-e-Azb (2016), the FATA merger (2018), and central bank autonomy (2021). These agreements were made possible by widespread recognition of the national importance of each initiative, regardless of political reservations over the government enacting them.
If the goal is indeed to foster policy continuity, then the consensus must be built around a few overarching objectives that outlive any single administration. Moreover, any reform agenda that relies on long-term continuity should not only be debated in parliament for potential enactment but also introduced to an inclusive national platform—such as an all-parties conference, similar to the process that led to the Eighteenth Amendment. By doing so, marginalized political and ethnic groups can have a voice in shaping a broad-based economic vision, thereby bolstering its legitimacy.
Moreover, before forging a comprehensive national charter to address Pakistan’s economic challenges, there must first be a consensus on the key problems themselves. Once a broad coalition agrees on the fundamental obstacles—be they population growth, climate change, radicalism, extremism, debt sustainability, chronic twin deficits, illiteracy, malnutrition, or inequitable taxation —each legitimately elected government thereafter should be free to tackle these issues with its own policy tools, so long as it remains committed to solving them.
But is there, for instance, true agreement on whether rapid population growth is a primary threat to Pakistan’s prosperity? Do we collectively accept that climate change and extremism pose existential crises? Is there widespread recognition that twin deficits and debt sustainability are the Achilles’ heel of the national economy? Are persistent illiteracy and malnutrition acknowledged as internal corrosive forces that eat away at the country’s potential? Without such a common diagnosis, one party’s five- or ten-year plan cannot realistically be expected to become a national policy priority for the many years it takes to bear fruit.
The PML-N, in unveiling Udaan Pakistan, seems to hope that its strategy will endure beyond its own tenure, but it risks encountering the same fate as other similar efforts before it. The missing ingredient is a robust, inclusive national consensus. Until Pakistan’s broader political class aligns on the fundamental obstacles to the country’s growth and agrees to a mechanism by which every government, regardless of party, addresses those challenges, any economic blueprint will ultimately remain vulnerable to the shifting winds of politics.
So, is Udaan Pakistan the charter of the economy that can meet the test of national consensus? Not yet—not without a concerted effort to gather all political stakeholders around a shared vision of the nation’s core challenges. Only then can long-term economic strategies overcome the impermanence of political power, ensuring that major reforms and policies outlive the electoral cycle and survive the inevitable changes in leadership that have historically undermined even the most well-intentioned plans.
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