Vulgar economists

Pakistan is what it is but it has been made much worse by borrowed fashionable development suggested by donors-governments or by their surrogate organisations. The measuring of incomes and poverty has now been going on for the better part of four decades. There is no solution in sight. Whatever has come their way by the various development theories and the 'noble' statements of the WB economists all come under the definition of Gunnar Myrdal's famous quote about vulgar economists in that institution.
His statement was based on the fact that the economists have no field experience. Experience itself is based on cognitive aspects that are developed by the institutions that these economists go to. The two types of experiences that are generally accepted are cumulative [more of the same] or exponential where the incumbent goes on having diverse experiences.
Pakistan is now experiencing a tragedy that will unfold later in the life of this nation. It has: 1. Massive law and order issues. 2. The terror aspect is growing as the tensions in society are increasing. 3. Feudalism or the idle rich can live on without an iota of work. 4. The labour class will toil until dead. 5. The toiling poor have no rights but are only liabilities. 6. Development consists of removing the poor from seemingly rich areas and the visibility aspects are improved for the few and at the expense of the poor. If there is any doubt then go and see Chak Shahzad and then go to Bhara Kau where the majority of the displaced persons have moved to. In fact if you were to go through one lane of the intestinal kind then you may find that that one lane has more population than the entire spread of Islamabad. Islamabad was created for the rich and the powerful. 7. Executives of whatever kind are overpaid and the organisations supposed to be working for the poor farmers are unto activities that would make me ashamed of their performance. It is like morality that the Americans are preaching where the general resigns over extra-marital relationship but is willing to kill thee-month-old children via bombing. The Afghan and the Iraq wars were serious non-moral wars.
There is no need of statistics for they carry a lot of lies with them. The facts can be ascertained by gut feeling and the shivers one gets down the spine at odd moments. Are we then a country that will collapse like a house of cards? How then are the poor sustaining themselves? I checked with a few of them. Some of them are having one meal a day others are trying to soak bits of chappatis in any liquid and take it as filler. The people in one of the development projects [Ghabbir dam, one hour drive from Islamabad] are all under nourished. So how does it look like I asked one of them? They responded by saying that one can only survive for that long and then it is better to go criminal. Without understanding the social context they had linked it with the growing criminality in the country. Crime has come down they tell me in the official statistics. They also tell me that crime is everywhere. Does that kind of rationalisation cut any ice with any one anymore?
Rising inflation and parochial and ethnic aspects have made the poor even worse. Hope is lost when we see recruitment, promotion and establishment policies for the powerful as against the hard working. The hardly working are getting all the benefits. Inflation is a virus that cuts the very vitals of a society. When Keynes said this he meant that with social system's breakdown all kinds of dubious activities take place. Every cost has gone up as a result of breakdown of local production system. What has happened is that the modern production system based on machinery and capital intensity has led to grave and copious kind of corruption. How do you handle when the foreign MNCs are involved? They have the habit of disturbing the culture of the locals via greed and desirability enhancement. Modern gadgetry and technological enhancement, whether in the info tech or in defence all lead to one sordid story? How to get a contract and how to pervert the system and to involve innocent people into deal making? When policymakers make mistakes that are unintentional then the matters are correctable. Intentional mistakes take you down another lane.
Has the household income not stagnated? All those studies by Amartya Sen and by Michael Lipton are one-off point studies and do not deal with the subject in its dynamic context. They may be true for a particular point in time but they are not a continuous in nature. This argument about real income does not cut any ice with the poor who are mostly involved in making it through the day. The economists can take their concepts home with themselves and sleep over them. The toiling poor have another problem and that has to do with horizontal poverty. That means that no matter what they do the cards are so stacked against them that there is no question that they will come out of the poverty area. There are not only income factors but also structural factors that forbid any kind of improvement.
To every urban pleasing area there is a poor slum area. It is every where except in Tokyo where I enquired of my Japanese host whether I can see their slum area. To which they replied that the slum area is not there but there is a poor area where the houses are smaller but the material used is the same as in the Emperor's palace. The lanes will be less wide but they will be clean. So it was.
The question that this begs is what about the rest of the world? The answer lies in what Gunnar Myrdal stated about three decades ago that we have no economists but vulgar economists and that they lack field experience and following that they lack exponential experience to bring about any change. I questioned one of the leading exponents of the game Dr Mehbub-ul-haq and I was appalled for he banked on H. U. Baig the then finance secretary for local knowledge. He was a Planning Monster [no spelling mistake] and he was unable to read the demographic profile and relate it to the areas where involvement was required. Since his game was linked to the WB and its players he catered for them and one of them was Maurice Strong. He may be the cat's whiskers but he was not aware of the local conditions in Pakistan. In fact none of us are there. You want to find out how current your knowledge is then go to the suburbs of Islamabad and you will probably realise that it is time bomb that one is sitting on; shades of the French Revolution.
Will these elections change anything for the rural and the urban poor? No they will not. The convenience of the rich cannot be trumped by the inconveniences of the poor. So it will go on with insensitive policymakers in position of authority. In any case they do not have any conceptual policymaker in position. It will take a massive change and a look at the economics more in line with China and less with the WB and their associates. The wisdom of the East versus the pragmatism of the West is in question. It is going to be tough. We have all softies in policymaking. The alternates to alternates have to be understood. Implementation is even tougher.