Managing ‘change’!

It is easy to promise change; very difficult to deliver it. Even more difficult, however, is to manage it in a manner that does not inflate inequality beyond what is already delivered by genetics or historical forces, and in a manner that ensures that new coping mechanisms are quickly built as old coping mechanisms and safety nets are destroyed by economic and social change. This will be the single biggest challenge for the ruling party whose rallying cry to the power corridor has been ‘change’.

If the PTI is able to deliver – and it is a big if – on its promises, a new class of merchants, traders, professionals will emerge, and quite likely at the expense of negative or slow growth of currently dominant class of merchants, traders, professionals and so forth.

The second phase of CPEC is of course one driver of it. So will be the new sectoral drivers of economic growth, such as tourism, housing, corporate farming and agriculture value added, that has been promised in the party’s manifesto.

The third driver of change is governance reforms. If the PTI is serious about governance reforms it will have to lay off many people from government employment. The current status of surplus government labour can be gauged by the fact that there are about five tiers of management level employees and six tiers of lower level employees, whereas civil service experts say that an efficient government does not need more than 4-5 tiers combined for both levels of government employees.

While restructuring the governance will result to lay-offs, which is both socially and politically difficult, change in economic direction will also create new winners and new losers and thereby creating inequalities. For instance, if corporate farming and agriculture value added picks up, then traditional farmers existing in huge numbers will have to learn new skills to be able to ride the growth in new farming economy. Or for instance, information about certain housing policies is kept from the public until the last minute, then those having private access to what should be public information will become rich overnight and thereby exacerbating inequality.

Change also has social implications as well. Rapid transformation has destroyed old coping mechanism or old safety nets in the world before and Pakistan cannot be expected to be different from the history of transformation. For instance, when the youth from agriculture economy leave his village/town for a better life in the market place of a city, his parents and grandparents are deprived of a key support that the market is unable to compensate for. This kind of social change is also visible in cities as well. For instance, the traditional day care of grandparents is being replaced due to growth in unitary lifestyles, but day care marketplaces in Pakistani cities haven’t emerged at the same pace.

Rapid change also has environmental implications. In many mountain societies of the Gilgit Baltistan region, old consumption habits where a natural cycle existed in harmony with nature are being replaced by modernity. For example, previously most people had a cow whose rubbish (dung) would be used to build cottage/shacks or burnt as fuel; now everyone used packaged milk and other packaged food whose rubbish is not being treated in a natural lifecycle leading to heaps of garbage alongside the once-picture perfect valleys.

These are just a few examples of how rapid transformation destroys old mechanisms, and old systems at a much faster pace, before new mechanisms and new systems are even developed. Managing these aspects of change will need more than just the expertise of macroeconomists and business experts. Hopefully, ‘change sellers’ are listening.