Prime Minister Imran Khan's hour-long address to the nation was that of a visionary statesman focused on the destiny of the nation. This is an unprecedented change in the leadership and politics of Pakistan and bring us back to the era of the early 1950s when all minds and hearts were geared towards building the budding nation. Starting from scratch in 1947, it was this decade of the 1950s when great institutions with great people were set up. Those were PIDC, Wapda, PIA, Suparco, Atomic Energy Commission of Pakistan, PICIC, oil and gas entities in the public and private sector resulting in the discovery of natural gas in Sui in 1953 and many other financial, industrial, science and technology institutions were set up to position the nation on a sound footing with domestic and foreign investments.
The current era again brings the nation to the point to do some soul searching of what has gone wrong in all these years and once again, as one nation, close its gaps and work for the nation building in an enabling environment vastly expected from the current leadership.
PM Imran Khan in his address to the nation talked about the burden of loan repayments, human development, lavish lifestyles of the rural elite and political leadership, denial of education to millions of poor children, welfare of widows, supremacy of law and its equality for all, austerity, tax enhancement, corruption, tracking and bringing back the ill-gotten money, attracting investments, importance of SMEs, overseas Pakistanis, jail and police reforms, healthcare, water issue, farmer support, local governments, environment, tourism, Fata and Balochistan uplift, jobs for the youth, Karachi issues and the National Action Plan.
Imran's vision indicates that the direction of the nation would be socio-economic, which means economy for the masses' welfare as is prevalent in various states of Europe, where the welfare of the common man has precedence over all other considerations and where the tax rate on elite segment is as high as 70 percent.
His vision also means that there will be lesser mega projects of glamour and more funds will be diverted towards education, healthcare, local bodies, industry and investments, restructuring of legal system and similar.
Also, it would mean diverting the CPEC initiative from mega projects to socio-economic-oriented projects such as Special Economic Zones planned under the CPEC which promise industrialisation and greater exports, creating immense job opportunities.
His vision is a long-term vision, but an essential one and an inevitable one and a winning one. The have-nots of this nation have waited too long and suffered too much and are on the brink of staging a revolt if their pathetic state of survival is not addressed anytime soon. The mindset of this majority was found its best reflection in the July 25 vote.
The message by this majority to all political parties is loud and clear that they cannot be taken for granted as enablers to position politicians on the seat of power while they continue to stand in queues for hours to fetch water, their children continue to play in heaps of garbage dumped on dilapidated streets and many are forced to become street children.
The vision without a formidable action plan is a recipe for disaster as the expectations and hopes of people have been raised and they expect fastest possible delivery on ground. It is this challenge which the government must begin to deal with. The challenge is formidable and time too short to produce tangible results on ground.
The first 100-day plan of the PTI government is under minute focus of adversaries as all the stakeholders and critics who are monitoring it closely. One critic has even set up a much publicised time clock with a software-driven surveillance and reporting on the delivery of PTI government's plan.
The government's taskforce, understandably, is in the process of putting together a strategy for it, whereas urgency demanded its roll-out for implementation on ground the day PTI government took office. Although a good and well thought-out strategy is essential for long-term sustainable gains, there are many burning areas which can be immediately addressed and positioned on an implementation mode. These include:
1. Restructuring and strengthening of institutions;
2. Stabilization of economy;
3. Restoration of circular debt;
4. Availability and affordability of power;
5. Need for mobilizing revenue generation (industry, exports and FDI);
6. Managing the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC);
7. Restructuring, rationalizing and privatising state-owned enterprises (SOEs); and
8. Restructuring of the federal ministries, autonomous bodies and state corporations.
The writer will seek to highlight possible fast track deliverables in these critical segments in his column of next week.
(The writer is former President of Overseas Investors Chamber of Commerce & Industry)
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