When I went to the villages of Punjab, the realization came that poverty was still rampant and that despite an excellent year in wheat and two successive productive years in rice, the social system was still not responsive in terms of poverty alleviation. I decided that two aspects were necessary and needed urgent consideration.
Where were the rural migrants likely to go and how were they subsisting in the new environment? So that called for considering the matter entirely differently. The second was what China had done to get rid of poverty in double quick time. When independence celebrations were held, reminders about China's excellent work came to the forefront. How is it that in a command and centralized political system, the economy had taken the interventions of capitalism and done so well?
To meet the first requirement, a survey, indicative and narrative at best, was undertaken of the peripheral areas where indigenous knowledge and industry was at work. It was cheap entry and therefore very basic and probably would make people sneer at its workings. None of these snitchers would realize that they are keeping, somehow, the social system intact.
The cost of entry was cheap and none of the investment was based on cost-benefit analysis. No economist had been involved in determining the demands of the market. There was not a Managing Director's posh office, made from skimming off the loans from an industrial banking system. There were no bonuses to the CEOs of this world just raw emotion[s] and no drawing room chairs.
At one such 'enterprise', two plastic chairs [cheap ones that we see all over the place] with no backs were in the office. The chairs had seen better times. The MD's table had the stand of a discarded cooler and on it was simply but artistically a marble. The second pertains to what China has called 'Spark Technologies' and these were the ones that they had brought about at the village level.
Great are the ways of the country that considers the requirements of the poor. One pities the nation that is not so involved. China has regular spark technologies fair[s] and some years ago, I had induced some Pakistanis to there and see it for themselves. But going to a place is different from going there to conceptualize what is the requirement of one's own country.
Pakistan is seriously lacking in social scientists, in social architects and in social doers. Yes, you will tell me about all these micro-credit people and how they are eliminating poverty. I have seen the articulate and I have seen the mafia that has emerged in such a short time and on the basis of which the people of this country have been reduced to slaves and Muslims that have become banias.
I have seen the Nobel Laureates create more poverty and we will no doubt see some more of these insensitive persons create more poverty. There simply is no sense in living in Defence and Bahria Housing Societies and living off the entailing system, where no effort has been made to work for oneself, but where others' blood and sweat is used for one's own comforts. It is indeed a pity.
My visits to the peripheral and marginal areas where intrapreneurs [self-induced and therefore to be distinguished from entrepreneurs] were at work, deciding on what was required to be done. Instead of wasting financial resources on the corporate sector, why not take these resources to the poor and marginal intrapreneurs.
Shaheed ZAB was the only one to take the risk of Islamic socialism. It was a bold effort and it paid rich dividends and these can be seen by the growth of the small industry in the early seventies and then came the watershed arrangements, in which some friends stabbed us in the back and created the nuisance that was Zia. Tyrants, when they are brought into the system, no matter by what powers, remain a source of shame for the country.
The decision-making went haywire. The sages in uniform were considered the people who could save what was left of Pakistan. This erroneous information is generally forwarded by the interests groups from within the power structure and is a means for rationalizing the abuse that was or that is likely to be heaped on anyone who shows another route. Whipping of innocent persons was carried out, to subjugate the people.
Bugti was killed by the forces for no reason, other than his choice not to submit to the whims of the tyrants of this country. Now those very tyrants are running around telling the world how good they were. In the process of saving their backs, they continue to ignore the poor masses. Instead, massive loans and massive mental and monetary corruption was carried out and the assets of the poor were taken away.
Pakistan and its people have paid a every heavy price for this kind of behaviour. It is not in the nature of things that when a governance structure is indecent, it should be dealt with in a decent manner. Imagine the opportunity cost of what has been spent on wasteful non-development, when half the nation is not in proper clothing and the other half is not properly fed.
The future then lies with not the large industrial sector, not the small industrial sector, but the indigenous, peripheral industrial sector, where everything is self-managed and the writ of the government is neither visible nor required. There are no posh offices and the hospitality is not in bone china cups but in small, ordinary crude ceramic cups. The manifestations are so different as to what constitutes happiness.
As I stopped at a place in Lunda bazaar, all of a sudden loadshedding hit us, exactly at noon. No one cribbed, but they all came to see how the shehri babu could be made comfortable; ever seen a posh person tolerating loadshedding and taking things in their stride. A couple of expletives and a crib as if what they were doing was of an earth shattering nature. Pakistan has been unfortunate not to tap this resource of tenacity, the people, who by no dint of imagination can be considered unworthy of this country.
There is an example that ought to be seen and emulated. I have seen much of the poverty and pain of the poor and no place could have been worse than former East Pakistan. There tolerance of the pettiness of the West Pakistanis ran out. Much was lost, but the area lost was not one laments, but the fact that we had excellent friends there and them we lost. We ran our brethren out. The social consequences of such neglect are not measurable, neither is the pain when the consequences follow.
The remedy then is simple. The peripheral people be taken care of and they will generate resources and they will generate dal roti employment, not necessarily pilau-murgi and thank heavens for little mercies. The doctor's bill would be reduced, but for the corporate sector that has all kinds of ailments. One such entrepreneur, a blue eyed boy of the then-President went to London for treatment for his slightly crooked little finger. In fact, he had gone for more psychedelic treatment and he was over or nearing seventies.
The father and son-in-law went together. A survey would indicate what has gone on in the past and what can be there for the future. Want to build one? Build and then get another tyrant to demolish what was built so assiduously. Self-destruct and self-destruct and again self-destruct.
Go on doing it, go on doing it, till you fall dead. May your evil thoughts fall dead and may your Satan be not mine. Take care and think of those that may have slept without a meal, take the case of the pregnant mother who is unable to meet the demands of the child she is carrying. We cannot even provide for a mother's pride and the moment she has lived for, in order to generate the human race. Pity this nation.