The doctrine is the governance of the many by the few. The proposition has been in operation during democratic times. These days there is a cry from all quarters about saving democracy. What democracy? Democracy is a way of life in which reason prevails. There is hardly any recourse to reason. I see anchor persons going harshly on the panellists and I see unreasonable defence of the unreasonable by these very panelists. Well, one can try and see how the panelists have defended the most unreasonable of actions of the politicians.
Journalists are after all human beings [?] and have options that they try and sell to the powerful in return for benefits. Every time I see an unreasonable defence of a politician or a bureaucrat I am aghast for I know that some benefit is taken or is likely to be taken for services rendered. Are the sections of the NAB ordinance attracted? What is the section of the NAB that would be attracted? In a recent conversation on TV I had suggested that there should be across-the-board accountability. How will this be possible as the rules of the game have never been dilated upon for journalists nor the army and certainly not the judiciary? The judiciary to be fair to them has its own set of institutional arrangements and that used to work well. Now the question is with the lower judiciary and the supportive junior staff. As people clamor for justice and as the means of communication open up, the functionaries have to be more upfront honest.
Today the economic package of the Balochistan province is under the spotlight. The PM with such a flurry had announced this package that I wanted to congratulate him. It seems that the package is a non-starter. Why? It is a non-starter because the package: a. in implementation is poor. b. It is not managed well. c. The elected members have been given sizable amounts that have not been used but probably wasted. d. The employment of the unemployed is not possible because the elected representatives are using these resources to their own end. Recently the political will was implemented with the recruitment of 500 persons in Balochistan at the whims of some of the political bosses. Research will take a nosedive. So what, my inconsequential relatives will have a job and the country can go for a jump. Since I keep travelling in the country I have found that the constituency of Chaudhry Nisar is where funds have been the most usefully utilised. As stated by developers that honesty has no utilitarian basis the answer comes from this area where the people are openly praising the works done by him. Why and how? I ventured to ask the members of the public and they said that he has a well-laid out plan and that he discusses all the implementation issues with them in an open forum and since he is not a fly by night politician he is accessible to the people at any time. The works done are more planned systematically.
What is happening in Balochistan is that the members have been given monetary resources and there is no monitoring or and no conscience at work with the individuals. A total of Rs 25 crores per member, I understand is allocated for development work yet there is no development in the areas. If there is, I at least, did not see it. Balochistan is exciting and the future of Pakistan's food security. How? Take an example of Chagai district - it is bigger than KPK. It has something like 4.5m hectare of land available for agriculture where the subsoil water is between 60 to 90 feet. The project initiated went and fell in to inefficient hands and what was conceived as a major effort to bring the youths of Balochistan in to agriculture was lost. At Noshki, Shaheed ZAB had started a college (1973) and at that time we had wondered what a misallocation of resources but now that is a full-fledged educational institution. An effort that would have given the unemployed something to look forward to was lost. Interested people changed the scope of the project and made it into a consumption oriented one rather than a recurring development project - a horse had been converted in to a mouse. A project that would have given hope to the newly educated went in to doldrums because of the shift in interventions. The youths of Balochistan were the losers. Similarly the Pakistani Canadians were interested in setting up in conjunction with the Pakistanis bio-fuel cultivation of plants. That was supposed to be grown in the marginal areas of Balochistan South, Sindh (Thar) and Punjab (Cholistan), areas where nothing grew. The production of bio fuels would have made the agriculture sectors transaction costs reduced as the price that we had worked out was about one-tenth of the existing price of diesel at that time. Comparative advantage of Pakistan's agriculture would have been possible and the transaction cost due fossil fuel would have been reduced drastically. Jobs were offered and in two years, Pakistan would have been on the recovery road economically and the non-productive areas would have become useful and productive using marginal water. The mafia would have nothing to do with this. The grant (140 million Canadian dollars) and the project were torpedoed. This was supposed to be a public-private project and the economic value can well be understood. An Indian journalist rang up and e-mailed (29.4.2009) and enquired whether this would go ahead? It turned out that in India, a similar game had been played. China does not allow interference by outsiders into its decision-making. One has to live and die by one's own thoughts and not on the advice of the others. There are numerous such players in the country who do not allow effort to be converted into productive use. Careful is not the watchword and seriously one is at a loss to say what can be done with these intriguers. In Pakistan, there are very few doers as most of them are eaters and the majority of them are intriguers. Again the paradoxical situation is that the powers-that-be do not understand the difference between activity and action. It is action-oriented policies that are wanted and not some hairy fairy way of doing things. The failure must have been mine for the liability to persuade was missing. The fight had gone out once the main actors were told to get lost. Marginal water was to be utilised and the barren lands of the three provinces would have gained. The bio-diesel plant has a drought tolerance of five years (!!!) and lives for more than a century. The advantage that accrued to me after I was told to go home for the umpteenth time was that I went as a consultant to USA bio Fuel Company on bio fuel production. The power lobby of the fossil fuels has worked.
These are only some of the misdoings of a democratic government? Should absolute thought in righteousness rest with the name of democracy? Having witnessed the East Pakistan debacle, I thought that rationality is only with the political government. One learns over a period of time that human degradation can be many times the one that one has thought off. Battles fought for democracy are lost in the labyrinth of human periodic failures that are based on simple self-asset-building. More recently the political persons of the democratic government have been responsible for the misdemeanours of the system and of the country. What right has the democratic government to assume that the indiscipline created by them is in the interest of the democratic government?
Will Pakistan be able to come back from the brink or is this another tipping point for the country? The so-called analysts that we see have brought different perspectives to the shouting debate. The question of whether they are right or wrong is not in question at all for who can predict the future? The journalists are having a field time with the politicians and getting their jobs done at will. Even they should have their due in this country's backwater cleansing system.
Spare a thought Mr Prime Minister to the armed forces and the para-military forces that are losing their personal to the ambushed personal. They too have families and some one has lost a brother, a father, a husband or whatever. If the Balochistan package was working in right earnest would that have happened? Or is the state of well-being only limited to the drawing rooms of the capital? Go and stay in Balochistan? One journalist dies and the powers that be are aghast. Is their no requiem for the Balochi dead and the dead of the para-military forces and the military or of those that died (35000?) in Fata, NWA and SWA? What rot are we talking about in terms of democracy? Democracy does the reverse of what is happening here in Pakistan. Are we blind and deaf defending the close friends at all costs and what messages are you giving Mr Wise guy(s). We owe allegiance to the state and not to the government(s), and certainly not to the regional representatives. Graduate to a higher form of living and analytical powers.
Come let us talk of the well done work of the various democracies that we have had and the various autocratics that we have worked with and do not tell me what is what unless there is a debate on not the best of systems but on the best of the bad systems? Savvy. I have served my time which most of us have not. Churchill after all had a view on governance in the sub-continent in 1946 and we are proving him right. Forget the slick talk and the forked tongue and get down to the act of doing things. Try and understand the compulsions of those that have been thrown on the streets. Democracy is fashionable to talk about, hard work is not. Get out of cosmetics. For what is best is what is best administered. Take a lesson or two on public policy!! Balochistan package is dead before it was born.