The number of mafia operating in Pakistan can be easily ascertained from the newspapers of Pakistan. They reap the economics of advertisement these days. The electronic media enjoys the benefits of paid advertisement by the political party in power. But these are ancillary income enjoyments by the various players in the system. One way to see this in an unemotional way is to study this mafia in other countries. Our PM's visit to the Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan [he sturdily avoided Kazakhstan because of certain bloomers that were made the last time a Pakistani politician went to this particular country]. These Central Asian countries were making the transition from socialism/communism to capitalism and I found myself in the midst of this for I was a consultant from FAO on the rural economics of these states. What I was to learn practically I was to deliver in theory to the students of the Fatima Jinnah Women's University, Rawalpindi where I was asked to teach a course on transitional economics. So practice and theory were alternating in these lectures. In virgin economics it allowed me to see how mafia develops. The newspapers are also a source of information wherein all these crony capitalism companies are found to be advertising, appealing to the government to put the consumers at peril. Any protection methods that are taken the price increase to the consumer is directly proportional to twice the amount. Thus in the early seventies when the textiles were protected in three digits the cost to the locals were twice the amount of that protection. Textiles were smuggled in to the country. In corporate social responsibility (CSR) the country refused to go to as consultant was Turkmenistan and for very sound social reasons. The right to speech was restricted and in fact dealt with severely. But we have strayed from the issue at hand. Pakistan has been instrumental in dealing a near death knell to the poorest of the poor. Let us look at the fertilizer mafia. The only person in the political system that understood this was President Sardar Farooq Ahmed Leghari. The pattern followed by President Zardari was an open liberal one while that by Shaheed Benazir Bhutto was a total confrontational one. What will be the policies of PML-N and Nawaz Sharif is still to be declared but from what one can glean from the press it will be what former governor of State Bank Ishrat Husain called 'an action by the elitist state'. The less said about the current ones the batter for their policy is openly urbanite and industrial. Fair enough. At least they do not make any qualms about it. The latest cut in interest rate is considered to be essential for local investment. Governor Ishrat Husain did the same and found that the results did not justify the means. There was economic squandering as a result. Where the industrial sector has had subsidies and crutches to walk on [provided by the government] the idea of economic incentives is disastrous. The entrepreneurs have not come through the market system and therefore lack the competitive abilities.
As a result of the operations of the mafia, alternate policies are never tried. Let us consider the cost of chemical fertilizer to the farmer. The plants uptake is only 10% for nitrogen, 7% for phosphate and 4% for potash. Check with any soil scientist in NARC and you would get the results that I have mentioned here. The last time I worked out the cost to the farmer per acre it was about Rs 18,000 in money terms but in actual terms if you worked out the real use factor it was Rs 82,000 per acre. Is there an alternative? Yes there is an alternate and then to the alternate there is another alternate. There is organic fertilizer that can be created from local waste material and then there are methods of making them in such a way that the waste in the village could be utilised. To this organic way there is another alternate that is even cheaper and that can be used based on the mineralogy of the system. But that is water on duck's back. Those that are circumcised by the system stay circumcised by it. The current system's being obsolete was indicated in many meetings but all that was to no avail. Why? The question has to be left unanswered.
Economic wisdom would have us believe that once the demand for the agriculture product was established all else would be hunky dory. So I set about setting up a demand structure for sugar cane and for textiles as well as for dairy and poultry. In one meeting with Pervez Musharraf he stated that I had powerful enemies and then as an afterthought he said that I also had powerful friends. My reply was that my friends may be discounted but that my enemies I would point out and when I did he agreed with me as to the constitution of these mafia that were working against me.
For Pakistan to be a fair country it is essential that its institutions work according to their function. Today the newspaper carries the story of the sacking of the Auditor General of Pakistan. The post is a constitutional one and the allegations levelled against him do not seem to follow from what I know about the gentleman. It is in the nature of the government that when they get after anyone he is painted as the very devil. They would have put horns on his forehead much like the devil. The hidden agenda is something different. There is no such thing as a conscience of a government.
But to get to the bottom of the goonda activity of any government we have a look at the assets that they have accumulated and how they have violated rules and regulations. I can cite innumerable occasions of malfeasance and violation of laws. Start from the planning process and the implementation of projects that are self-serving for the powerful families. Have we forgotten the beating administered to the bakery employee, the Model Town episode and no matter what the JIT report is the dead bodies will have to be accounted for sooner or later? I am with Gandapur (PTI) for this family as far as I know does not believe in telling lies. They will speak the truth no matter what the cost to them is in the short run.
When these kinds of episodes come to the knowledge of the poor they put their own interpretation to the entire working of the government. Has anyone looked at the poverty figures and the Planning Commission's work for the poor? Has anyone worried about the employment situation? Oh you can have any amount of talking episodes. You can twist and turn the argument but the truth will emerge and then there will be no recourse but to follow the law. Irrelevant statement and the heavens will be in our reach after say a decade. By the time that decade is reached the figures are worse off. What have the energy advisors achieved? Have they worked out what will be the impact of the utterly useless statements made by leaders?
Where is the solution? Where ever there is a public interest requirement the political system has to be bipartisan and take a collective decision. The government only remembers the opposition when it is in a tight corner. All this noise about Karachi is meaningless. It is not getting us anywhere. It will not get us anywhere in the future also. The decades of obsolete policies are coming home to roost. There will be much more to worry about come the future days. There is a saying cometh the event cometh the man. Where in Pakistan is there a linkage between event and man? All that this government knows is how to be anti-state. Good go on. Your time will also come and then we will start ab initio.