PTI’s economic policy
August 27th, 2012
One of the most trenchant criticisms of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has been its reliance on feel-good sloganeering over the nitty-gritty of policy details. The announcement of the party’s economic plan was meant to change all that although if the early details are anything to go by, this is not going to happen. One of the fundamental mistakes the PTI makes is to treat corruption as a personal rather than structural issue. It simply thinks that getting rid of the current crop of politicians and replacing those with themselves will lead to an automatic halt in corruption, a view that is at stark odds with the reality of Pakistan. Thus, when the party claims that it will recover two trillion rupees by bringing an end to corruption, that figure can safely be ignored as the product of the PTI’s imagination.
Much of the PTI’s economic blueprint is aspirational rather than realistic. It is to say that the cost of producing electricity will be reduced, even though not a single politician in Pakistan has any control over the international price of oil. The same goes for the promise to bring an end to the circular debt issue although the PTI is unable to explain where the money will come from in order for this to happen. The party has also focused on the symbolic rather than the practical. It is politically popular to say that the state will save money by slashing the budgets of the president, prime minister, chief minister and governors’ houses by 50 per cent but these savings will barely make a dent in our deficit. The PTI also wants Pakistan to make do without foreign loans although how this will not lead to instant bankruptcy is again left unexplained.
Many of the proposals also betray an inexcusable ignorance about politics and economics. It is well and good to say that the education and health budgets will be substantially increased but these are subjects that were devolved to the provinces under the Eighteenth Amendment and so will not be under the purview of the centre. The PTI also wants to increase government spending in many sectors, reduce unemployment substantially while bringing down inflation at the same time, which is something that would break all laws of economics if it ever happened. That ultimately is the problem with the PTI: it ignores reality for rhetoric.
Unchanged order
August 27th, 2012
We may as well be living in a different time and age. It seems that life has not moved forward at all. We continue to carry out acts so gory it is hard to believe that human beings in this day and age would be capable of even considering them.
The latest such incident has taken place in a village near Chakwal in Punjab, where a couple was murdered for marrying of their own free will. In our country, many such stories have been heard of before. In this case, Almas Khan, an employee of Mazhar Hussain, eloped with his employer’s daughter Shamim Akhter and fled to Khan’s native Nowshera. Clearly, differences in class, perceived ‘status’ and Khan’s situation as a servant in the house left them convinced they would never get the consent of Shamim’s parents to marry. A kidnapping case was lodged against Khan. However, before anything came of it, the couple was lured back to Chakwal on Eidul Fitr on the pretext that they had been forgiven and then murdered. Sole responsibility for this act has been claimed by Shamim’s brother.
Courts have, of course, given repeated rulings permitting adults free choice in marriage. A landmark judgment in this respect came in the 1990s from the Supreme Court. But more than a decade on, people remain unwilling to accept such rulings. Further complications stem from the Qisas and Diyat laws, which allow the heirs of a victim to accept blood money rather than seek punishment for murder. This factor explains why, in the case of women killed for ‘honour’, their brothers so often take the blame, permitting fathers to accept a ‘payment’ to compensate for physical hurt. The money never actually changes hands, allowing the perpetrators of the crime to, in fact, go scot free. As human rights groups have pointed out, this flaw needs to be plugged. But we also need a change in social attitudes so that such incidents do not occur and the kind of tragedy that was witnessed in Chakwal can be averted.
Trade relations with India
August 27th, 2012
The pace of progress in peace talks between Pakistan and India, since the 2008 Mumbai attacks, has recently sped up. On August 1, the Indian commerce ministry repealed a ban that prevented Pakistanis from investing in industrial ventures in India. This has now been quickly followed by a related decision to allow Pakistani individuals and entities to buy shares and convertible debentures of Indian companies. Earlier this year, Pakistan granted India the most-favoured nation trading status, leading to this latest round of economic liberalisation. Each decision in isolation might seem too small to celebrate but taken together they represent a genuine breakthrough that could lead to, if not lasting peace, then at least a long-term détente.
Hopes that the peace process will continue are raised by the fact that even the main opposition party, the PML-N, is on board with the plan to maintain good relations with India. It would have been very easy for the PML-N to play to nationalist sentiment and accuse the PPP of cosying up to our greatest enemy. Instead, it has put forth policies that go beyond even what the current government has achieved. The PTI, too, sees trade with India as an inevitability rather than a matter up for discussion. The main sticking point, as ever, remains the establishments and their proxies on both sides. The twin issues of Kashmir and militancy will always be the final stumbling blocks as hawks on both sides have shown no sign of softening their stance. The PPP and the Congress cannot ignore these issues forever.
Before we get too optimistic, it is important to remember that the two countries still retain the ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Just when a liberalised visa agreement was ready to be signed, it ended up being scuttled. Since then, no progress has been made on this issue. Person-to-person contact is necessary for people in both countries to realise that enmity is illogical. The next goal should be to make cross-border travel as painless as possible.