With the elections behind us, we can now look ahead to try and shape a better future for ourselves. Priority must now be given to projects that can contribute to employment generation and hence to poverty alleviation.
This should be done in a manner that leads to unleashing the creative potential of our youth through high quality education, massive investments in focused areas of science and technology, and promotion of innovation and entrepreneurship.
Here are some specific steps that the new government should take so that Pakistan can progress rapidly:
1) The key to our future success lies in good governance. Selection of competent federal and provincial secretaries is an important instrument in any agenda for change. These secretaries should be top scientists, engineers and experts in their respective fields. Each ministry should have a think tank of top specialists from within Pakistan and abroad that should provide regular inputs in order to shape development policies.
2) The key to quality education lies in the system of education. At present it is fragmented with different categories of schools for the rich and the poor. There needs to be a single system of education with a single national examination at matriculation or intermediate levels.
The recommendations of India’s Kothari Commission in the 1960s paved the way, and we should follow the same path. This requires single-minded commitment on the part of the new government by first an allocation of five percent of GDP to education, rising to seven percent over the next five years.
3) The Higher Education Commission has come under repeated attacks during 2008-2012. I resigned as Chairman HEC under protest when the foreign scholarships of thousands of scholarships of Pakistani students studying in foreign countries were stopped in September 2008 and the funds diverted to projects seeped in corruption. I had to go to the Supreme Court twice and won both times, to ensure the autonomy of HEC.
Rulings from the courts came in our favour; the HEC has survived but the attacks on it continue. The latest is an illegal notification issued on May 9, 2013, in open defiance and contempt of the earlier SC decision, by the newly named Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination, through which the powers of the HEC in respect of recognition and grant of equivalence have been withdrawn and transferred to this ministry. This was done on the basis of the cabinet division’s May 4 orders.
Both the secretaries of the cabinet division and the newly named ministry have thus committed a serious contempt of court for bowing under the pressure of fake degree holders and defying its orders. Their actions must immediately be reversed and they must be penalised so that bureaucracy remains obedient to the law instead of the politicians they presently serve.
The PML-N had earlier announced that it supported the complete autonomy of the HEC. It should now restore the autonomy and double the budget of higher education which was slashed by the previous government.
4) Engineering is the key to industrial development, as well as to self-reliance in the manufacture of industrial machinery, engineering goods, household appliances, automobiles, electronics, computers as well as defence equipment. It was for that reason that I had given the highest priority to strengthening the engineering universities when I was chairman HEC.
A network of foreign engineering universities that were being established in collaboration with Germany (Lahore), Austria (Lahore), Sweden (Sialkot), France (Karachi), Italy (Karachi), China (Islamabad) and with Korea, Japan and Turkey in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.
Mr Shahbaz Sharif had met the Germans and Austrians enthusiastically and fully supported the programme. Unfortunately the previous government abandoned this visionary programme in 2008, three months before classes were to commence. This programme needs to be revived.
5) The new government needs to promote innovation and entrepreneurship. It should take the following steps in this respect:
• Create a revolving ‘innovation fund’ to support indigenous technology development in the public and private sectors (Rs5 billion).
• Urgently re-structure the national science and technology organisations (discard ‘dead wood’, introduce a new performance based system of contractual appointments), give responsibility to provide technical support to small and medium enterprises.
• Make knowledge transfer an essential component in foreign direct investment.
• Encourage private sector R&D and business development through various incentives including venture capital funding.
• Formulate and implement a national technology and innovation policy to address concerns on global competitiveness.
• Promote high-tech manufacturing in the private sector with foreign collaboration.
• Grant ‘pioneering’ status to high tech industries with long-term tax breaks (based on the pattern that I introduced in 2001 when as federal minister of science and technology, including IT and telecom, I arranged to have a 15-year tax holiday given to the IT industry, following which it has grown from $30 million in 2001 to over $1 billion annually presently).
• Establish technology parks and high-tech industrial estates.
• Implement a 15-year tax holiday approved by the PM for high-tech industry.
• Provide matching grants to the private sector for technology upgrading and skills development and offer incentives for private sector industrial R&D (Korea, China, Malaysia models).
• Establish an organisation for technology assessment and forecasting (TAF) for regular technology foresight studies.
• Improve quality of technical training institutes, with international accreditation to guarantee quality of output.
• Increase the number of students being sent abroad for Masters and PhD to at least 2000 per year to provide high quality manpower in carefully identified priority areas.
• Modernise the IPR infrastructure.
• Allocation of 2.0 percent GNP for science and technology programmes with 15 percent of public science and technology budget to be spent to support skill and technology development in private firms.
• Constitute a national implementation committee under the prime minister comprising relevant ministries, eminent scientists, engineers, secretaries and private sector representatives.
• Revive the National Commission on Biotechnology and the National Commission of Nanotechnology abolished by the previous government.
• Implement the 300-page road map prepared under my supervision with inputs from thousands of eminent subject experts, private sector representatives, government officials and eminent economists that has already been approved by the cabinet.
Pakistan is on the verge of economic collapse. The new government has a challenging task ahead. Other countries such as Korea, Singapore and Malaysia faced similar challenges four decades ago and have emerged as Asian tigers. So can we, given enlightened and honest governance.
The writer is the former chairman of the Higher Education Commission and currently president, Pakistan Academy of Sciences.
Email: ibne_sina@hotmail.com

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