For the last 50 years, year after year, we have been celebrating
Pakistan’s anniversary of independence as mostly a festive occasion.
Jubilation as an act of pure rejoicing without much reflection falls under
the category of what Muhammad Iqbal warned us about. “Give up
imitating the nightingale and the peacock”, he said, “because the
nightingale is only sound and the peacock is only colour”. Thus, the
intellectual founder of Pakistan in his immortal poem, “Mosque of
Cordoba”, reminded us: “Keen as a sword that fate holds in its hand are a
people who undertake a careful and periodic assessment of their
performance”.
What were the yardsticks that Iqbal thought we should use to
measure our performance? Barely a year before he died, Iqbal, the great
thinker, wrote to the Quaid, the great founder, “but it is clear to my mind
that if Hinduism accepts social democracy it must necessarily cease to be
Hinduism. For Islam the acceptance of social democracy in some suitable
from and consistent with the legal principles of Islam is not a revolution
but a return to the original purity of Islam”. He was not making any
disparaging remarks about Hinduism. All that he was suggesting was that
if India were to move decisively towards the establishment of social
democracy, Hinduism with its caste system would have to be radically
replaced in this process.
But his statement that Islam and social democracy are
synonymous is a severe indictment of what Pakistan has achieved to this
day. If some of us were to become unduly complacent and think that since
parliamentary democracy in its electoral form has been established, he
would remind us that parliamentary democracy without being firmly anchored in certain participatory institutions of social democracy often
degenerates into elitist democracy as in many Western societies or in its
feudal form as in Pakistan.
system.
Many of our political science critics would point out that
parliamentary democracy can only become real and meaningful if were
reinforced by certain economic institutions of capitalism and the market
How wrong is this assessment can be seen from the fact that when
the market system is reinforced only by social utility of greed and not by
certain appropriate values, it can produce considerable social and
economic inequalities leading to a sense of deprivation among 20 to 30 per
t of the people even in countries like the United States. This explains
why the new British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, would like to produce a
modified market system in Britain based on certain values. The Blair
regime is making sure that the British people do not indulge purely in
money making in pursuit of their private good unrestrained by a certain
sense of values and principles designed to promote public good. This act
of balancing the pursuit of private good by concerns about public good
have been described by some of the French observers as the British
“hearts on the left” influencing the British “wallets on the right”.
In Pakistan, in striking contrast to all the ringing exhortations in
the constitution that Pakistan’s democracy would be based on Islamic
principles of social justice, we find that the present Finance Minister,
Sartaj Aziz, in the June budget speech is committing himself to Reagan’s
supply side economic approach. What is astonishing is that with this
commitment to supply side economics Sartaj Aziz, without realizing how
remote he was from reality, asked the members of the Assembly, “Can we
make a firm resolve to transform the country into a self sufficient nation?
d We are ready to accept the responsibility of making the nation 100 per
e cent literate, having access to education and health cover”. In the same
budget speech the Finance Minister conceded that the “debt servicing
amounted to 70 per cent of the total national tax receipts. He also
admitted, “The remaining receipts were not even sufficient for the defence
expenditures of the country”. Some of the unkind critics of the Finance
Minister would characterize his pronouncements as exercises in political
rhetoric designed to fool the people of Pakistan. Pakistan’s decision makers seem to ignore the fact that the heart
of Pakistan’s economy lies in agriculture. Three quarters of the country’s
population depend upon agriculture. Half the labour force is employed by
agriculture and a quarter of GDP is represented by agriculture. Yet when
one reads government announcements in the form of the budget speech
there is hardly any mention of agriculture. It is ironic that an agricultural country has been importing basic
food items. During the current fiscal year Pakistan has imported food
worth over $2.3 billion, including $ 600 million in wheat. During March
and April there have been riots in a city like Peshawar. The agriculture
minister, Abid Hussain, told a news conference in Islamabad on April 8
that up to 500 tons of wheat would arrive, mostly from the United States,
by the end of April. Some of these shortages could be explained by the
fact that large quantities of wheat and flour were being smuggled to
neighbouring India and Afghanistan where the wheat prices were higher
than the original procurement price in Pakistan. The government has
recently raised the procurement price by 30 per cent.
What do these alarming facts tell us? Increase in wheat
procurement price would fuel the fires of inflation as the 30 per cent
increase in price was the largest single increase in the country’s history.
Deficiencies in agricultural productivity have their impact on problems of
social unrest and also disclose the unpleasant fact that while the country is
being faced with food shortages, food is being smuggled out of the
country.
What are some of the root causes of this agricultural problem?
One of the major causes is that Pakistan suffers from low agricultural
productivity. It has been estimated that the difference between the average
and highest yields for stable crops such as wheat, rice and maize is in the
range of 30 to 50 per cent. What can Pakistan do to improve agricultural m
productivity? The answer lies in a more efficient use of scare resources
like land and water. In order to promote such an efficient use of land and
water, the government will have to change the social structure. Wealthy
landowners dominate the agricultural sector and through this constituency,
they dominate the federal and provincial parliaments. Forty per cent of the
arable land and the bulk of the irrigation system are in the hands of large
landowners. The World Bank has pointed out several times that large
landowners are less productive than small holders “poor tax payers, heavy
borrowers and bad debtors”. But it is the small holdings which are
predominant numerically 27 per cent of farms are less than one-acre farms
and 80 per cent are under five acres. The present system tenure system
smaller landholders who use land more efficiently. In addition, insecurity
Pakistan rewards the inefficient big landowners even though it is the
of the tenure system operates in such a way that the feudal lords can
arbitrarily evict their tenants.
It has been said that Article 58 (2b) of the Constitution, which
gave almost absolute power to the President to dismiss Prime Ministers,
dissolve National and Provincial Assemblies and order fresh election, could only stunt the growth of democracy in Pakistan. The charges under
which Prime Ministers were dismissed by the President centered around
dismiss four Prime Ministers and dissolve four National Assemblies and
corrupt practices. It has been pointed out that this article was used to
16 Provincial Legislatures. Therefore, Nawaz Sharif, using his more than
majority in the National Assembly, abolished the article which
gave such enormous powers to the President.
does not depend only on curbing the powers of the President. The powers
Pakistan’s power elites do not seem to realize that democracy
that feudal landlords have over their tenants or worse, still their bonded
labourers are equally pernicious in obstructing the growth and
development of democracy at the grassroots or constituency level. Thus, it
may be argued that an equally important legislation that Nawaz Sharif has
10 undertake is the systematic abolition of feudalism with its bonded
labour. Such a measure will enhance the growth of social democracy
which is the basis of parliamentary democracy.
Mere abolition of feudalism leading to better distribution of land
among those who have farms ranging from less than one acre to five acres
is not likely to increase agricultural productivity unless certain reinforcing
measures relating to agricultural research and provision of agricultural
credit are undertaken. The aim of agricultural research should be to
produce agricultural extension workers who can help the small size
farmers in the maximum utilization of land and water. Similarly, credit
facilities at lower interest rates are available only to large farmers and
these need to be extended to small holders.
Even a casual observer of Pakistan can see how corruption
continues to corrode the very vitals of its political system. Pakistan’s
Prime Ministers and its provincial Chief Ministers have demonstrated
beyond any shadow of doubt that in order to operate the parliamentary
system they need to allot almost in an unending fashion hundreds of plots
so that their party members in the assemblies may continue to support
them. It looked as if no political leader could excel Benazir Bhutto in allotting
as many as 621 plots worth Rs. 3.55 billion in Islamabad alone at
throw away price of Rs. 90 million to PPP activists and government
badies. Similarly, Nawaz Sharif has been accused of allotting nearly
2.000 plots in 12 localities of Lahore when he was Punjab’s Chief
Minister from 1985 to 1990.
Most of this corruption stems from the fact that our political
aders can neither set examples of basic honesty and decency in their
Political dealings nor have they had the will and capacity to develop their political parties on the basis of any coherent and inspiring political
programmes. Inability to promote social justice under which the profit
maximization of the market system has to be balanced and socially
restrained by the government’s commitment to promote the well being of
the poor is the central flaw that exists in all societies. In a society like
Pakistan, where the resourses are even more meagre and political
capabilities more underdeveloped, the inequities of the system look more
glaring.
All societies, both Western and Third World, seem to suffer
continuously from acts of inhuman violence directed against one’s fellow
human beings. Thus, Ireland suffers from sectarian violence and Pakistan
continues to be mire as well in ethnic and sectarian killings. The question
that arises is: What kind of leadership can overcome these problems of
senseless violence motivated by ethnic and economic animosities? Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif has appealed to Pakistanis to refrain from
retaliatory violence because such activities by threatening the law and
order situation will put his economic reforms in jeopardy. This kind of
reasoning is not adequate. The Prime Minister has to emerge as a moral
leader who invokes not just utilitarian values of economic reform but the
more fundamental moral values. These moral values are also enshrined in
the teachings of some of the great religious leaders, both Christian and
Islamic. Thus, the inspiring influence on Dag Hammarskjold, the UN
Secretary General, who lost his life in his ceaseless quest for international
peace and racial harmony, was no less than that of Christ to whom he
turned for guidance at the end of the day. In his diary, Markings, he
wrote: “Your position never gives you the right to command. It only
imposes on you the duty of so living your life that others can receive your
orders without being humiliated”. Dag Hammarskjold has set up a test by
which the moral leadership of a society is to be judged. A moral leader is
followed because he does not merely give orders. The orders, so to speak,
flow from the way he himself embodies them and in the way he conducts
his whole life. To put it simply, he practices what he preaches and thus
inspires total confidence in his leadership among his people.
The challenges that Nawaz Sharif faces may look almost
beginning that the society starts changing and transforming itself. Once
insurmountable. But the art of political leadership lies in making such a
of a liberal and humane Islam he has to change the rigidities and inequities
beginning is made even daunting problems become attainable. In the name
of a society which has created gross inequalities among men and women
as well as unequal treatment of Muslims and non-Muslims. society. The answer is that the great majority of our common people are
of Islam for making Pakistani society into a more decent and humane
aten influenced if we appeal to them in the name of Islam. Citations or
raditions of the American constitution do not mean much to them. Iqbal
said create a song or a lyric which your people can understand.
Some of the members of the Pakistan community in Canada have
set up a Centre for Pakistan Studies to examine from time to time
government policies in areas like education, public health and the
disabilities that both women and minorities suffer from in Pakistan. The
objective of this Centre is not so much to indulge in criticism only but to
fer to the government some useful policy recommendations of a practical
nature which can be implemented perhaps in the short span of five or ten
years. The social objective implied in these policy recommendations is to
promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number of Pakistani people.
The market system operates differently because the objective that a
graduate in medicine, liberal arts or science pursues is primarily to
increase his or her income.
In an area like public health some of the Pakistani doctors in
Canada are suggesting that since enormous resources of the country are
being spent in producing doctors who either tend to go abroad or work
mostly in urban areas, the result is that basic public health facilities in the
rural areas, where the majority of our people live, are grossly lacking.
Thus, a policy recommendation is that increasing the number of rural
clinics may be the long term objective but the short term objective should
be to oblige all medical students in training to spend a minimum period of
time in government service in the rural areas. Even a more precise
recommendation is that a medical student before he or she receives the
basic MBBS degree should be required to spend a minimum of six months
to a maximum of 12 months serving in some of the rural clinics. In other
words, he or she will not be given the medical degree unless this
requirement is fulfilled.
Usually policy makers in the field of education have only certain
quantitative objectives, that is, to achieve 100 per cent literacy. The
Centre for Pakistan Studies in Canada is also interested in subjecting
policy recommendations in the field of education to certain qualitative
criteria. For example, the question that they are examining is, literacy or
education for what purpose? Education in a society like Pakistan, which is
constantly plagued by scarcity of resources, has to address itself to certain
precise social needs. Should Pakistan continue to produce thousands or
even millions of unemployable liberal arts graduates? A major problem that Pakistan is facing is the frequent eruption
of sectarian and ethnic violence in many areas. If our graduates of liberal
are trained in skills of tension and
arts in fields like social psychology
conflict management, the government should be able to use their services
in practically every urban and rural district in the country, the purpose
I would be not only to reduce tension and conflict but also to increase the
scope for social and creative cooperation so that our ordinary people in the
rural and urban areas may be motivated to take part in community building
projects. Such activities can become possible only if the governments
produce social programmes and plans of such a nature that they clearly
indicate to various educational institution what exactly during the next five
or ten years are the needs of Pakistani society. Such indicators or signals
given by a five year plan are necessary so that educational institutions may
formulate their own plans in terms of certain precise targets.
