Discouraging talkers, finding doers

Islamabad diary
Let us admit, for the sake of argument, that all that is said of Malik Riaz, of whom we all know, is true. But whatever his sins he is a doer, not a talker. And what we need at the moment, especially in relation to the humanitarian crisis in North Waziristan (NW), are not paper tigers or talk show ghazis, or those whose good governance lives only in media ads, but doers.
Malik Riaz says he can look after a lakh NW refugees. Let us take him at his word, or let us call his bluff. We need someone with plenipotentiary powers to deal with this crisis. If Nawaz Sharif and company have any imagination they can appoint him refugee tsar. Set him guidelines and see that he delivers.
It was with dictatorial powers, vested in a small group of high officials, that we built the bomb. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the real father of the Pakistani bomb, saw to it that Dr A Q Khan and his team got what they wanted. No questions were asked and Dr Khan was lord of his domain. That’s how we got where we did: a country unable to get very much straight but managing to crack the nuclear code. Compare this with Iran’s travails, a country with riches far greater than ours but still only stumbling along the nuclear path.
Far be it from me to glorify the bomb. I am only pointing to the method. When the Americans bombed Hiroshima, Stalin was beside himself: “A-bomb blackmail is American policy.” Task Number One was immediately instituted and the security chief, the terror of all, Lavrenti Beria was put in charge… “managing between 330,000 and 460,000 people and 10,000 technicians” (this from Montefiore: Court of the Red Tsar). The scientists were looked after. “Leave them in peace,” said Stalin. “We can always shoot them later.”
I can’t resist another Beria anecdote. Most of the scientists on the atomic project lived in a state of semi-detention. One of them suggested that he might work better if was free. Beria’s priceless answer: “Certainly. But it would be risky. The traffic in the streets is crazy and you might get run over.”
Pakistan International had a great past because it was run by men like Air Marshals Nur Khan and Asghar Khan. By Bhutto’s time its condition had deteriorated. Bhutto chose leading industrialist Rafique Saigal to run it. Most people agree, Saigal did a good job. Today PIA is a playground of political patronage. And it is run by first-rate nincompoops or political favourites. Unless you change the methods, and put a Beria in charge, or someone with the authority of Asghar Khan, how on earth do you improve its condition?
Hasan Nisar points out in his Jang column that simple things that cost not a paisa can make a huge difference. He cites the time limit on marriage ceremonies at night and lauds it as a good decision of Shahbaz Sharif’s. He goes on to say that if motorcycles – now a menace on our roads – were confined to a particular lane and the traffic police were to ensure this, half the mess on our roads would disappear. But our rulers, he says, are in love with mega-projects. Why would they stoop to anything lower?
Good governance has taken on a bizarre meaning in Pakistan today. It means closing your eyes to services that affect the people: police, the patwari (meaning the revenue system), lower courts, government schools and colleges, government hospitals. All these can go to the devil as long as the publicity machine grinds on. Every two months or so Shahbaz Sharif vows to end thana culture. He has been doing this for the last six years.
Leading politicians who are also leading industrialists run their factories on strictly professional lines – choosing the best managers and letting them do their job. When it comes to running the state they turn these principles on their head, any notion of merit scattered to the winds. If they were to run their factories in this manner they would be soon ruined. Obviously they consider business sacred territory and governance a joke…or a means of further self-enrichment, the state at the service of its masters.
Shahbaz Sharif has been undisputed master of Punjab for the last six years, a lifetime in politics, as long as the Second World War. Have government bribery rates gone down in his tenure? Have the police and revenue officials stopped taking bribes? Have highway engineers stopped taking commissions? Are medicines available in government hospitals? Is education a priority?
Should these things be fixed first or scarce national resources wasted on expensive projects? Metro-buses and flyovers no doubt have their uses. But it is a question of priorities. Do basic services come first or publicity gimmicks?
My early teachers in St Deny’s, Murree, our masters in Lawrence College back in the 1950s and 1960s, were utterly devoted to their jobs and had no interest outside their jobs. The history that Mr Zaidi taught, the literature taught by Mr Ehsan Ellahi, the care taken over our essays by Walters, Manthorpe, Charlesworth…such care, such diligence, week after week, preparing us for our final exams. Where have they gone? In what corner of the everlasting fields do their spirits dwell?
The British knew how to run public schools, the Lawrence and Aitchison Colleges. After all the public school was their baby, their invention. We haven’t been so good at managing them. Shamim Khan, for many years principal of Aitchison, is an exception. He has been an outstanding principal and that’s precisely his problem. It has not been easy for the college to find a suitable replacement. So while he has wanted to go the college has clung to him. Very wisely too because after him, the deluge.
In the old Chakwal of the 1950s, there used to be a Sub-Divisional Magistrate, Sher Bahadur, a slight, diminutive figure but everyone in awe of him. With no escort except his part-cook, part-orderly, Nazir, every evening in suit and solar topee, cane in hand, the laat sahib of Chakwal would step out along Talagang Road or the bazaar on a tour of inspection – no police, nothing. The Municipal Garden, since defaced and reduced in size, was laid out by him. Trees on Talagang Road were planted by him (of course later cut in the name of road expansion). He was very regular in his court appearances.
If this sounds too much like pre-history, let me mention a police officer who retired as DG FIA but in the 1980s was posted as SP Jhelum, of which Chakwal used to be a tehsil…Tariq Pervez. It was said of him that on tour he would carry his own food, meaning thereby that no SHO would be obliged to lay out a meal for him. His reputation was of a strict and straight officer. I once had some work with him and went to his office. I did not know him but that seemed not to matter. When I explained my problem he issued orders immediately. In the last government he was chosen to head some kind of a national anti-terrorist body but nothing came of it.
I have taken these few names just to indicate that Pakistan’s problem is not that it has no men of talent and honour. It is that such men are pushed to the back. In front, manning the ramparts, stand the all too familiar nincompoops and charlatans.
Email: winlust@yahoo.com