Punishing talent and rewarding cheats

Pakistan enjoys an abundance of visionary talent that is being throttled and suffocated by nepotism, patronage and corruption. This isn’t a universal truth that applies to everything in Pakistan, at all times. But it is a frequent enough truth to make us worry.
If talent is not rewarded, and cheating, stealing and theft are not punished, then the signal in such a market will incentivise cheating, stealing and theft, and disincentive any investments in talent. In such a market, might will be right, and the most successful people and organisations will be the ones with the least scruples. The other name for such a place is the Daish emirate that is emerging in wild desert of Arabia.
If we want to prevent a free-for-all in which the most horrible, twisted and evil people take over all of our lives, we have to privilege talent over and above all factors when we make decisions. Talent shouldn’t have to stand in line to get what should be served to it on a silver platter. This is not an argument for special treatment for talented people. It is an argument against special treatment for people with no talent except financial or familial muscle.
We should be thinking about talent because everywhere we turn, it haunts us. Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy makes an Oscar winning film, and then decides to start working twice as hard. Since her documentary won the Oscar, she’s been on an airplane, taking short breaks to see family and sleep. In April, she will debut another film, at Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Film Festival. And those Pakistanis that were too self-conscious to appreciate her Oscar-winner, will be pleased to know that the subject of this film is a celebration of a uniquely beautiful Pakistani effort, the Jazz Ensemble put together by Sachal Studios in Lahore.
Her film is called ‘Song of Lahore’, but Sharmeen herself is a song of Pakistan. She is a crystallisation of talent that was privileged to have a series of opportunities in life. The chorus of the song that is Sharmeen however is how unceasingly and tirelessly she works. And the engine that powers Sharmeen? Her insatiable love for Pakistan.
The wellspring that drives people to expand the realm of the possible through their talent and imagination isn’t restricted to the arts. Some of the most creative and imaginative work that has served Pakistan has come from unexpected places. It has come from the minds of computer scientists who have dedicated their prime years to serving Pakistan, instead of earning accolades and money abroad. Two names stand out, Dr Umar Saif of the Punjab IT Board, and Usman Mobin of Nadra.
There is a sweet irony for these two to be mentioned in the same paragraph. Usman Mobin was appointed Nadra chairman after an exhaustive search in which these two titans were the final candidates. D. Saif’s list of achievements is already legend, but perhaps the most powerful expression of his contribution was the work he and another brilliant Pakistani, the former DMG officer, Zubair Bhatti did to suffocate the dengue epidemic of 2011. You may remember that year – over 16,000 people were affected by the dengue fever and 352 lost their lives to it.
In 2012, a completely different story emerged, with only 234 confirmed cases and zero fatalities deaths. How did such a dramatic turnaround happen? No doubt, God was merciful, but His Mercy was shining down upon a tracking and monitoring system developed by Dr Saif and his team that is cited with regularity around the world as an exemplary application of technology in government.
Mobin, the newly minted Nadra chairman is an incredibly impassioned and talented Pakistani. He’s spent the bulk of his career at Nadra and represents one of the greatest assets the government of Pakistan has at its disposal. Nadra is a one of the few self-sustaining government organisations, with a wide portfolio of client governments that, having been impressed with Ndra, asked Mobin’s team to replicate its technologies for those countries. If the current government has any presence of mind at all, it will use the new chairman to do revolutionary work in citizen service delivery through tracking mechanisms enabled by the Nadra database. With Mobin at the helm, the sky is the limit for big data in Pakistan’s public sector.
Not all our talent is invested in technology and certainly, not all of it works in government. The incredible patience and dedication of people like Dr Saif and Usman Mobin isn’t for everyone. Most of the miracles of talent in Pakistan are found outside government. And sadly, too often, outside Pakistan.
Arif Naqvi is the archetype of the Pakistani dream. He used pure talent, drive and ambition to turn a failed business effort in the late 1990s into the one of the world’s truly fascinating case studies of private equity success. Naqvi is founder and chairman of the Abraaj Group based in Dubai which manages over $7 billion in assets. Among the least celebrated successes Naqvi has helped engineer is the turnaround of KESC, or K-Electric.
Long suffering Karachiites may have short memories, but until KESC was awarded to Naqvi’s business conglomerate, retail electricity distribution was a black hole and KESC was the poster child for service delivery dysfunction. Unlike Pakistani politicians, Naqvi’s patronage makes a difference. He is one of the founding financiers of Art Dubai, and has bankrolled the impressive Aman Foundation here in Pakistan.
How can a country that produces the eye of Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, the algorithmic minds of Umar Saif and Usman Mobin, the creativity of Zubair Bhatti, and the financial genius of Arif Naqvi be on IMF dole? How can such a country not be able to figure out how to functionally and aesthetically transform its national airline, and make it profitable? How can such a country not find anything more useful to discuss on the airwaves than the silly shenanigans of out of shape has-been actors and venal third-tier politicians?
One of the reasons is the absence of a talent-driven meritocracy at the top of this country. Patronage, nepotism, and corruption at the very top tend to change the incentives for behaviour down below. And there are two ways to destroy a talent-driven system. The first is to condemn those with talent to a life of struggle. The second is to reward those lacking in talent to a life of comfort.
On average, talented Pakistanis either have to be incredibly lucky, or incredibly privileged to enjoy comfortable and secure lives. Not everybody can be that lucky. Successful societies create the space for more people to make more luck, thereby thriving. Failed societies, like the ones vulnerable to the terror of Daish, punish talent, reward cheating and fall apart.
The prime minister has a wealth of people in his party who have talent, but he allows personal relationships and loyalty to ruin the economy, the civil service and the chances for reform. This he cannot blame on the army, and the army can’t blame on India. This is a tragedy whose authorship is very much Pakistani.
The Senate election results prove once again the incredible resilience of the prime minister’s political skills. If those skills aren’t used to punish incompetence and reward talent, even within his own cabinet, they will never be of use to poor and vulnerable Pakistanis. And our worst fears about the future will continue to accumulate. Quite rightly.
The writer is an analyst and commentator.