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Thursday March 28, 2024

‘Good governance key to meeting South Asia’s challenges’

By Anil Datta
February 20, 2016

Karachi

The next two decades hold lots of challenges for the South Asia region, and one of the ways we could successfully grapple with those challenges is by ushering in good governance.

These views were expressed by Shuja Nawaz, a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Centre, Washington DC, US, while addressing members of the Pakistan Institute of International

Affairs (PIIA), media and intellectuals on Friday evening.

“I look at the region not as Pakistan alone. I look at wider connectivity over the next two decades,” he said. 

He advocated enhancement of trade with neighbours and among the South Asian states and also called for radical relaxation of barriers and gradual elimination of visas.

The author of the book ‘Cross Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within’, Nawaz cited the quest for good governance and said there would be both exogenous and endogenous shocks for South Asia. One of them, he said, was the rapid urbanisation and conurbation. “This is where the conflicts, the disparities are.” 

Going further, the security expert explained that it was those phenomena that promoted disparity and disaffection among the masses and created class fissures. He said this conurbation increased populations, making them heterogeneous, and as such there would be people who would be lining their pockets by capitalising on the resources. 

Then there were other factors like religious difference, like the Shia-Sunni squabbles. Then, he said, friction between nations could spell other disadvantageous phenomena like hitting migrant labour, and in this context he cited the expulsion of Bangladeshi workers by Saudi Arabia some two months ago.

There, Nawaz said, were endogenous factors like the geological phenomena of shifting subterranean plates causing earthquakes, floods, stifling of monsoon in South Asia, aging dams and their silting. Aging and silting of dams would hit agrarian production and hence cause food shortages, he added.

The next seven years, he said, were critical in light of the El-Nino phenomenon. In support of his contention, he cited his own case where there was a severe storm when he left Washington DC three days ago and the winter temperature in a part of California had touched 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

Another thing, we’d have to be careful about was conurbation, a phenomenon whereby a lot of urban habitations developed around a city and then these habitations merging with the centre of the city. He said this in turn would give rise to a burgeoning population. Such a situation prevented consensus on issues among the population, caused dissension and also gave rise to sectarianism.

Nawaz said the shadow economies of most countries of the region averaged 30 percent, and Pakistan’s was reported to be 60 percent. This, he said, was a factor that retarded prosperity.

He said that as for governance, Pakistan would have to begin thinking right away, because by 2035 the country would be losing the youth dividend. Pakistan, he said, had to create around three million jobs a year. Meritocracy and transparency, he said, were the need of the hour.

“Give ownership to the locals, especially as regards taxation matters. Let them decide on preferences relating to utilisation of taxes. In this context, he cited the case of the area in the US where he is currently residing, Fairfax County in the State of Virginia, and said that the local community was in charge of the taxes. They decided that that they’d allocate the maximum amount to education and said that this as the reason why today the Fairfax county had the best schools

system in the US. He said schools in the county were the first ones to purchase super computers.

He said that to grapple with the problem of terrorism, it was imperative to put in place a viable education system. He said that like the madrasas in Pakistan, there were faith-based schools in the West too, but they taught much more than just religion.

Answering a participant’s question on security, he said a viable national policy and a robust economy were the key to security. “There’s no military solution to security issues,” he said.

Answering another question about the hopes for a solution of the Kashmir issue, he said that once the people of Kashmir were brought into the equation, things would look brighter.