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The political governments love to take popular decisions but the real test for their nerve comes when they have to take difficult and unpopular decisions.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi very deftly sold one such decision to his nation last week.
On the evening of November 8, tickers suddenly appeared on the Indian television channels stating that Modi is going to address the nation shortly.
After few hours, he appeared on television and made an announcement which nobody had ever thought of. He announced that just after midnight, the Indian rupees 500 and 1,000 currency notes would no more be valid.
He said all this was being done to combat rampant corruption in India and burgeoning black money businesses which were eating away the country’s economy.
For a country of over one billion people, where an overwhelming majority of the people are unaware of the very basics of economics, and much of the transactions are done in cash, convincing people to support such a decision is an uphill task. But the shrewd politician played it straight to win the support for his cause.
The extraordinary move came as a shock for a majority of the people and Modi himself admitted that it was going to cause difficulties for the people, as the government had to replace more than 80 percent of the currency circulating in the country, but he had to do it for the sake of the country.
Experts say the bold initiative by Modi would go a long way in checking the growth of the informal economy in India, which, according to some estimates has inflicted losses worth 344 billion dollars on the Indian economy in the decade leading up to 2011.
Corruption has become a major issue in the world nowadays, and many countries are taking stringent measures to curb this menace.
Though imperialistic policies of the developed nations are largely blamed for the lack of economic progress of many countries, unbridled and unchecked corrupt practices are also a major reason behind their stunted growth and development
Corruption has been a major problem for the past three decades in Pakistan, but it has always been used as a political stint and no serious effort was made to tackle this problem head on.
In the 1990s, three political governments were amidst charges of corruption, but none of the accusations were proved in a court of law.
When former military ruler Pervez Musharraf took power in 1999, he promised to provide clean and corruption-free governance to the country, but all those claims proved wrong.
The recent official figures placed before the Senate showed that of all the loans written off over the past three decades, majority of them were done during his government.
The loans to the tune of 176 billion rupees were written off during Musharraf’s eight year rule as against 24 billion rupees written off during Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government and 14 billion rupees during the Pakistan Peoples’ Party government.
These loans were written off as political bribes to win sympathies of politicians or give favour to political cronies.
According to the 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index reported by Transparency International, Pakistan ranked 117 among 175 countries.
Though according to Transparency International 2015 report Pakistan has moved from 53rd to 50th position among the world’s most corrupt nations, it has to still go a long way to bring down corruption.
Following the publication of Panama Papers, in which the names of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s children appeared along with 400 other affluent Pakistani citizens who own offshore companies, accountability has again become a buzzword in Pakistani politics.
The revelations triggered a political storm which has refused to die even after the passage of seven months. Unfortunately, the issue is being exploited for political point-scoring and mud-slinging by the political rivals.
Successive governments have used institutions like National Accountability Bureau as a means to intimidate and harass their political rivals instead of letting them perform their basic function of tackling corruption.
The seriousness of our leaders to combat corruption can be gauged from the fact that they have failed to evolve an effective mechanism to probe any wrongdoings revealed in the Panama Papers despite passage of many months.
The government accuses its opponents of unnecessarily raising the bogey of PanamaLeaks probe to destabilise its agenda of economic development, while opposition says the government is trying to cover up the wrongdoings of its top leaders and their families by refusing to allow an independent probe.
Now that the Supreme Court is seized with the PanamaLeaks issue, the government and its opponents need to go back to parliament and work on required legislation to tackle corruption in an effective manner as this probe is just a tip of an iceberg. The problem of corruption in Pakistan is much bigger, deeper, and complicated, and it cannot be addressed through cosmetic measures.
The scourge of corruption can be checked by taking bold, innovative and effective measures, like the one undertaken by Modi, but do our leaders possess the political will to take such steps? So far, there are no signs that they are contemplating such bold initiatives.
However, by creating awareness among the people about these issues, pressure could be increased on the political leaders to mend their ways and evolve a mechanism to address these deep-rooted social and economic woes.
The writer is a senior journalist based in Islamabad
Combating corruption
By Zeeshan Haider
The political governments love to take popular decisions but the real test for their nerve comes when they have to take difficult and unpopular decisions.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi very deftly sold one such decision to his nation last week.
On the evening of November 8, tickers suddenly appeared on the Indian television channels stating that Modi is going to address the nation shortly.
After few hours, he appeared on television and made an announcement which nobody had ever thought of. He announced that just after midnight, the Indian rupees 500 and 1,000 currency notes would no more be valid.
He said all this was being done to combat rampant corruption in India and burgeoning black money businesses which were eating away the country’s economy.
For a country of over one billion people, where an overwhelming majority of the people are unaware of the very basics of economics, and much of the transactions are done in cash, convincing people to support such a decision is an uphill task. But the shrewd politician played it straight to win the support for his cause.
The extraordinary move came as a shock for a majority of the people and Modi himself admitted that it was going to cause difficulties for the people, as the government had to replace more than 80 percent of the currency circulating in the country, but he had to do it for the sake of the country.
Experts say the bold initiative by Modi would go a long way in checking the growth of the informal economy in India, which, according to some estimates has inflicted losses worth 344 billion dollars on the Indian economy in the decade leading up to 2011.
Corruption has become a major issue in the world nowadays, and many countries are taking stringent measures to curb this menace.
Though imperialistic policies of the developed nations are largely blamed for the lack of economic progress of many countries, unbridled and unchecked corrupt practices are also a major reason behind their stunted growth and development
Corruption has been a major problem for the past three decades in Pakistan, but it has always been used as a political stint and no serious effort was made to tackle this problem head on.
In the 1990s, three political governments were amidst charges of corruption, but none of the accusations were proved in a court of law.
When former military ruler Pervez Musharraf took power in 1999, he promised to provide clean and corruption-free governance to the country, but all those claims proved wrong.
The recent official figures placed before the Senate showed that of all the loans written off over the past three decades, majority of them were done during his government.
The loans to the tune of 176 billion rupees were written off during Musharraf’s eight year rule as against 24 billion rupees written off during Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government and 14 billion rupees during the Pakistan Peoples’ Party government.
These loans were written off as political bribes to win sympathies of politicians or give favour to political cronies.
According to the 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index reported by Transparency International, Pakistan ranked 117 among 175 countries.
Though according to Transparency International 2015 report Pakistan has moved from 53rd to 50th position among the world’s most corrupt nations, it has to still go a long way to bring down corruption.
Following the publication of Panama Papers, in which the names of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s children appeared along with 400 other affluent Pakistani citizens who own offshore companies, accountability has again become a buzzword in Pakistani politics.
The revelations triggered a political storm which has refused to die even after the passage of seven months. Unfortunately, the issue is being exploited for political point-scoring and mud-slinging by the political rivals.
Successive governments have used institutions like National Accountability Bureau as a means to intimidate and harass their political rivals instead of letting them perform their basic function of tackling corruption.
The seriousness of our leaders to combat corruption can be gauged from the fact that they have failed to evolve an effective mechanism to probe any wrongdoings revealed in the Panama Papers despite passage of many months.
The government accuses its opponents of unnecessarily raising the bogey of PanamaLeaks probe to destabilise its agenda of economic development, while opposition says the government is trying to cover up the wrongdoings of its top leaders and their families by refusing to allow an independent probe.
Now that the Supreme Court is seized with the PanamaLeaks issue, the government and its opponents need to go back to parliament and work on required legislation to tackle corruption in an effective manner as this probe is just a tip of an iceberg. The problem of corruption in Pakistan is much bigger, deeper, and complicated, and it cannot be addressed through cosmetic measures.
The scourge of corruption can be checked by taking bold, innovative and effective measures, like the one undertaken by Modi, but do our leaders possess the political will to take such steps? So far, there are no signs that they are contemplating such bold initiatives.
However, by creating awareness among the people about these issues, pressure could be increased on the political leaders to mend their ways and evolve a mechanism to address these deep-rooted social and economic woes.
The writer is a senior journalist based in Islamabad
