Vision Pakistan 2047 ( Part – IV )

It is often stated that Pakistan's economic challenges are due to the breakdown of an economic contract between its key stakeholders.

This contract is popularly referred to as the Charter for the Economy - an agreed-upon set of rules governing economic activities and sharing of economic resources. The absence of a charter creates a state of economic lawlessness, hiding of your income or wealth, and capital escaping to foreign jurisdictions. It encourages short-termism and discourages long-term investing. Individual economic players win, but the state loses.

Supporters of the economic charter claim that it will create a level playing field and allocate resources based on competitiveness, which creates a win-win incentive between economic players and the state. However, most countries do not have such a charter and yet they prosper. Economic players compete without harming the state’s interest. So successful states must be underpinned by a deeper contract that prevents players from damaging the state even as they compete for its resources.

This deeper contract that forces citizens to act for the benefit of the state is in fact between the citizens, their dead ancestors, and their unborn children.

Our ancestors embody our country’s history and legacy. They are its architects, and we owe a charter to them to continue their struggles for the betterment of society and the state. This charter is a commitment to our ancestor’s legacy. Without this connection to the past, a society detaches from its values, as well as its purpose to create a greater future for all citizens. A successful society honours its charter with the dead, by protecting and furthering the success of society and the state.

Renewing the charter with the dead means rising above your narrow selfish interest to serve society and the state, which is our ancestor’s legacy, continues to prosper and succeed.

Equally critical for perpetual prosperity is our charter with the unborn children or our next generation – for they benefit or suffer as a result of our actions and our legacy. Our responsibility to the unborn is to leave behind a state that supports their growth and prosperity.

The charter with your ancestors and the unborn future generation enables societies to make decisions that may be painful for a few or in the short term but are for the collective good of the state and its future generation. This Charter for Perpetual Prosperity is a continuum through which successful states get handed down from one generation to the next, each inter-generational handover better than the previous one.

Our actions of economic mismanagement, and debt accumulation are creating a fragmented state of Haves and Have-Nots – worsening with each successive generation. Selfish decisions that advantage individuals, clans or tribes are risking the collective freedom and economic sovereignty of our future generations. The broken charter with our ancestors and our unborn children is evidenced in the catastrophic debt burden on newborns. According to Tabadlab, a child born in 2011 was indebted to the tune of Rs71,000, and this debt increased 4.5 times to Rs321,000 in 2023. In our selfish economic decision-making, we are mortgaging our future generations.

Pakistan faces a dire situation, as evidenced by 800,000 of our brightest youth immigrating abroad in the last three years. Our ancestors leave with their children and sadly find their final resting abode in foreign lands. Our land is no longer considered fit for the dead or the unborn.

But this decline can be arrested and reversed.

To reverse our social fragmentation and economic decline, we must re-commit to this personal-social contract with our dead ancestors and our unborn. This commitment to making the interest of the state superior to the selfish short-term interest of our tribe, sect, or family is destroying the state and leaving our next generation in servitude of debt. The charter is a recognition that our actions ripple through time to affect our future generations.

Revitalizing our Charter for Perpetual Prosperity is not just a theoretical or philosophical endeavor; it's a pragmatic necessity for Pakistan's survival and prosperity.

The commitment to the dead and the unborn is a commitment to Pakistan’s perpetual economic success that transcends an individual’s life or tribal interest. It is a call to honour the past and pave the way for a positive prosperous future for the next generations. Such a renewed Charter for Perpetual Prosperity can build a resilient, self-sustaining Pakistan for generations to come.

The writer is a venture builder, a

private equity investor and investment banker. He tweets/posts

@AhmadJalal_1