Could we do better?

How could a nation blessed with vast natural resources remain poor for as long as Pakistan has? Is our financial situation the result of our incompetence? Most of us grew up listening to a typical phrase by the rulers: 'the country is passing through a critical stage'. This sentence is meant to prevent the public from demanding better living facilities. The common feature, however, is that the wealthiest class in society rules most poor countries. Pakistan is no exception in this matter.

Governments pay the least attention to the two most prominent factors. First, 26 million children are not attending schools, and more than 40 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line. Second, the country is the fifth most populous in the world, and its population is exploding without any sane voice at the political upper level ever heard to remedy it. The two most important issues are not touched upon, especially the second one, for fear of losing popularity and earning the antipathy of the religious classes. Illiteracy and unchecked population growth spell a bleak future for the country. It worries those most who consider this land their permanent abode.

No wonder that Pakistanis mostly lead the number of victims of the drowned boats. Do the fabulously wealthy classes of society realise the plight of these unfortunate people? And why are they forced to leave their country of birth to seek lowly jobs abroad?

Pakistani citizens who lose their lives while travelling in bedraggled boats leave their homes primarily because of poverty. They go abroad after selling their petty assets in the villages to pay the human smugglers. Those who make it to their destinations narrate pathetic stories about how their handlers treated them. Sometimes they were roughed up and kept hungry for days. The idea behind facing the miseries is to earn money from abroad and remit it back home to feed their families.

On the other hand, the government’s wasteful attitude speaks for itself. Recently, a headline in this paper about the fate of the PIA-owned Roosevelt Hotel attracted attention. The decision to privatise PIA and its assets in Manhattan, New York, is being postponed from one year to another. At the beginning of every year, the nation is given the news that PIA would be privatised by the end of ‘this year’. That stage never comes. The newspaper’s report mentioned many candidates, SOEs and so on, for privatisation but not a single good news of parting with any of them was announced. This is one of the main reasons for the nation’s poor financial situation.

The upper classes of society – politicians and bureaucrats – are reluctant to part with the loss-makers. Privatisation would deprive many retired bureaucrats of their cushy jobs in the loss-making outfits. By observing the lifestyle of the bureaucrats and elected representatives, nobody could imagine that another type of citizen of this nation was frequently reported as victims of capsized boats when illegally travelling to more prosperous countries for jobs. Those who beguile these job-seekers are called human smugglers who manage to remain beyond the reach of the law.

The most serious question at the national level is whether we are a poor nation because of a lack of natural resources or due to mismanaged affairs of the state. The latter is factually true. The country is blessed with vast tracts of agricultural land and water to grow all types of crops, yet we import wheat from abroad. For example, we export cotton fabric to Bangladesh, where it’s converted to apparel and exported to the US and Europe to earn foreign exchange. Many of our entrepreneurs intend to shift their businesses to Bangladesh for cheap raw materials and better working conditions.

Our misfortune is that the political leaders in power don’t think and plan ahead of time; their immediate aim is to have the best of everything. They’re not cut out to plan for the future. Were it so, 26 million children would have been attending classes. Isn’t it often quoted that children are the future of the nation? And what kind of future holds for uneducated children when they grow up? They would most likely fall prey to the human smugglers and meet the same fate as mentioned above.

The writer is a freelance columnist based in Lahore. He can be reached at: pinecity@gmail.com