Up for sale

The decision of the Sindh government to hand over Bagh Ibn Qasim to a private company is yet another manifestation of its unwillingness to serve the people.

This step has infuriated the city government. Interestingly, its defanged mayor is not opposed to the idea of allotting public places to private firms or business tycoons. All he wants is, perhaps, his nod. Unfortunately, many countries are being directly or indirectly run by companies. A quick glance over history will prove this fact.

Mohammad Mosaddegh, an elected prime minister of Iran, was ousted after he nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1953. Arbenz, a popular leader of Guatemala, infuriated a fruit company in the US and his government was toppled over by the CIA in 1954. Salvador Allende of Chile, Sukarno of Indonesia, Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso, Patrice Lumumba of Congo and Samora Machel of Mozambique were among the long list of those charismatic leaders who were taught tough lessons for either challenging multinational companies – which many in the third world sarcastically call Western monopolies – or planning to do so.

The secular-minded Ayub Khan, the obscurantist General Zia and the enlightened General Musharraf may have had different political strategies. But when it came to the economy, all of them worshipped the gospel of the free market. Harvard-educated Benazir Bhutto introduced the policies of liberalisation, privatisation and deregulation in Pakistan in the 1990s. Nawaz Sharif, her archrival, intensified her economic mission. Both leaders traded serious allegations against each other. But as far as economic affairs were concerned, they turned out to be the believers in laissez faire. Their tormentor, General Musharraf, too followed their legacy in economic affairs and carried out policies of liberalisation, privatisation and deregulation with religious zeal.

Pundits of the free market assert that states cannot run economies. This flies in the face of reality. The USSR adopted a state-run economy for 70-years. Crippling sanctions were slapped on the socialist country and Western-backed white forces imposed a destructive civil war soon after the revolution. But the workers’ state somehow managed to stand on its feeble feet in the mid-1930s when the capitalist world was reeling under the Great Depression.

The Second World War once again destroyed the workers’ state. According to statistics, 80 percent of the people who were killed during the WWII were from the USSR. Despite all this, it was through the vitality of the planned economy that the proletarian state emerged as the second largest industrial power after the US in 1956. Education was almost free from the school to university levels. Healthcare was no longer a burden on citizens. Unemployment was almost non-existent.

It was the strong economy of the Soviet Union which made it a generous player at the international level. It extended blanket support to China during the first decade of the 1949 revolution by sending it 22,000 experts and advisers. Moscow also refined oil for Cuba after American companies refused to do so even though it subsidised other products of that nascent revolutionary state. It granted subsidies worth billions of dollars to the socialist regimes of Eastern and Central Europe and helped Pakistan, India and a number of countries set up industrial plants. It also facilitated liberation and decolonisation movements in Africa and Asia. The Soviet economy was able to achieve these miracles in the absence of the casino, gambling, marketing and advertising industries that could prop up Western capitalist economies.

This is not a tribute to the USSR. The purpose is to show that state-run economies can do wonders if there is a willingness to run economic affairs. Even in our country, the departments that the government is willing to run achieve impressive results. For instance, notice the alacrity with which the protocol departments of the government make way for VIP movements. Visit the PM House, the President House, the chief minister and governor houses and you will be dazzled by their pristine floors and impeccable walls. If you compare that with the floors and walls of a government hospital, the difference will become palpable.

Even in this country, state institutions have worked wonders. Karachi’s power supply company, which was privatised during Musharraf’s time, was not running into financial losses in the 1970s or the 1980s when it was under state control. The PIA produced great professionals, who subsequently helped launch the best airlines in the Middle East. A number of government departments ran their own hospitals and schools and established housing colonies in the past. This could only have been possible if these entities were earning profits.

The mantra of heavy losses is the pretext that the ruling elite offers to justify privatisation. But the largest telecommunication company of the country was earning billions of rupees in profit when it was privatised. The three airports that are likely to be outsourced are also running in profits.

First, it was the federal government that was hell-bent on privatising state concerns. Now, the provincial governments are also handing over provincial autonomy to the corporate world by putting everything on sale. This suggests that when it comes to the economy, everyone wants to leave things at the mercy of the ruthless market forces.

The panacea of privatisation did not work because the buyers of state-run concerns are more interested in the huge swaths of lands that they possess. A large cement company was privatised in Karachi and we were blessed with a housing colony instead of more industries and jobs. Another large cement factory was doled out to a private party in Hyderabad and it was also turned into a housing colony. Since the 1980s, there has been no substantial investment in the manufacturing sector, which props up the economy of any state in modern times to a great extent.

With 80 percent water-borne diseases in the country, it can be claimed that the state has been unable to provide pure drinking water over the last seven decades. With over 60 percent of the population living without concrete roofs over their heads, it is clear that the ruling elite have failed miserably to provide housing to the public. With millions of children out of school, it goes without saying that our Western-educated ruling class and its tedious acolytes from the religious right are least bothered about stamping out literacy. Instead of focusing on these issues, the state is snatching whatever little the public has by putting everything on sale.

The writer is a Karachi-based freelance journalist.

Email: egalitarianism444@gmail.com