Hall of answerability

‘Inspired’ by the under-declaration of assets by the kings and king-makers of the country, I was just thinking of writing a column on ‘Living below the ostensible means’ that I came across quite an odd statement given by Prime Minister’s spokesperson Dr Musaddaq Malik of the electricity fame in a widely telecast television programme.
Malik says that ever since going independent, Nepra has become hubristic or excessively arrogant and “It doesn’t entertain or heeds our advice (Hamaari baat nahin manta)”. Very strange! Either the government is too soft to be taken for granted by the state-run organisations (viz Nepra) on whose decisions depend the people’s fate or it is a true believer in the independence of institutions, adhering strictly to the policy of non-interference in the organisational setup.
In either case, the sufferers are the power and petrol consumers, I mean the general public that has already seen enough of the excesses courtesy the lack of foresight of our higher echelons.
Then where lays the remedy? No doubt, lesser government and lesser regulation has brought about many improvements and improvisations in many a system in force in the successful world but quite unfortunately, in our land, most of the excesses have been perpetrated on the commoners in the name of and on the pride of this silly thing independence. I call it silly since most of the empowered ones among us misconstrue independence as non-answerability or non-accountability.
And certainly this is the root cause of all the causes of decay and deterioration. It is like a phase of reversal of civilisation that we are passing through for quite some time. Just give some powers to anyone and relish it with slight independence, it will become a lethal combination (borrowing the term ‘lethal combination’ from Wapda Chairman Zafar Mehmood, who once coined this term for a senior journalist with a superior civil services background). So, where there is lethal combination, the end product is the mass production of certain biggies whose mission statement is “I’m comfortable, so it’s all okay on all fronts” and “I’m safe, so no need to worry”.
This is what has been happening for quite some time, even in the gravest matters including terrorism that have continued to escalate over this ‘I’m comfortable, I’m safe’ conduct of most of our helms men despite clear wake-up calls given to them repeatedly by the civil society and the media and despite the disciplined work done by the armed services on a constant footing in the direction of warding off dangers that the top and middle-tier administrations’ over-complacency did not allow to be heeded well in time.
I think now it’s about time to build a hall of answerability where all the non-answerable ones should assemble off and on to shed some excess fat of non-accountability that continues to accumulate with their misled, wayward independence.
At the same time, living below the ostensible means should be made an offence. That would add another feather of pride in the FIA’s and NAB’s caps after the conferment of additional powers on these two watchdogs into the uncharted territory of ‘below the ostensible means’.
Some bureau should also be set up to watch against too much independence before clipping of the wings become inevitably inevitable. —mianrehman1@gmail.com