Deficits on other fronts

We are aware of the debate that was prompted by the speech made by Chief of Army Staff Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa at a seminar held in Karachi more than a week ago. The message delivered by the COAS was deliberate and forthright: the army is keenly watching the state of the country’s economic developments and has some concerns about it.

And his statement was brought into a sharper focus when the high functionaries of the federal government defended their economic governance and underlined its positive aspects. Even embattled Ishaq Dar, the finance minister who is distracted by his legal entanglements, had to find time to state his case.

For a while, there was a hint of a civil-military tiff on the strength or vulnerability of Pakistan’s economy. But then there was a cooling off process. Still, the issue does deserve a serious attention in the context of defining our national priorities. Essentially, it is security versus development when our resources are limited.

As would be expected, the army chief was candid. He told the seminar organised by the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI): “We have done our part on the security front, now it is up to you to take initiative and turn the economy around”.

Now, I do not want to dwell more on what is being said about the economic drift of the country. Gen Bajwa had spoken about mixed indicators. He conceded that growth has picked up but expressed concern that the debts are sky high. He agreed that infrastructure and energy have improved but the current account balance is a problem.

What I want to stress in this space is that, irrespective of this discussion, the economy may be just one cause for concern when we evaluate potential threats to our national security. There are other more significant fronts on which the battle for our survival has to be fought. Unfortunately, our rulers, in whichever attire, have done little to make advances on those fronts.

When we talk of development, we tend to look at its physical manifestations. That is how the army chief acknowledged the gains made in the infrastructure and energy sectors. However, it is the human development of a society that is more important. I have been speaking about the continuing decline in our human resources. There are many instances that certify this trend.

On the whole, it is the state of our society that is alarming, whether you look at it from the economy’s point of view or security’s. Yes, we have nuclear capability and one of the largest standing armies in the world. But only this week, we were served with the spectacle of a poor woman giving birth to her child on the road, in front of a hospital in Lahore.

This reminded me of another incident that disturbs my thoughts every time I think about the moral and spiritual resources of our society. It was also in Lahore, the glory of Pakistan in terms of physical development, that a married woman was stoned to death by her own relatives in front of the Lahore High Court three years ago. Obviously, it was an ‘honour killing’.

Perhaps the most alarming development for Pakistan is the patently resistible rise of hate speech and bigotry. Primitive passions that have inhibited the growth of a modern democracy are being injected into the mainstream. That is how the by-election in Lahore was a turning point. Mumtaz Qadri is becoming the rallying point for a new political mobilisation.

One would think that our military leaders would be aware of the threat this kind of fanaticism and extremism would pose to our national security. After all, our monumental struggle against terrorists was at least partially provoked by these passions that may, ironically, have been sustained by our national security policies.

This only means that the war that is to be fought in the minds of our youth has been neglected. Almost wilfully. This brings me to the intellectual environment that exists on our campuses. One knows that the lynching of Mashal Khan on the campus by his fellow students in April this year had greatly upset the establishment and deliberations were held on this matter.

But the rulers remain in denial – a pathological condition it is – that these derelictions are rooted in the very sense of direction that they have prescribed for this country. Apparently, the more steps we take in this direction, the more difficult it will become to repair the damage. The manner in which religion has been invested in our politics is an indication that democratic values will not be allowed to survive.

Eventually, the intellectual, moral and cultural poverty of Pakistani society must adversely affect its economic development – and, hence, its national security. If we look carefully, the symptoms are very visible, in spite of the victories we may have won against the terrorists. But extremism, intolerance and bigotry should be seen as the roots of our problem.

Pakistan needs to rebuild its society and that will demand meaningful respect for human rights and intellectual freedoms. We have to deal with a terrible mismatch between what we profess and what our actions portray. The situation is so grim that there is no scope for critical thinking in our institutes of higher learning; and please forget about the possibility of any rational debate in popular media.

Unless we are able to build sufficient social capital that is allocated to the development of an extensive intellectual infrastructure, the prospects of security and the economic wellbeing of the nation will remain bleak. It is possible that the rulers are not really aware of the situation that exists on the ground because they live in a security bubble and have all the comforts that can lull their concerns about the human conditions of Pakistan.

In 2002, UNDP issued its first Arab Human Development Report. The report’s findings shocked the Arab intelligentsia and a number of corrective measures were initiated after that, including translation of classics and promotion of creative writing. It identified three basic deficits that I think are also relevant in our case.

These are: the freedom deficit; the women’s empowerment deficit; and the knowledge and human capabilities’ deficit. We may have a longer list. But the most crucial deficit is our lack of understanding of the challenges we confront. There is surely a relationship between economy and national security. What we ignore is the relationship between human development and economic development.

The writer is a senior journalist.

Email: ghazi_salahuddin@hotmail.com