‘No significant growth in civilian institutions since 1990’

“You definitely want me to disappear,” chuckled Najam Sethi as a person in the audience asked him to avoid being ambiguous during a discussion titled ‘Making Sense of Pakistan’ at the ThinkFest held at the Institute of Business Administration’s (IBA) City Campus on Saturday.

Sethi, chief editor of The Friday Times, was among the panellists that included prime minister’s adviser Ishrat Husain and journalist Nadeem Farooq Paracha, who discussed religion, economy, politics and the role of the military in the country.

Discussing the contents of the book by Farzana Shaikh on which the session was titled, Sethi said that even before the Partition, people have been hearing about different versions of religion by different theorists, all quite different from one another.

Paracha said: “We as Pakistanis still have not been able to identify what the country was made for. And then there is the state narrative on this, which you cannot argue. The debate is [predominantly] between two ideologies of Muslim nationalism.”

He said that one ideologue says that the country was created to give due representation to Muslims who were in minority in India, while the other says it ought to be an Islamic republic.

“There are so many definitions of Pakistan, and they have increased with time, which is good,” he said, hoping: “Maybe there will be a time when we can all agree on one of these.”

Husain mainly spoke on economy. Regarding the “austerity drive” by Prime Minister Imran Khan-led federal government, he said the country had not always been in such financial conditions.

In fact, he said, there was no industry here in 1947, but by 1990 most of its institutions were making profits. “After that, the civilian institutions have not shown a significant growth,” he said, proposing that they can only float when their losses are cut.

Defending the bailouts from the International Monetary Fund, he said that things can be better if the private sector is provided with a comfortable environment to do business.