Economic growth without social justice, a car without wheels

LAHORE: Social justice is all about empowering people with equal opportunities and ensuring merit in the society instead of limiting opportunities of growth to a particular class, race or religion.

Economic growth is also closely linked to fair and equitable treatment with every citizen in a country and employees in an enterprise. Our rulers are well-aware of this reality but usually they are not prepared to fight for social justice.

It is politically risky in the short-term and is against the norms of culture they are attuned to. Our constitution is based on principles of social justice but the punitive laws are applied on powerless, while the influential are allowed to break them with impunity. This is impeding our growth in a myriad of ways.

Social justice and economic growth go hand in hand and being mutually inclusive one cannot happen without the other. All those enterprises are growing above normal pace that provide equal opportunities to their workers. They recruit their human resource on pure merit and ensure the best ones move up on the basis of performance and commitment towards the enterprise.

The criterion is to reward the competent and weed out the incompetent irrespective of their connections. Workers at all level are free to suggest ways for improvement in processes that enhance efficiency and reduce wastages.

This engagement with the workers becomes a learning process as those suggestions are considered and if rejected reasons a given to the suggesters. This enhances their learning about the way the company operates. No one makes fun of illogical suggestions made out of ignorance by the worker.

This process creates cohesion among the workers and the sponsors of the company. The company continues to outpace it rivals in growth and efficiency. The meal menu in socially compliant companies is the same for all employees including the chief executive and served in the same room.

There are quite a few enterprises, small and large, which are equal opportunity employers and are scaling up regularly. But generally speaking majority of the enterprises are neither equal opportunity employers nor socially compliant. This is one of the reasons that shorten the life of many or our commercial enterprises.

The public sector companies provide better facilities to their employees but are “exclusive opportunity employers”. The appointments are made either on political grounds or influence. There, promotions have got nothing to do with the merit. They consider facilities as their divine right without contributing towards the success of the enterprise. The performance of these companies is known to all.

No one should be excluded from the development process. Entrepreneurs should be respected and obeyed to maintain discipline; but the workers should also be treated respectfully. No enterprise can attain sustained growth without satisfied workers.

In the same way skills and craftsmanship would be useless if there is no enterprise to benefit from those skills. The system should be so fair that it eliminates incompetent entrepreneurs or workers.

Our thinking on social justice should refocus on work as this is the only way to take people above the poverty line and give them a chance to be a partner in the solution. This is social justice. The civil society will have to oppose social injustice as it is an inevitable feature of our society.

Social justice is in fact a realisation by the society that it is sensitive to the needs of others. All the members of the society should vow to share the resources available in the country with others. The government alone cannot address these issues and the civil society and the affluent should support fair reforms.

The entrepreneurs should realise they would rapidly scale up if they share a small portion of their income with the workers to ensure social compliance. A ten percent of the net income spent on workers welfare this year could result in 20 percent growth next year. Global as well as Pakistani evidence shows that in five years time, the net worth of the socially compliant entrepreneur would be much higher than the worth of his/her same sized non compliant competitor.