Reclaim thinking

“I think therefore I am”. Rene Descartes, a seventeenth century French philosopher, reduced the entire existentialist crisis to the function of the mind and its capacity to reflect.

The uniqueness of a human mind is its ability to exercise free will and to think and differentiate between right and wrong. Thinking is what distinguishes humans from all other species. Luckily, we have 220 million minds to think, to plan, to formulate and to forge a future. Yet we have, to a large extent, given up being a thinking nation.

There are probably no ‘firsts’ to do in a multi-tasking world; everyone – whether a policymaker, a technocrat, a civil servant, an activist or a politician – is simultaneously trying to do several tasks for betterment of a country. However, if one has to take a leap of faith to define a first to do for Pakistan’s economic and social wellbeing, it would likely be: to take unfettered ownership of the country’s thinking process. Let us set the stage for an informed discussion with some known knowns.

Economic and social thinking has been largely outsourced, something we have gradually and knowingly let happen. It is intriguing that each decade since the creation of Pakistan, an International Monetary Fund program has supported us. The Fund facilities tend to advise the country’s fiscal and monetary policies and, more recently, issues of state owned enterprises, privatization processes and investment climate. An international benchmark, Ease of Doing Business, has been at the center-stage of Pakistan’s investment reform before its global suspension.

We have seen two decades of energy sector reforms, largely designed by international partners and creation of regulatory regimes influenced by best practice advice. Our tax authorities, both at the federal and provincial levels, have seen innumerable programs and projects of tax reforms; the commerce side has undergone export sector refinement projects supported by international organizations, bilateral partners and consultancies. The social sector has seen the creation of an income support program also with multilateral support.

A certain thinking of taking ownership, even so for populist politics, has helped support the social welfare program by different governments and thus been of relief to the vulnerable as it has serviced them for more than a decade.

The above record of policy frameworks is by no means comprehensive but sets the context for a dialogue. In essence, our own thinking ecosystem to complement outside advice to forge local frameworks has gone amiss and needs restoration and regeneration. Our thinking and capacity to design context-based policy has essentially gone mute. This gives us room at an intellectual level to turn away from our responsibility for successes or failures, as credit is hard to come and blame is easy to lay on others. It would be fair to accept that this ability to shun responsibility has at times led to a half-hearted and incomplete implementation of even good advice that has come our way.

Putting to work our own policy thinking may have forged more desirable results, with balanced budgets, smatter unbundling of energy sector, more efficient use of gas in the country, effective regulatory regimes, diversified exports, improved social sector indicators and a downward trending multi-dimensional poverty; indeed, a more impressive record for citizens.

We would be living with less perception of financing, followed by running pillar to post as the necessary option to keep the economy afloat. Whereas one feels certain sadness about how we have curtailed our liberty to think about our own present and our future, it doesn’t have to be this way.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. I am reminded of a conversation from more than a decade ago with the leadership and economic czars of the time. The takeaway from our discussion was: apathy from our side, of the restrictive maneuverability to formulate policy. Practically, one understands being overwhelmed by the task of thinking for ourselves, but delaying what is for us to do will only make it harder to get ahead.

We have to start thinking about an economy beyond ‘crops, cotton and cloth’. We have to think about the quality of growth with smart cities, smart transportation, smart energy solutions and smart businesses. We have to think about a distributive strategy for Pakistan which goes further than supporting the poor through cash and one which makes a real transfer of assets. We have to start thinking about an economy which works for everyone by addressing societal imbalances.

The hard part of course is for those responsible to take this step and get everyone onboard. Operationally we may begin a process to adapt this change through many aspects – changes in legislation of how we interact with outside help; changes in the way we deliberate in all our ministries; internal policy discussions may be separated from normal overwhelming conformist meetings. Deliberations must become a real venue of open-minded, data driven evidence based forums, explicitly defined for a purpose with participation of a variety of academia and local universities; and lastly we must overhaul the planning commission’s role into a think tank of the highest caliber.

We must consciously have a thinking process filter across all layers of society – businesses, artisans, teachers and farmers. It is primarily through becoming a thinking society that we can innovate, or simply do everything better than we do today. Borrowing a cricket analogy, we must go from the back foot to the front foot.

The writer is former advisor, Ministry of Finance, Government of Pakistan.

Email: khaqanhnajeeb@gmail.com

Twitter: @KhaqanNajeeb