Crooked governance

LAHORE: Thugs in Pakistan adulterate food, sell substandard drugs, pollute environment, push spurious goods, and whatnot. They are by all means crooks of a distinguished league, but most of them are revered by the society.

Government of Pakistan has since long abdicated its civic and administrative responsibilities through consistent bad governance and the void is filled by opportunists. In fact the state now emulates thugs in extortion of money. For over two decades we have been generating revenues from either the already registered taxpayers or through sales tax which burdens mostly the poor or by increasing customs levies. Addition of a 100,000 new tax filers in a year is celebrated as if we have won the world cups of everything.

It is a shame that tax filers (only a few of whom pay taxes) are less than one percent of our population. When most of our wealth is concentrated among 20 percent richest segment of society the tax fillers should also be 20 percent. Or if 5 percent of the population has more wealth than the bottom 60 percent then at least 5 percent of the population should be filing tax returns annually. Many of the active taxpayers among the currently registered are employees and earn much below the incomes of top 5 percent of the population. This is simple math; our revenue numbers do not match with our incomes. Most of our lawmakers come from highly affluent families but the taxes they deposit are pathetically low. These lawmakers have the mandate to take measures for increasing revenues of the country.

We have increased the budgets of police and law enforcing agencies for internal security manifold; still the state has abdicated its duty to provide security to shops, industries, and commercial sector. About two decades back only the banks hired security guards. Industries usually had two to three persons manning the main gate. Now all big shops, business centers, industries have a fleet of security guards.

Businessmen with some standing are escorted by security vehicles. This extraordinary security costs money and increases the cost of doing business. The religious leaders and the politicians do not move about without personal security.

The additional budget of inland security forces is consumed in protecting their high officials, ruling party leaders, the offices of inland security forces. How can ordinary citizens feel safe when the officers of security forces need armed guards to protect them during traveling, in office or at their residence?

The government periodically bans two persons from riding motorcycles. The rulers fail to realise motorcycles are the major mode of transport in the cities used by lower middleclass families.

The actual solution is to get rid of the criminal elements in the society that move freely without any fear. Moreover major terror attacks have mostly been conducted through trucks or cars. It would be insane to curb movement of the majority instead of nabbing the culprits through strong political will and administrative measures. The motorcycles are mostly used in mobile snatching and other petty crimes.

The absence of alert law enforcing teams at vulnerable spots encourages these petty crimes. The government inaction in right direction has had a severe impact on the economy and wellbeing of the people.

The government suspends mobile phone services on all important occasion citing security reasons. He it is not prudent to deprive the entire country of this communication technology cutting off 160 million mobile users globally. Many business transactions could be jeopardised and the mobile phone operators lose billions in revenue when the mobiles are suspended on occasions like Eid. Why should the people at large bear the burden of incompetence of the state machinery? This practice is in vogue in countries with low level of governance.

Such measures send a strongly negative signal to foreign business partners of Pakistan and some prospective foreign investors. Communication is the most important medium in modern day economy and you cannot compete globally by making your accessibility erratic and unreliable. In short bad governance is the root cause of all ills in Pakistan.

Bad governance is when the tax authority has evidence of tax evasion by millions of individuals and fails to crack whip on them. Another example is influential persons flouting laws moving around without fear with arms flashing thugs.

An unabated persistence of target killing is the height of bad governance. When you have to pay extortion for carrying out any economic activity besides paying normal government taxes, it is bad governance. When a state exists within a state and thugs are more powerful than the law you cannot expect the economy to perform to its actual potential.