Cars versus bicycles?

Are cheaper cars set to revive Pakistan’s ailing economy? The modest reduction in car prices this month may help Pakistan’s automobile industry. But it's certainly not the impetus to revive the broader economy.

Pakistan’s economy remains largely under stress, irrespective of official claims to the contrary. In contrast to the revival of car sales, the difference will come only when Pakistan’s mass consumers finally feel the difference. One piece of evidence to this riddle remains tied to the provision of high quality, homemade bicycles at affordable costs in a country where that can easily be counted among the missing elements.

Across Islamabad’s Blue Area – the hub of the capital’s commercial heartbeat – bicycle shops are stacked with imported merchandise, priced well beyond the reach of ordinary consumers. In a country where locally made ‘Rustam’ and ‘Sohrab’ bicycles were once not just affordable for the poorest of the poor, they also came with the quality that kept them running for years, without the market exposed to entry of aggressive foreign bicycle producers armed with fancy gadgetry.

But the changing times are evident of slippages in economic thinking. It is a terrible reflection on the thought processes that have evolved over the past few decades, replacing meaningful change with fanciful choices.

Unlike the times when ‘Made in Pakistan’ slogans were a source of pride, the arrival of foreign brands has dominated the market. In the process, Pakistan’s industrial growth of the 60s has effectively gone in reverse, with many prospective industrialists transiting to become traders.

A clear lesson of history, both political and economic, lies in Pakistan’s neighbourhood across China – the world’s fastest growing economy. TV images from the 1960s and 1970s showed Chinese consumers, ranging from blue-collared workers to senior Communist party officials, proudly commuting back and forth on bicycles.

The two-wheeler, popularized by Chairman Mao, oversaw China persevere through some of the toughest battles in its history, ranging from the Sino-Soviet split, the Vietnam War, the rise of the Khmer Rouge and China’s involvement in the Korean war.

Yet, China’s bicycle era laid the foundation for the long haul that led to where It stands today. China’s historical journey offers much food for thought for Pakistan as Islamabad follows a direction that’s more about the superficial rather than the grass root reality.

For years, successive governments have overseen a continuous liberalization of Pakistan’s foreign trade regime that has led to the flooding of the local market with luxury goods. Even in areas where restrictive practices are possible such as tightening the import of perishable food items, the authorities appear to have ignored the arrival of foreign products.

The images of fancy stocks across stores for the sale of imported items tragically indicate another failure. As Pakistan’s crisis of governance has widened; the focus time and again has fallen on gimmickry rather than reality. If cheaper cars were the solution to Pakistan’s economic ills, life would likely progress for the better.

But this latest step is another addition to the distance from the long ignored crisis at the grassroots. The deepening challenge of increasingly expensive food items for middle and low income Pakistanis, though the subject of lip service for over two years, nevertheless continues to progress.

It is a tragic reflection on a key policy area that has been overshadowed by the pursuit of superficial objectives. Prime Minister Imran Khan’s recent launch of the widely publicized ‘Kissan Card' on its own will do little to tackle Pakistan’s growing food insecurity.

The solution lies in the rehabilitation of Pakistan’s long-ignored agriculture sector, plagued by increasingly dysfunctional research institutions and a broken down set of extension services. Consequently, Pakistan’s farmers, notably across Punjab – home to about 60 percent of the country’s population – have been pushed towards the periphery of the economic mainstream.

Reversing this trend requires a bold reversal of Pakistan’s crisis of governance – mainly across Punjab, once considered the country’s indispensable bread basket. But Prime Minister Khan’s insistence on backing Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar, notwithstanding the latter’s multiple failures to perform, has deepened the malaise. And coming out of the crisis surrounding Pakistan’s dinner tables requires far more than cheaper cars for the relatively few motorists across the country.

The writer is an Islamabad-based journalist who writes on political and economic affairs.

Email: farhanbokhari@gmail.com