KARACHI:
In current days, as Pakistan’s financial woes have intensified, a veritable cottage trade has developed to counsel methods of placing the nation again on monitor. These providing recommendation embrace eminent Pakistani professors at universities reminiscent of Harvard and Princeton, former finance ministers, and retired bureaucrats.
In posts on social media and newspaper columns, these distinguished thinkers present detailed analyses of the issues we face. That is often adopted by a set of prescriptions: increase productiveness, slash imports, enhance exports, put money into important infrastructure, rejuvenate native trade, and align the schooling system with the job market – the listing goes on.
All these suggestions make good sense and are certainly worthy of implementation. The issue, nevertheless, is that the illustrious thinkers contributing to the controversy are lacking the purpose. There isn’t a dispute about what needs to be carried out – it has been clear for a while.
The purpose they’re lacking isn’t “what needs to be carried out” however moderately “who will do it.” In regular international locations, the accountability would fall on the elected representatives of these international locations. However in our case, the individuals who sit in our assemblies merely should not have the flexibility or want to do what is important.
Sadly, our drawback is that at any time when there are elections, we succeed brilliantly in placing the worst of our folks in parliament. That is the precise reverse of what profitable democracies do – or no less than endeavour to do – which is to ship the most effective of their folks to parliament. And because of this these international locations are profitable.
So why will we in Pakistan get this so unsuitable? Real democracy is conditioned on two necessary precepts: One, that voters perceive the problems; and two, that they’re free to vote for the candidates of their selecting. Neither situation obtains in Pakistan.
Feudal management of the levers of energy has ensured widespread illiteracy. Huge swathes of the inhabitants are obliged to vote the best way they’re advised to vote by their feudal lords. The upshot: voters don’t perceive the problems, they usually can’t vote the best way they wish to.
Clearly, what we’ve got isn’t “democracy.” It’s feudalism camouflaged as democracy. That is why the identical folks or their ilk – the feudal lords and their households – all the time get elected. By and huge, they are typically corrupt and incompetent. They get elected to parliament to learn personally from the privileges of being representatives of the folks, not with the intention of serving them.
Till such time as we substitute these “representatives” – arguably the worst of our folks – with the most effective, nothing when it comes to our financial actuality will change. We’ll proceed to say no moderately than progress.
So, the problem for all of the well-meaning teachers and others is to shift their focus from what must be carried out to the central difficulty of how we get real democracy within the nation.
A doable answer to our predicament: Restrict the vote to those that have had no less than 10 years of education. People who find themselves educated have minds of their very own. They perceive the problems. And they’re often not slaves to the feudal.
It is a easy change. However it would – make no mistake – result in real democracy. And, if enacted, it would change our future by really empowering folks and opening the doorways of parliament to those that have the competence, power, want, and can to construct the nation, not eviscerate it.
THE WRITER IS CHAIRMAN OF MUSTAQBIL PAKISTAN AND HOLDS AN MBA FROM HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL