The politics of economics
With the Presentation of the Federal Budget, the economics of the nation has become subject to partisan political in-fighting. While the treasury benches are mostly singing praises of the measures proposed by the Finance Minister, the Opposition has unilaterally taken up cudgels “on behalf of the people”. Essentially both are correct and are also in the wrong. The Opposition must necessarily act as a democratic check against the excesses of the Government on the people, it is also their responsibility as legislators to support any process where the good of the masses is clearly manifest, not to oppose only for the sake of opposition. At the same time it is incumbent upon the members of the Treasury Benches to go over the Budgetary proposals with a jaundiced eye so that they can excise those proposals which they feel lack merit or substance only or are likely to affect the everyday living of the common man, they must not rubber-stamp all the Government’s submissions without critical analysis. In essence it is a joint responsibility of all our law-makers to ensure that the common citizens who have voted them into office are vindicated in the reposing of their trust in them.
Given all this, it is still the right of the Government, having been elected as a majority, to foster their own declared manifesto on the nation, making only those compromises which they feel they must make in the national interest. Political parties are supposed to be elected based on their stated programmes, in Third World countries, more after than not, it is a combination of the charisma of the leaders and the strength of the feudal system that decides the issue. Except for a few die-hard political activists and analysts, almost no one ever goes through the manifestoes, which are invariably devoted to promises that the leadership swear to high heaven they will honour once elected, almost all of which concerns the welfare of the people, and are mostly forgotten after the elections are over.
In 1970, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) had the catchy slogan of Roti, Kapra aur Makan (Bread, Cloth and Home ), riding on the strength of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s charisma they got an effective majority in then West Pakistan. Without really studying the effects of socialism on the economy or how to effect a socialistic system on the economy, Bhutto proceeded to carry out rampant nationalisation, instead what he accomplished was bureaucratization. He took the economic controls out of the hands of entrepreneurs and put it into the hands of untrained Managers without either professional acumen, business management skills or an interest in making profit for the State-owned ventures, with honourable exceptions. The masses stayed out in the cold. Robbed of incentives and professional skills thereof, the economy wilted. The subsequent martial law provided the coup de grace, that Pakistan has not gone down the Latin American way is because of a combination of good luck and built-in resilience of the economy.
Margaret Thatcher is wrongly portrayed as the ultimate symbol of a capitalistic society, she only did what Bhutto should have done, re-distributed the wealth of the few among the many. In effect, she was more of a socialist than the socialists themselves. By selling off the shares of huge chunk of State-owned and nationalised assets to the general public, she gave the masses a vested interest in the profitable running of these ventures. By broadening the number of electors (shareholders), Thatcher ensured that the best possible professional management would be at the helm of affairs of various industries and business corporations, thus she made the managers answerable and accountable for their actions. Her vision of privatisation was then more socialistic though its objective was capitalistic. The proof of the pudding being in the eating, she made Britain into an economic success story in the 80s.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s daughter learnt a lot from UK’s Thatcher years, even before the election campaign she began to identify her policies with that of a Thatcherite economy. By the time Ms Benazir eventually came to power in December 1988 she had effectively (and courageously, given her populist stance) repudiated the PPP’s original manifesto in favour of privatisation, denationalisation and de-regulation. Unfortunately for her and the nation, her 20 months were riven with conflict, some of her own making, some foisted on her by a relentless opposition. No one can ever doubt the wealth of professional economic talent available to the PPP, compared to them the rest are (and were) mostly of pedestrian quality, except that while Ms Benazir’s economic agenda was objective-oriented, her modus operandi to accomplish it was peculiar. Her professional supporters became powerless theoreticians, at best becoming members of the PM’s Economic Consultative Committee (and other such), to the best of our knowledge this club was never ever even chaired by her. Feroze Kaiser, Khurshid Hadi, Naeemul Haq, and the rest were like Army subalterns, neither to be seen, heard of or heard from. While she had the very best in economic handlers in V A Jafery and AGN Kazi, who kept the Government economy upwardly mobile, her choice of aides (and acquaintances) to effect rapid industrialisation can only be described as the Pakistani version of “voodoo economics”. Instead of Reagan’s supply-sided policies, the few favourites (mostly non-party individuals) went for the gold, to fill their own pockets (on behalf of the people!).
One may disagree with Ms Benazir on any number of issues, her approach to privatisation of nationalised corporations was at least theoretically correct insofar as following the Thatcher-route, putting up the shares of the nationalised corporations and other government-owned assets for purchase by the general public instead of the few rich. Given the fact that most of the money in private hands in UK was earned by legitimate means, a propensity to have equal distribution of wealth marked Thatcher’s policies, in essence she thus proved to be a closet socialist in capitalistic garb. In Pakistan, liquid money floating in the hand of our moneyed class has for the most part dubious origin and allowing the industries and corporations to pass into their hands would amount to legitimizing crime. On the other hand, even the industries acquired by “clean” money would go into the hands of a rich-elite who have less than passing interest in their social responsibilities and obligations. Either way, economic clout would translate into political power, not a very happy prospect for the nation in the future given the likelihood of power being in the wrong hands.
Our present political leaders have an enormous burden thrust upon their shoulders, to ensure that the economics of Pakistan does not become a slave to unfettered power in the wrong hands. If such an event were to come to pass, the people would not keep on bearing the burden in silence for long, suppression of protest would lead to anarchy. From there on it is but a short step to another Martial Law, this time around the men in uniform may be more ruthless in comparison to the benign ambience of previous occasions. While the advent of any kind of Martial Law is always tragic for the nation, that would be eminently more acceptable to the people than being governed by a dictatorship of the rich-elite spouting a lot of rhetoric under the garb of democracy while becoming richer themselves.
In any Budget, the statistics do matter, what matters more is the underlying thrust of the philosophy that gave life to the Budget. On that issue one cannot doubt the sincerity and purpose of Sartaj Aziz, in a country where actions out of vested interest is commonplace, an uncommon man has unveiled a largely pragmatic document. He has courage of conviction and is imbued by the rarest of qualities in a politician, conscience, one believes that he would rather resign than be pressurized or cajoled into doing the wrong thing by the nation. Ms Benazir, must remember “to honour while you strike him down, the foe that comes with fearless eyes”. On the other hand such people are not inflexible, they can be persuaded by logic to accept what is good for the nation.
Ms Benazir, as the leader of the Opposition, thus has a heavy burden on her shoulders, to ensure that the Budget does not create excess on the masses while maintaining the decorum of our nascent democracy. Her eloquent rhetoric must be objectively used to bring effective lobby on behalf of the people and hone the present Budget into a more complete and human document. With comprehensive argument the Government can be persuaded to amend, modify, add or delete to the Budgetary proposals, Parliamentary debate must effect a workable compromise. If on the other hand, the Opposition is going to use the occasion only to heap calumny on the Government and its Finance Minister without giving an effective argument and alternative on diverse issues, then the Government’s reaction is likely to be on the same vein, leading to a democratic stalemate which will be broken in favour of the Government because of their existing brute majority in Parliament. While this course is the likely scenario, it is not what democracy is all about, this effectively short-changes the masses in their aspirations for it.
The politics of economics must therefore be directed towards compromise for the benefit of the people, that is the essence of democracy.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment