In Pakistan: ‘Everyone is an economist’ including the illiterate Taliban lover Javed Chaudhry...

‘Everyone is an economist’

With global and national economies coinciding in their historic downturn, it is open season for all kinds of theorisers in English and Urdu to offer doomsday diagnoses of the “I-told-you-so” variety. Pakistan is condemned by some such analysts for having become “a slave of capitalism” in general and a tame camp-follower of the United States and its handmaiden institutions, the World Bank and the IMF, in particular, always looking for crumbs when it could presumably have an economic system all of its own. Armchair economists stare direly at you from the TV frame to warn you of what lies ahead unless Pakistan says goodbye to the global coalition against terror led by America.

Fortunately, Dr Akbar Zaidi, an eminent Pakistani economist, some of whose books are prescribed texts at school and college levels, has published a timely article in a paper which describes the free-for-all, one-sided debate going on in the media which tells us how hopelessly Pakistan and the world are mired in crises that no one can resolve. The government in power is hauled over the coals by these media pundits for “doing nothing” and each lobby is putting forward its own recommendations, unmindful of the fact that they are actually contradictory.

Here is Dr Zaidi’s description of the scene: “The huge media explosion, particularly in the electronic media but also in the English newspapers, has revealed how bare Pakistan’s scholarly cupboard is, and how charlatans have been crowned kings...Today, the electronic media has made bankers, businessmen, stockbrokers and journalists experts on the intricacies of economic and financial issues of which most know very little. Personal anecdotes, and not even informed opinion, replace any sound academic or general discussion about Pakistan’s economy or about the international financial crisis...Barring very few exceptions, most supposedly informed guests on these channels cannot distinguish between the capital market, capital investment or the capital account, yet speak with an authority which only reveals their complete ignorance”.

The plaint is justified if you take a cursory view of a day’s media mediations on the national economy. There is the politician in power who has to bear the brunt of the uninformed public that is burning tyres on the road; and there is his opponent who is actually secretly overjoyed that the crisis has come in handy to discredit the incumbent government and bring it down. The incumbent politician has his pet line serving as a diagnosis of what is happening to the economy. He points behind his back and says the crisis is inherited by him from the illegitimate past government of General Pervez Musharraf and that his government is now manfully engaged in the sanitary function of clearing up the rubbish (gandh) left behind by it.

The opposed politician, equally at sea about the economy, holds forth on the total lack of preparation of the government for handling the crisis which would have been tackled quickly and successfully if his party had been in power. Despite facts to the contrary, he accuses the government of not referring the crisis to the experts and of not having an actual plan on how to confront the meltdown. If monetary tightening is taken in hand to break the rupee’s headlong fall, he sides with the industrialist asking for low interest rates; if prices soar because of the “passing on of the real cost” on to the consumer, he stands on the road calling the government inhumane and insensitive to the plight of the common man.

Surprisingly, there is a third category of the politician too. He is the one who is supposed to have left behind the gandh. His job is the most convenient. He trundles out the good figures when the economy was supposed to be growing at the rate of 8 percent of the GDP and compares them to the deterioration that has taken place since the new government took over after the 2008 elections. In the final analysis, apparently, no one is to blame and the economy is hurtling down without a cause, if you listen to these gentlemen.

With due apologies to Dr Zaidi, one would like to add a fourth category of ‘expert’ who castigates the other three and, believe it or not, helps boost the ratings of his TV channel too [i.e. Javed Chaudhry, the notorious Taliban lover journalist]. He is best represented by the media’s top sound-bite expert whose favourite epithet for the politicians and rulers of Pakistan is haramkhor. He gives the audience a potted history of capitalism in which Jews figure as the first conspirators who thought up riba as the curse that will doom humanity and allow the Zionists to control the world. As long as Pakistan’s economy is under the dreaded regime of riba it doesn’t have a chance of a snowball in hell to survive, according to this view.

When will we get a break from such people? (Daily Times)
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The bubble of long March; and the Lawyers' movement

Zardari tours Lahore – Aftab Iqbal

Is it judges versus the economy?

Interestingly, no one is fully satisfied with the “conclusion” of the Long March. This is because, if truth be told, what was undertaken was not really capable of satisfying them. The lawyers’ movement was advised that the campaign was not relevant to the crisis of the economy which afflicts the masses, but such was the general enthusiasm of the campaigners that this advice was spurned as “motivated” or “subjective”. Indeed, the top legal leadership told us that after the judges are restored in the manner advocated by the lawyers, all our economic and social problems will evaporate because justice will be enshrined. (Would flour be cheap and available, electricity subsidised and loadshedding abolished?) Justice, we were told, was a universal value and the restored judiciary would produce the “just society” we craved, in short order.

With this kind of hype, disappointment was sure to come. Now the other leader of the movement, Mr Hamid Khan of Pakistan Bar Council, says that the lawyers made an “honest mistake” by not proceeding to “dharna” at the parliament and instead resolving to call off the Long March after the mammoth meeting in front of the legislature. He thinks that the decision to not allow a sit-in or “dharna” was hastily taken by “one individual who announced it without taking the implementation committee that was overseeing the event into confidence”. Clearly Mr Khan was in favour of escalation and Mr Aitzaz Ahsan of the Supreme Court Bar Association was not.

The movement has developed the classical syndrome of the radical and moderate factions. Mr Khan further says: “Members of the committee were under the impression that lawyers would stage at least a day-long sit-in, but its (sudden) termination should be construed as an honest mistake. Many bar associations went away fuming over the lost opportunity to force the government to reinstate the deposed judges”. Compared to Mr Ahsan, Mr Khan has been more courageous in telling the judges in the past what was wrong with the judiciary. As a representative of the lawyers, his valedictory speeches to the outgoing “pro-military judges” always verged on the insulting. His classic study of the judiciary — Constitutional and Political History of Pakistan (2001) — amply testifies to his credentials and his disappointment.

The movement is now being vigourously criticised. People who had kept quiet about the negative aspects of the movement are creeping out of the shadows to accuse the lawyers of “betraying” the people whose priorities were more related to their economic plight. At the risk of being provocative, one can say that they were shanghaied into the movement with an unspoken pledge of revenge. The profession’s leadership is on the backfoot and is now promising more action — maybe this time more confrontational — which would be a folly. The lawyers will continue to strike work on Thursdays, but there is a Train March in the offing too. One can hardly doubt that the aggressive lawyers who shouted slogans against Mr Ahsan at the rally for not besieging the parliament, will get the upper hand this time around. But this might also mean a bifurcation and ultimate scattering of the movement.

If it is the economy that remains issue number one and not the judges, unfortunately the problem is that our economists cannot agree about solutions in the economic realm. After the announcement of the Budget 2008-09 that is tilted heavily in favour of the agriculture sector — and making an unconvincing bow in the direction of the poor — the analytical daggers are out. And the passion for the judges is in addition to the hurt experienced at hearing that the Stock Exchange earnings were not being taxed for a period of time: “As long as the issues of the president and the judiciary hover over the head of the government and its allies, governance will be ineffective and weak. Hence, economic revival will also not be possible”.

Whatever the final response to the crisis, which is global in its sweep, it is the economy which can set Pakistan right after a period of great unavoidable pain. In Iraq, after the sects squared off electorally and rendered democracy meaningless, and the Americans relied on useless “surges” of troops, the turnaround finally came from the economy. The Economist, which had supported the 2003 invasion and the later “surge”, had to admit this week: “Thanks to soaring oil prices [the Iraq government] is flush with money. It is standing up to Iraq’s assorted militias and asserting its independence from both America and Iran. The overlapping wars — Sunni against American, Sunni against Shia and Shia against Shia — that harrowed Iraq after the invasion of 2003 have abated. The country no longer looks in imminent danger of flying apart or falling into everlasting anarchy”.

One can say that Pakistan’s problem number one was terrorism in 2007, but the national crisis occurred only after the economy faltered and the people traced it to the past government. We know that some professions are not directly affected by the economy — in fact some prosper on public misfortune — but it is their altruistic duty to help the state recover from its economic downturn. (Daily Times).
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