THESE days the taxation system in the country is being fiercely debated. Justifiably so. There’s a view that the big moneymaking fish (business tycoons, politicians, showbiz glitterati etc) seldom get pulled into the tax net. A recent episode of crackdown on a couple of fashion designers’ businesses for alleged tax evasion hints at how uncomplicated things are. However, if you travel back in time, half a century back to be precise, to see whether the issue was differently treated in the past, you will find that time has not moved that much.

On Nov 30, 1965 the West Pakistan Government issued a statement saying it had reorganised the excise intelligence bureau in the board of revenue for prevention and detention of excise crimes and evasion of entrainment taxes. The bureau had already been set up in Karachi with one inspector, one sub-inspector and 12 excise police constables. My word, a dozen constables! Shouldn’t the number be at least quadrupled today?

Law enforcement and numbers, more often than not, go together. On Dec 3, Karachi’s traffic police, who used to communicate through the media in those days, claimed that it had impounded 32 auto-rickshaws the week before for having defective meters. In all, 144 rickshaws were checked during the week, and drivers and owners of vehicles with faulty meters prosecuted. Meter? The word does ring a bell.

While vehicles plying the city roads were under scrutiny in 1965, Karachi’s air traffic was clear as day and clean as a whistle. International celebrities, members of royal families, sporting giants and world political leaders had no qualms in visiting or passing through Karachi. On the morning of Dec 1, Prince and Princess Hitachi of Japan had a stopover at Karachi airport on their way to home from Rome. They were received and seen off at the airport by the deputy chair of protocol, M. Husain Ali, and a director in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, R. R. Noore, their wives, and the Japanese charge d’affaires. Ah, the good old days, when security was least of our concerns!

After the September war, Japan and China’s were the two governments that were constantly engaged with the Pakistani state, ensuring Pakistan that it had friends in the international community. A delegation of Chinese journalists, who had been visiting the war fronts (Punjab, Kashmir) for the previous two weeks, returned to Karachi on Nov 30. The Karachi Union of Journalists (KUJ) gave a reception in their honour at the Karachi Press Club. Speaking on the occasion, the leader of the group, Chang Chin-chin, said the struggle of the Pakistani nation was the struggle of the Chinese people. He said that with solid and consistent support, imperialist and neo-colonialist powers would be wiped out.

Make no mistake: it was not just Asian opinion-makers who held that view. A Labourite, George Jeger, too was in consonance with them. In the first week of December, leading a British Parliamentarians’ mission, he visited different parts of Pakistan to understand the issues that triggered off the war with India, and its ramifications. On Dec 5, he attended an event organised by the Present and Past Parliamentarians’ Association of Pakistan for the visiting British delegation. In his interaction with his hosts, Mr Jeger said he was convinced that Pakistan had no territorial ambitions and it only wished to build itself up economically. He added: “You are a nation engaged in increasing productivity effectively not through aggressive acts on neighbours, but by utilising your own resources.” Didn’t he sound like Jeremy Corbyn?

Published in Dawn, November 30th, 2015