THE country’s economic managers are gearing up to sell yet another basic utility provider, even though the ink has not dried on the agreement through which the Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation was sold to a German-Saudi conglomerate. Next in line is the coveted Pakistan Telecommunications Company Limited (PTCL), which, unlike KESC, is not suffering from considerable losses. Clearly the logic of privatization has little to do with whether any particular state enterprise is making a profit or loss. It seems that the government is in a rush to get rid of as many public assets as possible.

It would not be accurate to ascribe the astounding urgency of the privatization rollercoaster to any one factor. On the one hand there is the obvious pressure of Pakistan’s financiers, all of whom are committed to the radical orthodoxy of neo-liberal economics. All around the world the same financiers that back the present government have made similarly dramatic demands of other third world governments and, for the most part, have been successful in getting the required results. But the pressure of the international financial oligarchies would be considerably less effective if our economic managers were not willing accomplices to privatizing everything under the sun (like economic managers in other third world countries). Since the late 1980s when neo-liberalism started to make real headway in the country, successive Pakistani governments have acquiesced to the pressure to divest assets.

The economic arguments for privatization still do not cut it. There are claims made that the totally ad hoc manner in which state assets were sold in the former socialist states has been beneficial to those economies as a whole. There is, as yet, no evidence to prove this fact. Some of the economies of Eastern Europe and Central Asia have contracted by as much as 25 per cent, while in virtually all of them social and economic conditions have deteriorated markedly for the majority of the population. Popular protest has erupted in Latin America in recent years because of the intense polarization that has been caused by neo-liberal orthodoxy, including privatization. In Bolivia for example, mass unrest was triggered by attempts to privatize water in the city of Cochabamba.

Meanwhile, the privatization ‘revolution’ continues largely unabated in Pakistan. It is not that the working people of the country are not feeling its effects. Among other things, hundreds of private factories have shut down after being privatized, thereby rendering tens of thousands of workers jobless. It is no coincidence that the prices of many privatized basic utilities as well as consumer durables have shot up over the past few years. The lack of organized resistance to the privatization rollercoaster has more to do with the dismal state of politics in the country rather than popular sentiment.

It is a sad reflection on those political parties – particularly those in the opposition – who purport to be committed to ordinary Pakistanis’ welfare, that they have not opposed the clearly contradictory policy of privatization. It was only after the bidding of KESC that some opposition members in the Senate took the issue up. Even though PTCL workers across the country are currently engaged in an intensive protest campaign, no opposition party has bothered to dispute the government’s policy on the matter.

The Oil and Gas Development Corporation Limited (OGDCL) is next, yet another profitable state enterprise being sold for reasons that cannot have anything to do with the long-term benefit of the people. Initial feasibility studies for the privatization of the Water and Sanitation Agency (WASA) in Lahore have been completed that confirm that prices can be expected to multiply manifold following privatization.

At the heart of this debate (assuming there is one) is the issue of the state’s responsibility to the ordinary Pakistani. Once the provision of services such as electricity, water, telecommunications and the like become the exclusive preserve of the private sector, it can and should be expected that the profit margin will be the major determinant of where, how much and at what price these services will be provided. Needless to say, in a country such as this one where the purchasing power of working people is being eroded on a daily basis, it is mere conjecture that privatization will be beneficial. Even if one were to agree with the highly dubitable assumption that privatization leads to an improvement in the quality of services, what good will improved services do for working people if they simply cannot afford them?

The mainstream political parties’ unwillingness to challenge the logic of privatization. These parties representing the local propertied classes have never been nationalistic in economic terms. The army –-as the country’s most powerful corporate interest-– benefits considerably from its monopoly on state affairs and finds its interests opposed to structural changes in the relationship between Pakistan’s economy and that of the industrialized core. So while the neo-liberal onslaught has been almost universal, in Pakistan it has been welcomed with aplomb by virtually all of the prominent political entities. This includes the religious right that has toed the neo-liberal line obediently since its induction into government almost three years ago.

It may therefore be futile to expect the government to overturn its favourite policy because it should. It is up to the workers in the targeted enterprises and to the rest of the public likely to be affected by privatization to compel the government to back down. There are only so many more failed privatizations that this country can bear.