IN the last few years, as the economy has continued to regress, the disenchantment with the prevailing political structure has generated a vigorous demand for political change as a means of reversing the economic free-fall and halting public misery.

This demand has been sparked off most prominently by massive public meetings held by Imran Khan’s Tehrik-i-Insaaf. But the demand has been vociferously echoed in meetings held by other political parties, including the PML-N, JUI -F, MQM and the ANP.

The PPP — supposedly with the largest mass support — has been unable to respond for various reasons. Firstly, it has been too preoccupied with litigation in the higher judiciary. Secondly, its skirmishes with the military along with security concerns have been a distraction. Finally, the dismal performance of the economy under its watch all but robs it of the ability to articulate a credible response to the growing and irresistible demand for change.

Its contrived strategy has been to hold the majority in parliament until it is ready to face the new election, with the mantle of victimhood as its only fig leaf. Whether it will get the breathing space it needs for survival depends on a number of imponderables. Soothsayers have been predicting a political calamity in the Ides of March. Hopefully, they will be proved wrong. The 20th Amendment may help defer its day of reckoning, but, not for long.

However, both the economic and political critiques of the current dispensation lack clarity and precision in their indictment of the current regime and do not provide credible alternatives, the rush to Imran Khan’s bandwagon notwithstanding. Even so, the mainstream political parties, long in denial of such thorny issues as the uncontrollable insurgency in Balochistan and the continued lack of transparency in the role of the ‘agencies’ in the subversion of the political process, are now being forced to take cognisance of their failure to protect human rights, especially of the poor and vulnerable.

Recent economic critiques, some by those who have played a prominent role in policymaking in the past, have stressed the need for change not so much in the content of economic policies — on that there is a presumed consensus — but on the manner in which the policies are implemented and the ‘economic team’ chosen to implement them. In fact, there is considerable scope for sharper delineation of economic policies — both strategic and tactical —which lie at the heart of the many political issues that bedevil the nation.

One of the most pivotal policy choices that needs to be more deliberatively made is the imperative of a change from ‘the security state’ to ‘a welfare state’, even though the task seems formidable. There is, however, a difference between populist rhetoric and careful crafting of a welfare agenda achievable within the parameters of realpolitik, although the latter is sometimes used as an excuse for protecting the status quo.

There is no doubt, however, that without some basic changes in economic policies, the slogan of change sounds hollow to the poor and deprived. Although the slogan ‘welfare state’ is getting rhetorical currency (witness Maulana Fazlur Rehman’s latest foray into populism and Imran Khan’s frequent allusion to the Swedish model), there is no clear agreement on the contours of the underlying social policy which differentiates it from the currently ruling paradigm of the security state.

Instead of being fixated on macroeconomic stabilisation, reducing the fiscal deficit and reducing government borrowing, the debate needs to focus on the prioritisation of different components of public expenditures and the means for financing them. The unravelling of the ‘security state’ since 9/11 — more particularly in the aftermath of the Abbottabad debacle — has revealed its fragility and unsustainability in the face of weakening support from and close alliance with a superpower itself caught in a declining trajectory.

The chase of strategic alliance and depth and the quest of geopolitical rent-seeking on which Pakistan had depended for so long have become a mirage. The security state was sustained by the overarching role of the military in the country’s polity which seems to have been eroded after Musharraf’s ouster in 2008, but it could stage a comeback if politicians are unable to keep their house in order.

The continued slide in the economy for more than half a decade, has made it even more difficult to meet the military’s burgeoning demand for resources. The trade-off between defence and civilian expenditures — the guns vs butter conundrum — is getting unbearably onerous and compelling. The time to bite the bullet for the military rather than the people at large — the favoured target of the IMF protagonists — has come and has to be faced squarely now.

Interestingly, it is the COAS, who has raised the issue by trying to show the military’s share in the budget as rather small. The issue can only be decided by a detailed examination of the military’s budget in the context of other national priorities, which the politicians have been clamouring for and the military has been resisting for years.

One can only hope that these serious issues will not be lost in the cacophony of accusations and counter-accusations by rival political parties in the prelude to the coming elections which is expected to reach a crescendo soon. The political class has to realise, once and for all, that unless the basic and underlying issues constraining our economy are addressed seriously, the sword of Damocles that it so dreads will continue to hang over its head.

The writer is a former professor of economics at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.

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