THERE is a surreal quality to the economic advice - from the likes of such accredited experts as Mr Moeen Qureshi and Mr Shahid Javed Burki - with which Pakistan's military rulers are being bombarded. Not that the prescriptions being offered are wrong.

But their brilliance notwithstanding, they are a bit like wrestling or body-building tips to a sick man on a hospital bed - someone who can't digest any food being told that if he would only jump out of bed at the crack of dawn, take six raw eggs on his empty stomach and go for a six-mile run he should soon be in the ring battling with the best.

This government is awash on a sea of simplicities. It lacks an agenda or even a sense of direction. What its competence has been over the last twelve months is now clear even to its most committed votaries. Worse than any economic recession is the mental depression in which the nation is trapped. Pakistan is not starving. It doesn't lack food or other necessities. Yet a pall of gloom hangs over it, attributable directly to the performance we are seeing: a great deal of coming and going related to no definable purpose.

As I write these lines, what are the newspaper headlines in front of me? "Cabinet decides to reduce fiscal deficit"... "Corruption in PIA, CAA to end soon"... "Musharraf orders speedy privatization". Bracing stuff. Surely in the spin factories of the government someone has a great sense of humour. What do the times require and what is the government delivering? "Cabinet decides to reduce fiscal deficit". The people of Pakistan should surely take heart from this rousing piece of news.

Buffeted by bad leadership, the people of Pakistan held fast to one last illusion: that the military was the last line of national defence. As the mess of government worsens only the battered wreck of this illusion remains. This may be the most vivid symbol of the failure of leadership we are seeing: the last holy cow laid to rest. "Cabinet decides to reduce fiscal deficit": this is the Pakistani version of evoking the spirit of Dunkirk.

There was a time when the initials ISI inspired a sense of awe and dread. A corps commanders' conference was akin to an assembly of the minor gods. Alas, no more. The mystique that not long ago had the nation in its thrall is lost, perhaps irrevocably. Familiarity plus muddled performance have bred indifference. (The word contempt I dare not use.) More than the necessity of reviving the economy, or reducing the fiscal deficit, Pakistan needs to manufacture a fresh set of illusions. For stripped of illusions, as Pakistan presently is, a country is naked.

Anyhow, this latest devaluation is true to type. We seem to have perfected the ability of devaluing the things we touch. Take our nuclear capacity. Between Dr A. Q. Khan's relentless public posturing and the monuments raised to Chaghi all over the country it has been turned into an object of fun. Except in a negative sense, who is impressed by it? We ourselves of course, but who else? Accountability, democracy, even Islamization: all concepts devalued at our hands. As if all this was not enough, we have now succeeded in nailing the last illusion to the mast.

Pakistan's problem is not 'what is to be done'? By and large we know the answer to this: wise government, the rule of law, administrative reform, institution-building, political stability and then, in the climate so engendered, long-term steps for debt retirement and economic growth. I have rattled off these cliches without consulting Adam Smith or Alan Greenspan. The litany of these great ideas is familiar and on the lips of every half-baked prophet of national reform and revival. The problem is 'who is to do the doing'? Who is to eat the raw eggs and run the six-mile run in order to be fit for the ring?

But first let us at least straighten out the tangled strings of national logic. A mule cannot produce offspring, not in a thousand years. A cockerel cannot lay eggs, not even with genetic engineering. The military is no solution to Pakistan's disease of the spirit (for it is a disease of the spirit before anything else), never was, never will be. The Pakistan army will readily hurl itself into battle should the necessity so arise. It can stop the enemy at the gates. Its young officers and men can compare with the best anywhere else. All this it can do ably and more. But exercising national leadership is a different thing. The army could not do this in better times. How can it perform this task in a rougher climate with the country's problems infinitely more intractable and complicated?

Another thing to get straight. A country has to put its political house in order before it can arrive at the frontiers of economic success. The cart cannot be put before the horse. If we fail to solve our political muddle, if we fail to discover the holy grail of political stability, we are doomed to go around in circles, forever ambitious, forever thwarted in our endeavours.

It is a strange national psyche which thinks that the problems facing Pakistan can be tackled in isolation from each other. Afghanistan, the presence of Afghan refugees on Pakistani soil, the fighting in Kashmir, the strident calls for jihad, the plastic shoppers clogging our drains and water channels, the huge open-air garbage dump outside Islamabad on the Kashmir Highway, the endemic corruption of everyday life in Pakistan, the traffic muddle on our roads, the untidiness of our airports, the unruliness to be witnessed whenever a major sporting event takes place: all these are inter-connected issues in that they portray a society at war with itself, a society unable to come to grips with either simple problems or complicated ones.

If the genius of Pakistan cannot overcome the challenge of the plastic shopper, if the capital of Pakistan (the reputed Beautiful City) does not know how to dispose of its garbage, how on earth do we expect our country to reach for the stars? In wars big or small, the principles of war remain the same. In managing large or small organizations, the principles of management remain the same. A leadership or a governing class which cannot master small problems, is unlikely to get the better of bigger ones. A national aesthetic helpless before the onslaught of the plastic shopper is unlikely to be hit by the absurdity of bankrupt means being put to the service of grandiose ends.

But all this is to state the obvious. If military rule is no answer to anything, where do we go from here? Lectures alone will not loosen the grip of military rule and the military on its own is unlikely to see the light and relinquish political power. What are we then in for? The signs are not propitious: an extended stalemate, the reinforcing of failure, doggedness turning to obstinacy, the nation's spirit exposed to the wind and the elements. Bleak winters, more lost years: in all, a depressing prospect.

Yet in this country fools abound who say we should sing of positive things. As if the mere singing, the mere rearranging of dismal news, will alter the balance of reality.

Of course we are not a meltdown state. Of course we are not headed the way of Gorbachev's Russia. Or, worse, the death and destruction of Afghanistan. We have resilience and talent. We grow our own food (or at least have begun to). If for fifty years we have survived incompetent and corrupt government, there is something to be said for our powers of endurance.

But the question remains. Why cannot we put our affairs in order? For this, no miracles are required, only a measure of sound and honest government. Once we have this the economic pundits can take over. But if even this bare minimum eludes us then it is time to call in the astrologers and soothsayers. What have we done, what sins committed, to so earn the implacable wrath of the heavens?