An incredible claim is now made at the highest level that there would be healthcare and clean water for all by 2007!
The question begging an answer is whose standard of living and health care for whom?
And the ground reality is that health and education is increasingly being pushed onto the private sector, with consequent escalation in their price. There is inflation, increase in the cost of living, burgeoning unemployment and an unprecedented rise in the number of beggars.
Many therefore feel justified in taking official claims with a pinch of salt. Also increasingly visible are deteriorating water and power situation in urban areas, and sick and failing industries, besides high cost of doing business.
One wonders, therefore, whether they have a line of action as regards socio-economic policies aimed at the common man’s uplift at all and misgivings arise in the people’s mind about their real priorities.
Granted their compulsion that too much of their time and attention has to go in planning to keep one up on their political opponents, they still need to make up their mind about the direction they want the country to take.
Consider the following: Though many new parks are being made, entry fee has been imposed on many old ones. Even the former city government, with an otherwise good record, thought it fit to demolish a water reservoir to make way for a park in the hills of North Nazimabad! Named Daman-e-Koh, it would be their answer to the Islamabad resort of the same name!
Recurrent power breakdowns are making citizens’ life miserable, but little has been done to bring about the badly needed improvements and up-gradation of the power network. Cynics point to the increasing use of private generators and UPS [Uninterrupted Power Supply] industry—and the government can perhaps make the dubious claim that these industries are ‘booming!’
Water shortage in many city areas remains endemic. But exorbitant water taxes are imposed, on the recommendations of international financial institutions. Many government agencies, besides the city government, the KPT and the DHA are going for amusement centres, in addition to ‘food streets,’ of which there is no shortage even without official patronage.
One wonders why these organizations do not attend to setting up playgrounds and other sports facilities, as well as the badly lacking libraries and reading rooms, to provide healthy outlets to the youth. Institutions of education and research, science and culture are needed to facilitate enabling conditions for development of human resources.
Entertainment facilities are no big deal; they would follow of their own accord once the economy takes off in the right direction. For now, more essential is the creation of jobs, and skill enhancement facilities to enhance their employability.
For the economy to take off, good infrastructure is essential. How a government that is fast abdicating its responsibility with regard to education and health, could provide health care for all by 2007 is beyond imagination!
Similar is the case of public transport. For years there has been talk, without results, of mass transit system for the city. When they talk of improving the transport system, the officials invariably come around to talk of running ‘air-conditioned’ buses, though what the people need is not air-conditioned buses but simply efficient and reasonably comfortable buses, which would take them to their destination without much hassle, at moderate cost, and which are not at the mercy of an unscrupulous transport mafia given to excessive profiteering.
Suspicion for lack of action naturally falls, therefore, on people with vested interest in maintaining the status quo!
Similarly, even after spending hundreds of millions of rupees on feasibility studies, meetings and seminars, the actual KCR revival project languishes, and the KCR baby is tossed from one organization to another, while roads for VIP use are sanctioned immediately. One such road is the ‘alternate route’ from the airport to the city to ‘facilitate’ VIP movement, ‘without hindrance to the public.’
One wonders whether it is in consideration of public convenience or the safety and convenience of the VIPs that the project was sanctioned so promptly after it was conceived by some wise man in the bureaucratic hierarchy!
Housing policies have already resulted in the price of residential plots and housing to skyrocket to a level where an ordinary citizen who does not already own some property can only dream about a house of his own. Master plans have not been strictly followed in the past, and land control vests in Karachi with a number of agencies, which has compounded the problem.
Now, a new Master Plan is to be prepared at a cost of about Rs58 million, but it remains to be seen whether it is implemented strictly. The Defence Housing Authority, one of the housing society-turned-Authority levies hefty charges for associate membership before one can own a property in its areas of jurisdiction. They have also slapped massive, arbitrary development charges in certain areas under their jurisdiction, which results in serious escalation in prices of real estate!
The main article of faith of the governing elite in the economic realm continues to be blind adherence to IFIs ’ prescriptions. Old habits die hard, and no crutches are worse than mental crutches.
Hence, the claimed ‘reduced dependence’ on them notwithstanding, policy of blind privatization and deregulation continues to be applied to profitable public sector organizations, irrespective of whether there are private groups within the country capable of managing these huge organizations of strategic value.
Nor do the rulers seem overly worried about the laying off, ultimately, of workers in large numbers from privatized Organizations, adding to the army of unemployed!
The government seems prepared to resort to force, if necessary, to curb workers’ opposition to privatization of strategic public sector Organizations. Turning over large organizations in the service sector, like the Railways, or PTCL or the ports to the private sector is bound to make these services much more expensive. The handing them over to the private sector, and that, too, to foreigners, is hardly advisable. In the United States, there has been a hue and cry even over the bid to purchase a private oil company, Unocal, by the Chinese!
With privatization would come an increase in inequality. The private sector usually employs less people. As globalization goes apace, big multinationals worldwide employ fewer people but make more profit. They pay a few individuals more, and reap far higher overall profits, but often turn external costs over to society. An increase in inequality usually translates into more social problems, enhanced corruption and more crime.
If we take a leaf out of principles of management, policies have to be judged by their outcome. Tall claims notwithstanding, we are reminded of reality now and again when disasters like the Ghotki train crash and frequent power breakdowns affecting half of Karachi jolt us.
The wizards need to come out of their world of make-believe, in which Pakistan has already turned into an ‘Asian tiger!’
The fact is that while efforts are made to improve organizations of strategic importance through better management and better technology where necessary, they should best be kept firmly in the public sector. Even in the UK, privatization of the Railways was not a success.
As far as Pakistan Railways is concerned, the first requirement for improved system is the dualization of the main Railway line all the way to Peshawar, and quadrupling of the track in the busier sections. Short of this, its problems will remain, since passenger and freight traffic on the PR has increased several-fold since 1947, but there has been little addition to track length.
‘Export led growth’ based narrowly on textiles has failed to lift the economy out of stagnation. Diversification of industry, so essential in the post-WTO era is nowhere in sight. Before the leap to ‘integrate’ the national economy with world economy is made, its different sectors must first be integrated with one another in a symbiotic relationship.
Goods and services must be generated within the economy, to take care of domestic requirements. Need it be emphasized that not doing so would be suicidal at the nascent stage? Foreign investment, if any, must be made to serve Pakistan’s economy, instead of making Pakistani market serve foreign investors!