KARACHI, Aug 28: After his election as Prime Minister, Shaukat Aziz, told the parliament that he would make Pakistan a true welfare state with the vision of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah.
His vision of "the true welfare state" may have to be spelt out so that the people can understand and be motivated by it. The vision would also have to be different from those role models which have become outdated with the march of events. The Western concept of welfare state has been replaced by "the least government is the best government". The market is now the engine of economic growth and state intervention in removing income disparities between households, districts and provinces is more of a myth than reality.
But the failure of one brand of welfare state or that of socialism should not deter policy makers from pursuing egalitarian causes and new ways to achieve them.
As far back as mid-1945, the Economic Planning Committee of the All India Muslim League rejected the welfare state model developed by the United Kingdom. The Committee said that great Britain is trying to perfect a system of social security through unemployment allowances. The system implies enforced idleness. Unemployment benefit is not productive use and it is no remedy to replace demand for work by demand by maintenance. Nor can social order be maintained for long under such a process. Prophetic words!
In a book on "Quaid-i-Azam's Unrealized Dreams", the writer Khalid Shamsul Hasan, quotes the committee report that gives Indian Muslim League's vision of national economic reconstruction. It says: "The right to work, adequately remunerated and appropriate to the mental and physical capacity, training or aptitude should be guaranteed to modern man. No country, which utilizes the people's power to work need to be poor.
"The organization of society should be such as to enable those who are willing to work and anxious to work to find employment and the responsibility of the state is to take measures for this is the overriding motive of policy," the report adds.
Both the welfare state and the socialism of Russian and Chinese brand have given way to the supremacy of the market. And now, says a former Chairman of ICI Munnwar Hamid "capitalism is under strain because it is producing poverty." Prime minister Shaukat Aziz would have to find ways to make the state and the market work to create full employment and reduce poverty.
The problem is not peculiar to Pakistan as China, the US, the UK and other developed states are finding social security system unsustainable with growing financial constraints.
In Pakistan, much of unemployment and poverty can be explained by the fact that national assets are highly skewed specially in agriculture. There is need to provide the poor access to agricultural lands through rapid distribution of all state lands. Perhaps, Venezuela offers some useful lessons. It is empowering the poor to improve their livelihood by themselves and is opting for independent path of economic reconstruction. Pakistan also needs to harness democratic values in the service of social justice.
No doubt, the district governments are a step in the right direction in the creation of welfare-oriented state but these are weak, lack political, administrative and financial autonomy, without which they cannot progress. Devolution cannot be a success without involvement of the local communities in social and physical development. In fact the reforms for transparent and good governance that the new prime minister promises should start from district and provincial governments, which matter most in national building.