A grand consensus

The Geneva Conference is over. Multi billion dollars’ worth pledges, promises and commitments by the global community have been made to address the climate disaster of last summer. The COAS has visited Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. News of economic support to Pakistan at this critical juncture is about to break. The IMF continues to be engaged. We can safely say that the immediate threat of economic default has been averted but a tough and bumpy road lies ahead.

The current economic meltdown should serve as a wakeup call for all stakeholders (translation: power elites) to discuss and decide the economic direction of the country as the status quo will soon land the country into a big quagmire with unimaginable consequences.

The old habits of the rentier state are not sustainable. The national security state paradigm has led us to oblivion, and the economic, social, cultural and political policies and the foreign policies of our elite have brought us closer to extinction as a state and society.

As the political leaders of the coalition government and the new military leadership come home, the writing on the wall says: either reform or get ready to be destroyed.

Pakistan must move to a grand consensus. Every policy is up for debate as we can’t wait for this consensus to emerge from the next elections. The country needs to reach a consensus on major policy issues. Elections without this Grand Consensus will lead us into an unknown planet of disaster and doom.

The current coalition government has a bigger responsibility to initiate the dialogue process and engage with every section of society. Indeed, the media, both the old and the new one, has to play its part to initiate and spearhead the dialogue process to reach a Grand Consensus on the major issues facing our country today.

All policies are interlinked so a change in one sector alone can’t succeed until it is carried out in all. Entire budget allocations need to be revisited and reviewed. Business as usual is not sustainable. The post 18th Amendment engineering of recreation of more than a dozen ministries and divisions under new fancy names needs to come to an end as it has increased our administrative costs exponentially rather than cutting it down and has killed the very purpose of devolution.

The natural calamity that hit us last summer won’t be addressed just by throwing some borrowed money at the problem. The way global warming is affecting the planet, especially our region, we expect a repeat of the same or worse this and coming years. We need a change in building codes, construction of infrastructure, agriculture, agricultural research, irrigation, water conservation, transport, and health policies to mitigate future disasters.

Also, we must understand that the post disaster 4RF won’t succeed if it is not implemented through the empowered local government system. Indeed, LGs need capacity building but while transferring and increasing the share of the provinces through the 18th Amendment, we did not wait for the capacity building of the provincial governments.

We also need to understand that we can’t hold such Geneva-type moots all the time. At the same time, we need to review our policies that have turned the food basket of the region into an importer of food items.

The mushroom growth of the real-estate sector, the exponential and obscene growth of horizontal housing has not only made us dependent on the import of the wheat and cotton we used to export but turned it into the largest blackhole of black money. Projects like RUDA are turning the entire country into brown cemented jungles. Sugar cartels have not only destroyed our cotton belts but taken the country hostage.

As we learn to live in the new arena, we can’t survive with the higher population growth and lower investment in our peoples’ health and education.

Without defeating religious extremism and terrorism, which has surged after Afghanistan was taken over by the Afghan Taliban, we should simply forget about the future of tourism and foreign direct investments.

All this seems a tall order, but we would need to make big and bold decisions if we want to survive; otherwise, the hopelessness that is driving out the human and financial capital out of the country will leave the country into a barren land with no hope for the future.

Can our leadership rise to the occasion and initiate a series of dialogue on all big-ticket items to create a Grand Consensus to take the country out of its current predicament?

Pakistan is either on the verge of a great take-off or we are doomed for good.

The writer is a journalist. He tweets @murtazasolangi and can be reached at: murtazasolangi@gmail.com