Where are we headed?

We now have in office an elected government. There may be debate on how strong or effective it is, but the fact is that governments are intended to serve people and their nations. There is no evidence that the current government, led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in the centre, is achieving this objective and the same holds true for each of the four provincial governments.

In the first place, there appears to be a complete absence of any kind of policy planning. Indeed, this has been the story of Pakistan, decade after decade, since it was created in 1947. At an average of every 20 years, a new education policy is put in place. This is not the right way to take forward education, or for that matter anything else, on an incline, which will lead to success and achievements in that field.

A consistent policy is required to reach any destination. Wavering along a path which twists and turns in various directions according to the whims and fancies of the current government simply diverts from this. At the present moment, we have a situation where at least half of the population is functionally illiterate and perhaps a far larger percentage than that is barely able to write a simple sentence in any language. This ability is expected of a grade 5 student, according to international educational standards.

We also have other distortions.

Incredibly, Pakistan Studies and Islamiat are compulsory subjects – not just at the school level but beyond this and into professional education. It is completely unclear why an IT or medical student should be required to study these topics. Surely knowledge on the history of Pakistan can be gained through other courses and Islamiat, of course, is a subject that can be imparted in homes and, if the family chooses, through tutors. This is the pattern in other Muslim countries, including Turkiye and the Arab states. They do not see it necessary to make such subjects compulsory even at the graduate level.

There are also many other issues that need to be settled as far as policies go. Our biggest problem at the current time is the economy of the country and how it is to be set right. Some short-term measures in the right direction have been taken, notably in Punjab under Mariam Nawaz Sharif. But it is uncertain if these measures are intended to help the leader and increase the political weight of the PML-N or if they are truly intended to bring about long-term change.

It is extraordinary that at the present time, in a situation of crisis, Pakistan lacks a person with a macroeconomic base of knowledge in its team at the centre. The current finance minister Muhammad Aurangzeb may be a good, hard-working and knowledgeable person, but the reality is that he is a banker and not an economist. The two fields are not connected and a banker cannot really lay out the macroeconomic policy of a nation.

There is talk that a consultant may be hired for the purpose of setting out the macro direction of the country as far as economics goes and determine why so many mishaps take place. But this is obviously not the ideal situation. We need a longer-term fix and we need a set of policies in virtually every sphere of life which can continue for decades so that they can in the end yield results.

The issue is highlighted by the disaster concerning the wheat crop. The previous caretaker government, which had no business making policy decisions, chose to import wheat at a time when it was known there would be a bumper crop.

The result has been a disaster for the agriculture sector – and notably for smaller farmers. While truckloads of wheat, from Ukraine and other countries, arrived at ports and were stored at warehouses, the yield from local farms has not been picked up even now, and farmers are not being given the support price promised to them months ago. This means wheat will be destroyed without being collected and properly stored. We cannot move forward when such steps are the norm.

We need policies that can be taken forward step by step in healthcare, employment, labour and various other areas. As far as labour goes, there is an urgent need to provide skilled workers in all fields to encourage foreign investors to bring their work to Pakistan.

Pakistan has already lost out in the carpet trade since it used children, in violation of its own law, to weave carpets with their small nimble fingers tying the smallest knots. These children were deprived of education and forced to work in conditions that sometimes left them with long-term physical defects. The world retaliated by refusing to pick up Pakistan’s carpets and here we lost another means of revenue. The situation was saved to some degree as far as footballs and the other equipment from Pakistan go. But a far more effective strategy and tactic is needed to make sure we are clear where we are headed and how we are achieving this. A team leader in place to lead the operation would be extremely useful.

We can see in India how this has been achieved and how the country continues to grow despite the fascist government of Narendra Modi, who is likely to be elected again for the third time. But the slogan ‘Rising India’, used by the Modi government is believed in by many Indians, and the world too seems to see India as an economy that is moving forward and offering a safe place for investment and trade as a partner with a huge population and with plenty of skill, notably through the Indian Institutes of Technology, or IITs, created very soon after the inception of the country through the vision of Jawaharlal Nehru.

We can learn from India in other areas too. This includes sport, nursing, hospital care, tourism and so many other areas. There is no harm in acquiring knowledge wherever it can be found. Bangladesh is another place from where we can pick up ideas that can help us shape our policies. The real challenge is to keep these policies in place over many years and carry them forward from one government to the next. Currently, policies keep changing with each change in the government and if governments are unable to last even the five years for which they were elected, we will have only more mayhem and less ability to move ahead and catch up with our neighbours as a country with a future and which is respected by the world.

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor. She can be reached at:

kamilahyat@hotmail.com