The people of Pakistan are beaten by frightening inflation and rising prices, and now the terror attacks on the mosques and Milad processions. Obviously, there is sadness and discomfort in the air. The poor are trying to cling on to any last piece of hope and for that they are desperately trying to find any reason and light whatsoever they can find

1. The quick fix
Kashif Mateen Ansari Published October 25, 2023
“The people of Pakistan are beaten by frightening inflation and
rising prices, and now the terror attacks on the mosques and Milad
processions. Obviously, there is sadness and discomfort in the air.
The poor are trying to cling on to any last piece of hope and for that
they are desperately trying to find any reason and light whatsoever
they can find”.
Cost of living crisis has hit every household, and we need to fix
things. The problem with fixing things is that when it comes to
national issues there aren’t any quick fixes. As John F Kennedy said,
“All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days.
Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, not in the life
of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this
planet. But let us begin.” So, the point is to stop peddling any quick
fixes rather look at the long term and chart a plan and stick to it.
In this piece there will not be any quick fixes for the power sector or the economy as the readers would
have had their fill from increasing the cheaper fuel mix to nationalization of IPPs (Independent Power
Producers). Some easier said than done and others outright absurd and fictitious.
The hard work must start from retrospection as to what went wrong in every sector and how that can be
fixed. Here the fixation is not on something quick rather something that is meaningful, and the good
impact would last at least a few generations.
“We often speak about South Korea that made use of our five-year development plan and rose to heights
of economic success, I am not sure whether that is true or not, but I surely know that we have had world
class economists like Dr Mehboob ul Haq working for us and writing plans for our economy. Then why we
are where we are? Is it lack of plans or lack of implementation? I think it is lack of sincere implementation
that is at the heart of our malaise, to put it mildly by borrowing JFK’s words, “This country cannot afford
to be materially rich and spiritually poor.”
Unfortunately, we have become spiritually poor, where corruption and insincerity are rewarded, and good
work goes unnoticed. Is the corrupt at fault alone or something else has broken the system? Let’s make a

2. quick check, what do we value most in our society, knowledge, community service and honesty or money,
material wealth, big houses and large vehicles.
If the answer is that we see common men respecting wealth and material belongings as opposed to
knowledge and good work then the whole society is to blame, because as it is said that “A nation reveals
itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.”
Let’s go back to history to see when nations faced dilemmas like us either in the shape of economic
hardship or war how they got themselves out of that quagmire.
The strategy appears to have a few pillars:
First and foremost is the attitude towards the challenge as attitude is a little thing that makes a big
difference. We must change the national attitude towards these problems by helping the people realize
that the only way out of this mess is to fight and never give up.
It will be a long walk to success but surely it is worth it. China rallied under Chairman Mao and the famous
Great March started the revolution, we must remember that it was a long way to success and full of
sacrifices.
The second important pillar is complete transparency, the government and the leaders must be absolutely
honest in defining the problems and outlining the answers to those. We need leaders that are blunt when
it comes to telling the truth. This also means embracing the solutions that are difficult but necessary.
This has worked for nations and companies alike, General Motors, one of the icons of the automobile
industry declared bankruptcy and reorganized itself and it worked for it. (PIA, other SOEs, Discos, anybody
listening?)
Third pillar is to Innovate, we must reinvent our industry and exports in the light of new technology and
requirement of new services that have been made possible due to information technology.
Government must support innovation through policy frameworks and enabling environment. We must
unleash the creative potential of the common person. That would not need billions of dollars of incentives
and bailout packages that our traditional businesses have been accustomed to rather it might need minor
tweaks in the environment, making it easy for a young person or their groups to get together and provide
services globally. In the form of technology hubs, better training, soft loans and these would be small loans,
tax incentives, etc.
Churchill said, “All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom,
justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.”
Same is the case for us, we need simple things, but these are values to be upheld, that include Justice,
Honor, Transparency, Equity and respect for common man.
Imam Ghazali wrote many books and one of them is “Counsel for Kings”; its translation is published by
Durham University of United Kingdom, (original name is Nasihat ul Muluk). He noted a quotation of Hazrat
Ali “al-mulk yabqa ma’al-kufr wala yabqu ma’a zulm” “Nations do not collapse because of kufr, they
collapse because of injustice.”

3. So, while we see our country sleepwalking into a social and economic abyss, it is high time that we remind
ourselves and our leaders to do justice in all walks of life, before it becomes too late for any salvation.
This would include reducing the wasteful expenditure on protocols and uncontrolled spending on the
Superior Servants of the bureaucracy of all shades. This would also mean to look at indirect taxes from the
point of view of an ordinary man who must pay sales tax on most of the items of his grocery that would
consume all his income whereas the rich pay the same on a miniscule percentage of their total wealth.
Further the total taxation for the rich is lower than the comparable burden on the poor, this is injustice.
Billions are owed by the government departments to the Discos and this consumption is further increased
by the well healed techno’s who have made a mess of the energy sector, yet they get free electricity and
gas, whereas the burden is shared by the poor, this is injustice.
Thieves get free electricity and one-third of the cost that an ordinary person pays towards his bills
comprises of the cost of this theft and inefficiency, this is injustice.
The rich make use of many facilities including the well-paved roads and underpasses and overheads, well
suited for their SUVs and cars but they pay too little to use these facilities thus burdening the already dying
poor, this is injustice.
The list could go on and would fill quite many pages, but it is not required that someone list all these
injustices for them to be corrected. For any correction only adherence to the basic values is sufficient.
We don’t need simplistic answers for complex economic problems, these would be at least as complex
and technical in detail as the problems are, but we need simple values to guide the complex processes
that need to be undertaken.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
KASHIF MATEEN ANSARI
The writer is CEO of a wind power project and can be reached at kashifmateenansari@post.harvard.edu