War on error

Article No. 1 - UNDERSTANDING ERROR

Written for The News

Everything political or geo political impacts everything economic, which in turn has an impact on pretty much everything else. To err is human and to institutionalize the erroneous governance is Pakistan’s national leadership like, political and non-political both. There appears one consistent policy, which is to NOT have a consistent policy, specially an economic policy. There is a glorious history of abundant and at times fatal errors in the space of political economy in Pakistan. This series of columns will attempt to highlight errors past and present and to somehow shed light on how these errors can be avoided, specially the unforced ones.

With or without Osama, War on Terror as we know now is an elusive, expensive and uphill task;War on Error however shouldn’t be one. A logical conclusion hence – should be – that terror cannot be addressed without addressing first the ‘error’ that precedes it. Economically deprived and those stricken by the inequities of a struggling society will continue to fuel the fires of radical and extreme behaviors. And such behaviors will continue to have human and economic cost attached that the country can ill afford. One grave and repeatedly made error is failing to position national economic interests before the national security concerns. Simple logic being that if the former is not sorted, it will continue to weaken the latter, one doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure this out.

The hallmark of all the political and military regimes has been that they say one thing and do quite the other. In the run up to the national budget session the President met with leading businessmen and emphasized the need for a Charter of Economy, commendable but unfortunately rhetorical. It is the lack of will and not the lack of ideas that is hampering the trust of business leadership in the government. It is well known what happened to the last popular charter which was supposed to redefine the political space of the country.

Politically motivated senseless rhetoric, which at times is downright belligerent and lacking character, is what all the strategy and promises and political charters shared over 3 years ago have boiled down to. Leadership cannot get easier, irresponsible or delusional; get dressed, get media managers active, arrange protocol and land up at any TV channel, go on air on any current affairs TV show in the evening and share rhetoric, lots of it.

Leadership today appears to be erring as badly as the leaderships of the past. Promising what it can’t deliver and rolling out economic plans it knows will never work. Chaotic mismanagement and the decay that besets the country today did not happen overnight, nor will it go away as quickly. One well meaning economic wiz said something which aptly projects the right picture, “Despite the economic downturn, the world is trying to move forward with innovative momentum and pace, amazingly our country is galloping, but only in the opposite direction.”

For years Karachi, the current economic and the former federal capital of the country, has been a target of inexplicable and un-investigate-able targeted killings and terrorist attacks. As if the turmoil and insecurity that reins post such inexplicable events is not enough to jeopardize the functioning of the national business center; reckless and less thought-out statements also add an embarrassing air. Statements like “attackers were dressed up like Start Wars characters” or “Karachi needs massive de-weapon-ization”, by the interior minister don’t bode well with those doing business in the city and certainly sends jitters across to those planning to travel to Karachi, specially for business.

According to the erstwhile finance minster the average growth in the agriculture sector stood at a meager 2.1 percent over the last 10 years. Surely there could and can be better and more robust growth in this vital space should better strategies are adopted. Errors are avoided. Shrinking employment opportunities did not get much attention during the budget speeches and uproars. There should have been some alarm bells on this subject alone. Employment opportunities are limited owing to the limiting activities in the economic space and thus should have be one of the focal concerns, it wasn’t. According to the Planning Commission, the economy needs to produce 1.5 million jobs a year for the next 3 years, it is currently producing about 0.2 million. What will become of this ominous buildup of the unemployed and the unemployable work force? No one seems to have a plan or strategy to address this.

Confronted with a perpetual threat of dissention in the coalition ranks and faced with challenges like the massive budgetary deficit, the un-ending war on terror and its unpaid/controversial bills; the government appears to have limiting options. It is however being forecasted that it might just get away with another deficit budget. The kind of self invoked predicaments the leadership finds itself mired in today, one wonders how it will ever deliver a policy that will bring some relief for Pakistan and its people.

ENDS

The thrill is gone

At times, time moves fast. One moment you know you have days if not weeks on hand to come up with and write about something interesting or wacky, ideally both. Ominously however and before you know it, you realize that you only have a handful of hours left to turn in your article. Ed called in.

You have no ideas, nothing interesting or wacky, not to mention the Chinese laptop and the frequent power outages and sweltering heat that lingers on even after the sun goes down. Why can’t us human beings simply get used to our miseries and go on with our miserable lives? I often wonder. “If it is to be, it is up to me” now who said that? That English gentleman of remarkable talent at stating such wordy yet intense thoughts, Mr. Shakespeare, indeed it was him who said this.

But an article is then again an article, you write, you read and you email. In the meantime you keep your fingers crossed or at least till you get that electronic nod from your editor that ‘all is well’. You sigh satisfactorily, you sit back and relax, and you perhaps even consider having a Taliban non compliant beverage. That’s that.

But then there are times when things and circumstances simply drag on, time stops for intervening prolonged periods of indecisiveness and confusion. From personal to economic, political to geo political issues and everything else in the middle including drones and the ever belligerent and mysterious militants in the mountains, your mind is taken over by the thoughts of the known unknowns, to the unknown unknowns – Courtesy Mr. Donald Rumsfeld a former defense secretary of the Unites States.

How bizarre and profoundly confusing are such times. Take the state of our nation, a very big majority of which comprises of very genuine and caring yet incredibly confused people. They have no choice; they just don’t know what’s going on. Mr. Rumsfeld – if allowed the liberty - would love to perhaps brand us as the nation of unknowing unknowns. Is it any wonder that our successive governments simply order inquiries, day in day out? They order inquiries into everything that goes on and goes wrong, and there is plenty that goes wrong here. I was just watching a news bulletin – at 2:00 am, yes I am that insane, and there were at least three mentions of inquiries of grave importance. The winner inquiry for me was the an inquiry commissioned to inquire about an earlier inquiry, the inquiry report of which had gone mysteriously missing while it should have been submitted about a year ago. Confusing?

But since we are wonderful citizens of this beautiful country, with picturesque mountainsides, lakes and valleys where use plastic bags and drones fly – there are no butterflies anymore - we are supposed to understand. Yes, understand to stay confused, numb and indifferent. Perhaps we are supposed to just watch TV, that’s why there are so many of them out there and frequently get to see how our smartly attired leaders leave and arrive from expensive yet prepaid foreign junkets. Let me not get carried away, the rant above wasn’t supposed to be this venomous or disjointed. Must be the heat, yes?

To more pleasant things, I was in Lahore recently, again, and had the pleasure of meeting a true gentleman and eating some lovely dinners and lunches, one was a surprise. This was a good turn of events as I was mired otherwise in the aforementioned pool of unknown and confusing thoughts. I have realized that one does come across more interesting people per capita in Lahore than in any other part of the country. Must be the water, yes?

The wise gentleman, I met, promptly cautioned me that I should abstain from dropping his name here. I shall therefore comply forthwith. What he shared was pretty simple but let’s just put it this way, we never can look at things quite like the wiser amongst us do. He said ‘do you ever wonder why and how we are so positively negative yet quite negatively positive?’ I had neither an answer nor anything to add. Wise old man of Lahore was right. We are indeed living in times where our ambitions, our hopes, harmless and kosher desires and above all our invaluable positive state of mind is being continuously eaten up on the inside by nothing but negativity and a galore of things, subjects, fears, anxieties and circumstances beyond our control, now that can’t be one bit healthy. Believe me, it is not.

And there are people like Paul Mckenna, the author of Instant Confidence. He tells you everything you need to know about positive attitudes, how to look at present (not the past or the future) and how to be a confident pretty much all the time. Mckenna even answers, questions like ‘Why do we feel what we feel’? A very American and blue Mr. BB King sings ‘the thrill is gone away’ in his deep and heart wrenching voice, of course on this Chinese computer technology while I read an interesting quote By HG Wells, ‘We have tamed the beasts and schooled the lightning…but we have still to tame ourselves”.

Good night and good luck people.

Painfully yours

Pain and pain management delivers billions if not trillions of dollars to the coffers of pharmaceutical companies world over. That is how significant ‘pain’ is to the world economy, and we are made to believe that it’s the crude oil. No sir, its pain. Hence it makes sense why mankind is in pain most of the time. I guess pain doctrine is the driving wisdom behind that American phrase, ‘no pain, no gain’. It was surely coined rather clandestinely by the pharma companies of the world and then inserted more clandestinely into the language English for global acceptance. Of course, it is all in the name of love and the good of world commerce and wellbeing of us humans.

Talking of humans, there are only two types of people, one that inflict pain and the other that alleviate pain. That’s perhaps the shortest history of mankind. But then again there is that unavoidable detail, and the devil lies therein, almost always does.

There are people who inflict pain know how to justify it also, including the sort that is found roaming the streets of our frontier province which is now ‘unanimously’ called KP (Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa). They are the lost kind; they do it in the name of god and religion, name of justice, conventions, in the name of culture or whatever other justification their shallow minds conjure up. I call that pointless misery; such people should be made worthy recipients of the same treatment they so happily choose for others. Someone needs to tell them about ‘who shall cast the first stone’ doctrine. I, for now, have more important things to rant about.

All the people who cause pain are not necessarily bad people, like those aforementioned. Though normally bundled with some seriously pain full moments in my life, I dare say the same thing about dentists. Not at all for the team of dentists, for instance, who have been painstakingly working on fixing my neglect of 4.0 decades, yes my set of teeth.

Though their hard work is already delivering results, I am told I am my million dollar smile is well on it’s way to putting Julia Roberts and George Clooney both to shame in one go, I know I have yet a long painful way to go on that chair. As my wise old grand father used to say, kids who get spoilt at the age of 5 need another 15 to be put back on track, or un-spoilt. Same goes for my set of teeth that have fallen from grace due to fascinations with things religious militants would find utterly deplorable, hell; they might even whip me very hard for that. Dentists cause pain, though they might be tad masochists at heart, they mean good end of the day. My last words (of wisdom) on tooth aches look after your teeth, or you better save up for that ‘paining’ day.

I resolutely believe that if the mankind wasn’t so self obsessed and erring that frequently at communicating, much pain and misery could have bee alleviated. That’s not the case with animals though, specially when it comes to your domesticated pets. They can’t talk as we know, so you have to feel and discover their pain when they aren’t well. There are always signs provided it’s you and not your servants that are looking after their wellbeing. You just know somehow if there is something wrong. Cyclops, the one eyed male Persian cat of mine, developed some weird eye allergy; sadly he only has one eye – as his name suggests - so it was a matter which required grave attention. The other eye Cyclops was born with was poked out by some rich kid before he dumped him at a chicken shop some 5 years ago. Mercifully he was recovered and then saved by the kind help of Dr. Isma Gheewala of the Animal Center in Karachi. Whether it’s Dr. Isma saving Cyclops in Karachi or Dr. Zia of Animal Hospital in Lahore looking after the lovable furry Persian named Shershah and many other lovely animals, these vets are epitome of kindness and care, though in the process they might cause some discomfort to animals, but that kind of pain is totally acceptable. I will take it any time.

Circumstances are very similar to pains; they just don’t remain the same. They get worse or get better with time or you simply learn to live with them, it depends on how you choose to look at them. Again, just like your relatives, you don’t get to choose your circumstances you are born with them. One day however, normally post a short spell of intense self assessment and introspection you realize that you need to change yourself in order to change your circumstances. That’s easier said then done but like it goes, courtesy pharmaceuticals, no pain no gain. Friends are like assets as we all know, but at times certain friends can cause quite a pain too, specially when you can talk to them but the aren’t able to communicate with you. I have a few friends on that list, I adore their presence in my life but I can sure do with less confusion. But perhaps that anonymous quote aptly describes what my friends are going through, ‘he listens to his psychiatrist, and then draws his own confusions’. Painfully.