By Sardar Khan Niazi
Forget the discussion about who is to blame for what our dear homeland is going through these days. Nevertheless, those in power have a greater responsibility to cool down political temperatures. Mere speechmaking is not going to do any good to the country.
There is no doubt that it is the worst time for our dear homeland. While the International Monetary Fund is forcing Pakistan to come out of its habit of living beyond its means, other moneylenders are seeking to set conditions identical to IMF’s.
As a natural result, the rupee is fast losing ground to the dollar, foreign direct investment is just about zero and the country’s dependence on imports tends to aggravate inflationary pressures.
Evidently, the main losers in the game of our economic disasters are disadvantaged that are shown running on TV channels to catch the first place in the long queues to receive the Eid gift of wheat flour while the affluent are gaining more affluence by the day and roads are cluttered with their expensive cars.
The economy is on the threshold of breakdown, political mess, mounting price increases, disturbing low levels of foreign exchange reserves and the rupee plunging to a new low every other day dominate the news daily.
The toxic politics in Pakistan is the chief cause of why the country remains under the tight hold of severe trials. The successor blames the predecessor for the present monetary disasters and lays down an austerity strategy that comprises completely new expenses.
Unfortunately, discarding the already-made expenses and creating new expenses is what they call austerity measures. As sugar gives instantaneous relief to anxiety but causes diabetes, most of the schemes launched just give hope and rarely act in the public interest.
Several projects feed on fluid cash and nothing comes out of the expenses. No wonder our development expenses are one of the heaviest loads the budget endures as our dear homeland being a growing inflationary economy sees a big swell in expenses and paradoxically, the price effect on expenses is overlooked.
In addition, over-invoicing of the expenses incurred is a habitual performance by the power holders to fill up their own pockets. The projects we have are not vague; rather power thirst and corruption victimize them. We are not lacking in the skill, but the projects become a product of favoritism and undergo manipulation by the few power greedy.
The need is neither to change nor to build new projects, but to change the course to run them. It is about time we woke up from our slumber and understood that thoughtlessly chanting political slogans will not do any good but an awakening to how we can perform better.
In order to deal with the crises we are facing right now we need to understand that it is essential to run our projects by the ones who know well the mischief and possess the right expertise to remove the mischief. In other words, the technocrats must control the projects and skill should be the merit.
Despite being a fragment of the contemporary world, we fail to enjoy the benefits of modern techniques of data analysis since we do not have the right tools. Digital transformation has led to the emergence of a data-driven economy. Running an economy on authentic statistics will offer us real visions, not the words that reverberate in political gatherings.
Furthermore, it can assist in monitoring the reduction of capital and will be a source of warning to corrupt elements that leads to the emptiness of the resources. We have perfect organizations. We just need to bring them to a point where they provide healthy support to the economy.
