In Samuel Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’, Didi and Gogo appear in slumberous poses, musing over their lives and recounting their troubles in a world gone awry.
The two protagonists constantly ruminate over their predicament with fatalistic resignation, hoping they will one day be rescued. Godot, however, never appears, and the two hopefuls continue living a miserable life, repeating their miseries in a cycle of futility.
In Pakistan, it often seems that we are repeating the Didi and Gogo act, constantly hoping for a miracle or the arrival of a messiah to rescue us from our misfortunes. As a nation, however, we need serious introspection and a willingness to modify our behaviour in light of the experiences of countries that overcame similar adversity to chart successful paths for themselves.
We have experimented with a quasi-presidential system, various forms of Westminster-style democracy inherited from the British, controlled democracy, the ‘One Unit’ scheme and multiple military dictatorships under leaders such as Iskander Mirza, Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Ziaul Haq and Musharraf. Yet none has produced lasting success.
A major reason is our failure to shed the colonial-era bureaucratic structures designed for control, extraction and revenue collection. In contrast, countries such as China, Vietnam, South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore undertook fundamental reforms and achieved remarkable progress. Leaders such as Mao Zedong, Park Chung-hee, Lee Kuan Yew, Mahathir Mohamad and Nguyen Van Linh provided stability and direction during critical periods. A dispassionate analysis of these success stories points to two essential ingredients: sincere leadership and discipline.
Without sincerity, no reforms are sustainable, and without discipline, no reforms are implementable. Today we lack discipline in all walks of life except for a few shining examples of excellence that give a glimmer of hope. Discipline has to be imbibed in its real spirit and enforced through rule of law. We never tire of claiming that we taught Koreans the five-year economic planning model, but have hardly implemented the same model successfully.
Where did we go wrong? What structural incapacities prevent us from achieving exportable surpluses, leaving a gaping deficit each time our economy heats up over four per cent? Why is our political model, slavishly copied from the Westminster model of our colonial masters, failing to deliver? Why have we not been able to evolve our own model of democracy that is suited to our social and economic needs? And the biggest question of all those questions is, why has the present model not delivered?
The apologists for the present model of political and economic governance cite the 1973 consensus that granted fiscal and political leverage to all provinces, but fail to explain why the same powers have not been devolved to the local level. Local governments have proven to be engines of progress and growth all over the world, but we have still not achieved that elusive objective. China in our neighbourhood provides a shining example of how a country once riven by factionalism and ravaged by the excesses of extractive colonialism could rise to be a global power.
China, which was once colonised by imperial and predatory nations and subjected to economic exploitation of the worst kind under infamous ‘concessions’, a euphemism for colonisation, has risen to emerge as the second largest economy in the world. China’s rise has been amazing and offers many lessons for countries like us.
During a recent visit by a Pakistani delegation, invited by the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) to celebrate 75 years of Pak-China diplomatic relations, the delegates were exposed to China’s achievements in industrial, agricultural, green energy and IT planning. The most important lessons were the consistency of policies, discipline and the devolution of political and economic power to the local level. China’s economic miracle and progress are owed to a strong government that is politically centralised yet adequately devolved to local levels such as cities, towns, prefectures and villages.
The mayors of all cities are fully empowered to plan and govern while ministering to the development needs of the people. The famous mayor economy has ensured that the cities and regions plan their infrastructure and industrial projects to increase the local GDP and are allowed to contract foreign as well as private sector funding for their projects. Contrary to our colonial era-based bureaucracy, the Chinese bureaucracy and the government under the watchful eye of the CPC, act as the enablers of the ‘mayor economies’, lending a helping hand to the local governments to achieve their planned objectives.
China has completed its 14th Five-Year Plan and unveiled its 15th, aimed at achieving ‘modernised’ status by 2035 and becoming a fully modernised country by 2050. Despite challenges such as an ageing population, rural-urban disparities and employment pressures, China has lifted over 800 million people out of poverty and remains on course to become the world’s largest economy by around 2045, according to many estimates.
The difference is that China largely achieves its goals, while Pakistan continues to lag due to inconsistency and weak accountability. If Pakistan is to end its interminable wait for a saviour, it must undertake fundamental political, economic and governance reforms that promote stability, growth and public welfare rather than elite interests.
The writer is a security and defence analyst. He can be reached at: [email protected]
