The make-believe world presented by Pakistan’s ruling class as evidence of the country’s economic turnaround was challenged again this month, with fresh evidence of mounting stress on Pakistan’s mainstream population.
Short-term inflation rose to over 11 per cent year-on-year in the week ending mid-October, driven mainly by higher food prices. Official data from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics again highlighted out-of-control food inflation pushing up overall inflation.
Evidence of Pakistan’s growing inflation driven by food insecurity coincides with the latest global warning of the same vulnerability. The latest report from the international humanitarian organisation Action Against Hunger has placed Pakistan among the world’s top ten countries hit hardest by the global hunger crisis. According to the report, climate-related disasters and economic hardship are among the most critical drivers of these trends.
Such warnings are hardly surprising, pushed up tragically by years of bare growth, marginally above Pakistan’s population growth. Ironically, rising food insecurity, which should be the foremost concern, has barely featured in the raging debate over creating more provinces across Pakistan. If this discussion aims to improve service delivery for the country’s mainstream population, reforms across Pakistan’s agricultural heartlands must be the foremost priority.
In sharp contrast, creating more provinces driven mainly by the interests of Pakistan’s ruling class will hardly help reform the country for long, as it faces a deepening crisis of governance and a failure to redirect economic policies where they matter most. Against this backdrop, the latest warnings of deepening food insecurity must prompt a revisit of Pakistan’s multiple crises tied to its history, current policy direction, and future opportunities.
In any evaluation, the crisis of governance has visibly deepened in recent decades, following the ill-conceived devolution agenda the late Gen Pervez Musharraf pursued relentlessly. Led by retired Lt-Gen Tanveer Naqvi and assisted by politician Daniyal Aziz Choudhry, the now-defunct National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB) was tasked with pushing devolution of authority across Pakistan. In pursuit of that objective, the previously functioning, long-established bureaucratic services across Pakistan were dismantled.
Literally overnight, the DCs, or deputy commissioners, were redesignated as DCOs, or District Coordination Officers, only to be returned to their old titles. But even as the old government structure was re-established in name, the bureaucracy’s authority was not restored. Unlike the years when a network of executive magistracy functioned under the DCs, no similar structure exists today. Meanwhile, the previous DCs’ authority, armed with the function of judicial magistrates, has yet to be fully re-established.
It is hardly surprising that long-delayed grassroots reforms have been ignored for so long. Specifically, the state’s authority in parts of Pakistan today lies in tatters. This poses a serious risk to the country’s present and future outlook. Meanwhile, the most critical risk to Pakistan’s future has emerged from a policy direction that will increasingly fail to change its destiny. As Pakistan continues to face a large incidence of poverty, notably across its rural areas, arresting the trend will hardly even begin to happen with the disbursement of more tractors to village dwellers. Instead, a lift in agriculture, notably across Punjab, Pakistan’s potential breadbasket, will come from factors that have adversely affected crop output.
Yields of key crops such as wheat remain far below national needs, driven mainly by the failure to provide high-quality seeds, fertilisers and reliable pesticides. As Pakistan faces increasing water scarcity, it needs a revitalised focus on reforming long-neglected irrigation networks. The future demands renewed focus on extensive research into alternative cash crops that can flourish amid worsening water shortages. Tackling the growing threat of climate change must be based on action across Pakistan, going well beyond widely publicised appearances by relevant ministers at high-profile events.
At the same time, key leaders must lead by example, with a renewed focus on Pakistan’s most endangered areas, notably the fields. On this journey, widely reported ostentatious purchases by the provincial head only reinforce the ruling class’s already unpopular image. Pakistan’s elite must reverse their detachment from the mainstream and lead the battle with visible examples to regain Pakistan’s lost fortunes across the heartlands that surround its urban and rural dwellers.
The writer is an Islamabad-basedjournalist who writes on political and economic affairs. He can be reached at: [email protected]
