In a few days Mr. Shaukat
Aziz will be called upon to cut the cake to celebrate
his elevation to the lofty position of prime minister
of Pakistan. But as he goes through these rituals he must
remember that there is another cake which he must cut
, and cut it as judiciously and as honestly as he can,
the cake of national wealth.
It is an unfortunate fact of our history
that the betterment of the poor has never been an important,
let alone the centrepiece of government policy. Poverty
has been 'an' issue, never 'the' issue. Elimination of
poverty was not point No. 1 of 7-point agenda of President
Musharraf in November, 1999.
The focus of economic planning has always
been the enlargement of national wealth. The rich and
powerful have been saying to the poor, "you wait
for now, let us first make the size of the 'cake' larger
and then we will think of cutting a bigger slice for you."
And that time has not come. Is it that it never will?
That is the question before Mr. Shaukat
Aziz. On an election tour of Tharparker, he saw the question
writ large on the faces of the poor. Reading it rightly,
he said that he saw a "ray of hope on their faces
".
This ray of hope epitomises the sentiments
of all the poor people of Pakistan that a day will soon
dawn when " a bigger slice " will be given to
them. Unless the present policies are reversed the ray
will only remain a ray. It will not break into sunshine.
Pursued and haunted by the ever-growing
spectre of poverty, the top-brass is following an ostrich-like
policy, by refusing to face or tackle the reality. The
'Gini co-efficient', a measure of inequality, has been
rising in Pakistan.
The trends are so hard to hide that the
government in the Economic Survey 20003-04, decided to
omit the chapter on income distribution completely and
talked about it only cursorily. It did not want to give
the continuing bad news to the people.
Similarly the development expenditure
reduced from 7.5 of GDP in 1991-92 to a low 2.2 per cent
of GDP in 2002-03. The cutback in development expenditure
hurt the poor who depend on state-provided services on
health, education, social welfare and other services.
The share of the richest 20 per cent of the country in
the national wealth increased from 44 per cent in 1988
to 48 per cent in 2000.
Correspondingly, the share of the poorest
20 per cent of the population came down from 9 in 1988
to 7 per cent in 2000.But to gloss over these harsh and
unpalatable realities, those in power, are putting forth
the thesis that there has been a 4 per cent reduction
in poverty.
The 'Pakistan integrated household survey'
conducted by the Federal Bureau of Statistics, which sampled
14,536 households, showed a 3 per cent rise in poverty
during 1999-02.
The government did not accept the results
and carried out a household survey on sample of 5,046
households to support its stand of 4 per cent reduction
in poverty. The Social Policy and Development Centre (SPDC)
is an NGO headed by Mr. Kaiser Bengali.
He has called the government's methodology
as " questionable and spurious and the results clearly
questionable". Such garbled versions are nothing
but a travesty of truth and will satisfy no one. Rather
these are making the credibility of the government reports
very suspect.
Poverty does not exist by itself as an
independent phenomenon. It is a creation of deliberate
acts of the powers that be. The cause is the policies
of the government and the effect is the poverty of the
masses.
Just a few days ago, President Musharraf
has formally announced in a policy directive that projects
and programmes for reducing poverty must be formulated
and implemented. Credit must be given to him for being
the first ruler of Pakistan for at least initiating a
call for a focused poverty specific programmes.
This policy initiative will and should
strengthen the hands of Mr. Aziz for countering the vested
interests who would not want that appreciable resources
should be allocated to such projects.
Mr. Aziz should have a lot of sympathy
for the poor. He admits that he comes from a middle-class
background. He has worked abroad for more than two decades,
and he knows more than anyone else, that the leaders of
private sector companies are not paragons of virtue, rather
the opposite.
Were it not so, the Western countries
would not have been affected by successive and recurring
waves of corporate scandals. It is the moral bankruptcy,
which has led to financial bankruptcies.
In our own country the scandals of defaulted
loans and write-offs have been well known for decades.
There is a need, a dire need, for changing the basic presumption,
of financial trustworthiness.
It is the poor who are more trust worthy
than the rich. Grameen Bank of Bangladesh was based on
this premise, and it proved to be a resounding success.
Now they are considering of setting up a 'beggars bank'!
Mr. Ghulam Mohammad, Chaudhry Mohammad
Ali and Mr.Ghulam Ishaque Khan, were three bureaucrats,
who assumed political power. All three had a background
of finance. Neither did anything so good which has left
an indelible mark on the consciousness and psyche of the
nation.
In fact, it can be asserted without fear
of contradiction, that no leader has done anything for
the betterment of the poor, for which he can claim an
abiding place in the history of Pakistan. What about Zulfiqar
Ali Bhutto? He gave nothing but slogans. He gave neither
'roti' (other than the failed Roti Corporation) nor 'kapra'
nor 'makan'.
Not too long ago Pakistan had foreign
exchange reserves for hardly three or four weeks of imports.
Today the reserves are more than $12 Billion, enough for
a year's imports. Pakistan has reduced its foreign debt
by $2 billion. For the first time Pakistan has 'prepaid'
a loan of about $1 billion taken from Asian Development
Bank.
For the first time more than Rs200 billion
have been provided in an annual budget (2004-05) for the
PSDP. For the first time all the crucial socio-economic
factors have come together to create a propitious environment
for the initiation of a visible change.
What is needed is a catalyst. Will Mr
Aziz choose to be it? Without a doubt, he stands on a
crossroad. He has the option to be a suave member of the
team. Flow with the tide, as did his predecessors and
have a good time as a Prime Minister? Or he can be circumspectly
assertive, knowing his strength in finance, and the great
need and demand for his expertise, at this crucial juncture
of our national life, and be an agent of change. If he
chooses the latter path, he can carve out a niche for
himself both in the history of Pakistan as well as the
hearts of its people.
