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However much I want to get back to the core issues underlying Pakistan's
economic fragility and long term prospects - water, textiles, rural
unemployment, SMEs, agriculture, infrastructure and so forth - the
grand political drama at the top keeps distracting pervasively. Politics
is the means and socio-economics the end; there is a strong correlation
between the two. One can not remain focussed on the ends, oblivious
of the means. Last week, I commented on the questionable means adopted
to create a new governance structure with a cabinet that most analysts
are labelling as 'bloated.'
The week before I had wondered whether Mr. Shaukat Aziz is going to
dig into the wisdom lying buried in tomes of policy strategies produced
since year 2000 during his tenure as finance minister or is he going
to start afresh with a blank page. All independent reviews of various
governments in the past point towards two failures: one, a lack of
a long term and consistent macro policy direction and secondly, dismal
performance in implementation.
As events are unfolding Mr. Aziz has skipped the issue of macro level
vision and direction altogether, as if that were an unequivocal certainty
that all and sundry in his team - politicians and bureaucrats - understood
perfectly well to the nth. degree of detail and it was simply a matter
of getting on with the job. He has asked all ministers to prepare
Gantt charts for next 100 days of their own chosen targets, six for
each ministry. The immediate result I can foresee is that Microsoft's
Project Manager is going to push aside the ubiquitous Power Point
as the most popular software in the ministries, if they were to go
about it in the right way. Forgive the wishful thinking on my part;
I am an incurable optimist.
What six targets? Who is going to determine them? Will the targets
of different ministries fit smoothly into an overall national grand
plan? Or will they contradict and nullify each other? Who will oversee
that investment in one sector does not cannibalise resources of another
sector? Are 60 odd 'Nizam Saqqa's' going to be unleashed on this country?
Do the ministers have the wherewithal to determine where their ministry
fits into the overall matrix of national economy? Who is going to
determine that these targets are not motivated by political or vested
commercial interests?
The sheer logistic enormity of the task seems mind boggling! What
happens, let's say, when 32 ministries present 6 plans each to the
Prime Minister. There are 192 projects on the table. How long will
it take to reconcile the sympathetic and antipathetic vectors between
these proposed plans? I assume a green light would be required before
the ministers can race out of their blocks. How soon will that green
light come?
Here are a few examples of what I am fretting about. The interest
of the consumers is invariably at odds with the interest of the domestic
'tariff protected' industries like sugar, automobiles, synthetic fibres
etc. Whose interest will which ministry be giving priority to? The
local vanaspati ghee industry thrives at the cost of domestic farmers
and solvent extraction and oil refining industry. So a plan to boost
domestic oilseeds production with a benevolent policy towards ghee
industry will cancel each other out. A policy conducive for fast growth
of garments industry will impinge upon cotton processing industry,
in the short run at least.
The value chains in each sector run across many ministries, e.g. cotton
crop is dealt by provincial agriculture departments, its research
by MINFAL; ginning is under provincial Industries Department and Ministry
of Industries and Production; cotton lint trade is under Ministry
Of Commerce; spinning mills come under Industries but the international
trade of raw cotton, lint and textiles under Commerce. The taxation
of all these sub-sectors is determined by CBR under Ministry of Finance.
The quality standards that matter so much in exports are set and monitored
by Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority, which is under
the Ministry of Science and Technology. We have been lamenting the
lack of inter-ministerial coordination despite the fact that each
secretary or minister sits on at least 60 committees at any given
point in time. The committees do exactly what they are good at - procrastinate
decisions ad infinitum.
Creating more ministries is not going to improve things, I can promise
you. If anything, the ministries of Agriculture, Industries and Commerce
should have been amalgamated to form just one ministry of trade and
production. Anyway, that is another subject of organizational restructuring,
which is beyond the scope of this column.
I am afraid this 'banker's approach' to governance is too linear.
It works for managing financial institutions because there you have
unidirectional goals to be achieved under a tight set of rules and
regulations. If any parallels are to be drawn, then running a country
is more the forte of an entrepreneur than a banker. An entrepreneur
is always looking for new opportunities to leverage his resources
to the best advantage. He takes calculated risks; he is a bit of a
gambler. He is not afraid of loosing some venture because he knows
he can make up in others; good ones come out winning more and loosing
less. And that is how development business works; risks have to be
taken to try out new approaches.
Having said all this, I am still finding it hard to believe that the
new cabinet is being treated like schoolboys with assignments, out
of a misplaced management perspective. I attribute far more acuity
to Mr. Shaukat Aziz. I have a sneaky feeling that along with General
Musharraf he knows something that we ordinary mortals do not.
There used to a gambler with a nagging wife who would chide him for
coming home late on weekend nights when he was playing cards with
friends. He would keep looking at his watch and at 1:15 a.m. would
rush out for ten minutes. When asked where he went, he would say,
"Oh, I just went down to the station to miss the last train."
The General needs political support to retain his uniform and a crowded
cabinet certainly helps. Fundamentally, he believes that politicians
are corrupt and inept; so the country needs to be saved from their
shenanigans. Now, wouldn't it be a divine intervention if the happy
parliamentarians of the coalition (one third of whom have portfolios)
were to extend the tenure of his uniform under Clause 1 (d) of Article
63 in the constitution and then prove to be inept themselves by not
meeting the targets set for them by the Prime Minister; and on top
of that the vigilant intelligence agencies were to collect all the
dirty fingerprints, which our leaders cannot help leaving behind.
It would give General Musharraf a very valid reason to serve the best
interest of the country by sending the assemblies packing and setting
up an interim government with a duly elected Prime Minister in place.
Such a move would bring a sense of relief to the chagrined masses
and bestow the General a unique distinction of saving the country
twice within a brief span of five years.
If this were to actually transpire, then there is certainly a method
to the madness, otherwise I must have fallen prey to the rampant epidemic
of hallucinations caused by rumours. So help me God.
Iqbal Mustafa
1239 words
10 September 2004
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