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Puranay Masail Naya Pakistan

Now that the results of the General Elections are officially in, and it is clear that the Imran Khan-led Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), along with its allies, is going to form the government in the Center, Punjab, and KPK, people are waiting for the promise of change to materialize. It took Khan many years to get to the point where he is today. He has made big promises to the public regarding reforms in almost every area of governance including economy, health, education, police, judiciary, environment, trade and foreign policy. However, the fact of the matter is that the incoming prime minister isn’t going to have an easy time managing these things. The new government will face a lot of challenges.

The most important and severe of these challenges is the economic crisis. We are running an $18 billion Current Account Deficit (CAD), which means that we are losing $1.5 billion a month. This year’s CAD is 45 percent higher than last the year. The new government will have to rollover Rs 4 trillion worth of outstanding rupee debt over the following three-to-four months. Never in Pakistan’s history have we ever had a Rs2.2 trillion budgetary deficit. Given the magnitude of these numbers, Pakistan has to go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for another bailout package – the 13th for the country since the 1980s. A recent report by IMF says that Pakistan’s external financing needs are expected to rise from $21.5 billion (7.1% of the GDP) in 2017 to $45 billion by 2023 (9% of GDP).

Another ordeal for the new government is the power shortfall. Lower power generation, because of less hydro-electric contribution and some state-owned power plants going off the grid due to faults, combined with a hot and humid weather and perennial line losses, have pushed the electricity shortfall up to 8,000MW. This has forced power distribution companies to observe around six hours of load shedding in urban areas, and over eight hours in rural areas across the country. According to the federal secretary of Water and Power Ministry, the situation worsened after some of its old power plants faced forced outages due to technical faults that these plants develop from time to time. This has caused a reduction in generation from 1,500MW to 1,800MW on average. Meanwhile, the maximum filling of Mangla reservoir, which normally completes by July or early August, didn’t happen, thus keeping generation restricted to 5,100MW.

Apart from these, another big task is managing the foreign policy, especially Pakistan’s relations with the US, Afghanistan, India, China, and Saudi Arabia. According to foreign policy analyst Moeed Yousuf, Khan’s victory wasn’t Washington’s preferred option. Much of what is said and thought of him is tied to his disparaging stance on the US war in Afghanistan and his sympathetic views towards the Afghan Taliban. Several columns written on him in the Western press since the elections have also tended to highlight his personal negatives. In this situation, handling the relationship with the US and being a mediator between Iran and Saudi Arab isn’t going to be easy for the incoming PM.

Other than this, ensuring accountability and ending corruption will also be a hard nut to crack. For this, the government has to empower institutions like NAB, FBR, FIA, and the police among others. Khan has vowed to make Pakistan a welfare state along the lines of Scandinavian countries. But given the country’s meager resources and the population explosion, this transformation will require bold and unpopular decisions, like wide-scale tax reforms, to actualize the promise of a welfare state.

Climate change is another frontier for the next government to fight on. On May 28, 2017, the temperature in Turbat, Baluchistan reached 53.5°C — an all-time high for the country and the world’s highest temperature for May — while the summer monsoon rainfall in the country was 22.5pc less than the long-term average. Acute shortage of freshwater, rising temperatures, shifting rain patterns, high risk of floods as well as droughts can affect millions and necessitate urgent action.

In addition, the education and healthcare systems are also in shambles. There is under-staffing and lack of proper training for the staff. It will require a lot of planning and effort to bring reforms in these sectors and make these services affordable for the public, while raising their standards. Another major issue is the management of civil-military relations which have not been so good in recent years. Khan will have a tough time dealing with the powerful military and its role in other areas including the foreign policy. Last but not the least, all these challenges come with a strong opposition comprising a multi-party alliance which is demanding a probe into alleged poll rigging. The new government does not have a simple majority and it can face trouble while taking unpopular decisions and carrying out reformist legislation. Khan will have to prove that he is different; a true reformer, political risk taker, bold, and as determined to change Pakistan as he has been in confronting the two political dynasties. Will he succeed? Only time will tell.

 

 

The writer is a student of BS Political Science at LUMS, Class of 2021.

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Indo Pak: Hello from the other side!

 

India and Pakistan, ‘the land beyond the Indus’ and ‘the land of the pure’, are connected through time and space, the world this year celebrated 70 years of our birth. And we celebrated seven decades of facing repercussions of a brutal partition that separated us in our minds and hearts and rooted the seeds of hatred and fear. The history has stood as the supreme spectator of the bond that our nations share and time has been and will always be the greatest master of the fate that our lands bear. We share a connection that is beyond the boundaries that divide us. It is beyond the religions that separated us in the first place. It is past the wars that we’ve fought and the lives that have been lost. It is far more than the words and decisions of a ‘few’ men of faith and politics that have governed, misjudged and miscommunicated our thoughts and emotions.

We have together experienced eons of history which have seen great empires rise and fall. We have seen our culture grow and flourish into grandeur. Our heritage that has left the world rapt in awe is unparalleled. Urdu and Hindi are just two different languages with the same soul, one took the Arabic script the other Devnaagri. The ‘wah-wahs’ for Urdu shaayris are as loud and passionate here as they are there. In fact, a lot of Urdu words have found their place in Bollywood songs. We share the Punjabi fervour and the devilishly delicious Hyderabadi Biryani. There were streets and towns in India where a Muslim mother recited to her kids the adventures of Lord Krishna and a Hindu Mother narrated the stories of mercy and compassion of the Prophet. If it existed once, it can exist again. For god’s sake, we have been eternally linked through the marriage of Shoaib Malik and Sania Mirza. If you are a victim of Shah Rukh Khan’s romantic magic, then we are head over heels for Fawad Khans’s charm. And even though it’s not very easy to admit, swallowing our pride we openly acknowledge the well-established fact that your Coke Studio is a tad better than ours. We have fallen in love with your melodious music and simplicity of your daily soaps. If you have danced to the Bollywood numbers, then we have hummed along with the tunes of Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and Atif Aslam. The India vs Pakistan cricket matches are as exhilarating as ever. They drive us to the teetering edge of our seats. With our hearts pounding hard and fast, and the rage building up, we both add to our vocabulary of abuses fiercely ready to barrel them towards each other but the only victim at the receiving end is our poor idiot box.

If we all look in the right places, we would notice that you and I are more alike than we are unlike. It is unfortunate that we have grown up in societies where we are wired to not like each other where our differences are shoved under the spotlight and the similarities are thrown into oblivion where all the bad that happens remains and the good, well, we hardly get to know about it. We keep knocking on to each other’s ‘borders’ for an exchange of bullet shots, blazing bombs and raging patriots. Instead, we must have an active dialogue, where we can exchange ideas, books, a cup of tea, food, poetries and songs and every little thing that makes life beautiful. The time has come for the Pakistani and Indian youth to unite and break the shackles of hatred that the social, political and historical monsters have bound us in because if we grow above it, the future of our nations is going to be brighter than the Sun.

Our struggles and our victories are same. Let us remember that we are humans, young, wild and free, with dreams that touch the sky and voices that are so loud that they are meant to be heard in every corner of the world no matter which side of the border we belong to. We are all bundles of joy and love and that is what we are first, before being a Pakistani or a Hindustani, before being a Muslim or Hindu. So, let’s embrace the positivity that resides within us. A future where a Pakistani having ‘aloo ka parathas’ in an Indian dhaba and an Indian savouring ‘biryani’ in a Pakistani restaurant should not seem like an impossible thought, where ‘dilli ke raaste’ and ‘Lahore ki galliyan’ tell stories of camaraderie that is lost but still alive somewhere in our hearts. To start with, think of a future where we are not enemies but rivals who can be friends. Just imagine the things we can achieve together.

So, when we celebrate the 71 years of our Independence next year, let us remember the yesterday that binds us together, let us rejoice in the tomorrow that will bring with it a promise of friendship, love and hope. Let us prove to the world that they can’t divide us anymore. That we can be a great example of peace and prosperity, staying true to the colours of our flags. A friend once told me that the existence of India and Pakistan is imperative for each other because it unites its denizens against a common foe. I say let the existence of India for Pakistan and vice versa be important to unite its citizens among and with, but not against each other. India and Pakistan are two names that are always going to be taken together for eternity to come, so let it be for all the right reasons because a peaceful forever awaits us.

 

By Tania Mishra

Tania is an Economics student at University Of Delhi