Aid not the answer – Tasneem Noorani

Aid not the answer – Tasneem Noorani

Ever since one can remember, there was a comfortable master-servant relationship in the urban areas and a chaudhry-tenant relationship in the rural areaS. It was a relationship of give and take and some understanding.

The government’s knee-jerk response is schemes involving free distribution of cash like the BISP, launching of Waseela-e-Haq schemes, giving away tractors/rickshaw and according to one report duty-free import of vehicles for generating income (we learnt nothing from the yellow cab scandal) or giving out almost free atta, as in Punjab and Karachi.

So while the government is buying time by distributing cash and food, there is little talk of making schemes for reviving industry in order to restore lost jobs and create more. Our economic debate now centres on shortages; power, sugar, gas etc. There is no urgency in government utterances to attend to basic issues of industry or agriculture. At the macro level we seem to be consciously pushing ourselves into complacency with the daily announcements of large sums of dollars being committed by this country.

But what good is this aid for the poor of the country, when record and history has shown that the benefits of aid hardly leave the confines of Islamabad and Washington. Most of it is taken back by international consultants and contractors. What remains is spent on projects which are the priority of the donor and not of Pakistan. Resultantly not a single job in the private sector is due to foreign aid, not a single significant infrastructure project due to foreign assistance. The only exception I can think of is the World Bank aid in the sixty’s for the infrastructure created under the Indus Water Treaty. We keep breaking and remolding our begging bowl with pride.

The hunger and pain in the eyes of the poor has intensified. At the same time the affluence and the flab on the rich has increased. The villas of the rich and famous in Murree and Nathiagali now keep waiting for years, because the owners now find the climate of Europe and US more bracing. While earlier there was one Gulberg or KDA, now there are 8 to 10 additional phases of Defence Housing in each city. The shantytowns, where people live in abject poverty or rural population living below the poverty line, are increasing at a faster pace. Every other house has a tail of having been robbed. Every other urban dweller has a tale of being held up at pistol point and deprived of his mobile, car, etc. The fastest growing industry is of security providers.

Despite the efforts of the donor, accentuated by his own convoluted bureaucracy, the money from the Kerry Lugar Bill has not even left the shores of US, even though we have been hearing about it for almost a year.

The answers, I admit, are difficult, but the reality of seeing Pakistan literally being crushed under poverty is too horrendous to be swept under the carpet by cash distribution schemes. The leadership has to be shaken out of its mistaken belief that begging for more aid will solve Pakistan’s problem. There is no option but for the leaders to patiently attend to the less glamorous tasks of slowly improving governance, dispensation of justice, revival of existing industry, making a good agriculture policy, administering the educations system well rather than make yet another education policy, etc.

Escaping from our internal weaknesses and taking comfort and pride in more aid is going to land us in a deeper ditch.

The writer is a former federal secretary. Email: tasneem. noorani@tnassociates.net