PENSIEVE: Of dust and lust —Farrukh Khan Pitafi

The handlers of these terrorists make a wily bunch that often has nothing to do with either impoverishment or intolerance — they do it for their own selfish motives and lust. And since most of these terrorists have been so thoroughly indoctrinated and irreparably damaged, their life might be our death

In His Dark Materials trilogy, Philip Pullman plays with our imaginations in an uncanny way. In one of his parallel worlds, dark matter is called dust. And quite contrary to our scientific understanding of the dark matter, the particles in his world are conscious and capable of contact with us mortals. Of course, to serve the central theme of the series, he makes the very particles emblems of the angelic revolt against authority. But dust in our humble part of the world is known basically for poverty — as in dirt poor. Budgets come and go and so do governments but somehow our country has not been able to invent a magic wand to rid us of this dusty musty poverty. Magic wands may exist, I would not know, but a sane wizard most certainly does not.

And this has something to do with the ongoing war on terror too. Impoverishment breeds anger, irritability and intolerance. And these in turn pull our legs into the grave of extremism. Since my experiments with my career take me often to stages where I do have to endure my own version of impoverishment, I can testify that the aforesaid is true. It, of course, does not mean that you give every terrorist benefit of the doubt because of his assumed sociology. The handlers of these terrorists make a wily bunch that often has nothing to do with either impoverishment or intolerance — they do it for their own selfish motives and lust. And since most of these terrorists have been so thoroughly indoctrinated and irreparably damaged that their life might be our death, we cannot afford to end this war based only on assumptions.

However, if poverty could be alleviated or the economic burdens on the masses could be eased a trifle, only a fool will deny that this will complement the efforts of fighting the extremists. But how to accomplish that at a time when the nation is already falling into the abyss?

I was keenly awaiting the budget speech to know where our new team of economic managers plan to take our country. The budget speech turned out to be a budget lecture. While it was unusual for a finance minister, sworn in only hours before, to deliver an extempore speech on something as tedious as the finance bill, or mentioning his own children and staff, I must say that it was unusually enjoyable and engaging.

First of all, we learned that the concept of the annual budget was now almost defunct and that the budget speech was a mere formality. The second noteworthy thing was that while we could still recover, the country was officially in a deep economic mess. Third, and this is perhaps the funniest of all, that while the government was cognisant of the general aversion to the concept of Value-Added Tax (VAT), there was no escape from imposing it. It was funny because no one even bothered to notice that the new tax, re-christened as the ‘reformed’ General Sales Tax (GST) had already been imposed before their own eyes while they imagined that it had been deferred. In fact, like the extension of tax deadlines, what had been deferred was the deadline for a note of submission from the stakeholders.

But while I have no love lost for budgetary projections or the official figures, I think the minister’s maiden budget lecture was brutally honest and, at least for me, quite inspiring. It is true that the country cannot escape IMF conditions and there is no point in pretending that we are not in the thickest soup possible. At least a fair admission was something that we had all hoped to get. But one thing that I could not digest was the minister’s nostalgic recollection of the telecom policy of the Musharraf regime. He will have to choose whether he wants to live in the past, which was not as glorious as he would like to assume, or a present that is equally challenging but absolutely real. In the present reality, there is a lot of room for him and he can excel all past achievements, provided he believes in real growth and not a circumstantial one like Musharraf’s. If I was expecting something substantial from the opposition I was deeply disappointed. Instead of protesting against the growing impoverishment in society, our opposition leader was found criticising the 50 percent increase in the wages of the salaried class.

While admitting the truth is a laudable feat in the Islamic Republic, let us not forget that without economic revival we cannot survive. Unfortunately, in the grim reality of our absolute dependence on the IMF, we cannot invest too many resources in economic revival. A report by the Lahore-based Institute of Public Policy has, fortunately, recommended that we should spare some resources for this revival by going slow on macro-economic stabilisation. Development, it argues, cannot be avoided if we want to build capacity in our economy. That I think we will have to do. And perhaps in view of the ongoing war on terror, we can afford to expect some more help from our benefactors.

But one thing is for sure. It is our war and no matter how much foreign aid we receive, only we are responsible for rebuilding our economy. And if we want to rebuild it, for the sake of improved tolerance, we will have to encourage economic activity, by bringing interest rates down, creating new avenues of growth and creating jobs.

Unlike Musharraf’s rule, instead of depending only on unsustainable growth in the service sector, we will have to pay some heed to the manufacturing and corporate farming sectors. And instead of a linear approach towards problem solving, we will have to adopt a comprehensive approach. If the new finance minister and his team can do it, no allegations of lust will come. Many of us, indeed, if of course convinced, will help people understand that every tough measure is meant for their own good including, of course, the imposition of VAT. If, however, the team cannot even begin to think laterally it should know we have heard even bigger speeches in the past.

The writer is an independent columnist and a talk show host. He can be reached at farukh@gmail.com