What are the most important
problems faced by the country and how a political party contemplates to go about
solving these problems? This, in essence, should be the crux of an election
manifesto.
At last, all the major political parties have come out with their election
manifestos. Let us analyze these documents. But before that, spelling out the
top priority national problems, which should also be of top concern to the
national political outfits, must take place.
Problems of the people are always intertwined. None of these problems could be
dealt with in isolation or independent of one another. Therefore all such omni-potent
problems have to be treated with due deference to their connections with one
another.
Education and employment, health and housing, promotion of democratic values and
empowerment of federating units, population planning and land reforms are, in
nutshell, the subjects of concern. The problem of terrorism merits its mention
separate from the other problems for not being a problem of all times. The
problem of terrorism sprang up due to the faulty policies of some stooge
governments in the past. As such it is not a problem of permanent nature. But
the solution of this problem is very much linked with the national literacy
profile and also with land reforms, to some extent.
However, to my reckoning, mother of all evils is exponential population growth.
For a country like Pakistan, with its given resources, optimum results cannot be
achieved in any of the fields of socio-economic activity without bringing the
demographic profile in line with the available resources. We keep on adding the
establishment of public as well as private sectors educational institutions in
the country frantically. Yet we fail to achieve the desired literacy index;
because our effort cannot cope with the population growth. In the like manner we
always remain drastically short of health and housing requirements due to the
same reason.
It is virtually a matter of criminal neglect on the part of all stake holders,
including the politicians, the government functionaries, the bureaucracy and the
media that no attention is paid to such an acute problem. All these institutions
have maintained a kind of deafening silence on the subject, despite its being
the fundamental problem requiring every one’s attention. There is no enigma
regarding this criminal neglect. This negligence is being maintained due to fear
of the religious right. Unfortunately, over a long period of time, a faulty
perception has developed in the upper tiers of society that the common man is
committed to the attitude of religious right in the matter. Despite repeated
rout of the religious parties in all the general elections that have taken place
so far in Pakistan the faulty perception does not die down.
Persistence of such a perception with politicians and bureaucracy could perhaps
be ignored due to the all time tainted character of these segments but the
deafening silence maintained by the intelligentsia, that is the men and women of
letters, and the media in general, is just not palpable.
Sages of all eras have maintained that every problem must be tackled from the
root. Superficial treatment of any problem of any magnitude is doomed to
failure. Instead of devising means of effective population planning we keep
making superficial arrangements like building more schools, creating more
superficial jobs, adding more hospitals and more beds in the existing hospitals,
building more houses, bringing more land under cultivation and so on and on.
With the available resources such additions always fall short.
Promotion of democratic values can be achieved only by ensuring proper use of
vote by the common man, free from feudal and ethnic bonds and prejudices. This
reform can be brought about through bi prong measures. Firstly by achieving
desired literacy and second by breaking the shackles of landlordism. We have
earlier concluded that the literacy index could be improved by arresting the
exponential population growth. And now we find that to achieve freedom of
exercise of vote by the rural population that accounts for around 70% of
country’s population, meaningful land reforms can ensure elimination of feudal
lords’ influence on voting.
Advocacy of a strong center has always been the most typical obsession of the
official bureaucracy and the feudal lords of Pakistan. This strategy badly
alienated the people of the smaller provinces and encouraged nationalist
movements there. The external forces also capitalized on such sentiments. As a
consequence we are still engaged in superficial measures to consolidate the
alienated units. Although the outgoing government had done some legislations
with regard to devolution of powers and finances to the provinces but still more
measures of such devolution have to be undertaken.
Purposeful land reforms will also help in restoring the confidence of the
smaller provinces in the federation. In the past only cosmetic land reforms were
carried out twice, once during the dictatorial regime of Ayub Khan and second
time by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Both the attempts were meant to fool the people.
Heads of conscious citizens hang in embarrassment to find missing mention of all
the top priority problems of the country in the election manifestoes of the main
political parties None of them has made an unequivocal commitment to carry out
land reforms in case their party is returned to power in the coming elections.
This is done to keep the feudals in good humor. Similarly to keep them on the
right side of the dark forces of bigotry and religious extremism, population
planning is not mentioned. The country is starving of energy, including gas and
electricity because of the population explosion. The country is far below the
international standards of health and hygiene because of over population.
Country is drastically short of the infrastructure required for providing
education to all the children, because of overpopulation. There is ever
increasing unemployment, because of overpopulation. With every passing day the
country is getting short of the water resources, due to the expanding
population. Housing problems is likewise accentuating with every passing hour,
again due to overpopulation.
All the above problems are better known to the prospective contestants of coming
general elections but they don’t touch upon the subject of population. One of
the leaders of a front line political party says he will launch a bullet train
when returned to power (but no mention of population planning, as if the bullet
train will be done up just by air). They claim to end power shortage in months
and corruption in days. And so on. They are trying to fool the simple and semi
literate folks of Pakistan. I don’t know how far they can go about doing that. I
therefore take solace in a saying of Abraham Lincoln that I quote here: “You can
fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time,
but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”