PRESIDENT Asif Zardari was heard pleading with the media the other day to look, once in a while, at a glass that is half full (with his administration’s achievements) and not always as half empty.

That should be a reasonable expectation of any government. It is more relevant for this one. Seldom have odds weighed so heavily against a government while nature has never been so unkind to the country. But the government has no external force to blame for its huge size and commensurate incompetence and corruption.

It is but a huddle of diverse, even mutually antagonistic, elements trying to serve personal or party ends and not the people at large. The same is true for the provincial administrations.

Mr Zardari’s half-full glass contains little more than the NFC award, the 18th constitutional amendment, a representative administration for Gilgit-Baltistan and a beginning towards redressing the grievances of the Baloch. None of these measures, or any other that the government might have taken, have any bearing on the ever-aggravating problems of the people which, to name only the three top ones, are inflation, unemployment and insecurity.

A few percentage points of extra revenue transferred from the federation to the provinces will make little difference as long as the national income stagnates or grows slowly.

The expectation that more money in the hands of the provincial governments would be spent more prudently is far-fetched.

In fact the reverse might happen. The provincial administrations, if at all, are less efficient and more wasteful. That is not to deny autonomy to the provinces but to emphasise the need for building up their capacity and holding them accountable.

The gesture of ‘rights’ seems neither to have pleased the loyal chiefs nor appeased the rebellious youth of Balochistan. In fact, the province is getting increasingly restive. The Gilgit-Baltistan region was previously administered by a political agent. There were no complaints then nor are there any plaudits now that the territory has an assembly and a cabinet. Tampering with the customary administrative structures and a system of justice in the northwest frontier alienated the tribal chiefs. The rise of a political elite in the fastnesses of the mountains where there was none is no occasion to rejoice.

The people of Hunza and Chitral have been reaping the benefits of grass-root ventures of the Aga Khan’s foundation and other voluntary organisations that won a world prize for Sadruddin Hashwani’s beekeeping project and a Nobel nomination for Shoaib Sultan Khan’s effort to promote skills and generate family incomes through community efforts led by women. One would loath to see a self-sustaining economic welfare programme fall victim to political inducement.

The gains accruing from Mr Zardari’s legalistic measures, or their hazards, may not count for much but it is his fancied ‘reconciliation’ that confuses people and undermines the principles of parliamentary democracy. To his mind, the alternative to reconciliation is confrontation. In fact political parties are in a state of confrontation while staying within the boundaries of his make-believe reconciliation.

Quite a few politicians and clerics are riding Zardari’s gravy train and yet blame him for all the ills. PPP ministers in Punjab grumble that they never get to see the chief minister, much less advise him, decisions are made in a cabal and not in the cabinet and bureaucrats ignore their orders. Sitting in the opposition they could have played a useful role but it was a hard choice between the perks of power and the rigours of opposition. Their party chairman’s reconciliation drive came to their rescue with the cost borne by the people.

It is similar wasteful expenditure, and embezzlement, that has led to a strong reaction against the new tax proposals.

Ironically, the culprits are also in the vanguard of protest. No wonder Pakistan has one of the lowest tax-to-GDP ratios in the world. At the same time it heads the charity league.

The people of Karachi would rather donate to Sattar Edhi or to the LRBT eye hospital whose surgeon Ashok Kumar operates free of charge than to pay taxes to the city government so that it can pay salaries to thousands of employees who were recruited only to sustain Mr Zardari’s reconciliation bid.

Surely he knows that for the doubtful benefit of stability, or more crudely put, in order to avoid mid-term elections, he has been promoting a culture of hypocrisy and graft in public life and has made the political system and the holder of every public office a laughing stock.

What truly should be the cornerstone of Mr Zardari’s policy, but is mentioned by him only in passing, is the fight against militancy and the normalisation of relations with India. The two are interlinked. If the militants are defeated and India is a friendly neighbour, the national focus is bound to shift from armies to economic development.

Mr Zardari’s commitment to defeating militancy does not appear to go beyond the army operations financed by America.

Even if the present lot of militants were to be so reclaimed or exterminated, a new and larger generation would emerge from thousands of parochial establishments operating in the country whose operators and ideologues are also among the beneficiaries of Mr Zardari’s reconciliation bid. Defeating militancy is a distant cry. No perpetrator of any terrorist attack has ever been traced much less tried, not even the two gunmen who were captured alive by worshippers in the midst of carnage at Ahmadi congregations in Lahore.

The long-term threat to democratic institutions, as images of the flood misery have shown, arises not from fighters in the hills or suicide bombers in mosques but from the rural poor. Even the low growth rate of three or four per cent is inequitably shared as it comes chiefly from industrialisation and trading which leaves the peasantry untouched. The challenge before the nation is to increase farm output and make rural society more egalitarian. But of that the political leadership shows little awareness.

kunwaridris@hotmail.com