Robin Hood economics
NOW don’t get me wrong. I’m all for “recovering looted wealth” and I’m all for using the proceeds to help educate our youth.
I’m also all for hiking outlays on health, and I would like nothing more than to see our government’s expenditures soar by almost 400 per cent in five years.
The intention behind many of the reforms proposed by the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf in its “economic plan” is admirable, although one is at a loss to see how it will actually work. It’s hard to see where the money will come from to pay for the boost in welfare spending and deficit cutting considering the major potential revenue heads now belong to the provinces.
The plan purports to run the country through a state of emergency. Every category of the plan is headlined “emergency”. So once voted in, we are told, the party will declare an “expenditure emergency’ and a “revenue collection emergency” and a “governance reform emergency” and an “institution reform emergency” and so on.
There follows beneath each heading a series of steps that sometimes read like they were written up by Robin Hood himself. They range from the comparatively basic steps like “all symbols of Pomp and Glory to be shut down” to bombastic declarations of a “Frontal Attack [sic]” on cartels and speculators and hoarders and gas and electricity thieves.
All this has been tried many times already. Remember the attempt of the Competition Commission to penalise the cement cartels in 2009 or the stock market crash and investigation of March 2005? Where did the 2009 suo motu against the sugar barons lead? Too often the pursuit of vested interests leads back to the homes of your own partners in power, and it’ll be no different for the PTI.
For all the apocalyptic metaphors that the party is so fond of there is something that they don’t know about their favourite one: the tsunami. Eventually all tsunamis recede, and the ground reasserts itself as the waters inevitably move back to the oceans from whence they came. The land always wins against the tsunami.
I don’t doubt that election night will be a big night for the party, although exactly how big remains to be seen. But that night will end, and the thousand and one nights that will follow will see the stubborn reassertion of the status quo, the same political landscape, the same constellation of capital and constituency, that the party claims in its economic plan it is out to destroy.
Without a firm foothold in the new political set-up, the plan becomes a little irrelevant, considering that when the curtain rises on the next parliament, it’s highly unlikely that the PTI will carry enough votes to form a government on their own and they are more likely to become embroiled in the politics of transition.
To whom will the party reach out for a coalition? The PML-N? The PPP? What will they do with the MQM, the regional party whose support has been essential to almost every government since 1988? Or will they choose to sit in opposition for five years?
And then there’ll be the stubborn reality of Pakistan’s economy, its many complex dysfunctions and difficult trade-offs.
Diverting gas from industry to power, to take one example, something the plan presents as a solution to the circular debt has always met spirited resistance from industry, and will likely discourage investment.
Gen Musharraf tried to rule the country through a far more drastic state of emergency than the one the PTI is envisioning.
Almost everything their programme talks about was tried in the first three years of the general’s rule.
There was a slash and burn accountability drive, loan recovery drive, documentation of the economy drive, imposition of GST drive, and so on. It all petered out with a whimper.
In over a decade of dedicated pursuit, NAB couldn’t even recover Rockwood Estate, and where it was pursuing dozens of cases against the ‘top leadership’ of the PPP and the PML-N, it had to declare the top leadership of the PML-Q to be squeaky clean, and was talking about recovering five billion from this scam here and seven billion from that scam there.
“Recovering looted wealth” sounds good to the ears, but always snags on the inconveniences of the law, of multiple jurisdictions, and of overlapping political loyalties, and it makes for a lousy platform on which to build a vast spending plan.
Nawaz Sharif was bequeathed a vast mandate to rule through the election in 1997. Gen Musharraf, who took on titles of state like they were feathers in his plumage — he was at one point the prime minister, the president and the army chief all at the same time — was forced, by 2002, to square his game on the same status quo he had sworn to uproot in 1999.
With all their power, both these rulers failed at many of the reforms the PTI is claiming it will undertake, including the Robin Hood economics.
So what makes the PTI think they will succeed where these two failed in bringing about revolutionary change? Not even the most optimistic take on their prospects sees them taking anywhere close to the number of seats in parliament that Nawaz Sharif had in 1997.
And no matter how much the party of the establishment they may be, they will never be more of an establishment’s party than Musharraf was prior to the 2002 election.
Keeping in mind the political realities the party will be operating within, it seems unlikely they will be in a position to take on the powerful vested interests that have consistently thwarted the kinds of reforms the party’s economic plan envisions.
The writer is a Karachi-based journalist covering business and economic policy.
khurram.husain@gmail.com
Twitter:@khurramhusain
Intellectual can tell u ‘why it cannot be done?” but they having nothing to say that “how it can be done”.
In the end, PTI brings a message of ‘hope’. Hope for change and for a ‘new pakistan’. And the dividing line then becomes, betwee those who ‘hope’ and those who dare not. it is clear which side this writer is at. Mr. Khurram, there are no more options left for Pakistan. Certainly, past failures of others is no indication of future performance of PTI. Even logically, it is inconsistant, past is not a predictor for future. This ‘tsunami’ is going to sweep away the existing system that you feel is too entrenched to be defeated, post election.
1st five comments are more thought provoking than the article… COme up with your solution Mr. Author or I doubt you want many hits for your blog. See! this is the power of “IK”, Its a brand, even every opponent wants to encash it :p
Note: 1st five comments from the top.
Neat Analysis and presented well !
Mere theory unrelated the concrete Pakistani situation may look good but reality speaks differently.
I found this article quite predictable .It seems to toe the line of most run of the mill,unimaginative reviews floating around these days.Even crticism can be interesting and thought provoking if
powered by original thought. and not just for the sake of criticism.”Been there done that” is the box that these self proclaimed economists/analysts cannot bring themselves to think beyond.
IK is trying to shortcut his way to power by sacrificing sincere allies in favour of professionally corrupt old politicians and with half baked plans. good luck to all.
a valid argument – let time be the best judge.
Good one !
The answer is within your analysis – the WILL to implement it, and supremacy of law no matter who the individual is. And this is the basis of PTI’s manifesto; if they won’t do it, then it wouldn’t be PTI now, would it?
Second, comparing PTI to Nawaz Sharif and Musharraf is not the right comparison at all. Nawaz Sharif is himself one of the leading corruption beneficiaries and lacked any will at all to change the status quo. Musharraf on the other hand did not have any political following of his own and fell short when he tried to hang on to power at all costs post 2002 by colluding with everyone and anyone on the local political scene who would agree to his whims, irrespective of ideological identities.
It thus comes down to WILL, plain and simple. And how PTI conducts itself post election (whether it is in the position of forming a government or not) will determine how sincere it is to its own ideology.
Nicely written article and some very relevant points ! Incase of other emergencies they do throw some light except two of the very critical natured areas 1) excess tax collection 2) one education system.
However, please do not compare PTI with Musharraf both are opposite, mushy is a curupt person and responsible for NRO after which only thugs like Zardari and Shareef could loot the country.
It is true that PTI will not make alliance with PMLN, PPP, MQM,JUIF,ANP etc, becuase only a party like PTI and a leader like Imran khan can choose to sit in oppostion instead of having the burden of fall of Pakistan on their conscience.
Long live Pakistan
Love live PTI
Long live Imran Khan
Long live Robin Hood (Assad Umar)
very good, Khurram
We have to cleanse Pakistan politicians and anyone that is in power from top to bottom before we can hope to have a better start. What Pakistan is at the moment is a moldy, muddy pool with no outlets and we are only thinking of pouring pure water and trying to clean the pool. The issue is we need an outlet for the mold and mud to be washed away. Until we don’t have that outlet, Pakistan will remain mold and muddy and there is nothing that can change it.
I think you should add this to your introduction (the writer is a Karachi based journalist….) as well:
The writes is a Karachi-based journalist who is not only covering business and economic policy but over a period of time has acquired the skill of predicting the future ( last sentence 5th paragraph, 8th paragraph, 3rd last paragraph and last paragraph are just a few examples). The writer additionally has perfected the art of listening to only what he wants to (vested interests, making alliance with same parties, no difference between Musharaf, Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan, all these questions have been answered several times by PTI, it is only if you would LISTEN Carefully, even at the time of presentation someone asked the similar question of vested interest and it was answered appropriately) and lastly the writer has some supernatural qualities of ‘ I know it all’, ‘I am too cool to crritisize anything just for the heck of it, with any basis’, ‘ I am a genius’!
without any basis i mean
Asad Umar has troubled Engro with his personal ambition. After that feat, he has joined the right party where the head of the party is another personally ambitious individual. Birds of the same feather flocked together.
I do find the article a bit of old fashion. You are a talking the same old way. It looks like the author is favouring the other party.
I thing we have to think out of the box. Someone have to come in front and start the process of change in our society. If people like you promoting the same old ideas i.e. no one can change our system. This is very sad. What is the alternative?
Yes it is very difficult to do what PTI is hoping for, and may not be look real. But to achieve something we have to take lots of pain and hard work; we have to make all these real, Inshallah.
Thanks for a hard-hitting analysis. Now that author is done criticizing, does he have any sincere advice for them as well? What good is knowledge that takes pride in telling people they will fail rather than helping them reach their goal?
We may expect that there will be many people who will flame Khurram Husain for what I consider to be a well thought-out article. We may expect to see many comments exhorting the virtue of the PTI based on the intention of their leadership and angrily rebuking Mr Husain for being “unfair” to and “against” Imran Khan.
And herein lies part of the problem: We tend to look at intent without any semblance of practicality. Mr Husain quite correctly implies that intent (if there really is any) is a far cry from implementation of actual practical measures. In this article then, I see no direct criticism of PTI or its ideas — if anything, Mr Husain is clearly hinting on the importance of having a practical plan based on our present realities. And I, for one, cannot find any fault in that notion. But others will berate Mr Husain for his writing.
And therein lies another part of our collective problem: we just love to shoot the messenger.
At least he said what most people WANT to hear, never mind if he can really do it or not. Imran Khan might be shooting himself in the foot by trying to form a government by inducting ‘Electables” in his party rather than going through the long haul and making a real grass root cadre based political party. I fear that this huge experiment of his might not succeed if he really comes into power. PTI might become a party with too many leaders, each having his own agenda in mind. But I do wish Khan all the best of luck on his endeavor. If he actually does what he claims he will do, he might be the first one on this planet ever to pull it off.