We often hear Pakistanis complain that their country suffers from an ‘image problem’ internationally — that not enough is being done to publicise good work by their compatriots abroad, who are making a name for themselves and their ancestral homeland in various fields, including science and technology.

Commissioned by a local software house and IT consultancy, A Greener Valley by Rabia Garib attempts to address this supposed shortcoming by profiling 22 Pakistani-origin IT professionals who have made it big over the years in Silicon Valley. The book’s dust jacket describes these individuals as those “incredible’ Pakistanis based in America who have set up multimillion dollar technology businesses, or worked with some of the biggest IT corporations in the world. It documents their struggles and failures, and asks them for their thoughts on what the future direction of the technological sector in Pakistan should be like.

Some of the accounts are truly thought-provoking. For example, Jahanzeb Sherwani went from being a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon to co-founder of two companies by developing a very successful iPhone application to remotely control computer screens from a distance. He talks about an interesting phase in his life when he was working on his doctoral thesis with impoverished women in interior Sindh, while simultaneously providing customer support for his app to users in Western countries. The stark contradiction in living conditions of both groups he was interacting with opened his eyes to the extreme polarity which characterises our world. While he eventually chose to abandon research in developing tools for community health workers in favour of his start-up business, those initial years of working with rural communities had such a lasting influence that they have kept his interest alive in bringing about change in the developing world.

A Greener Valley aims to inspire those wishing to start technology businesses in Pakistan, as well as documenting Pakistani success stories in Silicon Valley

Others among the 22 people profiled also have some valuable advice to offer. When asked how the technology situation in Pakistan can be improved, Rafat Pirzada identifies the potency of overseas Pakistanis, but stresses the need for creating an enabling environment for them to return, à la South Korea’s brain drain reversal programme during the 1970s. Two others, Idris Kothari and Saeed Kazmi, lament the low investment currently being made in the field of IT start-ups. When probed further about why we do not see more Pakistani tech start-ups in the US, Faysal Sohail opines that his countrymen are held back from being entrepreneurial by their high-risk averseness, claiming that Silicon Valley’s venture capital model only works in the presence of risk-taking behaviour. Farhat Ali attributes this to Pakistanis’ lack of tolerance, which holds them back from encouraging others’ viewpoints.

Besides serving to document Pakistani success stories in Silicon Valley for posterity, A Greener Valley aims to inspire those wishing to start tech businesses in Pakistan, with the foreword stating that the book is meant to teach budding entrepreneurs the mechanics of how to plan a start-up. However, given the book’s emphasis on how technologically advanced the US market is — and by comparison, how backward Pakistan is — it is difficult to see how inspirational it can be for Pakistanis living in Pakistan trying to be successful technopreneurs here.

A Greener Valley peddles the notion of the proverbial ‘American dream’ unabashedly. Starting from humble origins and working their way through the system by dint of hard work, the individuals in the book appear to have risen above their initial circumstances. Sounding uncannily like the US State Department sponsored programming on local TV channels which abounds with feel-good stories about the Pakistani diaspora, the book is undoubtedly meant to make us — its Pakistani readership — feel proud.

“Over the next few months, Jahanzeb learnt a tremendous amount both through his academic research, his main ‘job’, as well as through his iPhone app, his ‘weekend side-project’. Juggling his PhD research responsibilities during this time was tricky and his thesis adviser was convinced he was going to drop out since he’s seen the ‘green of money’. It was a uniquely interesting point in his life, where he had one foot in high-tech entrepreneurship, and the other in community healthcare for developing regions. ‘There was a point when I was in rural Sindh, running user studies for my research by day and doing customer support for my iPhone app by night. By day, I was working with low-literate, low-income brown women who were providing basic health services to their community, and by night, I was working with highly literate, high-income white men wondering why their mouse was 5 pixels off from where they clicked for the $25 app they had just paid for. On one hand, kids are dying of diarrhoea here, and you’re worried about 5 pixels? It was an eye-opener to experience the stark dichotomy that exits in our world, first hand. ... It was a little difficult to choose between continuing the research that I cared about and had worked on for years, and the start-up that was relatively younger, but I realised that while my PhD had honed my innovation and research skills, I had a lot to learn about building and scaling products and services to large user bases.’” — Excerpt from the book

It is indeed heartening to learn that so many Pakistanis abroad are doing so well, including those who are the alumni of local engineering universities. Of the individuals mentioned in the book, three are graduates of UET Lahore, with LUMS and FAST also having one alumnus each, and no less than seven referring to NED University in Karachi as their alma mater (NED is also supposed to have a superb alumni network in Silicon Valley).

However, more problematic is the insinuation that the success achieved by these professionals is replicable by everyone else — including those living in Pakistan. Throughout the book, there is an almost subliminal message that those who left for greener pastures escaped destitution, but the blueprint they used can be emulated. The book seems to whisper to the reader that if you follow their route, you will achieve fame and glory too. At one place, it even says that the place does not matter, implying that if Pakistanis tried hard enough within Pakistan, they could achieve similar success; and asks rhetorically why the same progress and people cannot be nurtured back home.

The astute reader would point out immediately that unfortunately, this is not as easy as the author implies. The notion that the average Pakistani has a chance to achieve the heights these people achieved simply through hard work and dedication dismisses other factors such as privilege and opportunity. After all, nearly a quarter of the interviewees studied at elite private schools in Karachi and Lahore before they moved abroad, and almost all had the good fortune of getting admitted to good universities in the US. How many Pakistanis are able to acquire tertiary education in Pakistan, let alone secure admission and funding in top-ranking American colleges?

Furthermore, much of the success of these IT professionals is attributable to the enabling infrastructure they encountered once they migrated to the US — the ease of attracting capital and talent, the presence of supportive forums such as the Organisation of Pakistani Entrepreneurs, and the positive externalities of functioning in a technologically savvy environment — not all of which are available in Pakistan. Incidentally, part of Pakistan’s problem is the inability to retain good talent within the country, even as the country already produces fewer engineers a year (10,000, as one of Garib’s interviewees, Sikander Naqvi points out — compared to India and the US, which produce 250,000 engineers each annually). Ignoring these factors makes for a rather simplistic analysis.

Meanwhile, in celebrating the achievements of those interviewed, the book inadvertently alienates its target audience owing to its arguably patronising tone towards those living in Pakistan, with constant references to their “massive, yet unrealised” potential. Though the interviewees appear somewhat hopeful about Pakistan’s future, they are at best ambivalent about the country’s technological prospects, even as their condescension is masked subtly by their willingness to ‘give back’ to their homeland through periodic recruitment drives and outsourcing. Furthermore, the book almost tries to reassure the reader that the 22 professionals are patriotic Pakistanis who are somehow doing a great favour to Pakistan by living and working abroad, and achieving a larger, nationalistic objective. But the bottom line is, they aren’t; they left Pakistan for their own reasons — and they readily admit so themselves.

Oddly enough, while the interviewees talk about their struggles in dealing with business failure or in attracting capital, none of them talk about any discrimination they might have encountered as Pakistanis or Muslims — or simply as outsiders. That would have been more interesting. This begs the question if the all-pervasive ‘American dream’ is true verbatim, or is something amiss here?

The author is herself actively involved in the local IT scene as a blogger, a technology journalist, and co-founder of a website providing Urdu infotainment to children. Given her credentials, I was surprised to find the book brimming with typos and grammatical errors. Her refrain that the reader should look beyond the mistakes at the bigger objective that the book tries to achieve is no consolation. Similarly, she includes several abbreviations without expanding on what the acronyms stand for, and assumes knowledge of various IT terms. Another stylistic improvement could be compiling profiles chronologically (in order of arrival in the US) rather than alphabetically, since some interviewees moved to the US almost 40 years ago, while others are more recent arrivals. These could be points worth considering for a second edition — which is mentioned to be in the works.

The reviewer is a political economist, and has taught social sciences at various academic institutions in Karachi.

A Greener Valley
(Information technology)
By Rabia Garib
Published by InfoTech Group, Lahore
180pp.

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, July 3rd, 2016