Bhuttos may be eliminated physically but they live on as leading thought givers on the country’s economic canvas.

And, Bhuttos may not have accomplished all that one would want to see in the practical realm, but their persistent pursuit of the goals of economic justice and equity has kept the torch burning and hope alive as there have been significant spillovers too. In the absence of this loud voice and impact, the economic scene would have been engulfed totally by the ones whose slogan is grow-now-distribute-later. That is, distribution may wait indefinitely while accumulation may go on unabated at the upper end of the social strata in the immediate term too. Would Benazir’s transition kill the economic hope many had in the country?

It might first be argued that a feudal-dominated PPP no longer lends itself to land reforms. So, whither the goals of poverty eradication and distributive justice? It is important to trace some history in a bid to address this question.

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s PPP was also populated by feudals. But, land reforms they did promote and enact to the extent possible at that time. A second time round could have been a bigger difference but life was snuffed out of ZAB and so it was out of his economic reforms in general and land reforms in particular. ZAB, however, left a huge imprint by awakening the labouring classes and giving them some of their rights during his lifetime and equipping the working classes to now speak up and fight for their remaining rights themselves after he was gone. Since ZAB’s departure in 1979, there has been a clamour for labour rights. Whether these rights are given is dependent on the party in office but the parties are now gauged on the basis of this major criterion by the bulk of the electorate and the human rights advocates who influence opinions one way or the other.

This awareness did not exist meaningfully prior to ZAB’s times. ZAB gave dignity to labour and threw all employees up as major stakeholders in business organisations. Professional management is what ZABhutto commanded elevating the status of shop floor workers, engineers, and MBAs alike. Serfdom that existed in organisations was put an end to by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto even if all of it could not be ended during that period on agricultural farms. Since then, there has been no looking back on this score.

However much General Ziaul Haq emphasised self-sufficiency of the public sector, labour rights could not be rolled back. By the time Benazir Bhutto became the prime minister, the country had been hauled to the doorsteps of the IMF. Pakistan had become an ally of the US in the last leg of the cold war as a part of which the World Bank was aggressively exporting economic neo-liberalism with which came tagged deregulation, privatisation, rolling back of the state, less government, market reforms to set prices right and to attract foreign investment, and openness of the economies. With its loan packages, Pakistan accepted all of the above that came tied with the loans. Workers’ rights once again stood threatened .

During BB’s first term in the office of the prime minister as well as in her second term, BB guarded the rights of workers to employment. BB’s weekly meetings for keeping the kitchen items’ prices contained were well-known and are well-remembered. Also, BB’s attempts at protecting domestic industry and thereby employment from foreign competition by maintaining or not reducing the top rates of custom duty did not go down too well with the IMF who withheld the tranches. This eventually led to the downfall of her government in 1996. The caretakers inducted next were soon supported by the IMF as well as by Washington. The period that ensued was marked with unprecedented large scale retrenchments especially during the last five years or so.

Benazir’s renewed slogan was roti, kapra, or makaan. It is as applicable now as it was in the 1960s and in the 1970s. People have been left as immizerised now as they were after General Ayub’s era of the 1960s. Slogan of roti, in fact, has become even more apt now with skyrocketing wheat prices. The poor run from pillar to post to find affordable flour. With a major portion of the budget of the poor diverted to roti, there is not much left for kapra and makaan either with katchi abaadis mushrooming all over.

With Benazir, therefore, came hope for reduced prices of, at least, food items whose prices are left absolutely unchecked nowadays. This burden would have been surely eased by Benazir. She would have also looked into the donor-orchestrated large-scale unemployment. There are organisations that are understaffed with existing employees overburdened. These could have been potential avenues for generating employment towards which BB as PM could have worked.

That is, this would have been an attempt at blunting the rough edges of donor-driven so-called economic reforms heavily tilted in favour of the upper end of the society. In this era of so-called reform that benefits the rich at the expense of the poor, BB again stood for guarding the interests of the adversely affected deprived.

This shows that General Ayub’s era of grow-now-distribute-later was replaced immediately by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s economic stand of redistribution-before-growth as in Irma Adelman. ZAB attempted these both in speech and practice. He would have shown more results had he not been hung. People remain hung up though on the idea of distributive justice. After ZAB, the country slid back to grow-now-distribute-later again by the turn of the century. Entered Benazir Bhutto and the new rallying cry was distribute-from-growth yet again in the first decade of the 21st century. Our critique though was that the PPP no longer talks about land reforms. So, how does it intend to root out poverty and deprivation?

My response is that while ZAB started with the root cause and land reforms in an era of popular socialism; BB, in a different global economic milieu, started with the symptoms of unemployment and food deprivation. While ZAB worked forward from land reforms, BB would have worked backward from addressing the symptoms. This part of her vision though would unfold with the passage of time in response to real life developments on the ground. While many would want to see a cut and dried strategy, this was an externally dominated nebulous economic situation in which strategy would have emerged as a pattern in a stream of decisions that the country’s violent environment did not permit to be taken.

Nonetheless, is this the end of a stand for the poor, the downtrodden, and the deprived in Pakistan? Certainly not. The economic values that Bhuttos stood for are now shared widely in the country. The level of awareness is very high. And, the souls are now even more charged than ever before. It will now be known to all that elimination of torch bearers does not extinguish the flame but rekindles it with fuel of greater anger, passion, and missionary zeal. As this fire of hope rages, Benazir Bhutto’s economic legacy will live on!