File photo. Rizwan Tabassum—AFP
As Pakistan teeters toward bankruptcy once more, its intellectuals struggle to define the latest crisis and what caused it. The more pessimistic view is that the country is entering a period of continuous, severe economic crises and political chaos, with an unending game-of-thrones between the PTI and other political parties; ever-increasing terrorism by “Baloch separatist and religiously motivated extremists”; international and regional semi-isolation; an extraordinarily corrupt and inefficient state; and collapsing societal institutions in the face of unchecked population explosion and unregulated urbanization—as our human development indicators progressively worsen. This stance predicts more violence and chaos—especially under Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who appears unable to take any decisive decision without the go-ahead of his elder brother-in-exile Nawaz Sharif.
Unfortunately, decisive decision-making is essential for a Pakistan on the brink of default and an increasingly apathetic world. Even its Arab friends are not doling out unconditional funds, stressing on the need to revive an IMF program, with its much-hated conditionalities. There is little to be gained from blaming Afghanistan, which facilitates smuggling that endangers Pakistan’s economy. Nor is there any benefit to blaming the U.S. for creating the Taliban—who now appear to have set Pakistan their target—to defeat Russia in Afghanistan. The only viable solution is the IMF, which wants Pakistan to withdraw subsidies that will trigger inflation and take even essential commodities out of the reach of the common man. The truth is that Pakistan has been living beyond its means since its inception and has now become too unsustainable for anyone to support even as regional neighbors India and Bangladesh have become self-sufficient and hold significant foreign exchange reserves.
Pakistani physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy has blamed the country’s elite—positing they do not behave like elites in other societies. He writes: “As in some African countries, Pakistan is home to the world’s richest politicians, real-estate tycoons, and generals. Symbiotically bound together, on Fridays they love being seen in a state of unctuous piety. Donning a prayer cap and dressed in starchy white shalwar-kameez, one by one they step out from their shiny new SUVs and into a DHA mosque.” But this hypocritical elite does nothing for the state that has allowed them to become rich unlike elites in other countries who fund science and academia, endowing universities with chairs and professorships while institutions bear their names to immortalize them “like India’s J.R.D. Tata, whose Tata Institute of Fundamental Research is the proud flagship of Indian science.”
Pakistan is now at a crossroads where it has no choice left but to change its way of living—in both the civilian and defense spheres—even as it tackles a deeply polarized political process that will only worsen in the coming days of hardship.