Hegemony of the Ruling Elite in Pakistan

temporal:

`Reluctantly and against logic I am being won over by the side that argues that Kashmir solution is the core of all problems among the scores of nationalities in the sub continenet`

don`t give up hope yet. the `core` problem is the (in)ability of people of different religion to live with eachother peacefully. once that issue is resolved (a great task, in the evergrowing presence of, often violent, fundamentalism) kashmir would be a non-problem. a good, viable solution for now is loc=ib.

Zeemax:

Interesting article. Thanks for posting it here otherwise we would not have seen it. You say,``The budget cannot be balanced without cutting non-productive expenditure, which in the most part means Defense expenditure; both visible, that is allocated in the budget as well as invisible which is never revealed. Military hardware purchases and maintenance place demands on foreign exchange resources that are unsustainable. All other economic concerns are secondary to this primary factor and are dependent.``

Agree with you completely. Any thoughts how this can be achieved without trading off sovereignity. Last time I invited somebody`s comments on this topic the answer must have gotten lost in the midst of hundreds of interactions there.

rgds

t

Jay wrote, ``Never ever have I seen a Pakistani post which says unconditionally that MUSLIMS CAN LIVE WITH THE HINDUS IN PEACE IN INDIA.``

Sir, I do. And if this is not sufficiently explicit to satisfy your inner urges, peace of mind, constipatorial thinking or whatever, I am prepared to say again and again I DO, I DO!

And if you have any other pet peeves against any of the poor, mangled, confused, backward looking, tunnel visioned Pakistanis please come forward now. I am in a happily obliging mood.
Will confess to any crime, even, where the statutory limit has expired.

every so obligingly,
yours humbly,

temporal

Ref Temporal # 60

[Any thoughts how this can be achieved without trading off sovereignity]

I had posted the answer as I see it in my Manifesto of the Millenium at # 443 in Again, Desperate Times board. I didn´t get many comments though one was that I was a coward and another friend said I was in danger of being branded an Indian agent. Would appreciate your views.

Rgds.

In reply to Temporal, #60, how to reduce Pakistan`s defence budget without trading off on sovereignity :

Good India-China relations are in Pakistan`s interest IF good relations lead to a reduction in India`s defence budget. Pakistan can then commensurately reduce its defence budget.

As the recent Kargil conflict shows, reliance on China to back Pakistan`s position on Kashmir is going to be disappointing. The China card has not trumped India yet.

A three-way reapproachment (Pakistan, India, China) with the goal of lower level of armaments and not necessarily involving a final solution to Kashmir is in all our interests. Again, to keep China from arming up, a China-US dialog on East Asian security needs to be pushed for.

-arun gupta

Let us see if this gets past the Chowk censors. They refused to print it as an article.

(Let me try the mantra again: TNT, TNT! Take that, you Pakis! Nyah, nyah, nyah!)

A Radical Proposal for Pakistan’s Salvation

One of the problems that Pakistan has faced from the outset is the challenge of living with a giant, hostile neighbor. Pakistan has reacted by trying for parity with India in the few areas where parity might be achievable.

The troubles with India over Kashmir has convinced Pakistan that it is in its best interests to enlarge its army and enhance its effectiveness through modern equipment. Pakistan is thus locked into an arms race with India, a race that it can ill afford. The most recent manifestations of this attempt at parity are the development of missiles and the nuclear weapons tests.

Pakistan does not have serious disputes with Iran or China, two of its neighbors. Pakistan has a forward foreign policy with regard to Afghanistan, carrying on the British tradition of trying to place a friendly government in power there and has finally succeeded in doing so. The issue with India is related to two areas: the Siachen glacier in Kashmir and Sir Creek in Kutch. There is a well-defined front in Siachen which essentially defines the border in an area which was left undefined. The trouble over Sir Creek is that the creek has changed its course and the dispute is over whether the border is the middle of the creek’s current course or earlier course. While visions of sugar plums dance in both countries` heads (in the form of oil and gas deposits that may or may not be present in the area), the fact is that this is an otherwise worthless salt marsh barely fit for grazing donkeys.

Pakistan has been a foreign policy state. By this I mean that Pakistan has spent an inordinate amount of time in the international arena. This of course feeds its ego and also counteracts India which has, since its independence, tried to assert an independent approach in the world, aligning with neither of the first two worlds and trying to create a third world group and trying to arrogate to itself a leadership role there. Pakistan has counteracted this by its alignment with the US when and where it was convenient to do so, which is most of the time. The fact that this alignment had a strong military dimension was all the more welcome since it enabled Pakistan to build up an armed force much larger than its economy could be expected to support.

But as peace has broken out over most of the world and the larger countries believe that it is better to engage in peaceful trade rather than war, we now suddenly find a peace momentum all over the world. It is because of this that the Kargil affair drew such strong condemnation from the world and Pakistan was left without friends.

Pakistan’s outward focus has left it no time to concentrate on internal development. It took several years to draw up a constitution which was then thrown out when the Army took over. The large army also eats up a huge portion of the national budget estimated at 35% or more. In addition, there is the clandestine budget for nuclear weapons. Thus Pakistan has not much money left for internal development.

The remedies that have been suggested are a reduction in tension along the border with India, a non-aggression or no-war pact, and simultaneous reduction in the armed forces of both India and Pakistan. The previous Pakistani attempts at maintaining parity with India have come back to haunt it because parity is still desired, though at lower force levels.

Thus the radical proposal. Instead of maintaining some sort of disproportionate parity with India, Pakistan should simply abolish its armed forces. Park the tanks and fighter jets in the middle of the Baluchi desert in plain view of the spy satellites. Demobilize the army, sell off the submarines and destroyers of the navy, send off the air force pilots on loan to Saudi Arabia and the Middle East sheikdoms so that they keep their flying skills. Convert a couple of army divisions to a National Guard armed only with APCs. Get on with the task of disarming the mobsters roaming the country. Get a handle on the illegal drug trade. Convert a small force of Navy personnel into a Coast Guard to guard Pakistan’s coast line and to provide maritime rescue services.

This will free up the money that goes toward maintaining the armed forces for other productive purposes. It has been estimated that in Pakistan there are 564 teachers for every 1000 soldiers whereas the South Asian average is 1500 teachers. The literacy rate in Pakistan is around 39%, the female literacy rate is much lower overall and as low as 3% in Baluchistan. The money that is saved by abolishing the army should be spent on adult literacy campaigns, schools for regular school-age children, agricultural and other infrastructure development and the like.

What happens if India invades? Of course India cannot invade. These are the people who have been proclaiming from the rooftops to anyone who will listen their commitment to peace and non-aggression. They have already fenced parts of the Punjab and Rajasthan border and plan to do so in Kargil and other Kashmir sectors, thus demarcating the border on the ground. How would they look if they invade a defenseless country? What will be the justification for the invasion? India will be eating its words of the last half-century. Fling those words at India daily and watch India squirm.

Pakistan should get a commitment from the US to monitor the Indo-Pak border in return for the only carrot it has: signing the CTBT. The US can monitor the border through on-ground sensors and satellites and pay for demarcating and if necessary fencing the rest of the border. Thus Pakistan’s territorial integrity is safe despite total disarmament.

What about the larger issue of Kashmir? I think Pakistan should offer the solution of making the Kashmir valley into another Bhutan. It will become nominally independent, will have its own flag and representation in the UN but will leave defense, external affairs and communications to India. India gets rid of the headache of maintaining peace, gets transit rights for its army to go to Ladakh to defend the border with China and Pakistan would have fulfilled its commitment of self-determination to the Kashmiris. Everybody wins and nobody loses face. In return, Pakistan has to make sure that unemployed Talibanists, be they Pakistanis or Afghans, don’t come into the valley to stir up trouble.

Exile all current and former generals. Get rid of the pirs and the feudals, if necessary by buying up their lands with some of the money saved by eliminating the army. Let them move to greener pastures elsewhere. Spend the next 20 years changing the outlook of the next generation of Pakistanis. Create some sort of National Service so that every Pakistani spends a year after high school working on public works projects. This will foster a sense of unity among the various provinces and will teach a trade to those who do not have the aptitude for academics. The public works projects can do what the Works Projects Administration did in the US in the 30s: build roads to remote areas, create parks, re-plant forests, etc.

But the real advantage is that no army, no coup. There is finally some chance of uninterrupted experimentation with democracy so that people get used to the idea that they have to wait for the next elections if they want a change in government and democracy starts putting down deep roots.

Will Pakistan rise to the challenge?

Ref Assad_K #: 55

You ask {You weren`t `Tsouhu`, were you?}

Don`t we use handles to be anonymous? Anyway, since you ask, the answer is `No`. I was PTwithNuclearTeeth. Some Indians interpreted PT to mean Paki Terrorist. I leave it to dedicated political scientists to figure out what it is!

Now that I have opened up the kimono, were you ConPak?

alireza,

No sir I never slander any one, no un-parlimentary words, no morons and bigots, no value judgements on people, occasional show of admiration for the few on chowk.

I only interpret the collective, interpret it in terms of TNT, religion and other specifics, they are provocative, but should not be offensive to the inteligent.

I dont focus on the specific, when the honour killing is not condemned by the senate, every one has to talke note, when deaths in Kashmir are reported day in and day out in the internet edition of dawn, every one has to take note, these relate to the collective of what is pakistan today. Every individual is an exception, but the collective is manifest in these, this collective guide the destiny of nations, if any one is interested, then should influence the collective.

Regards

Jay

I had submited the following article for publication on chowk sometime in early november but it hasn´t appeared so far. I´ll reproduce it here just in case some friends find it of interest.

IMF - Friend or Foe ?

International Monetary Fund is perceived as a saviour and a meddling dictator, interestingly both at the same time. We eagerly await release of tranches of money from them while cursing them simultaneously. There are accusations on Governments of extending the begging bowls to them ; sacrificing national pride ; compromising fiscal priorities ; and endangering democracy by accepting mandates of politically unpopular steps like removal of subsidies on essential items ; while not realizing that IMF doesn`t invite any nation to borrow from it! It`s the Governments that go running to IMF when they run out of reserves.

How did this come to be? How did the IMF attain the power where one cannot live with it but cannot live without it either? The favourite punching bag of third-world nations but called upon to bail out economies and it happily obliges!

The answer lies in the punjabi proverb `` Chor noon kyah chori karo tey Thaneydar noon kyah pharr lao `` (asking the thief to steal and telling the policeman to nab him) ; a carefully worked out strategy of divide and rule by financial means which proved to be so lethally effective in the Far-Eastern and Russian currency crises of 1997.

After the devastation of the Second World War, there was a rush towards accelerated growth to rebuild the economies. It was widely accepted that accelerated growth cannot be achieved without creation of ``paper money`` i.e. deficit financing, so that is what was preached to the developing nations. A new economic doctrine of borrow and spend ; or spend what doesn`t exist ; was established to appease the worldwide scramble to create national wealth through consumption, financed by government spending on major infrastructural projects. The doctrine did work by creating demand, which spurred industrialization thus boosting per capita incomes (demand-pull).

However, continued deficit financing also created inflation thus putting pressure on currencies. With creeping devaluation in the developing countries eating into their foreign exchange reserves, these countries were advised by the multilateral lenders to open up their economies for foreign investment; both direct in industries as well as portfolio investments in their stock markets ; and to make their currencies convertible on the capital account , i.e. float their currencies fully in order to benefit from resources available abroad in order to close their budgetary gaps. All the recent victims of the crisis of 1997, i.e. South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand fell into the trap. Russia did too in an unparalleled haste.

By opening up their economies and floating their currencies, no more tanks and naval vessels were required to colonize. Institutional speculators emptied the vaults of the central banks while the monetary authorities sought in vain to prop up their currencies. In 1997, more than 100 billion dollars of Asia`s hard currency reserves had been transferred in a matter of months into private financial hands. In the wake of the currency devaluation, real earnings and employment plummeted virtually overnight leading to mass poverty in countries, which had in the post-war period registered significant economic and social progress.

Under repeated speculative assaults, Asian central banks had entered into multi-billion dollar contracts in the forward foreign exchange market in a vain attempt to protect their currency. With the total depletion of their hard currency reserves, the monetary authorities were forced to borrow large amounts of money under the IMF bailout agreement. Following a scheme devised during the Mexican crisis of 1994-95, the bailout money, however, is not intended ``to rescue the country``. In fact the money never entered Korea, Thailand or Indonesia; it was earmarked to reimburse the institutional speculators, to ensure that they would be able to collect their money owed in hard currency.

In the words of renowned currency speculator George Soros (who made 1.6 billion dollars of speculative gains in the dramatic crash of the British pound in 1992) ``extending the market mechanism to all domains has the potential of destroying society``. In the late twentieth century, the outright conquest of nations can be carried out in an impersonal fashion from the corporate boardroom, a computer terminal, or a cell phone. In the words of Malaysia`s Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad: ``This deliberate devaluation of the currency of a country by currency traders purely for profit is a serious denial of the rights of independent nations``.

Where does the money come from to finance these multi-billion dollar operations? Only a small portion of the money comes from IMF resources. The US Treasury was called upon to make a large contribution to IMF sponsored rescue operations. The treasury issued US public debt to finance the same. Interestingly this issue was underwritten and guaranteed by the Wall Street merchant banks involved in the speculative assaults in the first place. In other words, those who raised the bailout money were those who were the ultimate recipients of it.

Pakistan has been resisting pressure to make it`s currency convertible so far but for how long? When partial convertibility was allowed and the stock markets opened up to foreign portfolio investment, it boosted the markets temporarily but then resulted in wild fluctuations leaving the small investors holding the bucket every time. We have been seeing the creeping devaluation since decades. A nation of 140 million people has to suffer humiliation for $ 280 million which is probably equal to any respectably-sized fund manager`s portfolio in Hicksville USA. We may curse the IMF but we simply don`t have the money ourselves - Period!

The lesson to be learnt from all of above is self-reliance. We cannot blame the East India Company for colonizing the sub-continent before we search into our own wasteful Mughal souls. It`s easy to blame foreigners but not so easy to look within and blame our own selves. The world is competitive and there aren`t any free lunches. The foreign armies will come to colonize, now armed with financial weapons, if we ourselves are weak.

The practical answer in the context of Pakistan; amongst all the clichés, lies in first formulating and then amalgamating fresh doctrines of economy and defense. Both are inextricably entwined. The budget cannot be balanced without cutting non-productive expenditure, which in the most part means Defense expenditure; both visible, that is allocated in the budget as well as invisible which is never revealed. Military hardware purchases and maintenance place demands on foreign exchange resources that are unsustainable. All other economic concerns are secondary to this primary factor and are dependent upon its rationalization. If we continue the love/hate relationship with multi-lateral donors like IMF to fund what we don`t need and can much less afford, we`ll soon fall into either a terminal debt spiral or hyperinflation or both.

The friendship of IMF is like that of a bear. Its embrace can kill you.

Zeemax

Debt and Dependency

In a survey of foreign aid to Pakistan, Jamil Rashid demonstrates how foreign aid has added to the misery of an overwhelming majority of the people of Pakistan (see Hasan Gardezi and Jamil Rashid, 1983, ``Pakistan: The Roots of Dictatorship. The Political Economy of a Praetorian State`` London: Zed Press. Pages: 173-191). I want to quote a few excerpt from this piece with a note that our decision-makers and ruling elite were told about the consequences of the so-called foreign aid (at least as early as 1983):

``[Foreign aid] has, at best, helped to create a small business-cum-industrialist class with its own vested interests. Military aid has created an elite army which has ruled the country. . . .`` (p. 67).

``Aid is not a free grant -- it has a high cost. Because of its debt liabilities, Pakistan will be a mortgaged country for many years to come. The Pakistani aid experience is analogous to credit buying in the Western countries. . . . Once the ocuntry has incurred credit liability, there is no way of repaying but to take further loans, in order to at least pay the unpaid balances. There are institutions at the international level willing to give aid in order to help the creditors collect interest, and thus, a vicious circle of debt sets in`` (p. 67).

``It follows from the ``two-gap`` theory that Pakistan needs foreign exchange aid to fill the gap between import and export deficits. Of course, a simple solution to the ``two-gap`` problem is to have an investment programme within one`s own means and to have a balanced foreign trade, where the country imports to the extent of its export capacity. China (until 1979) and a number of other countries have followed this model of self-reliance, but Pakistan has chosen the path of accepting foreign loans, disguised as ``aid`` (p. 174).

``If Pakistan continues to depend on foreign aid and loans for the economic development of the country, then the future looks bleak. Landed in the 1960s as model of rapid economic growth, Pakistan now provides a model of a country deeply trapped in debt, with limited prospects of getting out. Pakistan`s debt burden grows more serious every year. It was once glamorous to see new machinery imported, new buildings constructed and few bright students going abroad under aid programmes, but Pakistan has to pay a heavy price for these short-term gains. As many more debt mature in the 1980s, short-term credit will be necessary to get short-term relief from the payment of large sums`` (p. 190).

In conclusion the author (Jamil Rashid) suggests the following options to break free of the debt trap: (1) phenomenal increase in export earnings; (2) drastic reduction in imports; (3) turn foreign aid into pure grants; and (4) repudiate foreign debt (which means self-reliance). Now let us look at Musharraf`s speech in light of the information provided here.

Sincerely, Bilal Ahmad

Jay says : ``I am heartened by hamidm`s post, I wish him well as a Lashker and may he have all the glories. If my post has helped him to identify his innermost longings, dissolved the pretensions of civility and hypocrisy, may. be that is a profound achievement of chowk.``

Try as I might, it is difficult not to reply to this typical self-serving, moralizing, rife-with-putrid-rectitude, holier-than-thou and downright deceitful reply so typical of the whisky-soda-sipping intelligenstia from the wrong side of the border, who love to get up on their soap-boxes and preach international ettiquette to us shameful offspring of Iskander Harappa and Reza Hyder !

Phew ! I feel better now that I have that out of my system. All of us, the semi-liberated, farangi-educated, twice-a-year-namazi and often-inebriated Pakistanis, live , like Sofia Zenobia, with the collective shame of belonging to a marginally-civilized, one-step-forward-two-backward nation-wannabe that seems to be slowly slipping into the hands of the regressive Maulanas who - and we know this - will Oneday tumble mud walls on us................BUT we still do not want our pesky worse-off-than-us neighbours from the New Hindu Empire reminding us of our predicament. I know misery loves company, but please leave us alone - go pick on Sri Lanka !

Gymnosophist re:49

You weren`t `Tsouhu`, were you?

Of Feudals and Serfs :

bashir ahmed abid # 35

Thank you for your reiteration of cliche´s re feudalism in Pakistan. However the term `` feudalism`` has never been defined in the context of Pakistan and remains a populist slogan to be parroted for self-serving political interests; in order to befool the masses and to get cheap marks by fanning class conflict, just as the current junta is doing.

Feudalism was what existed in China before the Maoist revolution and in Russia before the Bolsheviks. Those socieities consisted of virtual mini-kingdoms of large land owning families with private armies enslaving the tenant peasants, who would work all day in the fields for a bowl of rice. That kind of feudalism does not exist anywhere in Pakistan except perhaps to a limited extent in remote areas of Baluchistan.

The key to successful agricultural production is a viable size of farmland per unit for the purpose of mechanised farming. For example, in the United States a farm of less than 500 acres is not considered economically efficient as it cannot be mechanised. You cannot have combine harvestors for a farmland of, say 50 acres. Small farms will continue to be tilled by traditional ploughs and per acre yield will continue to plummet as it has in Pakistan after successive land reforms. In China after the collapse of feudalism, collective farming in large chunks of land was introduced for this very reason. Agriculture needs to be viewed as any other industry employing land, labour and capital and with the same demands placed on the agricultarist as any industrialist for the sake of feasibility, rather than knocked as something evil sucking the blood of society.

Pakistan was supposed to be an agri-based economy to begin with, however more land has been going out of cultivation each year since the 70`s than has been brought into it. Part of the reason is water-logging and salinity but the major reason is that it`s just not worthwhile to be an agriculturist. The notion that agriculture is tax-free is also erroneous since there exists a fixed capacity tax on agricultural holdings, besides debilitating `` aabiyana`` levies by provincial govts for provision of water.

Above has resulted in the fact that we need to import huge quantities of wheat from USA each year when Punjab was the bread basket of the whole of undivided India before partition.

As for the vote bank of the so-called feudals, you may recall that the biggest landowners of them all e.g. Mustafa Jatoi, Mumtaz Bhutto, Mustafa Khar, and even Pir of Pagara were all defeated summarily in the first general elections after Zia-ul-Haq. Since then the foregoing stopped contesting themselves but even their nominees couldn´t win the later two elections.

The feudal is no more than a fictional bogeyman to scare children aka the Pakistani nation into behaving and going to sleep when it´s bedtime.

Rgds

Re: Jay #43

(``alirezas is an example of solidified TNT, ... damn all religions including hinduism.``)

Much as you are a constant source of entertainment to myself and many other readers in these columns, as you`ll painfully note by some other responses, you do need to sharpen up on your reading skills.

For the record, and as mentioned in my previous note: I have nothing against Hinduism. (Please read carefully how I mention that I respect all other religions). I do, however, have a lot against anybody slandering Islam with such idiotic and unnecessary comments like calling Prophets illiterate (although not defining what literacy meant in those days, in view of which one could stupidly ask: do you think Krishna had a PhD?)

ELITES VENEER OF CIVILITY

In the posts on chowk Pakistanis have shown remarkable knowledge about events in India, particularly relating to the Muslims, selective history of Babri masjid, various ratios in Kashmir and of course the daily score card in the internet editions of all of Pak news papers about the good work of the Lashkars in Kashmir.

What is in general lacking is a self criticism of Pakistan, either in chowk or in any of the Pak newspapers. Even on chowk by the so called `well read`, the criticism reduces to blaming corruption, illiteracy and at times historic injustice, all that Pakistan got is one Mangarams biscuit factory. The incisive criticism, which can be freely indulged on chowk, has not been made use of by the chowkirdars. The reproduced article by Kuldip Nayyar about Kashmir is good example of a self criticism, completely unheard of in Pakistan, venomously attacked on Chowk.

Some semblance of understanding and self knowledge can only come from provocative writing, exchanging of references even with ISBN will not help much. What influence us profoundly are thoughts with an emotional tag to it, the so called intellectual rarified, multiple edited posts are of no use unless it is ones profession.

I am heartened by hamidm`s post, I wish him well as a Lashker and may he have all the glories. If my post has helped him to identify his innermost longings, dissolved the pretensions of civility and hypocrisy, may. be that is a profound achievement of chowk.

Ever since the inception, I had been on the chowk, I have learned a lot from it, there are many well read and honest people there, some have even come to some kind of solution to Kashmir. I have been accused of the TNT mania. Never ever have I seen a Pakistani post which says unconditionally that MUSLIMS CAN LIVE WITH THE HINDUS IN PEACE IN INDIA.

There are a lot of educated Pakistanis, Pakistanis with `foreign` passports, no one dares to say that. May be the peace loving Indians and Pakistanis can ponder this, and in that process you will find my posts illuminating through the labyrinths of innermost thoughts, into the culdesacs of genetically transmitted world views.

In respose to Zeemax (Reply #: 48)

Dear Zeemax:

Your statement: ``Hmmm .. interesting .. so what are YOUR conclusions Mr. Ahmad ?``

Comment: I have often argued for the need of a vision and a sense of direction. I think, Pakistan has passed through a phase of, what public choice theorists call, government failure. We have, I think, entered a phase where the multiplier effect of governmental failure has set a deep-rooted crisis of civil society and a long-term crisis of economy. Musharraf`s economic and financial experts are engaged in a quick fix that is supported by the threat of danda. Danda has never worked. It has failed to bring desirable effects.

In 1993, I had to rush to the hospital (a top-class facility in my town in the US) due to angina (not heart attack). Patients in my situation normally leave the hospital within a weak (after angioplasty). In my case, some complications unnecessarily developed due to negligence in the intensive care unit. When the Surgeon came to see me, I said something to the effect that specialization has its costs (and in my case the costs were very serious). The surgeon said nothing and left me with a feeling as if I had said something silly. What most people fail to recognize is that the whole is not merely the sum of parts, and sometimes even small problems can lead to serious consequences (if unattended).

The problem of the present regime is somewhat similar. Army by its nature is coercive. We need more persuasion and less danda, not vice versa.

We cannot make nations with coercion and taxation only. In his poorly written speech, General Musharraf said: ``As in most other developing countries throughout the world, General Sales Tax is the major source of revenues. It is an equitable tax that discourages consumption and encourages savings.`` My little understanding of elementary public finance suggests that the sales tax is a regressive measure. How could a regressive tax be equitable? May be there is a typo in the speech and the word ``equitable`` should have been ``inequitable.`` Moreover, conspicuous consumption is a major problem in Pakistan. We have developed this problem at least during the past 52 years. In such a situation, we need to pay greater attention upon increasing production (productivity) and reducing the gap between the rich and poor by gradually uplifting the conditions of our poor masses. I think, the empowerment of common people is a necessary prerequisite for such a change in our society.

Sincerely, Bilal Ahmad