Failure of Institutions in Pakistan?

Re: # 12

Mr. Hamadani:

By making these perfidious and rhetorical comments without any proof, you are only accentuating your own pathetic existence.

Here is my phone number 0300-4604229. If you have even an iota of courage or substance to what you are yapping about, give me a call and talk to me in person instead of hiding behind these stupid nick names.

Good day to you,
Farrukh Mehboob Khan

Re: # 12

Mr. Hamadani:

By making these perfidious and rhetorical comments without any proof, you are only accentuating your own pathetic existence.

Here is my phone number 0300-4604229. If you have even an iota of courage or substance to what you are yapping about, give me a call and talk to me in person instead of hiding behind these stupid nick names.

Good day to you,
Farrukh Mehboob Khan

Another pathetic attempt by the lowly SMEDA employee to pose as an intellectual.

Will not go any where... just like Rehan Hassan Ansari.

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Jay,

My friend ... if I were to pray for daisy cutters I will be praying for the death of my own loved ones the majority of whom are just as innocent of the wrongs you mention as those who were subjected to apartheid in South Africa or the Harijans of India ... would you have prayed for daisy cutters there too?

Futility of effort has never acted as a reason for me to stop doing for what my heart gives the call ... kindly refrain from telling me on what to waste my time or not ... i do it with a sense of duty that will never make me jump ship even while she sinks.

Dont be so sure that none of the respondents to my article are Pakistanis. Arent you heartened by the fact that the writer of this article is a Pakistani?

Farrukh M Khan

Farruk,

You are the first pakistani to accept the social decay in pakistan. The two arrested in australia for links with laskers, one is a medical student, the other is an architect. The killer of daniel pearl is alondon school of economics graduate.
poverty in pakistan has increased by 20 percent, and the educated like romair and ylh cannot see any problem.
So far no educated in pakistan has said that the days of training to kill the kafirs are over, it is this basic activity that is to be banned and not the banning of organisations like laskers.

As you can see, no pakistani has interaced on this board. There is no hope for pakistan, and pl, do not waste your time on writing about decay of pak society. Just pry for the daisy cutters to rain down

Fara, bts, jay, M.B.Z. Isphahani, Ras:

Thank you all for your responses to my article.

Now then ... Fara refers to the problem of egg/chicken, which I think is rather outdated in this day and age. You see these were the problems of concepts inspired by things happening in serial processes and a corresponding understanding-apparatus of human beings. Now is the world of parallel processing and multi-tasking. And things also happen in Nature in a parallel manner and at several levels too. So I do not think that there is an either/or situation regarding institutions and people. People reflect the institutions and vice versa.

It is not even a question of people exploiting the institutions ... my point is that the institutions are not made by God; they are not immutable givens but changing realities. They work the way they do because of the culture promoted by the ruling elites or the effective leaders of society -- those who are the owners in the process of production. We need to change the current culture and its promoters and people will change along with it. I mean why do Pakistani professionals excel in Western countries and fail miserably here? Because the people who hire their services do not need them in the manner the Western entrepreneurs do. Pakistani entrepreneur knows that he stands to make more money through an SRO issued by the government in his favour than the efficiency of his workers. So why would he/she promote or build institutions that can produce efficient managers or workers? This was just to give you one example; the situation is the same across the board.

Moreover, Western institutions don’t work the way they are supposed to because of stringent application of punitive measures, as some people like to think; they do so because of the cultural dos and don`ts. No law enforcement agency can ensure the rule of law in a society, they are only meant to deal with aberrations that are exceptions to the cultural norm.

I think there certainly is a need if not demand for a cultural reconstruction in Pakistan if we are avoid the aeroplanes flying in from the East or West or which ever direction, which Jay likes to think is the only solution to our problems. No nation should be allowed to survive as we have up to now. We have acted as a regional goon of the West in return for the economic lease of life that they have provided to us in the form of loans and aid packages. Otherwise we could never have survived for over fifty years. The dismal decade of the 90s bears testimony to this dark reality, when Western aid conduit dried up after the US slapped sanctions on us under the Pressler Amendment, the already disintegrating façade of the Pakistani state began to crumble.

Pakistan is not a failed state; it simply never was one. Pakistan is the name of a bankrupt culture that has been rotting since the fall of the Moghal Empire. Ever since its breech birth in 1947, it has always acted as an agent acting on behalf of masters who sat far away pulling the strings of their puppets in power. Had our leaders an inkling of responsibility towards the land and people they governed, we would have been much better than we are. According to one World Bank report, Pakistan would have been much better off today, “if it had invested all the official development assistance from 1960 to 1998 at a real rate of 6%, it would have a stock of assets equal to $239 billion in 1998, many times the current external debt”.

In the end I would like to respond to Bts’ demand for an in-depth analysis of what I outlined in my article. I agree with him and would like to share with him that I am working on it. If the editors of this website will permit, I will shortly be submitting an article on the failure of leadership in Pakistan and then deal with the issue of our cultural decay in a third one. However, I would like to point out that since the issue that needs to be addressed here is that of giving a comprehensive account of the last three hundred years or so, it cannot be left up to one or two individuals. If there are people out there who do believe that the fundamental questions that I raised in my article are sound and correct enough for a deeper analysis, then we should pool in our resources and work together as responsible members of this society who would not like to behave as silent witnesses of its destruction. Let this be the debt that we owe to our future generations and the price that we have to pay for having a better understanding and sensitive souls.

Farrukh M Khan
22/04/2004

Very strong and well worded conclusion.

Institutions need strong foundations....

Ras

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farukh,

Very good article, i completely agree with you, there is no hope for pakistan, and pakistan of today reflects the darwenian selection of 1947. Only a foreign intervention, like iraquisation can bring about the change and for once I have found some one in coplete agreement with Bush.

Islam is like a termite mound, it has soldiers (the blasphemy laws), several queens ( the mulsim women) and several drones ( the muslim men) and the workers ( usually immigrants in oil endowed islamic countries, the geographical location rent in the case of pakistan) ensure that the society does not undergo any evolutionary change. Education is limited to reading the sme book, and hence no agents of change can enter the islamic society.

Farukh, pary for change, pray for daisy cutters, and when yoy see aircraft coming from the east, you know that redemption is not far away.

good analysis.. but I guess this is too broad. I`d want to see a more detailed analysis...

tha!

farrukh:

welcome to chowk! interesting article. however, i think this corresponds a bit to the egg/chicken problem. which comes first? where to begin the process of change, masses or institutions?

it is a bit of a supply-demand problem. either one supplies state of the art institutions coupled with regulations that curb exploitation and hopes that the demand side i.e. masses pick up on these incentives OR one educates/equips the demand side to create enough potential for the government to supply a much needed efficient insitutional setup.

having said that, it is probably `exploitation` of institutions by the people and indeed vice versa that needs to be controlled...more so eradicated to a large extent.

No Humair, the structure and people change together. A handmill gives you a society with a feudal lord and steam mill a social set up with industrial capitalist at the helm. The base of the society defines not only the societal superstructures but also the people and their inter-relationships within that social set up. Just as the feudal society had its serfs and peasants the industrial society had its labourers and middle class. Both are totally different animals in their motives, outlook, aspirations and consciousness of the self. To change the base therfore is to change the people too.

I hope this answered your question.

Farrukh M Khan

actually then can never...
we need to change the structure... not the people....