Sense and sensibilities, plus real intelligence as icing on the cake matter. Politics and voting and activism, etc. don’t put food on the table –this I learnt and experienced in Anglosphere over my 3 decades of stay there.
Journalist Najam Sethi’s latest narratives reinforce what’s on the table in order to move forward not backward:
Another journo, Kamran Khan, validates Sethi’s major observations, including politics versus economy. Both and mine, are somewhat similar: It’s all about oil economy!
Here’s a political visual share I received yesterday. “The red in the map may be 70% of the total population,” an analyst said. I consider the percentage may be more -taking Sindh province, specially it’s capital Karachi’s populace into account. Sindh is PPP’s stronghold. However, the word on Karachi streets as I find it, is that Khan “is the man”.
As stated in earlier posts of mine, the gene of holistic change is out of the bottle. This I know for sure; can’t be bottled. ‘Imran Khan ko ‘thikana lagana parega’ may have been just an emotive Colt-fire by one of his rival parties in the coalition at a recent presser.
A more insightful and comprehensive map, however, could comprise of overlays consisting of 1) which provinces took or benefited from the external loans against federal sovereign guarantees 2) all taxes collected and paid by each of the provinces 3) GDP of each province and GDP per capita of each province including their respective growth rates contributions as compared to their population and population growth rate.
Finally, 4) how many each province has as Lawmakers in the Parliament; what’s their agri income (non-taxable) locales, and each provinces’ quota of employment in federal jobs and in the loss-making state enterprises over decades of politics and polemics. The topping could be: how many political employments were made over the stated period.
During Khan’s three-and-a-half-year tenure, no such “bhartis’ were done -to the best of my knowledge and info.
The loss-making state enterprises are up for grab albeit fire sale on “their watch” -they are apparently in power again, and not on Khan’s time and place and watch.
Sometime dirty dozens deliver, an optimist says. Let’s see. Pakistan Zindabad.
(Irshad Salim, Karachi)
