Tahir Mahmood
The great Pakistani nation is presently rejoicing in our extraordinary victory against India in Operation Bunyanul Marsoos, and will also be celebrating 78th Independence Day on 14 August 2025. This permeating matchless spirit of a rejuvenated nationalism demands that we think profoundly and win on another front, which is also a key to our survival. It is the economic front that demands a rejuvenated economic nationalism to make Pakistan a truly great nation.
Despite all the successes that have been achieved so far, the nation finds itself bogged down in an economic morass. Here, the challenge is not some external enemy, but the ‘economy’, which, if carefully charted, is never out of reach for any determined body of people. We are a proud nation of 240 million people, and a nuclear power, but ironically have to manage our affairs on borrowed money. In order to address the economic upheavals and chaos, most of the time we are in a rush, and often rely on temporary and stopgap arrangements in the form of ill-planned tax cuts, foreign borrowing, circular debts, and resultant price hikes. Our economic ideas are not long-term but ad hoc in nature, implemented through new ordinances, laws, and financial schemes by the government. We have never induced mass participation in national economic uplift except in bearing the burden and customary grumbling.
Never to forget that a nation’s life is not all about managing the next day only. The nation has to be sustained on a long-term basis, and it has to keep changing its shape according to the ever-changing zeitgeist (spirit of the age). Surely, we need a profound national economic response to a challenge that has come to the whole nation as a survival puzzle.
If one looks at the globally successful nations, it becomes evident that the feature that counts the most in the present age is the ‘economic wealth’. It is different than the past centuries. The one factor that stands out in their journey on the road to success is the priority they accorded to the economy. And, strangely, when one casts a look at our national fundamentals, despite recent talk about the economy, hardly one finds ‘wealth creation’ mentioned favorably in our national lexicon. In the national idea, all we glorify is poverty, frugality, contentment, and forbearance as a way of life. This national idea draws its roots not only from our medieval history, mainly of warfare and conquest, but also gets inspiration from the struggle phase of the national independence. In this reverence for the past, we forget this law of nature which emphasizes adaptation as a key to survival and progress.
In our national curriculum, we glorify the spirit of ‘khudi’, which in itself a grand idea, but when used at a mundane level, depicts a ‘dervish’ type persona as an ideal. He relies more on frugality and is content in poverty. He is a minimalist and loves to abode in the mountains with limited food (or no food at all), yet never compromising on a higher solo flight in the vast sky. In this reverence, our hearts and minds start hating ‘wealth creation’ as an idea, an ideal, and a goal. This puts us in a great national irony: a nation that abhors wealth creation also wishes to be rich. The verses which are frequently quoted in our national curricula are: Mera tareeq ameeri nahi, faqiri hai; Khudi na bech, ghreebi main nam paida kar (my mode of living is not richness but poverty, never sell your self-ego, but make name in poverty); and, Gya dorr sarmaya dari gya; Tamasha dikha kar madari gya (The age of capitalism has gone away, like a conjuror leaves after the spectacle).
While we must remain reverent to such revolutionary pre-independence ideals, we also need to adapt to the present-day world, which has settled in shape over two hundred nation states. These nations are no longer struggling to achieve independence, but are consolidating their independence through economic wealth. A nation state, after attaining independence, has to evolve methods and mechanisms that sharpen its human potential to earn a trade surplus, add to its foreign reserves, and engage the citizens in perpetual innovation for life’s comfort. However, still in the national conceptual realm, we train our future generations to fight bare-handed, and dwell in poverty with pride. This in fact contradicts to our actual national lifestyle, which most often is extravagant, wasteful, and demands all the comforts of modern life. This contradiction was sustained through borrowed money in the past, but it wouldn’t work in the future anymore.
Of course, we can’t be rich by adoring and idealizing poverty. We will have to love ‘wealth creation’ to be rich and prosperous. For this, our national thought in the form of art, literature, folklore, and syllabi has to adjust to the economic zeitgeist, which adapts to the ways of global market practices. The world’s dominance and influence would not come through hollow slogans, but through skilled work done in the factories and fields.
At the domestic level, we need self-sufficiency, and in foreign markets, we need a comparative and competitive edge that earns us money and profit. Our national ego, honor, and survival are not how lofty we think and speak; it would solely rely on our purse, which must be full and heavy. For this, we need to accept that there is nothing wrong with being a profit-seeking nation providing for the world economic market!
Much can be said about how we have to negotiate the future, but a traditional approach by any government always relies on new borrowing, maintains extravagant state expenditure, and also lures the masses into subsidies on borrowed money. In fact, this is no policy in the long run. As a poor man can’t become rich on mere borrowing and living for another day, a nation can also not survive on foreign money, recycled loans, and conditional grants. Our governments need to speak truth to the nation, prepare them to live according to our resources, and wait till we work hard and become rich. The governments must also share this life of scarcity with the nation. There is very little time left with the ruling classes to adapt and adjust.
A poor national purse can’t sustain extravagant projects, national subsidies, and lavish waste of money for electioneering purposes. Pakistan needs a new national ethos that is in line with the size of our actual earnings and expenditures. Time is hard, cost is our country, a change must come, and our sole purpose should be to put our nation on a sustainable path of development and economic prosperity.
As a nation we will have to address the issues of uncontrolled population growth upfront, profoundly introduce valuing the money and richness, instill the habits of ‘productive work’, focus on ‘skill learning’ as an educational goal for short-to-medium-term, respecting time and work ethos at all levels and in each activity, and prepare each individual to contribute towards national economic output.
Pakistan has all the resources as national potential; all we need is a new national economic thought that should nurture a new economic nationalism. We are running against time; it is never too late to think deeply, differently, and act honestly!
The writer is an International Relations analyst. He can be reached at tmabbasi@yahoo.com
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