ISLAMABAD
\nThe Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) launched its latest issue of Discourse Magazine this week, an extensive publication that seeks to initiate a nationwide debate on the reform of key sectors, domains, and institutions.
\nAccording to its Chief Editor, Abbas Moosvi, Pakistan has failed to overhaul its colonial-era state configurations \u2013 top-down, extractive, and bureaucratic \u2013 which is the primary reason for its current socioeconomic and political woes.
\nIn light of the upcoming election cycle, which seems to be arriving at a critical juncture, the issue emphasizes that the time is optimal for taking a radical departure from current institutional arrangements to foster a Pakistan that works for the many \u2013 not just the privileged few.
\nFifteen unique areas are covered in \u2018Discourse \u2013 Reconfiguring Pakistan: State, Society, and Economy,\u2019 which include Reconceptualizing Development, Constitutional Reform, Political Contestation, Parliament and Civil Service, Economic Policy, Foreign Aid, Energy, Trade and Industry, Land and Agriculture, Labour Relations, Education, Public Welfare, Cities and Local Governance, Climate, and Society and Culture.
\nAccording to the Press Release issued by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), the publication features a substantial number of high-profile names from the academic domain, political sphere, legal fraternity, media sector, government bureaucracy, diplomatic circle, business community, development network, and more, to offer a framework within which a productive policy agenda may be formulated.
\nAccording to the Editor, each political party that aspires to be sworn into power must address each of the publication\u2019s sections, which have rarely \u2013 if ever \u2013 been discussed at a structural level. Colonial-era governance arrangements based on extraction have unfortunately continued to persist, with the White man simply being replaced by the \u2018Brown sahib\u2019.
\nWithout the elimination of these oppressive modalities, Pakistan will most likely continue to sink into further indebtedness, economic precarity, and sociopolitical instability: glimpses of which have been observed across the country in recent months.
\nHe further went on to claim that whilst incompetent individuals in the corridors of power are a primary reason for all this, an equally important point of consideration is the political economy that is responsible for their entry and overdue stay.
\nTechnical innovations into electoral processes are naturally going to be part of this, but a broader bird\u2019s eye view is pertinent to identify the various mechanisms \u2013 sometimes referred to as \u2018feeders\u2019 \u2013 that form the system of political contestation.
\nThese include unions, associations, empowered local governments, freedom of speech\/assembly, unimpeded arts\/culture, respect for human rights, and an overall dynamic, robust civil society that can check entrenched power structures.
\nIt is largely acknowledged in academic circles that prosperity is ultimately downstream of good governance, but what this means in our specific context remains ambiguous. Policy formulation in Pakistan is predominantly outsourced to international financial institutions and multilateral donor agencies, which are known to adopt a one-size-fits-all approach to their proposals \u2013 reproducing them in a wide array of countries across the Global South with little to no attention paid to the situation on the ground.
\nThe reason for this, of course, is that governing elites have approached their roles with the objective of rent-seeking: extracting resources from the global economy (mostly in the form of credit agreements) that are ultimately paid for by the already vulnerable working class population via indirect taxation on goods and services.
\nThese concerns bleed into all others – resulting in the situation today, in which Pakistan finds itself on the brink of sovereign default and at the mercy of the predatory International Monetary Fund.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ISLAMABAD The Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE) launched its latest issue of Discourse Magazine this week, an extensive publication that seeks to initiate a nationwide debate on the reform of key sectors, domains, and institutions. According to its Chief Editor, Abbas Moosvi, Pakistan has failed to overhaul its colonial-era state configurations \u2013 top-down, extractive, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356271,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-380875","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-national"},"yoast_head":"\n