POETIC LICENCE: Is Pakistan a ‘failing state’ or the ‘world’s most powerful Islamic state’?
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_27-11-2002_pg3_9
Kaleem Omar
When commentators talk about Pakistan being “a failing state,” what exactly do they mean? Don’t they owe it to their readers to define what they mean by the term before branding Pakistan a “failing state”? Or has “failing state” become just another buzzword for these commentators, along with such other fashionable buzzwords as “rogue state” and “terrorist state”?
It has become fashionable in some circles in recent years to label Pakistan a “failing state.” The latest variation on this is to label Pakistan a “failing state with nuclear weapons.”
That’s also the qualified description used in recent reviews of a couple of new books on Pakistan. Writing in Tuesday’s issue of Dawn, however, the well-known Indian journalist and author M. J. Akbar calls Pakistan “the world’s most powerful Islamic state.”
The first thing I have to say about this is that such commentators really ought to make up their minds about just what sort of a state Pakistan is: a “failing state with nuclear weapons” or “the world’s most powerful Islamic state.” It stands to reason that it cannot be both.
Second, when commentators talk about Pakistan being “a failing state,” what exactly do they mean? Don’t they owe it to their readers to define what they mean by the term before branding Pakistan a “failing state”? Or has “failing state” become just another buzzword for these commentators, along with such other fashionable buzzwords as “rogue state” and “terrorist state”?
Third, if by “failing state” these commentators mean a state that “does not work,” then, I put it to you, that Pakistan is anything but a failing state. On the contrary, it is a state where there is a huge body of things that not only work but work very well indeed, some occasional hiccups notwithstanding.
This is not to say that Pakistan doesn’t have problems; of course, it does. Perhaps the most intractable problem of all is the rise in poverty in recent years. This is the result of Pakistan being caught in the nutcracker of low GDP growth, on the one hand, and high population growth on the other.
These two factors have combined to put Pakistan in a situation where the size of the economic pie has not been increasing fast enough to match the increase in population.
The problem cannot be tackled by economic measures alone. If Pakistan is to get out of the demography-induced poverty trap, economic policies aimed at promoting more investment, higher GDP growth and higher export earnings have to be accompanied by social sector policies aimed at reducing the population growth rate.
But look at the other side of the coin. Pakistan is a country that, despite the four-fold increase in population since the first national census in 1991, has remained basically self-sufficient in food. This is due to the Herculean efforts of our farmers, the unsung heroes of this country. Today, Pakistan produces more than 20 million tons of rice, 6 million tons of rice, 30 million tons of fruits and vegetables, 48 million tons of sugar cane, and millions of tons of other food crops. Is this an example of a “failing state”?
Pakistan is one of the world’s biggest growers of cotton and the third biggest exporter of cotton in the world. It has been an important exporter of rice for many years and is now also an exporter of wheat (in 2000, for example, it exported close to a million tons of wheat). It produces some of the best fruit in the world, including more than two million tons of mandarin oranges a year, a million tons of mangoes a year, 600,000 tons of dates a year, 455,000 tons of guavas a year, 100,000 tons of bananas a year, 537,000 tons of apples a year, 190,000 tons of apricots a year, 50,000 tons of peaches a year, 36,000 tons of pears a year, 80,000 tons of plums a year, 75,000 tons of grapes a year, 50,000 tons of almonds a year, 105,000 tons of pomegranates a year, and 1,200,000 tons of other fruit a year — including melons, watermelons, papayas, chikoos, strawberries, mulberries, cherries, etc. Is this an example of a “failing state”?
Pakistan, today, has more than 40 medical colleges, turning out more than 6,000 doctors a year. It has more than 70 universities, with more being added to the list every year. It has literally hundreds of colleges and more than 300,000 schools. It has more than 1,500 newspapers, magazines and other periodical publications, and thousands of poets, musicians and other performing artists. Is this an example of a “failing state”?
In 1947, not a single village in Pakistan had electricity. In 1958, the year that saw the creation of the Water and Power Development Authority, only 609 villages had electricity. Since then, the number of villages with electricity has risen to 73,000 — or 120 times the 1959 figure. During the same period, the country’s generation capacity (including WAPDA’s, KESC’s and the independent power producers) has gone up from 200 MW to more than 16,000 MW — or 80 times the 1959 figure, with a 48-fold increase in the length of the country’s transmission and distribution lines: from only 7,000 kilometres in 1959 to more than 340,000 km today. Is this an example of a “failing state”?
Pakistan, today, has 12,000 post offices, 6,500 bank branches, 42 civilian airports, more than 4 million telephone connections, a microwave telecommunications network of 3,400 booster towers covering even the remotest parts of the country, several thousand petrol stations, and a railway network of 10,400 km. The National Logistics Cell’s truck fleet is now one of the largest trucking fleets under single-ownership in the world. Is this an example of a “failing state”?
Telecommunications equipment manufactured in Pakistan, including automatic exchanges, is being exported even to European countries. Railway carriages manufactured in Pakistan are being exported to countries like Bangladesh. Pakistan has more than 70 sugar mills, more than 400 textile mills, and thousands of other factories. The list of such things goes on and on. Is all this an example of a “failing state”?
Pakistan now also has a growing and increasingly sophisticated defence industry, employing more than 150,000 people and producing a wide range of armaments and other military equipment for the home and export markets, including jet aircraft, main battle tanks, armoured personnel carriers, small arms and a host of other items. Is this yet another example of a “failing state”? I would submit that it is not. Make that, NOT. [Bravo! —Ed]
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