My sister's experience bears this out. Her salary, at around
£50 a week, might not seem much by London standards. But it goes a
long way in Lahore. A few years ago, top MBA graduates in Pakistan
would have been lucky to earn that amount. And if my sister becomes a
full professor or a department head, she can expect to earn far more.
The sudden attractiveness of her profession is fuelling a surge of
interest in pursuing research degrees. In the sciences and engineering
alone, the government is expecting to graduate 1,500 doctoral students
annually by 2010, a hundred-fold increase on the 1990s figure.
Going to speak at the small urban campus at which my sister teaches, I
was taken aback by the subjects on offer. Students were studying to be
beat reporters, literature professors, sound engineers, magazine
editors, sculptors, and costume designers. They were putting on an
original rock musical. And enrolment was soaring, with ever-increasing
demand for places. My sister told me some of her students were working
nights in the city’s call centres to pay their tuition.
All of this has taken place against the backdrop of a staggering
economic boom. Over the past five years, Pakistan’s economy has been
one of the fastest growing in the world. Foreign firms are investing
billions of dollars in sectors such as telecoms, where Pakistani
mobile-phone users have gone from under a million at the start of the
decade to 30 million today. In London, one often reads of people of
Pakistani descent travelling to Pakistan to attend terrorist training
camps. Far more common, but virtually unreported, are the stories of
successful Pakistan-born expatriates returning home for better
financial prospects.
My buddy OH is one of them. An architect, he trained at the Rhode
Island School of Design and joined a small firm in Boston for several
years, working on projects ranging from baseball stadiums in the US to
nightclubs in China to cliffside residences in Venezuela. But he
wanted to be his own boss. So a couple of years ago he moved back to
Lahore and started his own firm. Now he is so busy that he has to turn
away assignments. “Nothing works here, yaar,” he tells me. “It
frustrates the hell out of you. But I love it. I wouldn’t go anywhere
else.”
For despite the inefficiency of Pakistan’s construction practices and
the corruption of its bureaucracy, the skyline of Lahore is being
transformed. With the economic boom has come a demand for offices,
hotels, and housing. Gleaming new towers are beginning to rise out of
deep pits in the fertile, alluvial soil of Lahore’s newer
neighbourhoods, dwarfing the slender minarets of the old walled city
that feature so prominently in postcards and guidebooks.
All this, it seems, is the upside of having a cheeta for your
president.
Why is it, then, given the remarkable progress made by Pakistan under
Musharraf, that so few other countries are clamouring to be led by
cheetas of their own? Perhaps it is because their people desire
greater say in the running of national affairs. I recall my own
participation in the referendum of 2002. Its purpose (omega) was to
give Pakistanis a chance to decide whether Musharraf, who seized power
in a coup in 1999, should continue to be President. I was in Islamabad
at the time, so I cast my vote in Pakistan’s capital.
I arrived at the polling station with the intention of voting in
support of Musharraf. My reasons were threefold. First, it was shortly
after September 11, and the invasion of Afghanistan, and I felt
Pakistan needed strong leadership if we were to avoid the fate that
had befallen our neighbour. Second, I approved of what appeared to be
a genuinely progressive approach that the government was taking in a
number of areas. Third, I thought that returning to the rule of either
Benazir Bhutto or Nawaz Sharif, the democratically elected Prime
Ministers who had presided over the decline of Pakistan’s economy and
institutions in the 1990s, would be an unmitigated disaster.
I immediately noticed at the polling station that staff far
outnumbered voters. Indeed, my sister and I seemed to be the only
voters there. I showed my identity card, had my finger marked with
indelible ink, and was given a ballot to take with me into a booth. I
expected a simple: “Pervez Musharraf for President: yes or no?”
Instead, I encountered the following text: “For the survival of the
local government system, establishment of democracy, continuity of
reforms, end to sectarianism and extremism, and to fulfil the vision
of Quaid-e-Azam, would you like to elect President General Pervez
Musharraf as President of Pakistan for five years?”
As I struggled to decipher what precisely it was that I was being
asked, a man came in and ordered me to hurry up. I had seen him
lurking about the entrance to the polling station, but he was not one
of the officials. “Who are you?” I asked him. “Can’t you see I’m
voting? Get out of here.”
He eyes hardened. “People are waiting,” he said
“What people? There’s half a dozen booths here and one voter.”
“I said,” he snarled, “hurry up.”
“Who the hell are you? Get out of my face.” I appealed to the
officials. “I’m trying to exercise my right as a citizen. I need my
privacy. Who is this person? Why don’t you do something about him?”
My sister emerged from the women’s section and we left. In the 10
minutes we had spent at the polls, neither of us had seen another
voter. Yet when the results of the referendum were announced, the
country was told not only that 97 per cent of votes had been in
support of Musharraf, but that the turnout had been 43 million people,
or a massive 56 per cent of the electorate. These figures were so
obviously ridiculous that even someone who had actually voted for the
man, as I had (having resisted the urge to change my mind in protest
at the low-grade intimidation I experienced), felt deeply disheartened
by the exercise.