breakdown in orderliness, public management delivery, and state legitimacy. Pakistan wallows
at the nether end of societal and institutional indicators worldwide. Hence, the notion of ‘delayed
nationalism’ needs to be associated with that of ‘anarcho-vassalage’, as significant determinants
of the nation’s political economy.
In the economic sphere, public policy in the first two decades focused on overcoming the almost
complete non-existence of an industrial sector. While the Indus region was a substantial
exporter of agricultural commodities and raw materials, there had been virtually no large scale
industrial investment there during colonialism. Beginning with savings accumulated during the
Korean War trade upturn, and heavily induced through state subsidies, incentives and tariff
protections, an incipient industrial sector began to emerge in the 1950s, and gained further
momentum in the 1960s with increasing wealth concentration. The emergence of a few
business groups, dominating the large scale industrial sector and diversifying into the financial
sector, began to appear iniquitous, since political rights and labour unions were suppressed,
and real wages of workers remained stagnant. Small and medium enterprise failed to receive
the subsidies and public sector divestments accruing to some selective business beneficiaries.
Regional misgivings also arose, with East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) increasingly resenting
apparent resource transfers from jute exports to industrial investment in the western wing. In
agriculture too, the Green Revolution benefits accrued mostly to middle and large farmers, who
could afford the new inputs needed for optimal profits, such as agricultural machinery,
pesticides, fertilizers and high yielding seeds. The upper peasantry was further squeezed, with
tenant expropriations induced by farm mechanization, and undertaken through authoritarian fiat.
More rapid economic growth had heightened rather than reduced income inequity and wealth
concentration.
The consequence of these growing inequalities and tensions was evident in the 1970 general
elections, the first in Pakistan’s history. These followed on the overthrow of the Ayub Khan
military regime after a popular agitation, and in the context of an assertion of popular will they
can be seen as equally an expression of a nationalist struggle as the events leading to 1947.
Not only did half the country break away to form Bangladesh, but in the remaining part a
reversal of economic strategy under the Peoples Party government of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto saw
extensive nationalization of large scale industry, banks and insurance, and even the education
and health sectors. Bhutto’s ‘progressive’ policies, however, were heavily over-determined, and
in the end betrayed, by an underlying hostility to business and market forces, inherent in his
No comments:
Post a Comment