18th Amendment – fallacious argument

Pakistan has a democratic government? There is no need to talk about this anymore. That devolution has taken place as a result of the 18th Amendment to the constitution. Please revisit the amendment. There are 102 amendments and the devolved ministries have actually not been devolved. Take agriculture ministry and the fact is that not a single project of the ministry has been accepted by the provincial governments.

In fact what has happened is that the period of three months that this program was in limbo all the records pertaining to the ongoing aspects of the ministry have been lost and are no longer available. That is the plea that that the ministry has taken before the Public Accounts Committee. They have sought one month for retrieving the files. I do not think that these files will be available at all. The 18th Amendment was and is a fallacious argument and was unable to see the unintended consequences. There are far too many fallacies to recount but these can be grouped together for the purpose of analysis. These four widespread kinds of fallacies are (1) Zero sum fallacy; (2) The fallacy of composition; (3) The chess pieces fallacy; and (4) The open-ended fallacy. It may not be possible to analyse all of these in the context of Pakistan because of space constraint.

Henry Roskovsky wrote in a university manual-‘never underestimate the difficulty of changing false beliefs by facts’. As an emerging democracy Pakistanis have been subjected to a number of false beliefs. Whenever there is a political disaster (by any or all the political parties) all kinds of excuses are put forward. There is seldom a single politician who has ever accepted responsibility for the actions of the party or their own. There is always some excuse or the other and the blame-game goes on. Very early on I was once asked about a letter that was signed by me and that did not go well by the powers that be of the time. I owned the letter and stated that if I did not I would be rubbishing my own name and that of my family.

Undefined words have special power in politics, particularly when the words invoke people’s emotions. Development of the common people is one such and the provinces are one such area. There are the CMs of Punjab and Sindh perpetuating their opinions on how well they have performed. The use of famous names on TV is normally used. Remember that a handicap word is a great and huge advantage in political parlance. Fair (equity – massawat) and social justice are words that come to mind. No one dare to oppose this. Yet these words mentioned above could mean different things to different people. Fallacies abound in everything from housing to international trade. When a policy backfires the general public is not aware of what is happening. Consider the free trade agreement with China. Pakistan’s loss is substantial and the adverse terms of trade figures are for all to see; similarly with other countries. The GOP does not seem to understand that Pakistan does not have the ability to compete and that can only be made possible if the private sector had been allowed to go through the market processes and not through the ‘baisakhi’ (crutches) system of support. The sectors that are ripe for international trade will never be taken to that level as these are owned by powerful mafias. They say that international trade is desirable and mutually beneficial. Is it really? There may never be a level-playing filed. The role of the WB is a disaster spelt for the developing countries. Globalisation and the WTO have stalled as a result. The productivity terms may be different in different countries depending on the subsidies provided. The mutual benefit principle does not hold. It can only hold if all things are equal and only the inefficiency of the countries is at par.

Transactions will only take place if the negotiations are such that both parties can get some benefits. However, with the third stakeholder as the consumer the ripple effect on the economy would be visible. The tragedy is that this may adversely affect in Pakistan the 180 million people. The mafia, and in agriculture there are eight such monopolists and mafias that can subvert the economy. The benefits could accrue to the few and the majority would suffer. In Pakistan the consumer’s interest has never been considered. All top politically powerful people have siphoned profits by creating conditions conducive to themselves. Take any industry and examine the concentration in that industry. Even in industry where the number of competing units is in hundreds (textiles, sugar) the unholy collaboration is for the manipulation of the market and to seek handouts from the government. The government, and all of them, is bewildered not by the facts but by the clout of the monopolists. The farmers in Pakistan are amorphous and jelly type with no backbone and therefore subjected to gross abuse. Their lands are confiscated and as elsewhere the power of the powerless does no work except when there is violent revolution. The Musharraf government while bringing in retail FDI was not bothered about the effect on the consumer or on the farmers. They were sold out to the policies given by the West. Pakistan has had this coming from the adventurer-brainwashed representatives from the US. The current Deputy Chairman Planning Commission and the finance minister are again not the players of or for Pakistan and even if acceptable are unable or unaware of the realities of Pakistan. Can any mens rea (criminal intent) be established?

The fallacy of composition simply stated is that if a part is true then that is true for the whole. It cannot be in any pluralistic society. Pakistan has not only variations in ethnicity but also in social composition of groups. Universal polices for Pakistan are not possible and the idea should be to make policies for specific people and areas. Pakistan has been a huge success in increasing conflicts. The policies for the few far outnumber the policies for the nation. Take the case of the building of Islamabad in particular and the urbanisation policies followed by the GOP. Bankrupt economists not aware of the impact have taken away land from the poor and given it away to the rich and those that have speculated and have become the nouweau riche do not have to pay any capital gains tax. The disruption to and of the poor owners has meant that shanty towns have developed and the poor have merely congregated and congested other areas. Bhara Kau is a pointer in that direction. The shanty population of Bhara Kau is now more that of the capital Islamabad. The speculators of the land acquired from the poor are the land mafia that has been allowed to develop as certain institutions were very keen to be the lead players with the mafia. This is no by and large true of the entire urbanisation activity. Look deeper. Growth of this kind has another impact on the poor. With the security taking away the major share of the budget, the rest is then spent on the infrastructure that the powerful seek for the areas where they have acquired lands. Look at Chak Shahzad. Musharraf built a farm there and that was land acquired for a specific purpose. Dedicated electricity lines were laid for his house and the road was built at a horrendous cost. The cake for the poor was non-existent. Of the four fallacies I have been able to touch only two – the rest can pend for the next time.