Sher Shah Suri of the 21st Century

Sher Shah Suri, the Lion King, reigned over India for a short stint from 1540 to 1545 interrupting the Moghul dynastic rule. He carried out lasting administrative reforms and opened the Grand Trunk Road from Chittagong to Kabul. He believed in connecting the empire for asserting his control, collecting revenue and doing the development. This period predated the advent of vehicles and the means of transport were limited to pack animals and carts. A great tribute to his futuristic vision the GT Road still serves as an artery connecting the length of Pakistan. We now have a modern version of the Builder King who too is passionate about building roads, bridges, Orange Lines, Metro buses, motor ways and corridors connecting the length and breadth of the country. He is sure to go into history as the new King of Connectivity, the kingly title he ironically already carries for his ostentatious demeanour. Lion also provides a connection of sorts between the two, one for pluck and the other for the party symbol. Connectivity is an essential factor leading to development, trade and prosperity. Most developed and affluent nations like the OECD countries concentrated on physical connectivity during the last century and built on it future development, industrialisation and trade creating prosperity and infrastructure conducive to spreading of knowledge and leading to technological innovations. Having built a strong base of physical, industrial, knowledge and technological infrastructure during the last century the OECD world was well poised to usher in the advent of knowledge economy from the onset of the 21st Century. Exploding innovations and mushrooming technology are adding to the contribution of knowledge economy. The industrial economy, especially the manufacturing, is losing ground to information and service economy. The latter does not need heavy financial, industrial and natural resources and is also not constrained by the economy of scales. It is unfortunate that while the world is now exploiting the information revolution and concentrating on knowledge economy that Pakistan is still caught up in the initial throes of physical infrastructure. The brick and mortar that we are forced to do today should have been done decades before so that we too were prepared to join the global wave of knowledge economy. This is perhaps what explains our Prime Minister’s passion with the physical infrastructure. He rightly thinks that physical infrastructure provided a springboard to OECD economies and for us to develop in their wake the same is inevitable. Although we missed the boat of brick and mortar infrastructure and are consequently suffering endemic poverty responsible for poor human indicators in health, education, housing, transportation and civic development, there is a need to mull over the options now to cover the lost ground instead of putting all our resources on the physical infrastructure. There is an urgent need to not to miss also the boat of knowledge economy and invest preferentially on soft infrastructure of Information Age to build the sound base of knowledge economy. We could catch up with the ground lost in industrial economy by catapulting into the era of innovation and knowledge economy. Putting part priority on investment on innovation and technology infrastructure could generate means for also building the physical infrastructure in due course. Human resource is at the heart of innovation, technology and knowledge economy and we are very rich in its number. It is that we have not invested in our people and resultantly turned the best asset of Information Age into the worst liability. We at times lament the brain drain but innovative minds gravitate to where innovation is prized and minds are valued. Look at the antiquity of our education system coupled with woefully low education budget, look at how many children, 25 million by some count, are not in schools in this day and age, look at the children health indicators, look at their technical education facilities, look at the support needed by the brighter students to have access to better educational facilities! Look at the scanty usage density of Internet countrywide which, it is considered, correlates with innovation that links with knowledge economy. Look across the eastern border, there is taking place the world’s largest hot lunch program throughout the country for the public school children to upbring healthy youth to build a brighter future. In terms of economic returns, the highest rate is from investment into human development and the same is also much faster. Look at the shine and sheen in the eyes of 5 years old, they exude preparedness to get started on the road to learning and look at them 5 years later and we have wasted that many brains. Nations don’t build that way, the brick can wait but not the brain. It is an irony that those not initiated in innovation are unable even to visualise what we are missing. Innovation requires the application of knowledge towards the creation of opportunities, which may not be apparent to those who lack the quality of human capital. This is what describes our state of affairs, we are not even aware of what we are losing and where to take a start. We need to assemble a bank of brains that can see and identify the path to human resource development and promotion of innovation. There would have to be closer association between the industry, investors and the innovation centres like universities, think-tanks and research institutes, etc. There would have to be a need to bring back some of our accomplished talent from abroad by providing them incentives and environment to incubate innovators and investors. We would have to ensure protection of intellectual property and promote and facilitate the proliferation of patents and opening more patent registration offices. The youth of Information Age are like upstarts in learning the use of technology and exhibit potential of value adding through better exposure to community based centres and workshops for innovation. We need to balance out the investment on physical and technological infrastructures. Let the latter also enter into the vision and the drive of our Sher Shah Suri and that of his team to serve the nation in its areas of priority.