The Truth is Powerful
Pakistan Prime Minister-elect Shehbaz Sharif on 7 April | Photographer: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images via Bloomberg It has been a month since the so-called unity government came to power. It still seems to be labouring under the illusion that formulating a coherent programme to serve the needs of Pakistanis is rocket science. In fact, it is quite straightforward.
For those in government that are committed to doing something substantial, I offer this column as unsolicited advice. To the rest of my readers, I admit that what I present here is not weighed down by the exigencies of electoral considerations — ie constituency-level patronage and the desire for our mainstream politicians to be on the right side of the establishment — but short-term expediency is precisely what has deepened our political-economic predicament.
In a nutshell, Pakistan needs to revive a substantive politics of redistribution. By this I mean both policy initiatives to shake up the old order within Pakistan, as well as a recalibration of Pakistan’s place in the global economic order, so as to redress historic and unequal relationships of exchange and power.
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The current […]