Muhammad Ramzan
The elections are around the corner. The Pakistani nation will elect the next government with the expectation that it will lead the country toward progress and prosperity and end the miseries of the common man. However, 76 years have passed since Pakistan gained independence and still, the majority of people of the country are yearning for an improved living standard, which no government has been able to give them as yet. So, what kind of leadership does the Pakistani nation need to uplift the common man and bring Pakistan to par with emerging economies?
Pakistan is a country of over 240 million people and 60 percent of them are youth. The youngsters need jobs to become productive citizens of the country, but unfortunately, getting employment for youth has become an uphill task as our fragile economy is unable to create new jobs in an environment where many industries have closed or heading towards closure due to the high cost of doing business. Therefore, Pakistan needs a kind of leadership that gives high priority to human resource development and focuses on the skills development of youth to improve the prospects of their employability. Pakistan has gone down on the Human Development Index due to a lack of attention from the successive leadership, therefore, human resource development should be the key priority of the new leadership to transform human capital into a great dividend to improve the economic growth of the country.
The private sector is the major employer in Pakistan but is confronted with many challenges due to which the jobs are shrinking. The public sector is already over-employed and the only good option for the government is to expand the private sector to create new employment opportunities to absorb youth in jobs. Millions of people have lost jobs in the recent past due to the closure of industries from textile, automobile, and other sectors triggered by the ban on imports. Therefore, Pakistan needs a kind of leadership that should promote ease of doing business and create a conducive environment for the private sector for its smooth expansion and growth to create new jobs for youth.
The last Global Climate Risk Index ranks Pakistan as the 5th most climate-vulnerable country in the world. Pakistan has already suffered huge human and economic losses due to flash floods in 2022. Lahore is considered the most polluted city in the world while the situation of Karachi, Faisalabad, Multan, and many other cities is far below the desired level. Successive governments paid no proper attention to making Pakistan a climate-friendly country. The country needs to spend billions of dollars to make itself a climate-resilient country. Therefore, Pakistan needs a kind of leadership that should give high priority to controlling emissions and improving the overall environment of the country to develop a healthy nation.
According to a UNICEF report, over 22 million children in Pakistan between the age of 5-16 years are out of school. Education has never been a high priority for the successive governments in Pakistan as the country is spending a nominal amount of its GDP on education and health. The result is that over 40 percent of children in Pakistan under 5 years of age are stunted. A nation without education and healthy people can never achieve better economic growth. Pakistan needs a kind of leadership that should provide the children with quality education and nutritious food to develop a healthy nation to drive the economy.
Pakistan is characterized by bad governance, corruption, and lack of rule of law. The law treats differently the influential people and the common man in Pakistan. Getting justice for poor people in Pakistan is like surmounting a mountain as the courts take years to decide the civil and criminal cases in the country. The common man has almost lost trust in the judicial system, which is unaffordable for him and deprives him of justice. Therefore, Pakistan needs a kind of leadership that should establish good governance, purge Pakistan of corruption, and establish the rule of law to ensure a just and peaceful society that will ultimately enable the country to unlock its true economic potential.
There are many other big challenges including the rising cost of domestic and foreign debt, surging circular debt, the poor performance of utilities leading to very high energy tariffs, huge cost to the national exchequer of the loss-making public sector commercial entities, record high inflation, high-interest rate, rising water shortage, food insecurity. We need visionary and farsighted leadership to cope with these challenges and put Pakistan into fast gear of growth and development.
Apart from the advanced economies, the leadership of many countries including China, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, and Turkiye have transformed their countries into rising economies. Will the Pakistani nation be able to choose a kind of leadership in the February 8 elections that would transform Pakistan into a rising economy in South Asia? Only time will tell.
