Solution to all of Pakistan's economic problems

[Awesome]

Get bounties on people's heads and then collect them for turning them in.

A father wants to send his son to college? Become a terrorist first, get a bounty, have the son turn him in.

The poor kid who burned himself for a uniform went off cheap.

Hafiz Saeed: The (10) million dollar man – The Express Tribune Blog

Ten million dollars. Not one, not five, 10!

This is it Pakistanis. If you don’t take this opportunity, you have no one else to blame but yourself for not winning this lottery. Easier than any question asked by Amitabh Bachchan on KBC, this is the fastest, surest way to the top guys. America has answered your prayers and you can get out of poverty – now!

Even with the usual 10% ‘charges’, this would leave you with a cool $9 million. Move to Karachi, officially the world’s cheapest city, and live the rest of your life in a nice bungalow with hundreds of maids. And we’re talking Defense, not your Lalu Kheth and Korangi housings.

All you have to do is hand over Hafiz Saeed – that guy who walks freely on our streets. The same dude our courts have shamelessly let off scot free despite his blatant transgressions. In order to help my fellow Pakistanis, I will give you some tips to find this mysterious man in ‘hiding’:

• He’s a 60 something man who wears the white Muslim prayer hat and sports a long beard. Okay, that could be anyone in your mohalla mosque
• He’s a portly mullah, the kind that makes you wonder whether he is spending that charity money on KFC binges for himself
• You’ll find him mouthing off stuff about cutting India up like it is a piece of mutton and he’s a butcher
• He has been addressing the Difa-e-Pakistan conferences, or as they are known otherwise, Defy-Pakistan’s-laws-and-make-a-mockery-of-them conferences
• Listening to his speeches, you will notice that he could have been a good qawali singer judging by his vocal abilities
• Last but not least, he openly holds public rallies promoting youngsters to go to jihad where they will live in tough conditions, before retiring into his bungalow house in Lahore’s suburbs – that nice Johar Town area.

Remember also, Zardari’s on his way to India this month. He’s still waiting for his Inferior – I mean Interior Minister Rehman Malik to confirm the story. Hurry up before he steals this opportunity and takes Hafiz himself. Forget Kony 2012, grab that mullah and make your money!

I know some of you will be thinking “but this harms our ghairat” but let’s be honest with ourselves for once. We’d sell our souls for less, hell we do it every day in Pakistan with our corrupt practices!

I do wonder what Hafiz’s thoughts are on this. Imagine waking up one day and knowing your true worth. He must be delighted. However, reports have confirmed that his mother, in typical desi mother’s fashion, twisted his ear and scolded him for ending up second behind Ayman al Zawahri:

Mayray betay may kya kamee hay jo usko sirf 10 million kee bounty lagaygee hay, mayra beta bhi 25 million say kum nahee.

( What does my son lack that only a bounty of $10 million has been offered for him, he deserves no less than $25 million)

And with Hafiz’s insistence on being a charitable person, he would be happy to turn himself in. There is no way his ‘charity’ organisation could raise that money on its own. This double master’s degree holder and suicide bombing advocate will surely recognise the amount of help all that money would bring to the poor in the country. And with his insistence on us making sacrifices for Islam and for Muslims, this is the best way to practice what he preaches. He must be over the moon.

All he has to do is go with the American authorities (that too alive and not shot dead and body thrown into the ocean) and we Pakistanis would be 10 million dollars richer - which could go towards feeding the poor. He does seem to favour this in his recent quote:

I am living my life in the open and the US can contact me whenever they want.

The US is now trying to find his Facebook profile to get in touch; alternatively his Skype ID will also help.

But this announcement surely makes things awkward amongst his circle of friends. Imagine sitting with them when you have a 10 million dollar bounty on you. Any time one of them excuses themselves to go to the bathroom, every other person would be thinking “He better not call the authorities… before I get a chance.”

All in all, prosperity is coming towards Pakistan. China, Bangladesh and India may have overtaken us in manufacturing clothes and other products. But our exclusive, high-quality terrorist line still demands the highest prices, manufactured in Pakistan, demanded in America.

I know a guy who is a real jerk - that should be worth a thousand backs on the man for money scale?

 

[Ignited Mind]

Nice satire.

 

[zakriaarshad]

I think I wanted to say it more to me... but article ended.........

 

[killerx]

mod plz close this thread

 

[chitti]

LOL.. i think you are getting there quite quickly. we need more raymond davises too, you need to diversify source of funds eh?

 

[Awesome]

People will now do a rethink. Don't send one kid to the Middle East for work, make one of them a terrorist and then US will pay good money for him.

When our military and our federal government sold themselves off for CSF and Transit fees what's the point now? America should just open up an office where people come and make deals with the US, and they pay them good money.

Pakistan is for sale, gentlemen.

 

[VCheng]

...............
Pakistan is for sale, gentlemen.

A clarification Sir, if I may: Pakistan has been sold down the river decades ago; not much left to buy, if you ask me.

 

[Jango]

A clarification Sir, if I may: Pakistan has been sold down the river decades ago; not much left to buy, if you ask me.

Market has now been flooded!!!

 

[Awesome]

A clarification Sir, if I may: Pakistan has been sold down the river decades ago; not much left to buy, if you ask me.

Clearance sale? Garage sale? Lemonade stand? Girnay ke liay abhi mukam aur bhi hain...

 

[VelocuR]

The other Pakistan


MY previous article on the rise of Pakistan’s middle class (which appeared in this newspaper on March 23), elicited a surprising response. It was the most ‘face-booked’ and ‘tweeted’ of all my op-eds since last year, and I received numerous comments via text message and e-mail as well.

Overwhelmingly, the response was euphoric and celebratory in nature, with many friends, especially from Karachi, suggesting that I had finally “seen the light”, and hoping that this would mark the start of more “positive” thinking and writing from me!

Indeed, the purpose of the article was to balance the narrative, and tell a story which also needed to be told: that the only way to explain the consumption and affluence visible in some parts of Pakistan was by the rise of a sizeable middle class. However, the attempt to balance the narrative may have an unintended consequence. It could reinforce the complacency that has been exhibited — and articulated — by senior government figures and policymakers, regarding the ‘true’ state of the economy and the socioeconomic circumstances of most Pakistanis.

This complacency is set to increase further if reports regarding the results of the latest official poverty assessment, as yet unreleased, are true — that Pakistan is likely to record another sharp fall in the poverty headcount ratio, from the controversial figure of 17.2 per cent that was estimated in 2008.

In the wake of some recent disturbing developments and findings, it is important to re-balance the narrative. While it is important to recognise the emergence of a large middle class in Pakistan, it is imperative not to forget that an unacceptably large number of our countrymen are falling through the cracks.

The first of these ‘counter narratives’ pertains to rising food insecurity and overall vulnerability in the country. While estimates of the size of the middle class are open to methodological questioning, on the other side of the equation, the estimates of the food-insecure and vulnerable population are perhaps relatively more ‘firm’. An UN inter-agency assessment mission, for example, had placed the food-insecure population in Pakistan at 77 million people — in 2008, at the start of the global food crisis. It is almost certainly likely to be the case that this cohort has grown in number since, given that food inflation has totalled 75 per cent between 2008 and 2011.

The second of these comes from the findings of the official National Nutrition Survey, 2011 (NNS, for short). While the results of the survey have not been officially released, a reader associated with this exercise has shared some of the grim findings. The two most important ones include:

— An across-the-board increase in malnutrition in children, with 67 per cent of this cohort falling in this category, across the whole of Pakistan (mothers have fared poorly as well);

— An across-the board increase in ‘stunting rates’ in children in Pakistan, with Sindh faring particularly poorly on this score.

According to this researcher, given that there are no discernible patterns in the findings and the results are fairly evenly distributed across different regions and sub-groups (male/female, rural/urban, by province), the most plausible explanation for the results is that “the underlying cause is poverty, which according to this survey would be very pervasive and extant”.

The third disturbing development relates to the re-emergence of polio in the country, with Pakistan amongst three countries in the world where this deadly debilitating disease has made a comeback. While this is perhaps more related to conflict than
directly to poverty, it does underscore an increase in vulnerability for large sub-groups in Pakistan, not a decrease.

Finally, and perhaps the most depressing: the recent suicide by not one, but two school-going teenagers, in quick succession and in separate events, but with ostensibly one common factor — the root of their desperation was largely economic in nature, going by media accounts.

These four developments should be enough to focus our minds on how successive policymakers and policies are failing Pakistan, even as a sizeable middle class takes root. The conundrum of the emergence of Pakistan’s middle class even as the economy has weakened in terms of a long-run, secular trend is perhaps explained quite significantly by the atrophying of the state and its institutions — the ability to collect taxes, duties and other dues (such as utility bills), and in more broad terms, by enforcing obligations — and not by the success of any deliberate economic policy per se.

In addition to the foregoing, given the context of the speech from which my article on the middle class was adapted, the downside of the consumption boom was not touched upon. The sharp and sustained pressure on the balance of payments is partly explained by a steep rise in imports of ‘non-essential’ products to sustain the lifestyle wants of the affluent in Pakistan.

The other, more disturbing element is that despite the boom in consumption, it remains largely outside the tax net, and hence, is not contributing to Pakistan’s economic stability and well-being to the extent it can and should.

Here, it would be instructive to ponder over the estimate provided by the Asian Development Bank for the total consumption spending by the middle class in Pakistan as of 2005: $75bn a year. Given that a fairly large chunk of this would be at
‘superstores’, designer boutiques, trendy restaurants and retail outlets in swank malls, well above the turnover threshold of mom-and-pop corner shops, it would be right to assume that this consumption spending should attract sales tax — but it does not. Hence, hundreds of billions of rupees are escaping from the tax net from the large, organised retail sector each year.

In sum, while we have every reason to celebrate the rise of Pakistan’s middle class, we should also be clear of its origins, and the persisting distributional issues it highlights.

The writer is a former economic adviser to government, and currently heads a macroeconomic consultancy based in Islamabad.
The other Pakistan | DAWN.COM

 

[VCheng]

Clearance sale? Garage sale? Lemonade stand? Girnay ke liay abhi mukam aur bhi hain...

Whatever happened to "sitaaron sey aagey jahan aur bhi hain"?

Come on AA, cheer up; you were the one chastising me for being negative not that long ago.

Please get your optimistic sparkle back!

(You are too young to be a cynic like me yet.)

 

[Icewolf]

VCheng what does your username mean

 

[Awesome]

Whatever happened to "sitaaron sey aagey jahan aur bhi hain"?

Come on AA, cheer up; you were the one chastising me for being negative not that long ago.

Please get your optimistic sparkle back!

(You are too young to be a cynic like me yet.)

I'm optimistic, if we're going to put up a fight and fight the status quo. Without doing anything things aren't going to change. If anyone wants to struggle to change things, I'll be in line.

 

[VCheng]

I'm optimistic, if we're going to put up a fight and fight the status quo. Without doing anything things aren't going to change. If anyone wants to struggle to change things, I'll be in line.

I am with you on that, even though we have our differences in methods, we are one on the goals.

 

[Jihad]

Asim Aquil as skeptical as ever...and rightly so.