What Pakistan needs is a lump sum in one go -about a trillion dollars so it can afford a proper army , wars in Dagestan , Kargil , Afghanistan and employ slave Kaffirs to do the productive work .. Jug Aug 24 Fungibility of aid Anees Jillani My wife has started dreading going to the market. It is not just because of the imposition of general sales tax (GST). It is the fact that almost every second shopkeeper is asking her for a loan. The household is already bad enough: the cook, the gardener, the maulvi sahib, the tailor, and to top it all, even our neighbor's chowkidar. It is as if she is a walking SBFC or small business finance corporation. And then these folks return the debt in small chunks which become meaningless and the last Rs500 have to be customarily written off. I am sick and tired of this phenomenon, along with so many of my other friends, and I have never seen any of these people getting rich by these small loans. Ishaq Dar, the finance minister, appears no different to me from these folks. Pakistan has been begging the international monetary agencies and our Arab brothers for grants, loans and assistance for the last 52 years. I have not seen any change in our economic situation since then. In fact, it appears to be deteriorating on a weekly basis. The people of Pakistan, and their rulers, may not realize it but the country's situation was never as bad as it is now. If you do not believe me, then all you have to do is to talk to a diplomat _base_d in Islamabad or better still read one of their despatches to their home offices. Most of them have lost hope in the country. If it is not feasible for you to do either of the above, then the least you can do is to drive through Islamabad's diplomatic enclave. One gets the impression as if you are driving through a war zone: 15 feet high walls; speed breakers every 20 feet; police check posts at each intersection and some of the roads totally closed to the public. Sometimes one gets the impression as if it is Saigon before its fall to the Communists in 1975. If the embassies are so uncomfortable in this country, a foreign investor is hardly expected to be rushing here with his millions. He has better options. It is known to few people that the Netherlands has stopped all economic assistance to Pakistan; the primary reason being given for this cessation is its futility. The Dutch parliamentarians feel that assistance in the past has not made any difference in Pakistan. Aid to Pakistan is now also being questioned in several other parliaments of Western countries. There is a new concept emerging in the West called fungibility of aid. Many in the West now argue that if Pakistan has money to make nuclear bombs and Ghauri missiles, if it can get embroiled in the Kargil heights, if its citizens are resourceful enough to be involved in civil wars from Central Asia down to Afghanistan and Kashmir, then it should actually be donating money rather than being a recipient of assistance. This view appears to be prevailing now that aid to a country like Pakistan actually displaces resources in that state. It is argued that aid for education, for instance, diverts the government's resources that it would have otherwise spent on education to carry out its nuclear tests and Kargil operations. If there had been no assistance, the country probably would have had no money to spend on these operations: there would have been no bomb. In other words, the donor community is now starting to feel that it indirectly funded Pakistan's nuclear bombs. The federal cabinet in a meeting on August 20 expressed the feeling that there is a propaganda warfare being waged against the country in the context of human rights. The Indians were accused of fanning the feeling about the presence of child labour in Pakistan through distribution of posters all over Europe; you do not have to see Indian posters to know about child labour in Pakistan as all you have to do is to simply stop your car at any intersection to be surrounded by child workers. This discussion in the cabinet is definitely a step backwards because instead of acknowledging the bleak state of human rights in the country, we are now almost denying its existence and instead starting to blame the activists who point out those very ills in the society. Even a psychiatrist is helpless in assisting a patient if the latter refuses to acknowledge his or her predicament. If Pakistan wants to have a system _base_d on some archaic tribal model, a nuclear bomb, a neutron bomb, intercontinental ballistic missiles, honour killings, child labour and karo kari, the world has no problems with it: it is Pakistan's internal problem and falls within the domain of our domestic jurisdiction. But then let us not ask the world for aid. We cannot have it both ways. At the same time, however, Pakistan should not worry too much. The economy is not going to completely collapse. The rich countries appear to have decided to keep giving Pakistan just enough to sustain itself, like my wife doling out money to her tailor, Shafiq, on a quarterly basis. Both will never be totally independent and on their feet; and thus will keep asking for more. And why is this being done? To avoid a catastrophe like the one we have seen in Afghanistan. If economic aid to Pakistan is completely stopped then the economy could crumble and the fundamentalist forces may try to take advantage of the situation by seizing power. There will be chaos in the region with millions flocking the world for immigration and millions of others in a situation similar to that in Afghanistan; there may even a balkanization of this region. The world presently is in no mood for another peace keeping operation. Oxygen for the economy in the shape of $280 million tranche will thus keep coming from the IMF, the World Bank, and the Consortium. We should not worry about it too much and our finance minister should not feel too elated that his three-piece suit and fancy tie did the trick in Washington. Even Lalika or Raja Zafarul Haq would have been able to do the same in red shorts with green stripes. Pakistan can get out of this mess by devising correct policies and by setting appropriate priorities. I have no several occasions given example of countries like Malaysia in this respect which our Prime Minister had to visit for economic assistance after the much-acclaimed Chagai nuclear tests. But, why go far? We also have the example of the United Arab Emirates which is fast becoming a model of development not just in this region but the world over for running its affairs so well. Can't the UAE afford a nuclear bomb? But they rather be an Asian Tiger than a nuclear power because tigers at least do not have to beg with an atomic bowl