NA pointed me to Ayaz Amir’s latest column today. It’s not too long, and worth a read. Mr. Amir asks what the purpose of founding Islamabad was, and points out how shoddily the city is being run as it continues to explode beyond the capacity it was designed for. The themes are familiar: the traffic problem is being addressed by actively attacking the most attractive aspect of Islamabad, its green belts. In addition, various opulent and — for lack of a better word considering we’re a third-world country — ridiculous real estate developments are mushrooming in its outskirts.
Of course, it’s not only in Islamabad that you wonder what the hell is going on. Sure, Islamabad may shortly boast a 7-star hotel, but let’s not forget the palm-shaped artificial island that is being planned for Gwadar (I can’t find a link — anyone?), or the multiple 5-star-and-above hotels that are being built in Karachi and Lahore (again, no link, but I have this on authority from my cousin, who’s doing air conditioning logistics for 3 of them).
Honestly, this isn’t the typical cynical, everyone-else-is-an-idiot, listen-to-me griping that we’re so good at as a nation. Sure, the banking and hotel sectors may be booming, but these are not the industries a nation is built upon — these are the industries a nation gradually grows into.
General Musharraf might possibly win my support if only there was evidence that the basic aspects of government, leadership, vision, and required infrastructural and institutional changes, are receiving due attention. Oh, that reminds me…
I got sucked into one of those stupid is-Pakistan-a-failed-state discussions the other day; my interlocutor’s argument eventually turned into “Partition was a horrible idea, and we would have been better off without it”. Now this guy isn’t Pakistani, so I assume he meant subcontinental Muslims would have been better off if the Indian subcontinent hadn’t been divided into India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Ignoring for a moment the fact that the dude clearly had no idea what he was talking about, and without settling for either the India-only-pulled-its-act-together-in-1992 or the hindsight-is-20-20 argument, the question that needed to be posed was: “OK, let’s suppose Muslims would have been better off if the subcontinent hadn’t been divided. Now, keeping in mind the government of India would have been dominated by non-Muslims, if India was still a booming economy, who would deserve credit? The non-Muslim government, correct? Then does the problem lie with the country of Pakistan, or the Muslims leading it?”
Partition wasn’t a mistake. But until we stop shooting ourselves in the foot we’ll never be able to prove it.
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