Parasites Economies and International Financial Hosts: By Faheem Aamer

A few days back, all Pakistani newspapers carried a headline that Pakistan received the second tranche of 700 million dollars from the IMF and Pakistan will get another $ 1.1 billion, if it completes the next economic assessment “successfully”. ‘Success’ used as a term here does not delineate to which economic class will benefit it. Will the extreme chill of naked bodies on the streets keep them warm, who burn the garbage from the dustbins to maintain their body temperature for the night? No North Star, no hope of dawn! Will a loan-based economy of an underdeveloped country provide free medical treatment to those senior citizens, who pray every night for their death to get relief from their pain? But every next morning they again embrace their torment as Muhammad Hanif writes, “They are good, just suffering from life”. Will the poverty-bitten children start getting quality education from the public schools as education, health, and industry are already bought by the corrupt private sector? It’s needless to mention, they are in billions.
My own home town Khanewal – Punjab (Pakistan) had also benefited from these ‘great blessings’ of the IMF and World Bank, but could the piles of garbage be removed from the town? When we see the declassified quarterly reports, we wonder if the IMF, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and other international paymaster institutions consider ‘environment’ as their prior issue. But, will the heaps of garbage be removed, in which more than 50 million people are forced to breathe?
Well, may his soul rest in eternal peace, a businessman invested money with political intentions to make paradise in one small portion of Civil Lines, where only the bureaucrats abode at public expense whereas the rest of the vicinity named ‘Civil Lines’, along with rest of the town is still a dirty wreck. The businessman departed before getting a hold of town politics through the town’s powerless state machinery, but his fine sense of development increased a feeling of deprivation in billions of the people in town. However, the dirty wreck was a dirty wreck even before IMF and World Bank funding. The phenomenon, which was changed, is only that repaying of these debts effected in a way that the debt monster with two faces as one international paymaster organizations, and the second their Pakistani facilitators. This bi-headed monster became so powerful that previously it used to abduct our children in the darkness and now it swallows them in broad daylight.
No Socrates is required to identify this exploitation as any commoner can calculate how much each living Pakistani has to contribute to repay the loan that they never utilized. Eurostat declares that the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has revealed that Pakistan has to repay $27.47 billion of foreign debt by November 2024. This payment includes both the principal amount and interest cost.
In 2018, the estimated average inflation rate in Pakistan was around 3.93 percent over the previous year, a slight decrease from 2017, but much faster than four years ago. In the next few years, it is predicted to reach around 6.5%. Please note these figures are from UN-related Statistics Cooperation, not ours at all ….!
Our figures only show that the inflation rate in Pakistan, which is just another of 96 underdeveloped countries has reached 44.64 percent. We requested Dr. Ammar Hassan to solve this mystery as to how the income per capita is calculated. He replied with a little amusement, a sarcastic smile on his face and stress on his brow asking us to suppose there are 100 people, out of which just two people possess an income of one million rupees per head, making it two million. The rest of the 98 people earn PKR 2,000 per head. So, even with a dishonest exaggeration it makes 196,000 rupees. Now, please care to add those two million rupees and divide the sum by a hundred and see that surprisingly the income per capita rises to Rs. 21,960, which will be Rs. 19,960/- more than actual. So, the people who attend lavish meetings at the International Economic Forum, etc. use the same formula. He said, “You had written an article on sanitary workers. You had reported that sanitary workers do not wear denim dangri uniforms, rubber gloves, proper shoes etcetera. So, what happened? You received an appreciation letter from ILO and nothing changed. Can the baldness be squeezed and washed”?
Doc continued, you also launched your cameras before the Provincial Legislative Assembly and asked just one question what is the price of flour? Everyone replied with wickedness as they didn’t have any answer and why did they not have an answer? Because they all belonged to those two persons who contributed 2 million rupees to the ‘income per capita’ and the price of basic ingredients of food was never their issue.
Is there someone who could question these artisans of statistics on how they calculate ‘income per capita’ in an underdeveloped country like Pakistan, where the rich are extremely rich and the poor are extremely poor? We don’t know about any such person, but history will repeat this question, again and again, race after race till this is replied to and addressed.
Referring back to the flour price, when I asked the same question to the people living in pathetic poverty in Nishtar Town Lahore, they told me with collective wrath not just the flour prices, but also the prices of lentils, sugar, vegetables, cheap cooking oil, fuel and Liquid Paraffin Gas (LPG), their house rent, electricity bills, school fees, etc. When I told them that this program would not be aired to reach the authorities and even if it reached, nothing could be done as their pre-budget meeting with IMF was already done. Their wrath deflated down to deep sorrow and while serving tea, they felt sorry, “Sir we cannot offer you our food as it’s not worth eating”. They also asked me to tell various UN-related organizations to save some amount for towns like Khanewal from their lavish conferences. But wait brother, you said yourself that your rulers do not bother to listen to neutral investigative journalists.
They were right as orders of an honest TMA officer are not obeyed by subordinate staff and why would they obey, as every evening of these subordinates is spent in the houses of influential political figures for flattery and just flattery? And as reported by BBC, the said honest officer was intimidated by subordinate staff with the blasphemy laws, promulgated by late military dictator General Zia in 1982.
However, The economic figures are as phony as our religion-stamped constitution. People of many faiths live in our country, but there is only one religion in our constitution, in our state, and because of this, cities are burnt, bombs explode in places of worship, cyber laws are used against progressive sites by blocking the digital broadcasts without any prior notice. Our constitution does not prevent our children from studying in expensive schools like Alpin Beau Soleil in Switzerland. So can we send our children to this school? When did the Constitution say not to treat your parents at Adelaide Hospital in South Australia? Then why do we drag them to unhygienic public hospitals to die moment by moment? The constitution did not prohibit editors from coming to the newsroom in a Rolls Royce. Then why do we continue to endure the oppression of seasons in Ching Chi rickshaws?? Only a ‘commoner’ can understand that until a common man can cope with economic prosperity, this constitution is a mirage and these figures are meaningless words before the eyes of a dyslexic patient.
Yes, these numbers, this constitution, this democracy are magic wands in the hands of the powerful and privileged classes, by using which they have been mounted on our backs like a witch and do not get down with the speeches and media statements of stinking rich political leaders.
The saddest of all is the fact that a common Pakistani, after reading or listening to such news, happily sinks into the mire of inflation. Sinking and smiling, without realizing that in economic terms they are making us parasites, and international financial institutions and their national facilitators are the hosts.