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Pakistan Can Survive
and Thrive Without Foreign Aid
 It
saddens us to hear the news, comments, and debates on
Kerry-Lugar Bill in Pakistani media.
It is particularly pathetic the way PPP
government’s spokespersons and official commentators and
intellectuals are defending or opposing the Kerry-Lugar Bill.
We firmly believe that Pakistan not only can
survive without foreign aid it can also thrive and become
economically a vibrant country in a short amount of time.
What Pakistan needs is right thinking,
political will and right economic policies to come out of all
the economic mess and grow as a vibrant country.
These policies do not necessarily need to be
revolutionary. However, they do need serious reforms and
overhauling to put the economy on the right track.
In these pages, we have several times pointed
out the steps that Pakistan needs to take to become economically
vibrant country.
To start with, Pakistan needs to develop
economic policies which insure every Pakistani a decent job, a
comfortable home, equal educational opportunities, fair business
opportunities and solid social, cultural, economic and political
security for every Pakistani and Pakistan itself.
In order to achieve these objectives,
Pakistan has to take steps which keep maximum money invested in
business activities.
The second most important step the government
needs to take is to devise policies which raise the level of
poor classes to the middle and also bring down the level of
upper classes at the middle level.
This can only happen if entire Pakistani
population becomes a middle class. There should be no per se
upper or lower classes in the country. Everyone, rich and poor,
should have constitutional guarantees of a decent job to provide
enough of food on the table, comfortable residence, latest
educational facilities for their offspring and permanent
financial security.
In this regard, new economic model must
provide assurance to the rich classes that their life style will
remain intact; however, it would be mandatory for them to invest
their extra monies in business activities.
New economic mechanism would be needed to be
developed to allow rich classes to maintain their life style by
giving those incentives for active participation in Pakistan's
infra structure to enable it to grow to the point where our
working classes start gaining the benefits of the system and
start moving upward to become middle class.
It is doable. However, Pakistan’s current
economic managers and corrupt political forces do not have the
required political will and necessary skills to move Pakistan on
the road to self reliance and prosperity.
Instead of begging for foreign aid,
Pakistan’s current economic managers should follow the model we
are suggesting, or step aside and let someone else fix the dire
economic problems and let Pakistan become a self reliant and
prosperous country without foreign aid or foreign help. | 
