Asian lessons for Pakistan |
The title of this essay needs to be explained. Pakistan is an Asian nation, and it should not be looking too far out to draw some important lessons for the design of public policy. For lessons, it has to search far into Asia to draw some important lessons for managing its economy. Pakistan has four neighbours – Afghanistan, China, India and Iran – three of which have adopted religion as the way of economic governance. Until the arrival of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as prime minster in 2014, India had followed an inclusive approach to economic management. It is now abandoning that approach and has decided to adopt what the main governing party – the Hindu nationalist, Bharatiya Janata Party, the BJP – calls "Hindutva".
This way of governance was initially developed in the western state of Gujarat when Modi governed as the Chief Minister. Rather than follow an inclusive system of governing the country, Modi has opted for an exclusionary system, which keeps out all non-Hindu groups for involvement in making public policy. This approach has limited the participation of the country's 200 million Muslims in governance. I have written about this feature of Modi's India in an article I titled "India's Mussalman problem". Today my focus will be on the lessons that can be drawn from the way governments in the eastern part of the continent rule their domains.
I had a long stint in the World Bank – I worked at the institution over a period of 26 years, eight of which included directorship of the China Program. The directorate I managed was part of the East Asian Vice Presidency........