As Pakistan struggled with ever-growing challenges in recent decades, a succession of regimes have sought to jumpstart the country – notably its economy – without comprehensively tackling long-term challenges.

It is a tragic legacy whose outcome should have taught enduring lessons to a succession of rulers. And yet the virtual absence of lessons learnt in favour of a more promising future has repeatedly exposed a failure by Pakistan’s competing elite to learn from past mistakes.

In brief, even the best-intentioned ‘jumpstart’ plans have run the risk of getting bogged down unless fully backed by deeper reforms.

Plans such as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) or more recently the Special Investment Facilitation Cell (SIFC) meant to lift Pakistan’s prospects as never before run the risk of getting sidetracked in transforming Pakistan, unless pursued in tandem with a series of changes across the country.

Specifically, three key areas are fundamentally essential to change Pakistan’s destiny alongside bold initiatives involving foreign capital.

First, the country’s crisis of governance has only deepened in recent decades notably since experiments such as the devolution of government authority and the 18th Amendment were undertaken to transform Pakistan for the better. Instead of moving forward, the country has only gone backwards........

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