Pakistan Rising or Failing? Reality vs Perception

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistan has a population of over 200 million people and a booming trillion dollar economy ranked among the top 25 largest economies of the world.

Courtesy:  Ashraf Hameedi, Highforest Capital

Pakistan's 135 million millennials have made it the world's fastest growing retail market. There is surging demand for fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) and durables like smartphones, computers, cars, motorcycles and home appliances.

Courtesy: Nikkei Asian Review

Major energy and infrastructure projects, part of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), are transforming the country and creating millions of new jobs.

Incidents of terrorism and terror related deaths are in sharp decline since the country's military started nation-wide anti-terror operations in 2013.

Its $20 billion tourism industry is seeing rapid growth.

And yet, many continue to call Pakistan a "failed state". Why is it? Why is perception lagging reality?

Viewpoint From Overseas host Faraz Darvesh discusses these questions with Monis Rehman, Pakistani entrepreneur and CEO of Rozee.pk, and regular panelist Riaz Haq (www.riazhaq.com)

https://youtu.be/XDima7JSxKs

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Riaz Haq's YouTube Channel

PakAlumni Social Network

[Riaz Haq]

#Nigeria tops India with 87 million Nigerians in extreme #poverty exceeding #India’s 73 million. Rapid poverty reduction in #Asia fueled by the high rates of income per capita growth in India, #Indonesia, #Bangladesh, the #Philippines, #China and #Pakistan. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/india-no-longer-home-to-t...

The benchmark projections of poverty by country imply a high speed of poverty reduction in South Asia, East Asia and the Pacific, fuelled by the high rates of income per capita growth in India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, the Philippines, China and Pakistan, the study says. It showed global income increases in the last decades have led to systematic decreases in poverty rates worldwide, with the experience in India and China having played the most important role when it comes to the overall number of persons escaping absolute poverty.

[Riaz Haq]

#Pakistan: Beyond the stereotypes: Rural #women in colorful attires, girls learning boxing, countryside kids playing #football on a dusty street, tribal men learning English, rare #Asian rhino, vibrantly painted rickshaws that show rich #culture 

http://bit.ly/2m19ywg

Rural women in multi-coloured attire, young girls learning boxing, traditional kushti (wrestling) matches, countryside kids playing football on a dusty street, tribal men learning the English language, a girl from Gilgit-Baltistan playing Rubab (a lute-like musical instrument), the rare Asian one-horned rhino, vibrantly painted rickshaws that are emblems of a cultural richness ... these are images of Pakistan so rarely seen in mainstream media dominated as it is by narrow narratives of violence, strife and politics that it drove a Pakistani freelance photojournalist to do something about overturning the stereotypes.
“All you hear about Pakistan in the news is about terrorism, politics or poverty. But the Pakistan I know and live in is more than that. Pakistan is full of colours, smiles and diversity,” Saleem told Gulf News. And then last February, as he scrolled through his Instagram feed, he came across a cascade of images from a city that was on the other side of the border, in India. The Everyday Mumbai project that was all about capturing quotidian glimpses of the bustling megapolis.
“I was so inspired by the Everyday Mumbai project and its creator Chirag Wakaskar that I contacted the global community of Everyday Projects to start a similar project for Pakistan,” he said. Thus was born Everyday Pakistan.


Everyday Projects is a photography education non-profit and a collective of Instagram feeds which represents more than 50 countries. Its mission, according to the website, is to use photography “to challenge stereotypes that distort our understanding of the world.” The collective audience of Everyday Projects is over 1 million now.


Everyday Pakistan launched early this year with Saleem as the founder/curator with the assistance of a fellow writer, Anushe Noor. What started as a one-man mission to challenge stereotypes about his homeland now boasts nearly 58,000 followers on Instagram with a significant following on other social media platforms. “Everyday Pakistan is transforming negative perceptions, one photo at a time,” Saleem said.
The Instagram account offers a kaleidoscopic view of Pakistan’s innumerable wealth in terms of its people, cultures, natural resources, traditions and way of life.

From the fascinating shots of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Karachi, Buddha statues at the Bhamala Stupa near Khanpur, shrine of Sufi Saint Hazrat Ali Hajvery in Lahore, Shri Naval Mandir Narayanpura Hindu Temple in Karachi, and a portrait of 55-year-old Pakistani Sikh from Gurdwara Punja Sahib in Hassan Abdal, Everyday Pakistan brings to light the stunning cultural and religious diversity in Pakistan.
The most popular post was of a young man offering prayer in the caves of Quetta which received more than 130,000 likes.
During Ramadan and Eid, he received many requests from all over the world to share more photos of the festival as people were curious to learn more about Pakistan.
Through the online photo documentary project, Saleem also aims to provide a platform to local photographers to promote photojournalism in Pakistan and build a community of storytellers by giving viewers an honest insight into Pakistan.
A shared sense of history

[Riaz Haq]

Message to #Pakistani "liberals": The ideal praise to criticism ratio is about 5.6 to 1. Praise your country and its people 5.6X more often than you criticize to encourage better #performance. #positivethinking https://hbr.org/2013/03/the-ideal-praise-to-criticism


Which is more effective in improving team performance: using positive feedback to let people know when they’re doing well, or offering constructive comments to help them when they’re off track?

New research suggests that this is a trick question. The answer, as one might intuitively expect, is that both are important. But the real question is—in what proportion?

The research, conducted by academic Emily Heaphy and consultant Marcial Losada*, examined the effectiveness of 60 strategic-business-unit leadership teams at a large information-processing company.

“Effectiveness” was measured according to financial performance, customer satisfaction ratings, and 360-degree feedback ratings of the team members. The factor that made the greatest difference between the most and least successful teams, Heaphy and Losada found, was the ratio of positive comments (“I agree with that,” for instance, or “That’s a terrific idea”) to negative comments (“I don’t agree with you” “We shouldn’t even consider doing that”) that the participants made to one another. (Negative comments, we should point out, could go as far as sarcastic or disparaging remarks.) The average ratio for the highest-performing teams was 5.6 (that is, nearly six positive comments for every negative one). The medium-performance teams averaged 1.9 (almost twice as many positive comments than negative ones.) But the average for the low-performing teams, at 0.36 to 1, was almost three negative comments for every positive one.

So, while a little negative feedback apparently goes a long way, it is an essential part of the mix. Why is that? First, because of its ability to grab someone’s attention. Think of it as a whack on the side of the head. Second, certainly, negative feedback guards against complacency and groupthink.

And third, our own research shows, it helps leaders overcome serious weaknesses. The key word here is serious. Our firm provides 360-degree feedback to leaders. We have observed among the 50,000 or so leaders we have in our database that those who’ve received the most negative comments were the ones who, in absolute terms, improved the most. Specifically, our aggregate data show that three-fourths of those receiving the lowest leadership effectiveness scores who made an effort to improve, rose on average 33 percentile points in their rankings after a year. That is, they were able to move from the 23rd percentile (the middle of the worst) to the 56th percentile (or square in the middle of the pack).

A few colleagues have raised their eyebrows when we’ve noted this because we’re strongly in the camp that proposes that leaders work on their strengths. How do we reconcile these seemingly contrary perspectives? Simple: the people who get the most negative feedback have the most room to grow. It’s far harder for someone at the 90th percentile already to improve so much.

But clearly those benefits come with serious costs or the amount of negative feedback that leads to high performance would be higher. Negative feedback is important when we’re heading over a cliff to warn us that we’d really better stop doing something horrible or start doing something we’re not doing right away. But even the most well-intentioned criticism can rupture relationships and undermine self-confidence and initiative. It can change behavior, certainly, but it doesn’t cause people to put forth their best efforts.

[Riaz Haq]

Pakistan has shown remarkable resilience in the face of adversity – evidenced most tellingly by its recovery following the humiliating defeat in 1971. It has recovered significantly from the terror backlash, which followed Musharraf’s U-turn in the wake of 9/11. Fatalities in terror violence that mounted sharply from 2004 onwards, reaching the peak of 11,317 in 2009 (civilians, security forces personnel and terrorists), were down to 365 in 2019. Similarly, fatalities in suicide attacks, which reached the peak of 1,220 in 2010, were down to 76 in 2019. The secular decline in fatalities as a result of  the violence perpetrated by the terror groups operating against the Pakistani state, seen since 2009, is however not visible in the case of the killings in sectarian violence. At the peak of the terror wave in 2010, such violence claimed 509 lives. The number has waxed and waned during the subsequent years and stood at 507 and 558 in 2012 and 2013, respectively. The number of Shias killed has also not shown a secular decline since 2009 and has waxed and waned.8 Clearly, Pakistan’s action against terror has been focused essentially on the terror groups attacking the Pakistani state and not the groups perpetrating terror outside Pakistan or indulging in sectarian violence.

Sabharwal, Sharat. India’s Pakistan Conundrum (pp. 148-149). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. 

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In conclusion, it can be said that Pakistan is neither a failed state nor one about to fail in the foreseeable future. Further, so long as the army remains a largely professional and disciplined force, having at its disposal Pakistan’s rapidly growing arsenal of nuclear weapons, the probability of a change in Pakistan’s external boundaries would remain very low. Therefore, a policy premised on the failure or disintegration of the Pakistani state would hinge on unsound expectations. However, because of the various factors examined in the previous chapters, Pakistan will continue to be a highly dysfunctional state with widespread lawlessness.

Sabharwal, Sharat. India’s Pakistan Conundrum (p. 149). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. 

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Should India work to break up Pakistan? A body of opinion in India recommends that India should be proactive in causing the disintegration of Pakistan. For the reasons mentioned in Chapter 6, a policy premised on disintegration of the Pakistani state would hinge on unsound expectations. However, let us examine, for the sake of argument, the consequences of heightened turmoil in/break up of Pakistan for India. The unwise policies of Pakistan’s rulers have already resulted in considerable turbulence there. Though the Pakistani state uses terror against India, it is calibrated  by its instrumentalities. Heightened chaos in Pakistan leading to collapse of the state authority will not leave India untouched. Let us not forget that Pakistan has continued to pay a heavy price for having caused instability in its neighbour – Afghanistan – something I repeatedly recalled to my Pakistani audiences. Collapse of the state will also present India with a humanitarian crisis of a gigantic proportion, with the terrain between the two countries offering an easy passage to India for those fleeing unrest in Pakistan. At the height of terrorism in the Pakistani Punjab in 2009–10, some of my interlocutors in Lahore were candid enough to say that in the event of a Taliban takeover, they  would have no option but to run towards India. Break up of Pakistan could lead to a civil war amongst the successor states or worse still among various warring groups vying for influence, as was the case after collapse of the state authority in Afghanistan, entailing the undesirable consequences mentioned above and perilous uncertainty concerning the ownership of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Alternatively, India may be faced with a hostile Pakistani Punjab in possession of nuclear weapons. In either case, it will be bad news for India.

Sabharwal, Sharat. India’s Pakistan Conundrum (pp. 290-291). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition.