Development 2.0--by Nadeem Ul Haque

Should we think Judicial Reform Justice Iftikhar Choudhry will have a place in Pakistan history for giving us judicial independence. What we now have to achieve is a working judiciary. For that we should start thinking seriously of judicial reform.    All of us have personal stories of a justice delayed, justice denied and justice sold. Many of us hesitate to approach the judiciary settling out of court for a song. Every person has many such stories of long delayed justice. Cases are pending in some cases for decades. Decisions are given without regard to economic consequences. Decisions on economic matters are given without being informed by economic analysis at a cost to the economy. Judicial reform has been restricted to increasing judges’ perks, compensation and pension and that too for mainly the superior judiciary. Nothing tangible has been done to ensure timely and fair justice. Perhaps it is time that initiate a discussion on how our strong indepe...

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http://magazine.thenews.com.pk/mag/moneymatter_detail.asp?id=6863&magId=10&catId=30

http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-9-221053-The-HECs-outmoded-processes

On Failure! Bilal Lakhani wrote a poignant and painful piece on how we failed our forefathers.  tribune.com.pk/story/647371/we-have-failed-our-forefathers/   His questioning has been visited by abuse and derision. He has been accused of being unpatriotic, pessimistic and even worse un-Pakistani. I share the pain of youth crying out for answers. Pakistani youth like youth everywhere wants to achieve, compete, and prove themselves worthy of being global citizens. Unfortunately, they find that channels, forums and institutions to foster their ambitions missing.  Bilal is correct, raising questions asking for a debate is not condemning Pakistan. The strength of advanced societies is their ability to foster debate even on uncomfortable issues. The long and emotional debate on civil rights did much to mend the race problem in the US. Critics from within like Noam Chomsky, Bertrand Russell, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Emile Zola have evolved society in...

I congratulate Ahsan Iqbal for adding the reform component to the Planning Commission. I wanted to do that but my good friend Hafeez Shaikh did not believe in reform. But Mr Iqbal must no go forward and reform the PC. I would like to put forward my thoughts for discussion as I believe reform without wide discussion is useless. If we want growth we must develop a planning process along the same lines of the SBP. This would mean an independent Planning Commission enshrined in law with a technocratic leadership. There should be no minister of Planning; the FM should only be in charge of the MOF. DCPC should be a tenured technocrat with a rank equivalent to a federal minister. DCPC must be a part of all high level decision-making bodies to present the considerations of long term growth and development. The PC should report directly to the PM. Subjects of the PC that are replicated in the MOF such as Poverty, reform and PSRP should be either dissolved or merged in the PC. Members ...

People are totally confused about the economy.  One way of looking at the economy is that it is the aggregate of all economic decisions taken in a time period.  If the government is run on archaic principles  with poor  decision-making , don’t expect great outcomes for the economy. The process of human resource management in the government is at the heart of the slow growth in our economy. Think about it.  Let me give  you  some  food for thought. All appointments in Pakistan’s public sector are highly centralized. The refrain is that we cannot trust appointments to be decentralized  for there will be poor quality appointments and possible corruption. Hence the rationale for secretaries and bureaucrats to be on all governing bodies of public sector enterprises,  including   universities ,  think-tank’s  and other  non-profits . Meanwhile the principle accounting officer of all these bodies remains the secretar...