2020 – the ugly, the bad and the good for Pakistan
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It is going to be tough finding a country on the planet that proclaims 2020 has been a great year for them. Pakistan, like virtually every other country, is anxiously counting the hours to ring in 2021 and consign the outgoing annus horribilis to the heap of history.
Much like for others, the ‘year from hell’ for Pakistan was mainly because of the pandemic but also due to sociopolitical and economic conditions that brought little cheer for the people in tangible form. But a closer look at some of the intangibles in the short term allow the country a mixed bag of the good, the bad and the ugly when rating the year with the benefit of hindsight.
The ugly in one word: coronavirus. The pandemic in all probability infected tens of millions although just over 6 million were tested in a country of over 200 million. Ten months after the virus was detected in Pakistan, there is currently a caseload of over 400,000 persons tested infected, according to official figures. There are over 9,000 recorded killed by the virus, including thousands of doctors and paramedics.
The impact has been devastating in many ways. Apart from those whose homes saw their loved ones dying or wasted away by the virus, up to 18.5 million were forecast by the government to lose jobs and the economy has sustained losses of up to Rs2.5 trillion-- over half of the country’s annual budget.
The economy, already steadily contracting under the incumbent government’s steerage since it took power, plunged to almost zero percent growth in 2020.
The proverbial flip side of all the ugly brings with them opportunities, and the pandemic accelerated the digitalization of Pakistan’s socio-economic landscape.
Adnan Rehmat
The government has already borrowed almost $24 billion in expensive loans in its 30 months in power to stay solvent. When Imran Khan took power, 31 percent of Pakistanis were living in poverty. Today about 40 percent do, according to independent assessments. It is a toss-up between what is uglier – the pandemic or the government’s handling of the economy.
The bad-- Already bad in 2019, the generally absent working relationship between the government and opposition in Pakistan grew worse in 2020. Growing heavy-handedness of the government in pursuing a controversial accountability process that saw almost the entire leadership of main opposition parties tied up in legal knots in jail, court or National Accountability Bureau offices, resulted in enhanced political polarization and instability. This, in turn, made conditions for the economy worse and needlessly distracted the government from optimal response to tackling the impact of COVID-19 and the economy.
The political polarization got so bad that the individual opposition parties, including the Pakistan People’s Party and Pakistan Muslim League-N, which have between them won eight of Pakistan’s 11 elections, banded together into a formal opposition alliance, the Pakistan Democratic Movement.
The PDM has allowed Bilawal Bhutto and Maryam Nawaz to emerge as popular political mobilizers and mount troubling political challenges for the Khan government by taking out a series of massive political rallies across the country. As the year closed, there were promises by PDM to take the polarization up a notch by quitting national and provincial legislatures and laying siege to Islamabad to force the government to resign in early 2021.
Then there’s the good. The proverbial flip side of all the ugly brings with them opportunities, and the pandemic accelerated the digitalization of Pakistan’s socio-economic landscape. Academia, generally went from crippled by the pandemic, to creating the basic infrastructure for classes online. Teachers and students both fast-tracked into new ways of education. It’s still a long way to go before Pakistan matches more advanced countries in digital education, but 10 months down the line it has already seemingly leapfrogged 10 years into its natural evolutionary pace.
As internet access expanded dramatically in Pakistan – over 80 million users now – in limited ways consumer economy and governance improved through the use of technology. Fast-tracked digitalization, for example, has allowed the accelerated expansion of an ecosystem of public services, from ordering food and groceries to filing for government services – or complaints – online.
The Citizens Portal has allowed Pakistanis to approach the Prime Minister’s office directly – millions of requests made and addressed – for service response, complaints redressal and transparency around performance. The government also managed to pull quite a feat by using technology to disburse over Rs200 billion in emergency cash handouts to 15 million of the poorest families to cope with the impact of diminished livelihoods caused by COVID-19. This was one of the largest such subsistence programs anywhere on the planet.
Despite the relative good though, Pakistanis can’t wait to wave goodbye to 2020 and see that it all gets better in 2021 with the diminishing of what was ugly this year and the bad paving the way for political and economic stability.
*Adnan Rehmat is a Pakistan-based journalist, researcher and analyst with interests in politics, media, development and science.
Twitter: @adnanrehmat1
