Mosharraf Zaidi

http://www.thenews.com.pk/07-09-2010/Opinion/3507.htm

Rebellion in the fact-free zone

Tuesday, September 7, 2010
by Mosharraf Zaidi

The dangers of having a national discourse that is based largely on the motley assertions, emotions and ideologies of those that can scream loudest should be self-evident. Instead of decision-making that is based on facts, society ends up making decisions that are based on narrow self-interests of the ones with the microphone. Instead of learning from past experience, on data from 63 years of rich experience, there’s a repetition of mistakes, over and over and over again. Instead of evidence, we allow our decisions to be based on whatever makes us feel better. Instead of reality, we are bulldozed into doing things based on mythology. The costs of living in a fact-free zone are very, very high. Still we persist.

There doesn’t have to be a conspiracy behind this systemic contempt for facts in Pakistani discourse. There also doesn’t have to be a single group or ideology that is more likely to indulge in it. In a fact-free zone, just like at an intersection where no one pays attention to traffic lights, it doesn’t matter if the signal is red, amber or green. The only thing that matters is that each driver of each car is doing what is best, and most convenient for them. Exploring these kinds of phenomenon is no light matter. Some of the most relevant and accessible work by Nobel prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling examined this very interplay between individual acts, and the societal outcomes they lead to. In his own words, Schelling spent the better part of the 1970s exploring “the ways that individual behavioral choices could aggregate into social phenomena that were unintended or unexpected.” This lead to one of his seminal pieces of work, a book titled Micromotives and Macrobehaviour. No economist is whole without having read it (that may not be a fact, but rather a mere opinion).

In a fact-free zone, selfishness and emotions at the individual level lead to larger outcomes that are unintended, or unexpected. This does not excuse the damage, nor does it indemnify what is at times, the criminal liability of leaders that act only in narrow self-interest, and leaders that appeal to our base emotions. It does however give us an opening. If the absence of rational and fact-based decision-making in Pakistan is only the product of different selfish and emotional actors coming together, rather than a product of a grand conspiracy to destroy us-then there is hope.

With a sustained and objective commitment to fact-check our assertions we can change the disastrous outcomes that we produce in this country. We can shift our orientation from what makes us feel better, or from what we believe in, to what is indisputable, and what cannot be argued for or against. The beauty of fact-based discourse is that we don’t have to like facts, or each other. Facts are a pay-grade above the oft-noble and oft-petty preoccupations of our ideas, our values and our sensitivities. We don’t have to stop being who we are, or believing what we believe. All we have to do is stop letting those things dictate all our behaviour. We have to use our heads instead of our aching, broken hearts.

Everywhere we look there are facts to replace our ideological and self-interested hyperbole. Take the ridiculous theories making the rounds about Pakistan’s biblical floods being the product of Indian and Afghan manipulation of rivers and dams. Let’s just take some facts here.

The record rainfall in Peshawar for the month of July was set in 1956. It was 212 mm for the entire month. During the single 24-hour stretch of July 29, 2010 it rained 312 mm. The floods are a product of too much water falling from the sky. How much? 150 per cent more in one day than it ever has in an entire month.

The landscape is riddled with bullets of fiction. We can heal it all with facts. One of my favourite bits of fiction is the confidence with which some Pakistani “social entrepreneurs” market the success of Bangladesh’s stateless development-where mega NGOs rule the day.

I’ve no quarrel with people’s faith in unregulated free markets or their own donor-funded projects. But stating fantasies as fact is plain wrong. When we’re invited to “just look at how Bangladesh’s GDP has overtaken Pakistan’s,” we should.

Bangladesh’s GDP has been higher than Pakistan’s only three times-1973, 1974 and 1975. Pakistan’s GDP has been higher than Bangladesh’s every single year since 1975, and the distance between the two has grown, from a mere $3.2 billion in 1976 to $85.4 billion in 2008. Pakistan’s economy is more than double the size of Bangladesh’s economy. The 2008 GDP per capita for Pakistan was $991 and for Bangladesh $497. The 2008 GNI per capita in PPP terms was $2590 for Pakistan and $1450 for Bangladesh.

No matter what metric we use, Pakistanis are wealthier than Banlgadeshis. What does this prove? Luckily, not much. It does however emphatically demonstrate that emotional claims about how NGOs are catapulting Bangladesh’s poor into middle class status, while Pakistanis are getting left behind are patently false.

As Pakistan seeks help for flood relief, there is hand-wringing at home and abroad about how the world won’t help Pakistan because of corruption in the Pakistani government. Knowing the facts about flood-relief however, would suggest that these worries are wildly exaggerated. Not because the government is full of saints, but rather because flood-relief money simply doesn’t pass through the government.
Donating money to Pakistanis does not mean donating money to the Pakistani government. Almost every foreign donor that is providing aid is providing it through three key instruments. The first is the still unfulfilled UN appeal for $460 million. This money goes directly to the UN agencies involved in supporting flood affectees. The second is through local and international organizations and NGOs, like the Red Cross, Oxfam and Edhi. The third is through direct in-kind contributions, like the dozens of C-130 flights coming in from countries as far away as Australia, and as close-by as Saudi Arabia.

None of these means of contributing are susceptible to the corruption in the Pakistani government. Yet still the shrill hullabaloo over corruption continues without fail. It damages the relief-effort by slowing down people’s generosity. The facts here are a matter of life and death.

Perhaps the most pertinent facts for Pakistanis in these heady days are the ones that don’t need any numbers to back them up. Almost thirty months ago, we voted out a dictatorship that failed us, mutilated our institutions and treated our economy like a fickle teenager. That dictatorship built no new infrastructure, destroyed our international credibility, devoured land like a gluttonous sumo wrestler, and failed to keep any of its seven-point agenda promises.

Before we begin calling for military interventions and imported models of governance that have been tried and have failed before, we should think about the facts preceding our current imbroglio.

Most of all, as noises about debt-forgiveness begin to gain traction, we should think carefully about what aspect of our national life consumes the most attention, sympathy and money. One small hint? It is not debt-servicing, and it is not corrupt politicians. If this country will cease to be a fact-free zone, the smartest place to start might be to put our mouth where our money is.