Bint-e-Adam
Was Bhutto’s policy of Nationalization a flirtation with
Socialism? Discuss the positive outcomes of the policy as well.
Zulfiqar Ali
Bhutto has been the most influential, charismatic and yet the most
controversial political leader in the history of Pakistan. People still depict
mixed views and sentiments when it comes to evaluating Bhutto’s government, his
democracy and policies. There are those to whom Bhutto was yet another leader
who came to exercise power and authority to feel a sense of aggrandizement, and
then there are those for whom Bhutto was a leader, like no other, who mobilized
the masses, put forward an un-controversial constitution and held an inevitable
charm and authority. However, the main response towards Bhutto’s era is
negative and the main reason for that being his Socialist ideology.
Before going
ahead with how far and how much Bhutto implemented what he claimed, it is
important that we see what socialism actually is. According to Karl Marx
theory, “Socialist Action argues that the problems of exploitation and
oppression in the world today can ultimately be solved by first replacing the
capitalist system with a socialist system. The chief means of production should
be socialized, that is, taken out of the private hands of the capitalists and
put under public ownership, that is, government ownership. The economy should
then be run by councils of democratically elected representatives of workers
and consumers at all levels of the economy. Instead of being run on the basis
of what will maximize profit for a super-rich minority, the economy should be
planned to meet the needs of the people—in employment, education, nutrition,
health care, housing, transportation, leisure, and cultural development.” [1]
PPP came into
main stream politics under the powerful leadership of ZAB with the slogan of
socialism and according to the above definition of socialism; I believe that
Bhutto’s policies were socialist but they meet only the first part of the
definition i.e. nationalization. Bhutto’s main policy by introducing
Nationalization was to:
·
Concentration of economic power should be dispersed and should belong to
people.
· Financial
resources should not be under the control of a few rich families.
· The economy
should be submissive to socio-political objectives.
He himself while introducing the land reforms said that his
reforms would “effectively breakup the iniquitous concentration of landed
wealth, reduce income disparities, increase production, reduce unemployment,
streamline the administration of land revenue and agricultural taxation and
truly lay down the foundations of a relationship of owner and mutual benefit between
land owner and tenant.” So basically what Bhutto had in mind was the
development of country. He was an intellectual man. He knew where all the
capitalist policies had failed in past introducing a communist policy would
solve Pakistan’s problem because the major problem with Pakistan is the
concentration of power and economy with a particular class which is elite and
thus the rich gets richer and poor get poorer. Bhutto’s policy was, therefore,
a very bold and crucial step in changing the very economical structure of
Pakistan.
But if the policy
was based on actual socialism and could change the infra-structure of Pakistan,
then what went wrong? The problem lies in the implementation of the policy.
Followings were the outcomes of the policy.
Negative Outcomes:
· The land
reforms were introduced with great pomp and show but they never attained the
target. According to statistics only 1%
of the land-less tenants and small owner benefited by these reforms and 39% of
the area resumed was still with the government.
Although land reforms couldn’t be effectively implemented,
however, just as much were implemented aggravated the landlord-tenant
relationships and the main purpose of Bhutto behind this policy which was to
strengthen economy, reduce unemployment and increase production came to a halt.
· The
privatization of 31 industrial units proved to be the biggest setback to his
policy. It broke the power of about 22 families financially and it expanded its
roots to rural areas and nationalized even very small scale industries. The
problem here was in the approach. In the light of privatization of industries
Bhutto forgot that he wanted this system for the benefit of people and
snatching away the ownership from even the smallest of the industrialist proved
to be a cruel step on his part. This collapsed the economy as this step broke
the industrialists in body and spirit, with the result that they disposed off
industries that escaped nationalization or self-imposed a moratorium on new
projects.
· The
privatization of educational institutions was a good step, had it been
implemented right. Since most of the private sectors were owned by
missionaries, so once this policy was introduced they left the country and went
back. The private teacher were then replaced by government one and due to the
shortage of teachers, teachers from the private sectors were given the
government jobs. There was no check and balance and thus teachers became
irresponsible and indifferent about their duties. This resulted in the collapse
of the entire educational system and aggravation of corruption.
Positive Outcomes:
· The
nationalization of bank and insurance companies proved to be remarkable. It
crushed the power of 22 families which owned about 97% of insurance and
controlled the banking too.[2] Moreover, the reforms like ensuring 70% of
institutional lending for small land holders of 12.5 acres or less made farmers
and small businessmen clients of banks which were previously confined to the
upper class. Even the number of bank branches rose by 75% from December 1971 to
November 1976, from 3,295 to 5,727. [3] Thus, the bank reforms were successful
in dispersing the infra-structure of banks and banking to the rural level and
thus provide opportunities for the lower class to grow. However, some argue
that PPP’s favored people exploited the entire system and took loans which they
never returned. But I believe that considering the statistical growth in
banking and its expansion to the rural areas proves that if not extremely
effectively, these reforms were implemented effectively enough to at least show
some productive results.
· These
reforms were a blessing to the employees of the nationalized departments as
they got government jobs with which came all the incentives that government had
set for its employees.
· Moreover,
the export of Pakistan shoot up to a historic record and then health and
educational facilities were made available to the masses.
Analysis: There were many factors that led to the failure of
implementation of the policy. Some of them were due to Bhutto’s shortcomings
and others were environmental. The very first factor was that most of his
allies and members of parliament were feudal and since land reforms were
against feudalism, they didn’t let the reforms be implemented rightly. There
are arguments that Bhutto lacked the credentials to check and balance his own
policy. But given the sort of intellectual Bhutto was, I believe this is mere
accusation. The real reason why he failed to impose the policy effectively is
that being a President or a Prime Minister brings its own responsibilities and
if along with them you have to face more urgent and crucial a problems like
severe floods, global opaque price height, global oil crisis, world recession,
cotton crisis and Anti-Quadiyani movement then your attention is definitely
diverted and you can’t focus on one thing. It wasn’t easy for Bhutto to deal
with all this and yet make sure that his policy was implemented effectively. He
dealt with all these problems holding a firm ground and came up with such
rational solutions to the situations which shocked the world. People argue that
he used the socialist ideology just to mobilize people or to gain support.
Well! I believe if it were just to mobilize he would have never taken the step
of nationalizing the private sectors and as far as their effective
implementation is concerned, it’s not the work of one person alone. It takes a
joint venture; collaboration; unison to do so, and unfortunately Bhutto wasn’t
lucky enough to have people who were as sincere to the cause as he was. Bhutto
was also accused of introducing the system only to aggrandize his power and to
feel a sense of authority over every institution or department in Pakistan. But
isn’t it what socialism is all about?
Doesn’t socialism talk about full state-control? Yes it does, and in
doing so Bhutto was only exercising Socialism and not aggrandizement of his own
power. However, a flaw on Bhutto’s part
could be that he relied on PPP members and Sindhi feudal for his support. Had
he been able to win the opposition and work in harmony with them, his policy
would have taken Pakistan on an inevitable journey to success.
Conclusion: Overall, I believe Bhutto’s policy of
Nationalization was not at all a flirtation with socialism for his ideas were
based on the real essence of Socialism. He wanted to introduce a system which
would bring prosperity, development and success to Pakistan. His socialist
ideas were not confined to a slogan alone, but he introduced them and imposed
them. He, however, failed to achieve his purpose to the fullest, but still this
proved to be beneficial to Pakistan in a lot of ways. Bhutto’s socialism was
real and so were Bhutto’s intentions behind it; it was the lack of collaboration
that crippled Bhutto’s policy even before it could stand.
[1] http://www.socialistaction.org/socialism.htm
[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zulfikar_Ali_Bhutto#Banking_and_Export_expansion
[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zulfikar_Ali_Bhutto#Banking_and_Export_expansion
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