The Big Picture

  1. Most of the, so called, intellectual and experts have either lost capacity to look at the big picture, or deceitfully distort facts, or look only at a piece, to give a distorted meaning to suit their objectives. Here are a few examples of what I am talking about. I am sure you would have also come across such situations.
  2. Pakistan’s GDP grew by about 6% in 2016. The counter argument provided by this group is, look at the trade deficit and foreign debt, economy is helped by low oil prices, exports are down, foreign currency reserves are stagnant, remittances are down. Non of these arguments change the fact that Pakistan’s GDP grew by almost 6%, which is a great achievement. I will address these points that have no or very little relevance in the infrastructure development phase that Pakistan is going through. For now I would like to leave it at that.
  3. Most credible agencies like Bloomberg, Forbes and likes forecast that Pakistan is a new growth frontier and is expected to be among top 20 economies in the world by about 2040 and the driver of this growth is infrastructure development is CPEC. Rather than acknowledging and appreciating this, they would say things that numbers are fudged, look at India its going to be in top ten etc.etc
  4. $50BN investment from China to develop critically needed infrastructure in Pakistan. They say oh we have another East India company coming to Pakistan, but what are the terms?, our nation is burdened with debt, look at what happened to Srilanka etc. etc. They have no clue that a dollar invested in infrastructure pays its off multiple times. Rather than appreciating the fact that China has agreed to invest in infrastructure in Pakistan, they criticize it day in and day out.
  5. Coal Power project built by Chinese help to overcome energy shortage. You hear from these critics that China is dumping technology on Pakistan that is obsolete, the power projects are way to make commission for the ruling family, look at Nandipur failure etc. etc. All these comments do not change the fact that Power shortage will be eliminated when these new projects come on stream.

I have given few examples to put across the fact that our, so called, intellectual class have completely lost the capacity to look at the big picture. They go into small and non consequential stuff to put their point across. They forget that big picture always has a better story to tell.

As opposed to our intellectual class the, so called, uneducated or less educated see the big picture and give their opinion based on that. If they see development, they say so without any qualification. They see progress all around, reduced load shedding, more work opportunities, they see CPEC as game changer and so on.

My earnest request to all intellectuals and expert to look at the big picture. And the big picture is that Pakistan moves ahead and progress is being made.