Reforming without restoring trust

A new narrative of “home-grown solutions” takes the lead. A piece by Dr Ishrat Husain endorsing it appeared in The News on June 8. It’s a good omen that the narrative of home-grown solutions is making waves, though not in government circles, and only in the domain of civil society thinking (this thinking takes shape mostly in WhatsApp group chats and published writings). After cursorily enlisting “home-grown solutions” prepared over the last six years, that is, plans, reports, proposals, etc produced locally, Dr Ishrat Husain concludes his piece by proposing a number of measures. It may be noted here that PIDE VC Dr Nadeemul Haque terms a lot of these home-grown solutions donor-funded. Husain proposals include bringing in 60% of the economy into the tax net, reducing the sales tax rate, privatising the loss-making SOEs, targeted energy subsidies for the poor, expanding the BISP’s scope, restructuring and reducing the size of the government, devolving power and diverting development funds from legislators to the directly elected local governments (LGs). I don’t aim to contest the proposed measures here, though I strongly disagree with a few of them. My concern is the entire political-economic environment within which an attempt to implement these and other reforms can be made.