Dramatic democracy of Pakistan

From the inception of Pakistan, the political system has always been a victim of dictatorship. But if we just ponder upon the passed decades and make a short ratio analysis of achievements vs. army rule to achievement vs. political regime, the graph of army rule would always be in an elevated position. Negating the fact for a moment about monetary benefits army gets in their regime one could easily go a little back to General Musharraf’s period and revise their anti Musharraf slogan, “Go Musharraf go” to , “his tenure was much better than this current political system”.

I don’t belong or assimilate to army in any sense, neither my descendants had an army background, I am stating this  as a common man, and by word of mouth from common people who used to deject General Musharraf’s tenure in the most aggressive way.

Democracy in very common language synonymies as, “equality, consensus, republic, parliamentary government and fairness. If I ask my readers to fit this current democratic government among any of the synonyms stated above, the answer to this I know, “please state the opposites of these synonyms”. This particular government performance has been so pathetic, that people frustration level has risen to the extent of destroying their resources. E.g. Current incident at Lahore against prolonged electricity load shedding, killing one and injuring several, under the headline “Power outage protest turns bloody, one killed”. (Source: Pakistan Observer, Karachi page, 27^th march 2012) Prime Minister who was in Seoul to attend a meeting on, “Nuclear Security Summit”, took notice of the situation and ordered the relevant ministry to end load shedding within 24 hours. This is just to show the public and journalists, how instant actions are being taken by the authority, but in actual this is like saying, “I don’t eat food and my belly is always full”, Wow! This action would somehow give a little ease to the dwellers of Lahore and Faisalabad for some hours but again when their center of attention gets to their routine life; it would start again with a better pace. How Electricity could be supplied without disruptions when there are no back ups, no enough dams built to generate and no other alternative like Solar or coal generated electricity, despite the fact both of the resources are found in abundance.

Our Prime Minister, President are busy in their lavish lives and they are very happy with their routine trips, no matter how many more casualties are to be given in the name of terror, electricity outage, lawlessness and joblessness. But I really wonder about some developments, which let our people believed that this government is reaching to end. I hope you got it:

1. ·         Army
2. ·         Imran Khan

The reason of stating army as the first, is on the basis of a chaos existed between Prime Minister and ISI former chief, Memo gate case when army gave instant replies to the statements made by Prime Minister , stating those statements irresponsible and unauthentic. In the light of those statements’ exchange, media and public thought its going to be the end of Government, but the cases went into the Supreme Court and are pending with no conclusions.

The second motivation was Imran Khan, who came with such a passion that within some month’s time he is going to take the place as head of the state. Now some questions must be coming in the minds of people:

1. ·         What is army doing?
2. ·         Why they are not taking any action despite the fact of economic crises, although economic crunch seems hitting across the world, but what about the pathetic governance and domestic issues?
3. ·         Does army don’t want to take the blame to discharge government and let them fail by themselves and surrender?
4. ·         If  prior is the reason then, army does not know what harm this government can bring to the state if they lasted till the next elections?
5. ·         Has Imran Khan done a deal with Government to stay out till the next elections and they will support him in the coming elections?

When the same question was asked from Imran Khan on ARY channel by Kashif Abbasi, he said, “our party is waiting for the right time and we are pretty sure that we will be elected.  We have ignited the revolution!

Now my question is where is the democracy?

Democracy is the power of people, and it is very healthy for the country’ progress but before democracy there is something which is more significant. Pakistan’s dilemma is, with diminishing law system every crime is welcomed here. And the ones who do it, they know with power, money and terror they can manipulate the system easily without even getting noticed. The reasons why army rule seems consistent and progress oriented:

1. ·        The law & order situation gets in control.
2. ·        Prices of the commodities become consistent.
3. ·        Curbs on media not to show any anti state news.
4. ·        When people don’t watch it, they are not frustrated.

I wish Pakistan before becoming a true democratic nation, first become law oriented nation. This can nearly evacuate about 50-60% of the overall issues that exist in Pakistan today.

Management Books, an orthodox or situational?

Yesterday I met one person surprisingly, he usually comes to our office and meet my boss for the routine problems relating to decline or rise in Sales. Oh let me just tell you where I am working and what my JD is. I am working in Adamjee Insurance Co. as an Assistant Manager Sales Communication & support, and my job is to assist my boss, GM Sales in various activities like presentations, budget projections, analysis and forecasts. As in insurance when you talk about Sales it’s just a single document which is our product, and the Sales persons sell that document and bring premium (Sales) to our Co. Let’s just cut it and come to the point, otherwise it will take several hours to explain about insurance.

I have little interaction with that person previously, as we did not talk before for such a long duration, only hello, hi, but that day it lasted for two hours. I really have nothing to do for the entire day as my boss was out of station for meetings, and was wondering how to kill my time. Luckily that person came towards me and inquired about my academics, I said I did Masers from Karachi University in Mass Communication 5 years back and nowadays pursuing MBA from IOBM. Instantly he said, so you must be well aware of Kotler who writes management books. Now that's something he poked me to spill out my frustration and I thought in my mind for a moment, got the victim!

He started by stating that, what a person he is, how informational he sounds. I said yes you are right, he really knows and writes books that really help people in organizational management, no doubt about that. But do you really think that his books are meant for our market and do you really think they help in countering our problems at work. He said in a doubtful manner, umm yes of course. I said, No! These books are orthodox, they just give you a mere reflection about the organization in which you are working and they are not situational. The reason I am saying not situational is because they just tell you the standards and situations vary from place to place and type of work. Talking about West countries, they are rich in resources and they don't spend their precious time in thinking about the petty domestic issues, that's why it is said and most of you must have experienced, list is very fast there. Our people are different, our economy is different, we have a lot of resources but unfortunately we have so many other issues to deal with, like Baluchistan and the transitional government, that is another debate but the point is we have to create our own SOP's under the SOPs of our company to make the things go smoother, like what are the standards of a company and how I am going to create my own standards to coincide with the company's standards
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He started taking interest and got curious to know more about, what I have to say. I then gave him an example of a course conducted by a very famous professional teacher some days back in IBA, not going to take his name as previously I believed that he knows all, he teaches marketing courses and this time the course title was somewhat like Marketing Dynamics in Pharmaceuticals. What went wrong?  There is no doubt about the command he has over his subject, but this time he chosen the wrong audience.
 The people attended his course were all pharmacists, having vast experience of 12 to 15 years in Sales and Marketing and most of them were MBA's. Pharmaceutical marketing is quite different as their client or consumer is a doctor not the patient directly. You can’t advertise directly and go for the ATL services as they are restrictions from the government side and advertising only goes for some OTC products.

I added by saying the above mentioned anonymous teacher started by giving them examples from FMCG markets, like detergents, soaps and daily domestic items. He is a person who has taught several students and even the experienced professionals and mid career professionals, he has a very good repute in all prior mentioned levels as the things he told them were directly related to their market and also he had a vast experience of FMCG companies as he worked there.

I personally know the teacher, talked to him three to four times but haven't met, I consider him my mentor. But the point I want to focus on, he used the standard knowledge to apply to different market. Again this particular situation is very debatable but the person, to whom I have now interacted for nearly two hours, agreed and said yes you are right and justifications are appropriate.

Mostly management books tells you the set standards, they are never 100% applicable to your markets. Books should be taken like the knowing about the basics, they should not be the end of the beliefs. How you people take books like? (Please note that there are so many books and the objective of writers is different, so take this specifically under the title given above)