“A state that does not employ the worthy perishes.”
– Menicus
As the news of another Greek Tragedy involving Pakistan surfaces, a predictable cycle of moaning and groaning begins about the ills of illegal migration, immigration, and brain drain. We, as a nation, love to talk a lot and lie a lot. We have also developed the fatal addiction of lying to ourselves over and over again in order to experience a temporary “high” followed by a predictable “low” when reality smacks us in the face. In this spirit, a former Prime Minister of ours even had the gall to celebrate the brain drain as something good!
Today, pained as I am about the devastating loss of life in the newest Greek boat tragedy, I will only focus on the causes and effects of the brain drain so that readers might become more informed about this phenomenon than the “ill-informed” people who are running our country.
Let’s examine the push and pull factors governing the brain drain from Pakistan. First, and perhaps most important, is the better standard of living and work opportunities abroad. A labourer or a driver earns much more in the Gulf than in Pakistan and gets better working conditions. A doctor or an engineer gets the opportunity to work with cutting-edge technologies and also has to work fewer hours in the West.
Unfortunately, making an honest living has become quite difficult in Pakistan, even for educated professionals like doctors, engineers, IT professionals, etc. Quackery and commission mafias have constrained the space for honest doctors, the atrophy of industry has left engineers scrambling for decent jobs in an environment where government jobs with opportunities for corruption and job security have become highly coveted, and the government’s “war on the internet” has hit IT/software professionals hard. The same is the case for other professions, ranging from journalists to research scientists.
We can never compete with advanced countries in terms of standards of living and work opportunities. What can Pakistan offer to its citizens to overcome the “push” of this factor? The answer lies in intangible factors. A Pakistani will always be an alien abroad. Pakistan can give its citizens a sense of identity and national pride. It can resonate with its citizens through ideological purity, enforcing merit, and providing justice. A just society in which one’s cultural and ideological values aren’t only respected but are actively encouraged might be preferable for many despite the allure of more money and better jobs abroad. The inertia (most people want to stay in their home conditions) and family factors can also synergize with the cultural, ideological, justice, and merit factors to create an almost irresistible psychological force. Sadly, the opposite has happened in our country. A mockery has been made of ideology, merit, and justice in our country. Our elite leads the way toward Pakistan’s cultural suicide by bending over backwards in applying foreign values (imported from either the West or India). What sane person would want to stay in a country like this?
The synergy of the above-mentioned material and psychological factors explains the “push” factors of the brain drain. One can delve deeper here as well. The elite capture has directly contributed to the lack of opportunities in Pakistan. Every Pakistani should read the book, “Big Capital in an Unequal World: The Micropolitics of Wealth in Pakistan” by Rosita Armytage, in which she explains how the civil and military elite maintains a highly exclusive parallel structure to enforce its will on Pakistan and deprive the 99.99% of Pakistanis of the opportunities reserved for itself.
All the government institutions, all the laws, and all the watchdogs dance to the tunes of this elite, which grows richer and richer (and takes its money abroad to preclude even a little trickle-down effect) while Pakistan reels in the grip of poverty. For Pakistanis not part of this elite, there is no provision of welfare or personal dignity. The elite cements itself further through nepotism (look at the “credentials” of our IT minister who is conducting the war on the internet), which in turn undermines merit and social justice even more.
It is true that until and unless this elite is dislodged, Pakistan can’t prosper. However, everything is not the elite’s fault. The common people, “the awam,” have much to answer for as well. The elite only remains in power through the passive affirmation of the people.
Our fondness for lies and our inferiority complex, coupled with excessive egoism, are the hallmarks of a slave mentality that enables us to be exploited. A free person and a slave are two different species. The free person only confers legitimacy based on either objectivity or an informed subjectivity (based on factors like ideology, honesty, and culture), whereas a slave is always yearning for a master and is ready to accept anyone who “appears superior”. A slave only looks at the world in terms of masters and fellow slaves. The master invokes awe, an inferiority complex, and servility in the slave. It is immaterial to the slave how the master accrued this “superiority”. Even if the master’s superiority directly resulted from exploiting slaves like him (which is almost always the case), the slave remains unconcerned about the dynamics behind the master’s power. Similarly, he is supremely unconcerned about the other slaves. He just wants the scraps from the table of his master, and when disappointed, instead of struggling for freedom, he starts looking for a different master. So, when disappointed by the “local master,” many of the slaves (who could have been free had they wished) depart for distant shores and find Arab or White masters to serve. After all, the slaves reason, our local masters are also slaves to these same “super-masters.” The Western soft power plays a part here as well, and many of our people, infested with a deep inferiority complex, are enamored by the TV shows and movies depicting the gilded lifestyle open to those ready to place their talents at the West’s disposal.
Before discussing the effects of this brain drain, let’s first briefly examine its magnitude. In the last 5 years, more than 3 million Pakistanis have gone to work abroad just through government channels. Two-thirds of the youth want to leave the country. If we talk about the qualitative brain drain, the picture is even more worrisome. According to a Bloomberg news report, around 1 million highly skilled persons (doctors, engineers, accountants, managers, etc.) have left Pakistan in the last 3 years. Just calculate the ratio of this skilled population to the general populace and then compare this ratio with that of those emigrating, and one can be horrified at the qualitative aspect of the brain drain. No wonder people have to travel hundreds of kilometers just to find a good doctor for a basic ailment!
Lastly, let’s take a look at the effects of this brain drain. Cheap labor from Pakistan provides a boost to the economies of other countries (as does the stashing of ill-gotten wealth by our elite in those same countries; it is extremely ironic that the walls of a bank are built by immigrant Pakistanis and the vaults of that bank are stuffed with money stolen from those very workers and others like them!). Pakistan also ends up losing the most dynamic and competitive section of its population. As a doctor, I am very familiar with this phenomenon and its effects as the best leave disgusted with the system here, and our hospitals are left stuffed with “doctors” getting substandard degrees from 10th-rate “universities” of countries like Tajikistan and God-knows-where!
This is just one aspect of the qualitative brain drain. More importantly, those who leave are the ones who would have been supposed to lead the charge against injustice and elite capture. Consequently, the elite is left to loot the leaderless public with ease and impunity (no wonder the members of the ruling elite are least concerned with the brain drain, and some of them even openly claim that it is a good thing!)
Our large diaspora (especially the poor section in the Gulf region) also serves to weaken our foreign policy as we can (and have been) blackmailed by the host to follow their dictates, or they could start sending back Pakistani workers in droves. The wealthier diaspora in the West, cut off from its values and culture, develops severe social problems and an identity crisis. The only positive effect of this brain drain is that some of the bright Pakistanis abroad have become part of the larger global Islamic diaspora and are contributing to it. Here, I admit that I don’t count the remittances as a positive because had we kept our talent in our country and given it opportunities to develop, we would have earned much more for the country than the anemic income from remittances.
I wouldn’t even bother to implore the ruling elite to take notice and do its best to fix the problem, as an integral part of the problem can never be expected to fix the problem. It is clear that the brain drain problem (amongst many others) has considerably worsened in the last 3 years of political turmoil, but those drunk with power have only expressed nonchalance and callousness. It is only to the people that I appeal to rise up and try to take their fate into their own hands as Iqbal prescribed. Please shatter the shackles of mental slavery and understand that if this country’s talent continues to haemorrhage, it can’t survive. One only needs to look at the terrible ordeal of the Palestinians to realize what losing one’s country entails! The elite will always be able to find greener pastures (like the pre-Nakba Palestinian elite). It is we, the people, who would be trampled and denied even an identity, along with any chance to live and work in peace. It is time to wake up and smell the coffee. Otherwise, history is never kind to laggards and slaves.
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Dr Hassaan Bokhari is a graduate of Rawalpindi Medical College, Rawalpindi. In 2018-19, he cleared the CSS exam and was 34th in Pakistan. However, he declined to join the civil service in order to pursue his passion for the study and analysis of history more freely. Presently, he is running a YouTube channel "Tareekh aur Tajziya (History and Analysis)" which focuses on the objective analysis of history and current affairs. Dr. Hassaan Bokhari has authored a book titled "Forks in the Road" about the 1971 fratricide and has also headed the India Desk at South Asia Times Islamabad. He aims to play a part in the process of enabling the nation to understand its history in a perspective marked by objectivity, honesty, and confidence.
