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Thought Behind Things · Dec 24, 2021 · 1:48:31

Pakistan's farmland is a science problem, not a land problem

Saad Tamman — actuarial scientist turned farmer turned PM's strategic reforms unit lead — walks Muzamil through how a tomato farm went bankrupt because of a one-day price control, why 70% of agricultural technology is the seed itself, and what really happened inside the room when PTI's hundred-day plan was being written.

with Saad Tamman

13 min read

From actuarial science in Waterloo to a farm in Pothohar

The episode opens with Muzamil welcoming Saad Tamman, a guest he first met around two years before the recording while Saad was working at the Prime Minister’s Strategic Reforms Unit. The conversation begins, as most Thought Behind Things conversations do, with the long route in. Saad went to Aitchison in Lahore, then to the University of Waterloo in Canada to study actuarial science — applied statistics for the insurance industry, which is where he first understood that risk pricing, stock-market modelling and what would later be called data science all share the same statistical spine.

The cohort started at a thousand students. A hundred and ten graduated. Saad graduated six months early in 2009, straight into the financial crisis, and spent the next year doing odd jobs — a stint at an Egyptian restaurant, twelve-hour shifts on the assembly line at Research In Motion in Waterloo. The decision to come home was triggered by two moments he describes clearly. The first was a conversation with his dean, Mary Hardy. “She said: think about going back,” he recalls — and the fact that the chair of his faculty was telling him this, rather than offering him another lap, hit hard. The second was a Moroccan cab driver in Canada who, on hearing Saad was Pakistani, started mocking the country in the wake of the Sri Lankan cricket team attack. “Mujhe bohot hi ganda laga,” Saad says. He decided to leave.

Easypaisa, Mobicash, HBL Express — and a five-year tour of mobile banking

Back in Pakistan, Saad joined Tameer Microfinance Bank, the back-end arm of Easypaisa. Telco data and financial data are the two large datasets Pakistan actually produces, and at that point one of them — the telco side — was being turned into a banking product for the first time. He describes Easypaisa as humbling for a different reason than most people expect. A commercial-bank branch, he points out, exists to either pull in one large depositor or lend to one large borrower. Microfinance exists because there is an entire economy underneath that branch model that the formal system does not see. “It made me think different,” he says. “I realised that one statistic, that one branch — they’re doing business in a completely different way.”

From Tameer he was picked up to help launch Mobicash with Mobilink, then HBL Express (now HBL Konnect) at HBL. By the time he left for a Fulbright scholarship at Vanderbilt in 2013, he had spent five years on the niche where telco, finance and data overlap in Pakistan. Muzamil presses him on the contrast between the three institutions and Saad is candid: Jazz was a cool but bureaucratic telco, HBL was an old commercial bank that resisted change, and the textbook lessons about organisational behaviour that had seemed abstract in school suddenly made sense.

Why he came back: the bond, McKinsey, and Punjab’s education reforms

Saad is clear that the Fulbright application itself forced him to articulate something he had been circling around. “I’m not really driven by money,” he tells Muzamil. “In Pakistan, you make far more in property than in a salary. So what’s the point of studying — unless you can see something somewhere is changing.” The bond required him to come back and work in or for Pakistan for five years. He came back to McKinsey’s newly opened Pakistan office, as the firm’s second hire in the country, and was staffed on the Punjab government’s education reforms program — at the time, one of the largest public-sector reform engagements in the country.

His description of management consulting is unusually plain-spoken. Senior management at most firms, he argues, does not have the capacity to attack non-routine problems. McKinsey’s value is not technical depth — “any technician will do the 80% solution,” he says — but the discipline of structuring the problem, defining the solution space, and instituting a routine of stocktakes that survives the consultant’s departure. The lead on the Punjab project, Taimur Khan, would later become the reason Saad ended up inside the PM Office. They worked together for a year. Saad left McKinsey in early 2016.

Tunnels, tomatoes, and the day a price control destroyed a season

The agricultural section of the conversation is the one that gives the episode its title. Saad’s family comes from Pothohar, south of Pindi-Gheb, where Tamman is the family name. His father is a doctor; the family farmed but did not live off the farm. Saad spent ten years cycling in and out of agriculture — “thora thora” — before his father told him he was ready to run it on his own.

The story he uses to explain why Pakistani agriculture is broken is not a story about land. It is the story of one tomato season. He had installed tunnels. He had installed drip irrigation. He had a university agronomist visiting twice a month. His production cost was twelve rupees a kilo and he was getting five and a half kilos of off-season tomato from a single plant. A twenty-kilo crate was selling at twelve hundred rupees at the farm gate. “Super profitable,” he says. “Main bara khush tha.”

Then the federal noise machine started shouting about tomato prices. The government opened imports from India and instituted a price control in Punjab. Within a month, the farm-gate price collapsed to seven rupees a kilo against a twelve-rupee cost of production. He had to dump sixty thousand kilograms of tomatoes. He gave up the farm and leased it to a friend who now grows gladiolas and marigolds on it under the brand Gulmaan. “My entire business case died,” he tells Muzamil. “I cannot predict what the rate will be eight months from now when I’m sowing. I had no incentive left.”

The point he wants the listener to take away is precise: the failure was not weather, not yield, not technology. The failure was a one-day political decision in Islamabad that no farmer could have priced in eight months earlier.

Seeds, not tractors: where the real technology gap is

Muzamil tries to push the conversation toward the obvious answers — tractor density, drip irrigation, hydroponics — and Saad gently redirects. “Voh baatein laddh hain,” he says. Those are the old talking points. The real technology in agriculture, he argues, is the seed.

“In agriculture, 70% of the technology is seed.” He frames it through a human analogy. One person has the DNA to grow seven feet tall and rarely need a hospital. Another is physically frail but mentally formidable. You would train each one for a different life. A seed has a DNA in exactly the same way. Sow the wrong genetics and no amount of fertiliser, water management or sunlight will rescue the yield.

Pakistan’s seed performance, by his read, is uneven. Maize has improved drastically. Rice is genuinely world-class — basmati only grows properly on the narrow strip around Hafizabad and Gujranwala, and that geography is a national advantage. Wheat is not good enough. The technology gap is not in the tractor shed. It is in the seed.

A desert called Punjab and a Pothohar farm that harvests its own rain

One of the more surprising passages in the conversation is Saad’s reminder that most of Punjab — including Lahore — was desert before the canal system. The fertile topsoil people associate with Punjab is silt deposited by a hundred years of canal irrigation. “Aap teen char foot neeche jaaye, neeche se ret nikalti hai,” he says. Three to four feet below Kasur, the soil turns to sand.

Pothohar is a different problem. There is no canal water, and groundwater is expensive and limited. So Saad does something simple. He harvests the rain that already falls. He laser-levels his land into narrow terraced strips, the way central Punjab was levelled decades ago, so that when rain comes it spreads evenly across each strip instead of running off the high ground and drowning the low ground. The investment was cumbersome. The result is that his yields are up roughly 60% with no new technology — just water management. “It’s a management problem,” he tells Muzamil. “Barish ho rahi hai. Voh mere par hai ke main us paani ko harvest kaise karta hoon.”

His point is generalisable. Pothohar before the canal system used to feed the entire subcontinent. The land is still there. The opportunity to level it and harvest its own rain is still there. Almost no one is doing it.

A Whatsapp message to Taimur Khan and a seat inside the PM Office

The pivot from farmer to policy adviser happens, in Saad’s telling, over a message. He saw that Taimur Khan had joined PTI and sent him congratulations. Two days later Taimur asked if he could come work full-time, without pay. Saad said no to full-time, yes to part-time, and yes to agriculture in particular — because he had just dumped sixty thousand kilos of tomatoes and had specific opinions about why.

He started with two days a week in Islamabad inside the party’s election management cell — a technocratic unit led by Arbab Shahzad, the former KP chief secretary, with Taimur Khan running the policy strand and Jahangir Tareen and Asad Umar in the orbit above. The brief was to write the hundred-day agenda. Saad is careful to point out that the unit was deliberately walled off from politics. “Hum to woh log the the worst people to be associated with,” he says. “We had to make documents. We had no exposure.”

He describes the day the hundred-day plan was launched at the Marriott in Islamabad in Ramzan, May 2018. He had typed his own number on the RSVP card. The lunch invitation had read “launch at 3:30.” Within hours social media was carrying screenshots claiming PTI was serving lunch during Ramzan. It was the first time he understood, in a small and slightly funny way, what the political environment was actually going to be like. “Voh kaafi weird moment tha,” he says. “Yaar, yeh kis qisam ka tum ne dafter jala diya hai? Launch ko lunch bana diya hai.”

Inside the room: the hundred-day plan and the agriculture transformation program

Saad walks Muzamil through what was actually in the hundred-day plan and what was not. The five-million-houses commitment, he insists, was never meant as a federal construction program — it was a regulatory commitment to make it easier for ordinary Pakistanis to start building. He concedes the implementation drifted. The dams agenda, the FATA reform, civil-service reform, the energy plan, the ten-billion-tree plan — these were the major chapters, and he is clear that the work of the unit was structural rather than political. “Hum ne status quo todna tha. Voh hope barqarar rakhna, voh hamara kaam tha.”

The clearest policy success he claims is the federal agriculture program. He calls it the largest agriculture program any federal government had ever put together, with six sections — crops, water, agriculture markets, small dams, fisheries, and livestock. The framing is the one he keeps returning to throughout the conversation: foreign exchange and food security are the two non-negotiables for Pakistan, and agriculture is upstream of both.

Sugar, SOEs, and the politics of admitting reform is painful

Muzamil presses Saad on the sugar crisis. Saad’s read is unambiguous: the sugar problem is a decades-old political-economy issue, not the invention of any one government. The mill licensing regime — capacity by license — has been free money for whoever holds the license. Cracking it open is politically expensive and economically uncertain in the short run.

On state-owned enterprises he is similarly direct. PIA, Pakistan Steel and the rest are textbook examples of what happens when the state insists on doing everything itself instead of partnering with the private sector. He distinguishes carefully between subsidising a national carrier — which can be defensible if a subsidised seat brings in a foreign visitor who creates twelve jobs on the ground — and running an airline as a state job-creation scheme. The first is policy. The second is a structural drain.

The line Saad keeps returning to is one he attributes to his old economics professor: “If there is no pain, there will be no gain.” Reform hurts. Pretending it does not, or expecting a five-year term to undo decades of accumulated cost, is the move that gets reformers in trouble.

Performance agreements, HR overstaffing, and the limits of disappointment

Late in the conversation Muzamil asks about the performance agreements between the prime minister and his ministers — a less photogenic reform that Saad helped design. The mechanism is simple. The prime minister and each minister agree on a plan. The ministry and its staff own the plan. Quarterly stocktakes track progress. The first impact, Saad argues, is just that a ministry knows what it is supposed to be doing this year — which in the Pakistani public sector is a non-trivial baseline.

He is candid about the harder problem. Government in Pakistan is overstaffed and under-allocated at the same time. “Out of a hundred people, twelve are working and eighty-eight are carrying their weight,” Muzamil offers. Saad does not contest it. He extends it. This is not a public-sector pathology alone — the private sector has the same distribution. The fix is HR allocation, not headcount. Move people to where the work is. Stop pretending the system is choked because it lacks staff when in fact it is choked because the staff is in the wrong place.

When Muzamil asks, towards the end, about the disappointment that educated technocrats who supported the current government now express, Saad does not duck. He places himself in the same category. “Main bhi koi siyasi aadmi nahin hoon,” he says. “I’m here as a technocrat. My expectations have been disappointed in multiple places too.” But he refuses to let the disappointment become the whole story. Government, he reminds Muzamil, is not the state bureaucracy. The two get confused all the time, and confusing them is how most critiques of Pakistani policy end up landing in the wrong place.

Pakistan in thirty years: an ultra-free economy that will survive

By the end of the conversation Muzamil asks Saad the long-horizon question — what does Pakistan look like when Saad is sixty-five? Saad’s answer is unromantic. Pakistan, in his read, is structurally similar to the United States: an ultra-free economy where individual initiative is unusually powerful and the state’s hand is unusually light. “Pakistan will always survive,” he says. “It will always come up with something innovative.” The educated population coming through the system over the next two decades is, in his view, much larger than the cohort the country produced in the 1990s and 2000s. That alone changes what is possible.

Muzamil closes the episode at the seventy-five-minute mark, thanking Saad for one of the more granular conversations the show has carried on agriculture and reform. Saad’s working summary of his own decade, offered earlier in the conversation, is the line worth ending on: “If you want to do something, do something that will change the country. Don’t do anything else. There is literally no point.”

Full transcript
Muzamil

Claim, Javier Alzate. Welcome back to the episode of Thought Dine. Thanks, Javier Alzate, Malyuna. Ik bod y kas, mi man, who I got to know, I I believe, two years ago, maybe give or take. He was working at the prime minister's special reforms unit. Strategic reforms. Strategic reforms unit. साथ Taman is with us today. Thank you so much for being part of the show. Thank you. Thank you, मैं तमिल. साथ में थोड़ा सा बताइएगा कि, you know, how did you, like, working with the prime minister on, on this, fascinatingly worried unit. How does that come about? Like, क्या आपका from high school till date, कैसा, क्या experience रहा था कि you ended up here?

Guest

So, you know, high school was in लाहौर. Right. In Edison. And वहां पर, you know, school, you know, you're told to think big. Right. तो वह जो सोच थी उसके साथ, you know, you want you wanted to do things. आप ही मुझे you they instill this drive in you कि आपने काम करना है, बड़ी चीज़ करनी है, यह करना है. So, You are the best of the best in Pakistan. Need to make sure कि आप कुछ major करें, impactful करें. हां, impactful करें. I, वह best of the best इतना नहीं करते. अच्छा. हां, वह वह थोड़ा सा misconstrued है. अच्छा. Misconception है. वह कहते हैं कि जी, perseverance command success बस लगे रहने हैं. Right. That was our motto and we've all firmly believed in it. हम काफ़ी उसको releases ही follow करते थे. So, you know, जब when I when I graduated or when I was about to graduate मेरे I was deciding कि आगे क्या करना है. Right. क्योंकि all boy school था, सब शुक्ल था, इतना कोई काम शाम तो, you know, मैं my, I discuss with my parents. उन्होंने मुझे कहा कि, you know, do what you want. Right. जिससे बात करो वह कहें do what you want. अच्छा. तो यह साल कौन सा है? This is 2005. ठीक है. ठीक? So, when that happened, I was good at maths. Lot of my friends were going to lumps. चंद doctor वन रहे थे, चंद lawyers की तरफ जा रहे थे. तो मैंने you know I said कि चलो बाहर जाता हूं. I have this opportunity. Parents were willing to let me take this step and but I wanted to do something जो different है. Pakistan में नहीं कर सकता था. So I ended, I found this program mathematics के अंदर होता है. There was, there were very few faculties mathematics, mathematics की और majors and natural sciences. अच्छा, what is that? So it's basically statistics. Exactly. It's applied statistics. आप stats लगाते हैं on data, on large datasets. उसकी primary application तो insurance industry पर. अच्छा. देखिए जो insurance की premiums होते हैं, फिर वैसा ही से उसकी stock market में गई, फिर अब big data, फिर अब उसका एक नया variant है AI. Right. Right? AI की भी statistics ही है base. Right. So, it's basically using large data and then using the data to come up with, models and using, actually developing those models for that day to make sense out of the data. Right. Right? उस पर algorithms बनाते हैं जो सब probability की theories लगाते हैं. उसके बाद primarily expect, you know, जितना premium जो है insurance का, वह एक expected value है of what this person should pay so that वह covered है. Right. In a larger universe आप सिर्फ एक ही number सबसे charge कर रहे हो उतने. So if that number is off and खुदाना खासे कोई casualties हों, insurance companies can go bankrupt. Right. At the same time, you're depriving, I mean, first world countries में you're depriving them of the right of insurance. Right. Right? So you need very, you need very robust models and very advanced evolving algorithms जो कि इस data को capture करेंगे. इसमें से they make sense out of it and then, you know, so यह theory जो थी, यह जो actually जो approach है यह stock market में इस्तेमाल हुई. यह उसके बाद आपके अब जो Essentially data science जहां जहां इस्तेमाल हुई है. Data science जहां इस्तेमाल हुई है. वहां पर you know उसकी base statistics ही है. Right. So I did actual sciences मैंने बहुत मुश्किल थी. काफी, it was ठंडा था, Canada. Canada was very cold. So मैं करता यह था कि summers में I would stay there. अच्छा. Winters में I would come back because I would take the semesters off ना. हम एक British school system से निकले हुए थे. हम suddenly went to this this US जो US की style of education है where you have the leverage of deciding कि कितना चलाना है आगे का. So, I would take courses in summers. Summer was nice there. Winters जब वहां पर minus 20 था तो था I was being lowered. अच्छा. बड़ा अच्छा मौसम था.

Muzamil

आपने अपना time timely complete की degree? मैंने timing complete. Actually, I completed,

Guest

six months before I was supposed to because summer semesters were slightly longer. अच्छा. Extra course से ले सकता था. Right. So, that was very helpful. But the thing वह कि, you know, what one when I graduated, हमारी there was a class of 1,000 when we started. Graduated, around 110 people graduated because dropout rate was very high. Class of actuarial sciences or class of the entire sort of? Math faculty की है ना जो लोग आए थे ना यह majors करने. अच्छा. So हम हज़ार plus बंदे थे. अच्छा. और आखिर में एक सौ दस बंदा graduate किया था जो मेरी जो मेरी communication थी cycle में. So बहुत से लोग जो थे ना वह they either swap majors और या वह कुछ और किसी और तरफ चले जाते हैं. Very boring and dull subject. Right. But and the आगे job market is also very specific. So, what happened? I graduated 2009. That was when the Financial crisis. Crisis kicked in. When it kicked in तो नौकरी नहीं मिलती थी. Apply करते थे, बैठे रहते थे. I was doing odd jobs. I would I was working in a Egyptian restaurant. I worked at यह Research and Motion नहीं है Black Perry की जो founding company है. Right. उसकी it was a starter based out of Waterloo university. तो उनकी उनका जो campus था जो Research and Motion का वह बिल्कुल university के साथ था. Right. One of the programs they had was कि जो university के students हैं, उनको वह hire कर लेते थे and we would work on the assembly line. Right. You know, और job. हां हां हां. बारह बारह घंटे की shift होती थी. Actuarial sciences का क्या? हां, यह सब कुछ करके, सोचो, यह सब कुछ करके ना इतना बड़ा you know, घर से दूर, सारा वह cycle और आगे ना यह financial crisis में हम जो land गया पूरा उसके अंदर. Right. तो फिर यह odd jobs की और फिर मैंने मैं गया अपने professor के पास, dean जो थी हमारी, Mary Hardy. I asked her, मैंने कहा जी this is my my performance. I don't think कि मुझे कोई मतलब रखें ना, वह लेता interview तो बुला सकते हैं. तो she looked at me, she said देखो, you know, it's a financial crisis and, Pakistan के उस समय हालात बड़े ख़राब थे.

Muzamil

And you're all This is the Peoples Party government, war on terror बहुत आसमान पर. Exactly. Floods मेरा ख़राब, अगले साल आ गए थे. हां जी, floods उसके अगले साल आए थे. 2010 में floods आए थे. But 02/1965

Guest

में earthquake आया था. Right. Yeah yeah yeah, six. So, it was just trouble time. So, उसने कहा कि, you know, think about going back. And she would not have said that वह इस्ता मुझे ना कहती वह मेरी dean थी. Right? वह वह chair थी faculty की, वह कहती कि और मैं तुम्हें I'll help you out, right? So that really hit me और पर मैंने सोचना शुरू किया दादा. उसके बाद यह श्रीलंका वाला incident हो गया. The cricket team? The cricket team वाला. Right. So, I was मैं market में था. I hailed a cab में, cab में बैठा and it was a Moroccan guy, I think. उसने कहा where are you from? तो I said Pakistan. उसने मेरी चिढ़ाई शुरू कर. आज जब उसने मेरी चिढ़ाई शुरू की मुझे बहुत ही गंदा लगा. मैंने कहा कि हम मतलब यह रह गए हम, you know. तो वह एक Pakistan के लिए जागना शुरू हुआ. पहले भी था ज़्यादा लेकिन I said, you know, I have to go back. So lo and behold, घर वालों से बात की, दोस्तों से मशवरी किए. जिनको वहां का शौक चस्प पड़ गया था वहां रह रहे थे. जिनको नहीं था वह वापस आ चुके हुए थे. Right. And I came back. I came back and I, you know, different थोड़ी सी आगे पीछे देखा क्या हो रहा है? Easy पैसा was a new thing then. Right. And this tech and this वहां से data निकल रहा था. Insurance sector in Pakistan is not that much. Yes, non existent. सौ में से, हज़ार में से एक बंदे की insurance policy होती है यहां पर. So, मैंने कहा कि you know this is the same school and this is new. Models बनाने हैं, maths करनी है, maths पर तो you know. तो easy पैसा के अंदर हो रहे थे models and math and math. हां हां हां अच्छा. हां काफ़ी like वह data generate हो रहा था ना. Right. So data या तो telco के यह phone number से generate होता है. Call से और यह, this is one big data set. Right. And the other data, big data set in Pakistan is finance. Right. State bank is very tight on regulations and all. तो वह, that data is not given to the public. Right. And you have to वहां पर इतना culture भी नहीं है. Data science, data को use करने का ना banks में अब आए हैं. So telco was in I find new पीछू people, बादशात हुई and I joined, तमिल micro finance. It was sort of the backend arm of Yeah. Easy पैसा. Right. तो वह एक बहुत ही अच्छा experience था. अच्छा? हां, it was,

Muzamil

they were And just to sort of, what year was this now? This was 2010.

Guest

Ok. ठीक, nine में मैं वापस साथ graduate करके वापस आ गया था, छह सात महीने बहुत. बहुत humbling experience है. एक तो, you realize कि, micro finance में वैसे, if एक innovative business model है, it made me think different, right? Made me realize कि जो एक एक statistic है वैसे बताता हूं. एक branch होती है ना commercial bank की. Mhmm. वह एक बड़ा client ले आए और उससे वह loan दे दे या उसके पैसे अपने पास रख लें. वो लोग ऐसा कारोबार करते क्यों हैं? And then you get to know these people and फिर उनके you know, you you realize इसमें फिर वो खूबत का एक different model है, लोग innovate कर रहे थे. So naturally फिर वो थोड़ी सी एक entrepreneurial expert आ गया, एक thinking process आ गया और साथ पर this the data that was being generated from EasyPaisa और उस पर काम और Telenor के साथ coordination, सारा कुछ. Was, you know, एक वह MNC का Pakistan stop employer I believe. Very cool office, open floor, you know and मैं एक. Were you working in the f eleven? हां हां, Paris Plaza. Paris Plaza में इन्होंने थे. तो very cool, very innovative. मैं खुद थोड़ा सा you know एक micro finance का टूटा टूटा सा दफ्तर होता था वहां पर जाता था. मैंने कहा, मैं गया देख लेता मैंने कहा मैं याद ही रोका हूं. मैं रिश्तेदार को phone किया, मैंने कहा जी भाई आपके पास रोका. तो वह because वह इतनी dichotomy थी ना और disparity बहुत थी. फिर उसके बाद, you know, because this was something of this was a fad, right? This mobile banking. Right. तो jazz wanted, MobileLink then wanted to do this. तो they approached us. तो they then picked it picked us up as a team. अच्छा. We went and we started their MobiCash. Right. उसकी building blocks है ना वह रखे. फिर what happened was कि we developed this expertise in this area. इसकी regulations भी दब नहीं थीं. Mhmm. Team मेरे boss थे असफिर जमाल. Right. उन्होंने मुझे बड़ा सिखाया. तो उन्होंने फिर, मुझे वह अब उनको approach करते थे और मुझे साथ ले जाते थे. Right. फिर HPL ने approached us to do the same और फिर HPL की HPL, Express के नाम से हमने product launch की. अब it's been now it's HPL Connect. अच्छा. Right? Right. So, we was I was in this, this sort of like a hybrid tech finance data space. बड़ी niche थी. वह insurance, sector तो मैं भूल चुका हुआ था. Right. यह वहां पर क्या होता But you know, मुझे मुल्क से बड़ी, I really wanted to do something अगर मैं यहां आ गया हूं. There is no point. If you want to do something, do something which will change the country. Don't do anything. I mean, there is literally इतना अपना आपको exposure डलवाकर, इतनी मेहनत करके, सब कुछ करके, कोशिश करो कि, you know, you can create more opportunity for others. Right.

Muzamil

Just a sort of छोटा सा मैं segue लूंगा. Is your family a business family or, you know,

Guest

what's the what's the primary income source? So my family, my मेरे वाले साहब की side से were, feudals. Right. In a way and हम पोटोहार से हैं south of पिंडीगीप जगह, Taman is my surname. But the difference is कि because my father is a doctor. Right. Right? उन्होंने कहा practice नहीं की but it's a, it's a family जो बहुत push करती है to educate yourselves. Right. And they were also into politics. मेरे वाले सब district के chairman थे, मेरे चाचा को सुने M and A. Right. My

Muzamil

mother's side was, they're very, you know, उनको पढ़ाई का बहुत शौक है. वह कहते हैं तालीन, you know, तालीन खिलावा कुछ और कुछ. हां, मतलब what I'm wondering is when you come back and particularly global financial crisis तो है and उसी के साथ साथ Pakistan के हालात कोई इतनी कोई ज़बरदस्त नहीं है. Mhmm. So why don't you

Guest

Climate change has had a massive impact. भाषाओं के cycle disturb होंगे. पहले तो यह था ना फसल काश कि जब काटनी गुरुद्ध लगे देखेंगे उसको. उससे पहले कुछ करने की ज़रूरत नहीं है. नरी इलाके में तो आपको फिर पानी लगाना पड़ता है. मैंने कोशिश की, मैं गांव जाता था, मुझे पसंद था. बचपन में मैं आ जाते तो एक एक attachment होती है. Mhmm. तो you want to hang on to it and you want to be part of it. तो but I I tried cycles करता रहा, I start, start. Now after ten years, you know, my father said ठीक है, अब तुम सही तरह कर सकते हो. Right. अब अब I do something on my own there. पहले यह था कि, you know, साथ साथ थोड़ा थोड़ा कर लिया. आज उसको थोड़ा सा इसका चस्का पूरा करा लो. So it takes ten years of experience before you can No, daily sort of work बिल्कुल बिल्कुल. It take... Agriculture is not easy. अच्छा. Right? People take it for granted. Right. Our country has taken. मुझे, you know, it's a life science. People think कि आ बस, you know, काश्त कर देते हैं, फिर काटना होता है. It's easy money. No, it's not. अब it's, water scarcity के issues हैं, cost के issues हैं, मौसम की issues हैं, market में adulteration बहुत है, government के pressures हैं. कभी किसी चीज़ पर price control आ जाता है, कभी किसी चीज़ पर. तो आपकी पूरी planning ख़राब हो जाती है. Right. एक time था agriculture बहुत आसान काम था. बस काश किया, भूल गए, कर लिया. Now there is अब technology बहुत आ गई है. Water management is critical. Mhmm. Fertilizer management is critical. Actually, fun fact यह है कि in agriculture 70% जो technology है ना वह seed है. अच्छा. हां, because it's very similar कि आप देखें कि एक बंदा है, इंसान की मुसाल लेते हैं, उसका DNA है, he's going to be strong. Right. वह सात foot का होगा. Hospital कम जाना पड़ेगा. उसको hospital कम जाना पड़ेगा. Right, right, right. फिर एक बंदा है जो कि physically frail है but mentally बहुत strong है. अब जो physically frail है और mentally बहुत strong है उसको मैं Olympics पर एक तरफ training करना शुरू कर दूं और जो physically बहुत strong है और mentally इतना strong नहीं है उसको मैं कहूंगा उसमें scientist वन जाओ. Right. So seed is exactly the same. It has a DNA. उसके जो genetics हैं, आपने उस पर focus करना है और अगर आपने गलत genetics वाला बीज काश कर दिया, आप जो मर्ज़ी कर लें. Pockets में improvement है. I feel कि जो सबसे ज़्यादा improvement आई है वह आई है इन maize. Right. Corn में. उसकी जो yields हैं वह drastically improve की हैं. Wheat हमारी इतनी अच्छी नहीं है. Rice हमारी अच्छी है. Rice में we're lucky, right? देखें जो जो genetics है बास्मती rice का वह सिर्फ़ हमारा area ही मानता है. यह हमारे पास ही, you know, this uh-uh, strip of land around हाफसाबाद गुजरावाला, वह सौ डेढ़ सौ, kilometer हो गया. Right, right. ज़्यादा

Muzamil

यहां पर उगती है. And sorry, last question on agriculture because I know there's a lot to talk about. Do you think there is now innovation and particularly now with the inflation in in agriculture products? Direct एक revenue, increase आएगा उसमें. Mhmm. Do you think we're investing on modern technologies? I was reading a a study recently कि we have one of the lowest tractor पर एक, availability. We have one of the lowest, like, हम, you know, drip irrigation, hydroponics, इतना की technologies बिल्कुल भी नहीं use करें. Why do you think that is? Is that because of the unit economics or is that because of क्या मेरे पास वह capital नहीं है? नहीं, यह जो you

Guest

know वह बातें लद्द हैं. Pakistan है मैं चारों मौसम हैं. You know, मैं मैं वह redundant बातें करने लगा हूं लेकिन उसकी मैं आपको अब Science था उसकी. Science क्या है उसकी? Pakistan में चारों मौसम हैं, abundant sun, small mild winters, and a lot of water. Right. A lot of water. A lot of, ये पांच दिलायाब बैठे हैं Punjab के दरमियान से. हमारे सुबह का नाम ही Punjab है, right? Right. So, वह, sin में यार यह sin जाता है, KP के अंदर लद्दा है. हमें ज़रूरत नहीं है. अच्छा. हमें ज़रूरत नहीं थी for the longest time. अब जाकर कोई लगता ऐसे है कि थोड़ा बहुत ज़रूरत पड़नी शुरू हुई है. हम, surplus ही जाते हैं चीज़ों में. अच्छा. हमारा मसला तो, ऐसा हुआ कि एक दिन, एक महीना पहले बीस किलों का एक crate चार निकलता था farm से. वह हज़ार बारह सौ रुपए का बिक रहा था. Super profitable. मैं बड़ा खुश था. महीने बाद वह government ने you know टमाटर का वह शोर मचता है बड़ा. वह शोर मचा है, वह कीमत आ गई दो सौ रुपए पर. मतलब मुझे मिल रहा था at the end, farmer को जो मिलते थे वह थे around सात रुपए KG. 7 rupees, ठीक? 7 rupees KG market में, ठीक है, जैसे दुकानदार है उसने अपना करना होता है. उसने अपने खान निकाली होती है निकाली खर्चा पूरा करना होता है. वह एक margin रखता है. Right. बिल्कुल जायज़ है. मेरी production cost बारह रुपए की थी. सही क्योंकि मैंने tunnels लगाए हुए थे, drip irrigation लगाई हुई थी, मेरा fertilizer में I will science थी. मैंने एक बंदा रखा हुआ था university से जो मुझे महीने में दो दफ़ा आकर guide करता था. Right. See, तो I tried my best कि मैं एक पौधे से साढ़े पांच किलों टमाटर की गीत लेता था. Right. और यह off season की बात कर रहा हूं. तो मेरा पूरा business case दबा हो गया. I had to dump 60,000 kgs of tomatoes. 60,000

Muzamil

kgs of This

Guest

was in the April, May के महीने में. Because मैं उसको market लेकर जा सकते हैं. Nobody wanted to buy them. Yeah. Because India से सारे टमाटर यहां पर आ जाते थे. वह India से एक import खोली थी, local market में शिवासी की हुकूमत थी. तो Punjab के अंदर तो वह price control जाता था. अब यह नहीं हो सकता कि आज यह rate है, कल वह rate है. Because ज़मीन दार तो यह फ़सल मैंने आठ महीने पहले काश की थी. मैं नहीं predict कर सकता. तो मेरे पास incentive रहा ही नहीं. मैंने वह farm छोड़ दी. मैंने अपने वह दोस्त को ज़मीन ठेके पर दे दी. वहां फ़ूल उगाता है. So उसने उसका इस brand is गुलमान. Right. And he does doing pretty well. कौन से flowers वगैरह है वहां पर? वहां पर उस this stock, there's यह अपने gladiolas हैं,

Muzamil

marigolds हैं. Very cool. Very interesting. अच्छा sorry. So we're gonna turn it back. Yeah. Agriculture से पहले you were telling me about. So we were at microfinance.

Guest

Microfinance and you were at HBL now? I was at HBL. HBL का यह था कि when I joined HBL उससे पहले I had applied for the Fulbright Scholarship. Right. So by when I was joining them I told them कि जी वह I I received the scholarship. तो मैंने उनको बताया था कि जी मैं सिर्फ पांच छह महीने यहां पर होऊंगा. उसके बाद I'll go. तो they said fine आज हो, you know. And when I completed that वह तो product launch नहीं हुआ था but I it was a different experience. हम पहले micro finance के साथ वह चीज़ हो रही थी. फिर एक cool telco. Jazz is a very, Jazz is a cool but it's slightly bureaucratic telco. Yeah. इतनी वह funky नहीं है. Yeah. और फिर then we went to this बाबू bank. हां. वही चीज़ कर दे.

Muzamil

तो वह बड़ा एक, it was a very बड़ी. It was a ना easy level, medium level and then आपने hardball भी है. हां, hardball.

Guest

तो वह सब कहते हैं वह वह लोग resist करते हैं change को. तो बहुत ही जो चीज़ें पढ़ी थी school में वह they start making sense. But nonetheless I went मैंने Vanderbilt, Tennessee Mid West में. This was sorry not but this is the South, US the the the true South. Right. You know? So and beautiful beautiful country side, very nice people, very hospitable. वह हमारी तरह laid back भी हैं. अच्छा. So I was there for two years. I studied economics. मैंने वहां पर, फिर I I came, दरमियाने में planning commission में internship भी की. जब मैंने apply किया था ना Fulbright पर और अपना when I was placed there, उसमें you know you have to write these essays. I was already at a disadvantage. मैंने पहले ही buyer से पढ़ा हुआ था. Right. So, I really had to make the case कि मैं यह मुल्क के लिए like this is something I will मैं contribute करूंगा वापस आकर. It's not something कि मैं shock के लिए या अपने अपने लिए जा रहा हूं. So, मुझे बड़ी सारा याद है जब मैंने उसका वह सारा, एक वह study objective statement होती है, एक personal statement होती है. So, जितना मैं उस पर लिखता गया, मैंने लोगों से बात शायद की, you realize कि आपको you know आपका ध्यान दिल किस तरफ है? Right. It's primarily कि you know not really I'm not really driven by money because मैं अगर खुलकर बोलूं, जो अब जो market में उस वक्त तनख्वाही हैं या जो market में जो अब जो मतलब salaries Salaries हैं, वह Pakistan ऐसा मुल्क वन गया कि जहां पर आप investment करने plot में, you make far more. You know, तो what's the point of studying? You know, so you might as well do something जो जिससे आपको कोई नज़र आए कि कोई चीज़ कहीं से कोई तब्दीली आ रही है. Right. Anyway, it was a diverse program, बड़ा छोटा program था. 20 people in that program. मोहम्मद यूनिस जिन्होंने micro finance bank start किया था, वह उस program के alumni थे. अच्छा. Branderbilt में. हां So. हां I heard about it. One of the best programs in the world I believe. हां, the very few economics के masters. Lots of so the the education sector has pivoted. Economics में अब ज़्यादा PhDs होती हैं. Right. Masters कम रह गए हैं. So यह US में ना तीन चार masters थे जो रह गए हुए थे. Just because they are better better programs. It was a very nice program. Very diverse. मेरे like in my, in my program I was the only पाकिस्तानी. फिर they were obviously Chinese. They're everywhere. They're everywhere. Everywhere. They're they're उनके and and they're very hardworking. So it's tough competition Then there was, US से दो लोग थे. There was Africa से बहुत लोग थे, Middle East से बहुत लोग थे. Lebanon, Doha.

Muzamil

बाहर गई. It is fascinating. Those seven from China and two from The US. Yeah, only two from The US. She was a lot about, you know, the priorities

Guest

उनकी. Yeah. तो US में जो लोग masters करते हैं, for them, you know, it's such a capitalist economy. वह कहते हैं कि MBA करेंगे, तभी पैसे पूरे होंगे. वरना I can't afford to lose two years, right? कि मैं दो साल income ना कमाऊं and then unless or until you get like a very healthy and handsome scholarship.

Muzamil

And do you think these Chinese, if you, you know, followed them through, did they end up going back to China or did they stay in The US?

Guest

So, I think around in my... So, they did their PhDs. They were aspirant aspirant PhD candidates. Three of them did their PhDs, बाकी सब चले गए थे वापस. Right. यह government का program था ना इसमें ज़्यादा लोग government से आते थे. Right. So मेरे जो मेरा roommate Indonesia से था. अच्छा. वह वहां की planning commission में काम करता है. अच्छा. हां, लेकिन interestingly मुझे इसे बात हो रही थी. वह कह रहा था कि वह अब वहां पर court का in charge है. अच्छा. हां, so काफी interesting. So वह Indonesia से काफी लोग आते थे वहां पर. Right. And चार लोग हैं जो वापस इन्होंने private sector में गए. बाकी सारे के सारे public sector गए हैं. अच्छा. या वह academics में गए हैं और बड़ा अच्छा it was a very multidisciplinary, ज़्यादा interactive program था क्योंकि मैंने पहले math पढ़ी थी बर्फ के अंदर. आपके पास एक अच्छे मौसम में light subject पढ़ने को था तो it was very enlightening. I, this is a very good experience. Surprisingly there were no Indians in हां. My भी there I think very much like the. उस time वाले हैं ना कि get into the tech and really sort of own the tech. हां, get into the tech or go into the business. Go Yeah. Go where the money is, right? Yeah yeah yeah. So, हमारे मस्ते थोड़े फ़र्क हैं किया. तो, So you came back immediately after that? I had to come back. It was part of the bond. Right. मैंने bond sign किया था कि once you graduate, have to come back. Work in Pakistan for five years or indirectly benefit by Pakistan five years. So when I came back, I had a very good friend, eight k, school से. He worked with McKinsey in Dubai. Right. तो उसने कहा कि McKinsey का Pakistan में दफ़्तर खोल रहा है और apply करो. So I applied, एक rigorous process था आठ महीने का. यहां आठ महीने. अच्छा. मतलब test था, फिर interviews थे, फिर wait था. उनको कभी पूछता था कि क्या बनाया था? कहते जब भी दफ्तर का सोचने हैं कामनाने. And you were waiting with all that time? Waited all. No, so in the meantime Yale University की एक research lab है economics की, IPA के नाम से, innovation for poverty actions. They had this project with EasyPaisa. Right. Where they were doing these randomized control trials कि you know intervention design कर रहे थे और वह EasyPaisa के ज़रिए disbursement तो उसके लिए ना they wanted like a research coordinator and a person यहां पर. So I worked so it was like a part time role. वह किया यहां पर center for economic research in Pakistan है Serb के नाम से. वह उनकी affiliate body थी. जब तक मेरा McKinsey भी नहीं हुआ था I was working there for six seven months. फिर I joined तो मैं का पहला associate था. Right. I was a second hire. The first hire was अली असन. वह New York के office से आए थे. Right. And he was a lawyer, very nice guy. फिर McKinsey की जो broader team थी ना दुबई वाली, उसमें तेमूर खान जो KPK finance minister जिनकी वजह से हम यहां बैठे हैं. Right. अच्छा. What's that story? That's a very interesting story. Right. मैं McKinsey में जो मेरा when I was staffed तो आपको different projects देते हैं. जिसका आप आपको हिस्सा बना देते हैं. So, इन्होंने मुझे Pakistan में एक ही project चल रहा था project, which is now I can otherwise I can't tell कि McKinsey किस client कौन है but this is now open secret. Right. Punjab government का education reforms program. Right. I was placed there. तेमूर was one of the leads जो आते थे Dubai से and काम शाम करते थे. हमारे वह आप समझ लें, he was like our boss. Right. You know? And, वहां से मेरा तेमुर से वास्तव तालप, you know, पढ़ा, काम किया. फिर तेमुर, फिर I, तब तक मैंने अपना agriculture में काम बहुत बढ़ा दिया हुआ था. Right.

Muzamil

And I just decided कि, you know, time to move on. Yeah. And I mean, mean, McKinsey is not easy also. I mean, a lot of people say कि McKinsey आप जाते हैं साल, दो साल, CVP के ऊपर आपको लगाते हैं and then you basically go to, like, a cushy corporate, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I'd like to sort of understand, because we've all heard about McKinsey a lot, but what exactly do they do? Like, what's the job? Because it sounds so random. Like, they'll essentially do anything as long it's sort of Yeah.

Guest

A very complex problem to solve. But what what what's the thought process there? McKinsey has identified this gap, right, in leadership, in management leadership. Right. होता यह है कि, it's like if if there is business as usual, things are getting solved but some problems are also coming, right? तो जो आपकी senior management होती है, उनकी उतनी capacity नहीं होती कि वह इन चीज़ों को करें. तो वहां से ना यह management consulting का concept निकला whereas the senior resources of a firm hire people to structure problems. Right. And उसका 80% solution ढूंढने. जो उसका technical bits है ना वह कोई technician कर लेगा. ठीक है. Right? लेकिन जो GP होता ना वह मोटे मोटे मसले identify कर देता है. या जो mercenary होता है वह जाकर जो मसला होता है उसको attack करता है, right? So McKinsey is that firm which is basically addressing those challenges. Right. In the private sector, in the public sector. And they'll take any challenge as long as, I mean, there is it's big enough. Yes. They'll take any any challenge. उसमें I mean, they're so well equipped, to address, such multidisciplinary problems ना वह functioning like I think around a few dozen verticals, expertise हो जाती हैं. फिर thing is कि आप consult consultation का जितना एक doctor consultation कर कर के उसको इतना तज़रबा बज जाता ना, इनका भी firm की भी एक memory है. Right. Right? And and then it sort of brings its past experience. Right. And the problems that McKinsey और firm और management consulting firms, वह board level के problem solve करने कोशिश करती हैं. जिससे जो company की strategic direction बेहतर हो, not the everyday issues, right? Because that's not management consulting. That's either technical advisory or that's tech consulting because वह ambit फ़र्क़ है. Right. यह ज़्यादा strategic level है. ज़्यादा strategic है. आप problem को structure करने में बड़ी value होती है. Right right right. So, solution space उसकी define करना. Then also अच्छी routine set करना. Like regular stock takes, evaluations, जिस time मैं Punjab की बता देता हूं. सिर्फ़ एक एक routine set करनी थी कि यह reform है. Mhmm. इसको चलाते रहें. Mhmm. Attendance बढ़ानी है students की, इसको चलाते रहें. You know, उसकी monitoring evaluation बेहतर करनी है चलाते रहे. हां. So and तेमूर work very hard, right? I saw him जितना it was, he was very passionate about it. So it was like the, it's like the perfect cross cut, right? उसके अंदर जहां पर you're focusing on impact. Impact driven होना है. आपका एक value structure है. आपका you have these very interesting problems to solve. Scale बहुत बड़ा है. You make one decision right. It will have a very positive impact. You make a bad decision, it results in, उसका ripple effect होता है. Right. So Punjab में education में बहुत काम हुआ था. अच्छा. बहुत काम हुआ था. And this is 02/1415? No, this was this was I think around eight year program.

Muzamil

नहीं, but what what year were you working? I this is 2015.

Guest

'15. Yeah. This is this is 2015. I was there in 2015. And then you worked for a year and then you left? I worked for a year. I took a sort of I I left. फिर उसके बाद, it was me on my own. अच्छा. Right? 2016 was a tough year. Tough year because I wanted to risk taking behavior था मेरे में महेशा से. इतना calculated करे वगैरह निकलता थोड़ा सा गट भी जाता था. That's fascinating for an actuarial science. Yeah. It was all about numbers, right? I said, yeah, you know I've I've had a very good run. I can't get the best of everything, right? Yeah. So जो है उसको लेते हैं और चलते हैं आगे. Right. So McKinsey के एक partner थे वह उन्होंने अपनी एक venture capital fund fund खोला Dubai में. He said that, you know, come help me out and then in the meantime do whatever you want. Right. So it's called Glofish के नाम से वह था, Venture Capital Fund. They have very interesting startups. एक Ola Dog Pakistan में and there's car switch in Dubai. There was some सूख एक के नाम से थी. यह पाकिस्तानी थे साहब? And then उन्होंने Pakistan में अपना एक आम बनाना था, जहां पर वह local startups को support करेंगे. You know, that was also something which was interesting. जो advisory थी, उसमें थोड़ी सी entrepreneurship थी. साथ मैं अपना agriculture का काम बेहतर कर रहा था. Right. And I was getting these consulting opportunities, right? जैसे ही यह काम थोड़ा stable हुआ तो मुझे एक Gates Foundation से आ गई, National Bank की एक study थी, उसमें काम किया. So, I made sure कि you know, I can't, I'll try to make the best of both. Right. I know I can't stick in one because, I have responsibilities now. Yeah. So I, you know, I like, you know, I'm very kind. I'll जितना ज़्यादा मज़ा शुक्र कर रहे हो, उतना कम है. Worked with National Bank के अंदर उनकी एक again digital financial inclusion के ऊपर उनकी payments, payments की strategy बनानी थी तो उस पर काम किया, फिर या startups को help किया. Agriculture में I try to do innovative stuff, जितना कर सकता था. What were you growing at that time? जब batter तो out हो गया. I tried quinoa. अच्छा? हां हां, I tried quinoa. I tried quinoa. Didn't that work? It worked. It worked but कीन्वा का इतना वह market नहीं है. Right. Because मैं बड़े so मैं पहले ना I tried so many things यार. Tried लेकिन these are always small projects because big glass के लिए पर there was a complete बिना अपने पैर में गोली मारने के बराबर. So, I tried lots of crops but this required time. Right. Right and this required कि थोड़ी learning हो. Analysis constantly क्या चल रहा है, क्या नहीं चल रहा है. क्या नहीं चल रहा कितना आगे अगर इसको proper तरीके से करना है तो जितने अभी चीज़ें experiment करके सीख लो. Right. और फिर आगे उसको बेहतर कर लेना. मैं अभी क्योंकि अब मैं बरान जगह पर काम ज़्यादा करता हूं. पानी का मेरे पास नहीं है. Down down water का उतना access नहीं है. जो है it's very expensive. Right. So feasible नहीं है. So what I have started doing is कि I have to harvest the rainwater. अच्छा. Right? So, हां, so basically it's very basic technique. देखिए this table is flat, अगर इसमें बारिश होगी ना तो पूरे table में पानी बराबर फैलेगा. तो इसको laser leveling कराते हैं. ठीक है. कहते हैं. पूरे Punjab के Central Punjab में यह चीज़ हुई भी है. North Punjab में से concept नहीं है. ठीक है, laser leveling से क्या हमारा बात है? Laser leveling होती है कि जितना so you know you have land वह थोड़ी सी undulating होगी. उसका एक हिस्सा जो है वह foot नीचा होगा, एक उसका ऊंचा होगा. उसमें जब पाई लगता है ना जो foot दो foot जगह डूबी है, वह पानी से irrigate हो जाती है. Right. जो ऊंची है, वहां पानी नहीं लगता. So, भरानी area जिसने इस्लाम बाद है, it's all आप बाहर वहां पर तो जगह आप straight सीधी कर ही सकते. So, हमने ना terrace farming का हल्का सा concept लेकर आए जहां पर हमने छोटे छोटे पहाड़ियों को इतना काटा है कि वहां पर हम सीधी level strips of land बना लें. Right. It was a very मतलब cumbersome long process लेकिन अब यह है कि water security है. ठीक है. Because जब बारिश होती है, बारिशें ज़्यादा होती है इस area में. तीन हफ्ते में चार, अब यह कभी कभी आते हैं stretches जितना महीना date बारिश कम होती है. लेकिन हर दो तीन हफ्ते में तो एक बार बारिश हो जाती है और जब होती है तो पूरी जगह को पानी बराबर लगता है. वरना पानी का runoff बहुत है. Just through this technique, you know, my yields have gone up 60%. अच्छा. Yes. It's it's a simple thing, right? It's it's just a, it's में, it's a management problem. Right? It's just water management. बारिश हो रही है. वह मेरे पर है कि मैं उस पानी को harvest कैसा करता हूं, right? Right. So, बरान agriculture is very close to land in the sense कि बारे ज़्यादा हो जाए ना, तो जो जगह depression में होती है, वह कीचड़ वन जाता है. Right. जो ऊंची होती है, वह सूख जाती है. So दोनों दबाव जाती हैं जैसे कि दोनों दबाव जाती हैं. Right. So वहां से I realize कि I mean, I waste so much land in this. मेरी फ़सल ख़राब होती है. फिर I have to wait for the next train. You don't know. Mhmm. So this was something that I think is a lot of a lot of opportunity in the Potoháar, region to level land. Mhmm. Actually, hundred, two hundred actually, before the canal system Punjab का, it was the पोटोहा region which used to feed the entire subcontinent. अच्छा. This trip ना ही हिमाचल प्रदेश तक जाती है. जैसे कश्मीर से होती हुई सारी. So, बार्शियां होती थीं. Right. Punjab तो desert, लोहर is actually a desert. Really? Yes, लोहौर is a desert. Before the canal system. यार, these places were all deserts, right? Punjab is a desert. यह जो आपको मिट्टी नज़र आ रही है ना, यह पानी canalओं से चढ़ा चढ़ा के over hundred years, वह silk deposit हो होकर वह आपको लगता है क्यों मिट्टी है. आप तीन चार foot नीचे जाए ना नीचे से रेत निकलती है. अच्छा. हां. कसूर में for example आप तीन foot नीचे जाएं, नीचे रेत है. यह सारी because आप खुद देखें जितनी हरियाली है in Punjab.

Muzamil

छोटी है सारी. मतलब it's not like very दो सौ साल पुरानी चार सौ साल की गायब पड़ी उस तरह की नहीं forestry.

Guest

It's very structured. Yeah. Plot बने में है सारे. Yeah. It's the other thing is कि बारिश कितनी होती है लाहौर में? सिर्फ monsoon में होती है और Feb में थोड़ी Feb में आती है और थोड़ी सी westerlies आती हैं, right? Winter rains जो आप कहते हैं. इसमें इतनी हज़ारी हो सकती है. Mhmm. इतनी बाशियां होती थीं. इस्लामवाद is proper place where जो कभी मतलब you know. Constantly treating treating treating हां होती है. बारिश होती रहती है, होती रहती है. You know, you get like eighty ninety days. Think जहां पर बारिश हो रही है and you get lots of rain. Yeah. In Punjab, in Central Punjab you don't. In South Punjab you don't. Right. So these this entire region was a desert. Right. Which the canal system converted into arable land which you could,

Muzamil

sow. Grow crops in there. No problem.

Guest

So, जो but वहां से सीखा बहुत. Right. Right? So, क्योंकि वहां पर कसूर में था तो फिर I applied those techniques there. So, it's basically the seed and water management. Right. Lots of things are out of your control. कभी locust का attack हो जाता है. Locust का attack भी हमने देखा है. अच्छा. हमने

Muzamil

तबाह कर देते हैं सारा कुछ? खाया था सारा. खत्म, zero. चार पांच महीने की महीने खत्म. बिल्कुल like, actually

Guest

मैं हमारा region इतना खराब नहीं हुआ था. आए थे लेकिन जब वह खुसते हैं ना खाने को, वह काफी अकलमंद है. उसको पता है कि मतलब वह अगर उसको पता हो ना कि यह गंदों का पौधा है और यह canola का पौधा वह canola का खाएगा. अच्छा. क्योंकि वह soft है, right? वह आइचता आइचता ना जब वह soft plants ख़त्म कर देगा which are slightly more, which is sweeter, right? Then it'll come to these harder plants. Then it'll come to even harder plants. Right. So हमारे पास गंदम काश थी तो we got slightly lucky. Right. Otherwise we would be in trouble. एक दफ़ा hailstorm हुआ, दो घंटे ही अलाबारी हुई. तो वह आपकी फ़सल ख़राब. आपको पता नहीं होता कि आपके पास क्या आना था और क्या तो वह फिर, you know, you have to let it go. Yeah yeah. जिस तरह चाहता है वह जा रहा है. You know, you you can't know much about it. ख़ास तो है बड़ान बड़ान agriculture में. But it's something which I enjoy. It's a passion. Yeah. मैंने हक़ूमा के साथ ही बहुत ज़्यादा काम किया इसमें. Right. So, I I, you know, it's a hobby. Right. Sixteen seventeen में you left,

Muzamil

McKenzie? हां, six sixteen के start. 16 के start में. And then you started doing these consulting projects and साथ साथ आप जो है यह agriculture कर रहे थे. Agriculture कर रहा था and till one day I think 2737

Guest

के end में, मुझे पैसा था तेमूर ने PTI join कर ली है. अच्छा. So मैंने तेमूर खान को message किया कि मुबारे को. I was a fan. I was a supporter of, the the of PTI and I believe हमारा we have to change. Yeah. So बड़ा जो hope थी. तो मैंने ऐसे बुर्ग को message किया. I said, you know, great decision, good luck and if you need anything let me know. Always here to help. Right. तो उसने बताया thank you वगैरह कहा. I wasn't expecting दो दिनों उसका message आया. Can you work? मैंने कहा, हां ज़रूर. No, he said no full time. मैंने कहा and without pay. मैंने कहा, can't do that. I said I'll help you in agriculture. This is something I've actually वह मैंने उसी ना वह टमाटर भी डाम किए हुए थे वह सारा experience है तो मैंने कहा यार मैं अगर कुछ करूंगा. इसको fix करना है इस पर काम कर सकते हैं. Right. So तेमुर ने कहा कि मैंने अब join कर ली है. मैंने अब party के अंदर एक policy cell बना दी है. हमने उस policy cell में policies पर काम करना है. Right. तो मैंने कहा कि ज़रूर मैं help करता हूं. So I started with two days a week. I would come to इस्लामबार remotely. अच्छा, you were living in लोहौर? I was in लोहौर, was living in लोहौर, with my family. तो, I would come here, हम उस पर काम करते थे. Sometimes तमुल भी लोहौर, you know, PTE के लिए leadership थी. उनको presentations होती थी on different topics. So the pace started to pick up. Right. Suddenly ना वह we started seeing that the encumberds then were making, were probably not coming back. Right. You know? So, and the graph of PTI was going up day by day. Very exciting times. Yeah. So there was this election management cell था एक, जिसका यह policy unit हिस्सा था. इसको leave करते थे अरबाब शिज़ाद साहब. जी. इनके साथ होगा भी काम करते थे. Right. और उसमें झांकी तिरीन थे, जो party की तरफ से support करते थे. असद उमर साहब थे, PM साहब की, इमरान खान की embod के नीचे. This cell was not supposed to be सियासी. Right. It was a very Technocratic. Technocratic, very to the point, very ad hoc, set for a particular purpose, has an expiry. Right. Right? Election days expiry. Right. So, उसमें बहुत कम लोग थे. जो सयासी था वह यहां नहीं आता था. उससे कोई क्योंकि हम, we were the worst people to be associated with ना. अच्छा. हमने काग़ज़ बनाने होते थे. हमने you know. Exposure भी कोई नहीं है उस तरह से. Know, just like अपने कमरे में काम कर रहे and doesn't really क्या है कि बाहर क्या है? बिल्कुल बिल्कुल and वह बड़ा exciting था वह कि the talking points क्या होने चाहिए? You know, वह problem solving session होता था कि talking points क्या होने चाहिए? फिर वह लोग अपना ideas देते थे. फिर these were people I would look up to you. And there was a, you know, they are the change leaders in that spirit. And you know you would help them, guide them. लोहौर पर जलसा हुआ. April 29 से kick off हुई campaign. PM या इमरान खानियां या उनके जो talking points थे उसमें हमने हिस्से डाले हुए थे. अच्छा. You know, तो हम सब sun रहे थे कि यार इसमें क्या होगा? यह बोलेगा कि नहीं बोलेगा? हां. So, उसके बाद That must be quite a feeling though, I think. It was a great feeling. It was like, you know, was surreal. Yeah. Can I go? Because here I was doing consulting and agriculture, completely disconnected. And the next few months, I'm in the middle of a political campaign, national level, supporting a very strong technocrat, right, to secure a position in the party, helping them with the elections without pay, you know? Yeah, I see what's happening. You know, so it was जज़्बा था वह जिनून था. It was passion. Yeah. And so this unit that I'm part of was formed then. Right. And जो हमारे अरबाब शिज़ाल साहब, you know, he was the chief secretary of KP government in इमरान खान के जो पिछली कुमत थी, पीटी की पिछली कुमत थी. So he was leading this and he was very to the point, very disciplined, technically sound person. So हमारा जो समझ ले जितना जो जो exposure था ना, वह कोई उतना स्यासी नहीं था. It was very कि आपने जो काम करने आए हो तो काम करो, अगर नहीं करना तो तो चले जाओ. You know, no hanky panky, no unethical stuff, no politics, right? तो तेमूर खान and अरबाब शज़ाद, they decided to do the hundred days thing. Right. Which was actually an an agenda कि हमने पहले सौ दिन में क्या agenda बनाना है? किन चीज़ों पर काम हम शुरू करेंगे? अब seemingly realistic हो रहा था कि शायद, you know, आ ही जाए power. आ ही जाए, right? So, वह वह thought process उस तरह जाना शुरू हो रहा था. So we help वह लोगों के साथ coordinate किया, थोड़ी सी basic thinking थी. It wasn't कि we didn't put those points in. This was something that were told that you were said कि you know इन पर काम करो और इनके there should be some material at the back of it. Right. So that when if the if the government is formed हमारे पास एक Direction होता है. Direction हो काम करने की. So, बड़े broad topics पकड़े गए. Minor consultations होती थी external party से लेकिन primarily consultations होती थी internally. Right. और उनके हमेशे होते थे. जिस तरह यह dams के आप ले लें, agriculture का ले लें, civil services reform, फाटा reform, energy की जो challenge है, finance is one thing, right? So, right? पचास लाख घर is ultra ambitious, right? So there was a very clear vision before the elections कि पचास लाख घर हमने नहीं बनाने, हमने regulatory framework उस तरह करना है कि लोग आकर घर ना शुरू करने. Right. जो कि इस अकूमर ने कर लिया हर तरफ construction हो रही है. Right. तो बात सारी है कि आपने environment को productive करना है. Right. और बहुत चीज़ें थीं, there was climate change, huge, right? उस पर बहुत solid agenda था. There was billionaire पहले थी, अब 10 billionaire था and then the entire framework around it. So the putting that together was a very समझले, very operational task but sort of sanitizing it, giving it the hygiene, सारा event करना, वह थोड़ा सी coolness लेकर आना, you know, status quo को तोड़ना. Right. वह hope बरकरार रखना, वह हमारा काम था. Right. So वह हमने when we when we did that, तेमूर then, you know, he was sure कि he's going to be very successful there. Right. He left and we were left behind in स्लाहुबद. So then we worked on the Demo at the time went to KP then? He went to KP. His campaign started, right? This was, I think, The Hundred Days was done on the May 20. Right. 2018? 2018. Right. 05/20/2018, this is Ramzan. I remember my first जो political जो आपको victimization होती है ना वह उस card पर RSVP में मेरा नाम लिखा हुआ था और मेरे colleague के साथ कावा खेल. Right. Right? So उसका नाम भी लिखा था. मेरे number लिखे हुए थे और बिलाल रावी कौरवाई को है. तो हम, होना था कि यह जो Marriott में event था थोड़े से लोग बुलाए हुए थे. अवतार से पहले का time था तो कितना expect कर सकते थे? उसके लिए पता launch at 03:30. So, हमने वह social media खोला. तो उस पर देखा लोगों ने कहा कि यह देखो कितने गंदे लोग हैं, रमज़ान में lunch serve कर रहे हैं साढ़े तीन बजे. So, वह जो वह जो था ना कि वह तो पहला झटका था कि you know, oh यार यह तो यहां पर तो U भी होता है. हां. U मतलब हमने क्यों हमने launch क्यों लिखा Luvs? You know, so this is something जो you realize कि when

Muzamil

you're there, अब आप they're looking at everything and now they're going to be over analyzing everything and it's not as simple as generally हमारी ज़िंदगियों में चल रहा होता है कि भाई काम करते रहो ठीक है, it's ok. Exactly. No, you have to be very very smart.

Guest

मतलब जिसने आपको यह गान निकालना है वह निकालता रहे. Haters will always exist. Right. You can't मतलब Make everyone happy. हां, you can't make everyone happy but वह एक काफी weird weird weird moment था. Right. कि यार वह यह किस किस्म का तुमने बर्फ जला दिया है? उन्होंने launch को launch lunch बना दिया है. तो लोग कह रहे हैं देखो यह काफी लोग हैं. So, अपना then we worked on this manifesto. Manifesto was basically sort of expanding on the hundred years thing. And फिर election जीत गए. So Was there was there very surprising? नहीं वह सब तक हो चुका था. तब तक समझ आ गई थी. समझ आ गई थी. You know, the the thing was कि मैंने दो हज़ार तेरह का election भी masters में बड़ा closely follow किया था. अच्छा. बड़ा मेरा दिल टूटा था उस election में. ठीक, so, वह selection दो हज़ार तेरह के election में they were telling signs you you couldn't read them. Right. But but people start joining you. Right. एक हवा चल जाती है और आप देख रहे होते हो कि people are more interested. वह आपको उठा रहे होते हैं. वह आपको चला रहे हो, defend कर रहे होते हैं. वह आपको, भारी भारी एक state से शायद काम, you नहीं होगा लेकिन एक अच्छा sizable, किराची was an amazing surprise. Right? It was a total pivot, right? So, there was KP का we were expecting, Punjab we were expecting it will be a tough contest. But किराची was a total surprise. And so जब वह हकूमत वन गई, फिर वह JKD का जहाज उड़ रहा होता था. हां. So वह भी बड़ा interesting environment थी कि पता नहीं अब क्या होगा? Right. So, and बस फिर August 19 को हम सुबह दफ़्तर election sell गए. तो वहां में गया तो phone आया अरबाब शिद्धार्थ के उन्हीं का इबल के सबको कि तुम लोग वहां पर क्या कर रहे हो? तो हमने कहान है? कहते हैं PM office आ जाओ. So हम so जिस दिन oath हुआ रहा उसके बाद PM office was active. Right. So उसके अगले दिन cabinet ने oath लेनी होती है. PM ने अपनी cabinet. So वह presidency भी जाकर अपनी इनको oath लेते हैं. So from that, we went straight to the office. अच्छा. We were amongst I think the first few dozen dozen odd people who entered the office. You could see कि this office has इसमें जान डालनी पड़ेगी. हां. बहुत ज़्यादा ताकत मेहनत करनी पड़ेगी. So हम फिर गए and then we started, you know, they were status को इतना strong था कि they couldn't conceive कि these young kids will come and work on these topics. Yeah. You know and फिर हमने आइश्ता आइश्ता. हमने काफी हमारा I think हमने culture change की है. You know, मुझे बस इतना बोलना चाहिए उतना ही बोलना चाहिए. लेकिन हमने we I think हमने एक we brought in some positivity. Yeah. And वहां पर actually नवाशी के time पर unit बना हुआ था. Right. It was PMDU. I think I believe it was headed by मुसद्दिक मलिक. Right. Then यह culture exist करता था but not like these freelancers, right? Who just Thinking outside of the box. Of the box, you know, they're involved in moisturize and very transparent. We were not being paid then. हां, we were not not being paid in the start, but we were very passionate about it. Our job was to coordinate the 100 what's happening and to kick off work, to ensure कि लोग उस पर काम करें. Right. Sorry, as so.

Muzamil

And this must be like obviously because this is all very very new, right? You're real time पर you're learning the processes and also sort of getting it to So

Guest

you know, बाहर से लोग confuse करते हैं कि जो bureaucracy है ना, वह state के functionaries हैं. जो government होती वह हमेशा out. It's by the people. Government and state bureaucracy को people confuse a lot. Right. And then government का काम policy है. फ़ैसले करना है, oversight है, citizens की demand को state के ज़रिए पूरा करवाना है. Government का काम है कि एक थोड़ा सा sanity prepare करें. Mhmm. Government का काम legislation है, parliament में जाकर. तो लोगों को लगता है कि government आ गई है वह. Magically अब कोई हां कोई जीनी bottle निकलेगा और कहेगा जी जादू की छड़ी है, वह भी कर लो, मुफ्त मशरे भी आपको सुनने पड़ते हैं, यह भी होता है, वह भी होता है. But it was a very fulfilling experience. Right. मतलब जितना आप बंदा शुक्र कर रहे हो उतना काम है. हमने मैं agriculture पर काम करता था और start में ना हमारे जो वह six verticals थे तो उसमें से एक vertical agriculture था. वह मुझे वह उस पर मैं coordinate कर रहा था और सारा. तो मैं national agriculture program बनाया. Prime minister साहब ने तब झाग़ी तेरीन को charge दिया हुआ था to कि वह इस पर thought leadership ने जो उनके experience से जैसा ना? Government के end से जो food के minister थे वह अपना programs बना रहे थे, thought leadership पीछे से आ रही थी और बहुत हमने काम किया और huge program. तीन सौ अरब रुपए का हमने program बनाया

Muzamil

जो चारों सूबों में था. It was very basic but very impactful. अच्छा, this is very interesting because I was actually talking to someone the other day and they were like, know, one of the things that I am, we were talking about was कि Pakistan का एक सबसे major मसला जो है वह obviously food security है. Mhmm. Right? Like आप लोगों को खाना मिल जाए. बाकी कुछ भी होता रहे ना वो कर लेंगे. वो बर्दाश्त कर लेंगे यार महंगाई हो गई हो गया वो क्या भाई खाना है. खाना नहीं out हो. That's when the real trouble starts. And and they mentioned कि, you know, like, PTI never did anything about agriculture. And to be very honest, I don't have that insight as well. What... आपने यह program की बात की. What was... What were the major pillars of this program, and what were you looking at in terms of कि how do you sort of revitalize the agriculture sector in Pakistan?

Guest

I mean this was I think this was one of the most the largest program that a federal government अभी तक जितने बने थे. इसमें कहने की बात नहीं है. This was very comprehensive. Has like six section. There is crops, water, agriculture markets, आपकी small dams, there was fisheries, livestock. It's huge, you know. And जो जो the essence of जो देखिए, one has to accept कि जो आपकी foreign exchange और जो आपका interest rate है, वह policies इतनी strong होती हैं कि they influence every sector. Right. Dollar you can't imagine कितना influence करता है agriculture sector को. Because अगर dollar market based हो ना तो आपको international parity की price लगती है. Right. Which is basically कि दुनिया में अगर आठ dollar की बोरी है ना गंदम की, You have to do this reform because आपने support prices लगा लगाकर गंदम को इतना promote कर दिया था कि वह cannibalize करी थी. Cotton पर, बाकी हर्षित. बाकी crops पर, right? वह बारह dollar पड़ता था. बारह dollar का एक monda. Right. जो unit है. बाहर से आप गंदम import कर सकते थे आठ, साढ़े आठ रुपए. Right. Right? Just because the dollar was low, you were getting $12. Right? The dollar was kept low. The farmer was getting $12 so but you could have imported that for $8. Right. Now what happened was we said that let the dollar go, right? Market पर जाएं तो. अब हमारे farmer को उतने dollar नहीं मिलते, right? लेकिन उसको rate बहुत अच्छा, उसको international rate मिलता है. Right. वह आठ dollar जो है वह अब मेरे अब मेरे ख्याल में आठ नौ dollar का ही मानना है. मैं follow नहीं कर रहा उतना ज़्यादा लेकिन you know सोलह सौ Assume आठ आठ dollar के हिसाब से वह बनेगा तक़रीबन world. चौदह, पंद्रह सौ रुपए का आपको वह बड़े आराम से. मतलब international आपके freight charges होते हैं, वह किराची land करता है, यहां आता था हज़ार दो तीन सौ रुपए fee मान भर जाता है. But the point is आपने market को खोला. Mhmm. तो लोगों ने कहा यार यह तो गंदम जो है यह इतनी profitable नहीं है. Mhmm mhmm. Rate बढ़ गया था. Mhmm. क्योंकि canola जो है वह पहले ढाई हज़ार रुपए का 100 KG का bag बाज़ार में बिकता था. आज से चार साल पुरानी पहले की बात कर रहा हूं. अब वह जो bag है वह दस हज़ार पांच सौ रुपए का बिकता है. मैंने खुद बेचा है. क्योंकि dollar हमने क्योंकि international parity आ गई ना. जो दुनिया के जब rates बढ़ेंगे किसी चीज़ के ऊपर, वह हमें import हमारी मजबूरी होगी करना, तो यहां पर भी उसकी rate बढ़ेंगे. क्योंकि आपको international price तो आपको वही maintain करनी होती है. Canola के profit बढ़ा, लोगों ने canola लगाना शुरू कर दिया. Canola लगाना शुरू किया तो canola जो है वह use होगा in edible oil. Right. उससे आपका oil import, edible oil import. And which is one of the highest in terms of food, edible oil is one of the highest. I I don't know the number but it's huge. Yes. $23,000,000,000 captures. Over 2,000,000,000, over 2,000,000,000. देखिए that's the thing ना unless and until आप वह crops locally promote नहीं करेंगे. Mhmm. देखिए if, if Pakistan farmers or the पाकिस्तानी agriculture sector can grow something which is cheaper than the international market, तो दुनिया आप सारे खरीदना शुरू कर देगी. Mhmm. हम गंदम अच्छी उगाते हैं. हमारी international हमारी yields बहुत व्यवस्था नहीं है लेकिन हमारी हमेशा गंदम surplus होती है. Right. इसलिए और यहां पर हम गंदम थोड़ी सी सस्ती होती तो वह export हो जाती है. Right. You know, acquisitions हैं smuggle भी हो जाती हैं. So, लेकिन जो चीज़ हम अच्छी नहीं उगा सकते, मसल के तौर पर cotton हम उतनी अच्छी नहीं उगाते, तो cotton हमें import करनी चाहिए. Right. वह जो जगह है हमारे पास, उस जगह पर हम कुछ और लगाना चाहिए. सस्ता बना लेता हूं. मुनाफे बक्श भी है, farmer को promote भी की है, मेज use होती है, chicken feed and you name it, right? In The US you also make corn starch out of it. Right? Yeah yeah. So, these then you have to let the market decide. Right. Market, market can make good decisions for themselves, for the for the country. Right. So, you you have to let आपने बस dollar को खुद dollar को आपने free float किया. ठीक है, थोड़ा बहुत है वह state bank करता है जो करता है but that then Fundamentals पर आगे business. Fundamentals पर आप आपका business जो है within true business. Right. Right? There's subsidy का element खत्म हो जाता है, imports ज़रूर महंगी होती हैं, तेल ज़रूर महंगा होता है. But

Muzamil

Stabilize हो जाता है eventually. हां, आप आप आप. What about other areas in terms of like this is obviously one reform but what about other reforms?

Guest

So, you know, after the hundred days and after this agriculture program, around a year we worked on this till the next budget cycle. So this team and we in particular, disband They can, I thought you were disbanded now? हां, but we sort of went our own ways, right? In within the framework. Framework, तो, our role we sort of was incubation, right? कि कोई सोच है उसको float रखना है. Mhmm. You know जितना digital Pakistan था एक. Mhmm. हमारे पास यह civil services reform में performance agreements हैं. Mhmm. There were lots of these small initiatives जो आपको मौका मिलते थे. Sorry, excuse me. आपको मौके मिलते थे to to work on him. और आपका काम क्या होता था कि आपने उस पर basic like basic चीज़ें उसकी तैयार करनी है. Right.

Muzamil

So,

Guest

तो ज़रूरी नहीं है कि सारे काम करेंगे. Some would work, some would work. नहीं नहीं, हां exactly exactly. This is part and parcel of the game. I mean, you reform is a very painful process. I told you before also. My my मेरे economist of वैसे थे, वह कहते थे कि if there is no pain there will be no gain. Right. Like it will it will hurt. Right? And if some would like it, some won't like it. It's part of it, doesn't matter. Right. And but you have to have this you know दिल खुला होना चाहिए, थोड़ा सा दिमाग खुला, सोच थोड़ी, खुली सोचकर आपको चलते जाना चाहिए इसके अंदर. हमारे पास बहुत सी opportunities आई हैं जिसमें हमने छोटी छोटी चीज़ें जिनका काफी अच्छा impact रहा और और उसे काफी चीज़ें switch होगी. For example अगर digital Pakistan successful उस तरह नहीं हुआ लेकिन वह अपने छोटे छोटे you know seats सो कर गया. Right. वह एक एक framework वन गया. नादरा वह इस्तेमाल करता है थोड़ा बहुता फिर उन्होंने इस्तेमाल किया. They were very receptive to it. IT ministry ने उसको थोड़ा बहुत देखा. So आप चीज़ें incubate then you just move away. Yeah. Right? Your job is to just make sure कि एक नहीं सोच है वह incubate हो जाए. Right. And

Muzamil

इसी तरह performance agreements हम तीन साल से काम कर हैं. So so performance agreements, I wanna wanna really sort of have that conversation. But just, last comment on on agriculture.

Guest

Yeah.

Muzamil

Most recently we've seen two major, crises. And I haven't followed agriculture very closely. So again, layman है. I apologize for for for being dumb. Oh. एक sugar का मसला है. Mhmm. कुछ मसला है. मुझे नहीं पता क्या है? Most people don't know क्या है? Mhmm. अब एक मसला है. वह क्या है? और दूसरा, I don't know if that was sugar or क्योंकि sugar की एक report भी आई थी. वह सारा का सारा Very हुआ complicated. Most people don't really sort of understand कि वह actually है क्या? फ़ल सफ़ा क्या उसके पीछे? दूसरा, you know, जब हम, बात करते हैं, आपने multiple times यह बात बोला. आपने कहा कि हमारा जो food है वह surplus में. Mhmm. Right? So, do you think in your, you know, the way that you see it, अभी जब parity पर आया है, do you think that has made क्योंकि inflation बहुत ज़्यादा food में हुई है. Do you think that has put the, you know, it it put food out of the reach of your essentially the lowest strat of the society? क्योंकि दहाई है वह pricing फ़र्क़ तो आई है. अगर आठ रुपए की चीज़, छब्बीस रुपए की हो गई है तो किसी को तो वह hit पड़ी, बढ़िया दहाई है. तो if you can just sort of expand about the truth. So

Guest

so, देखो sugar वाला is a political economy का issue होता है. ठीक है? It's a this issue is not specific to this government. यह मतलब काफ़ी decades पुराना है. इसमें licenses बांटे गए थे. ठीक है. Right? कि आप यह mill लगा लें, आप यह कर लें. Obviously a lot of it is free money, handing out free money. So naturally इस पर तनक़ीद होनी थी and यह हमेशा एक एक issue रहता.

Muzamil

जो

Guest

so mills का license होता है? Non license holder mills can't operate? No no, you need a license of a for to make a sugar mill, right? आपको एक capacity का license मिलता है. Right. मुझे ज़्यादा इसमें detail नहीं पता but That's odd though. Should that be free market also? क्या वह ठीक लग रहा था ना? हां, तो देखिए ना अगर free market होती तो शायद पागल साम sugar mill होती ना because हमारी sugar cane की जो production है, वह उसकी efficiency इतनी low है. Right. Right? On average कि वह हमें हम we would have been better off importing and then doing something else. There are very few players in this country जो जो international yields touch करते हैं. अच्छा. हां, उसमें से एक यह JKT वाले हैं. Right. JKT ने you know, I've learned from him, right? So the credit goes to him. Sugar का जो issue है वह यह है कि when you keep the dollar low, naturally the price of sugar in dollar terms is sort of less. Sorry, in rupee terms is less, right? क्योंकि मैं तो buyer से import कर रहा हूं sugar bill फ़र्ज़ दस dollar की. Right. तब यह हज़ार रुपए था. अब वह open market है. अब वह सातारह सौ रुपए का है. ठीक? So kilo की चीनी कीमत है ना वह सत्तर सत्तर percent बढ़ गई है. ठीक है. तो जब वह बढ़ जाती है तो naturally फिर जो local हमारा miller है या जो जो जो farmer है, वह उसको rate बितल लगता है गन्ने का. क्योंकि पहले जो एक मन गन्ने से चार किलो चीनी बनती है. ठीक है. ठीक? पहले यह जो मन था यह क्योंकि dollar नीचे था, international price थी, parity होती थी तो यह मन बिकता था मेघन में डेढ़ सौ रुपए का. Actually यह हिस्सा होता था कि किसान का मन कोई ख़रीदने जाता था ही नहीं. वह millers के mills के हमें line लगी होती थी, trolley बढ़े हुए होते थे. अब यह हुआ था कि जो millers थे वह उल्टा वापस भाग रहे थे कि जी ख़ुदा के पास थे हमें अपना यह देश दो. Because अब, you know, लोगों ने sugarcane कम लगा रहे हैं. Right? But because sugarcane कम लगना शुरू हो गया. वही ना बात है कि कि people started going for alternative crops which were more profitable. The supply of sugarcane decreased because of which there was a pressure to increase the price of of the the price that the miller would pay to the किसान. ठीक है. वह पहले डेढ़ सौ थी, dollar ही बढ़ गया, sugar भी short हो गया. जब वह short हुआ तो वह price चली गई ढाई सौ रुपए. ठीक है. वह जो सौ रुपए का delta था ना, वह naturally चीनी की price बढ़ाने पर. ठीक? अब मसला यह होता था कि पहले क्योंकि यह इतना heavily subsidized था, sugar के excessive लग रही थी, तो चीनी ज़्यादा produce होती थी मुल्क के अंदर. More than our requirement. अब miller mills जो हैं वह तीन महीने active होती हैं साल में. अब bill first मैंने पहले साल में हज़ार kilo चीनी extra बना ली. अगले साल मैंने दुबारा हज़ार kilo extra बना ली. अब मेरे पास दो हज़ार का stock पड़ा हुआ है. मैंने वह बेचना है ना. Mhmm. तो miller कहता था कि यार मैं पहले वह बेचूं. Sorry, फिर मैं अपनी crushing start करूं. Right. मैं अपनी crushing start करने जब निकला, crushing ले लेती थी. किसान disturb होते थे. Government upset होती थी कि आप mill mill crushing क्यों नहीं कर रही? Mill crushing क्यों नहीं? वह कहते थे कि जी पहले पड़ी है वह तो बेच लें. अच्छा वह कहते थे कितना बेचे? वह कहते थे जी इसको export कर लें. अच्छा. वह which was the basic जिससे political issue बनता था. वह कहते हैं जी पहले licenses दिए हुए mills को फिर उसके बाद आप export subsidy देते हैं. Right. तो millers यह कहते हैं कि जी अगर आपने गन्ने आप चाहते हैं कि हम जाकर गन्ना खरीदें तो आपको export subsidy देनी पड़गी. Right. ताकि हमारा फिर कारोबार का cycle चलेगा. Right. So in this entire process what happened was कि a lot of money bled. Right. पता नहीं कितने अरब रुपए हैं. यह सुकुमान ने कुछ दिया ही नहीं है, right? Because वह international parity आ गई है ना. The technically the the inefficient miller should go out of business. Right. Always, right? Because वह free market है. हां. जो like जिस तरह like आपको vertical integration करनी है, sugar cane is technically a weed. Right. It's technically not even a crop crop, right? अच्छा. It's a weed. What do you mean by that? So जिस्नानी ना जड़ी बूटी जिसको कहते हैं. हां हां हां. जो आप उठ जाती बताती हां. हां. Sugar cane एक weed है, very heavy on water. It is supposed to flower actually. Right. In Pakistan it doesn't flower. It doesn't flower because it's not indigenous to Pakistan. It's an बाहर से आई हुई है और this requires a lot of sun. It requires, so Sindh is like a great place जहां पर, you know, sugarcane होनी चाहिए. हमने लगा दिया है जिन northern areas में जहां पर ठंड है, चार सदा में sugarcane हो गया है. It's wrong policy. Right. Right? So, this is not this is this is sugarcane की जो मिल के license है, चार सद्दे में sugarcane की मिल का license चला गया. वहां पर जी एक एकड़ से इतनी ज़्यादा औस नहीं आती गन्ने की. Actually वहां पर एक गन्ना लगता है गोड़ वाला. Right. चीनी वाला गन्ना होता ही फ़र्क़ है. Right. So, जो uh-uh naturally when you are inefficient, the cost will go up. Mhmm. तो इसी वजह से फिर subsidies आ जाती हैं. Right. फिर आम आम आम का pressure आ जाता है. Right. और फिर subsidies और आ जाती हैं. फिर वह एक vicious cycle वन जाता है और फिर उसे निकलते निकलते आपको एक like, there is pain. Yeah. Right? So so that's that's the issue with with sugarcane in particular. It was just very heavily subsidized in in before. और अगर industry चलानी है तो आपको millers को पैसे देने पड़ते थे ताकि वह export कर दें और अगर आपने एक subsidy नहीं दी तो फिर आपके किसान जो है वह पिछ जाता था. Right. तो that that was the issue. अभी यह fix हो गया? अभी subsidy वगैरह नहीं जा रही? नहीं, अब subsidy नहीं जा रही. There is no subsidy going. The thing is ना कि देखिए, subsidy अगर जा भी रही होगी तो, actually subsidy नहीं जा रही अब तो import हो रही है चीनी. Right. Right? वह reverse हो गया ना? हां. Because you realized, the local market realized कि अगर मैं local miller से इतनी चीनी ले रहा हूं, तो यह तो मुझे पड़ी है दस रुपए की wilfers. मैं bar से import क्यों ना कर लूं? Mhmm. सस्ती पड़ेगी. So इसलिए आपका import bill बढ़ना शुरू हो गया. अब आपकी food basket बहुत diverse हो गई है. You know, we're still very lucky as a country. I mean, हमारे livestock हम indigenous हैं, हमारा, wheat है, चावल हैं, दाले हैं. So we're better off, than lots of countries. हमारा edible oil का issue है. Right. तेल का. हम palm oil import कर पाएं. Generally जो मेरा second question था कि in terms of food security, do you think we're food secure at this point in time as a country? हां, I think we're food secure. We're very food mismanagement is a बड़ा एक serious challenge है. Like, you, check out the कब मंडी गए आप किसी I haven't had the So you go now, you'll see the piles of food rotting. Yeah. हमारी packaging industry नहीं है. हमारे like turkey for the longest time tomatoes जितने से time भी होते थे वह उसकी puree बनाकर ना घर में रख लेते थे. Right. It's true like they would, they would refrigerate the puree for the entire year. उसको पूरा साल इस्तेमाल करें. हमारे पास यह concept नहीं है. Right. Obviously उसकी बहुत सी वजह हुआ आते हैं, you know,

Muzamil

मतलब बिजली महंगी है. Freezer का issue है, अपना accessibilities का issue है. But I think अब वह change आना शुरू हो गया. I'm saying I was looking at technologies, they are looking to get into distribution and packaging and then obviously वह उसके अलावा recently fries Pakistan में आना शुरू है और उसे टमाटर वह अब आप Exactly, हां. Strawberries आ गए, strawberries आ गए. Essentially वह यही कर रहे हैं कि वह on season के अंदर जो excess है वह score है, उसको store करें. Makes sense. Okay. So now we're gonna talk about, and I I feel like that's what you're working on these days as well, which is the performance Agreements. Agreements. What's what's that? Performance agreements is basically,

Guest

it's a बहुत theoretical चीज़ है. Right. But it's very interesting, very impactful. It's, happening for the first time in Pakistan in this fashion. It's basically कि prime minister और उनके जो minister हैं वह एक मोइदा कर लेते हैं. मोइदा यह है कि minister और उनकी ministry और उनके सारे जो staff हैं, जो ministry का staff है, they agree on a plan, develop a plan. कि हमने यह बीस मोटी मोटी चीज़ें करनी हैं. लेकिन in addition to that हमने यह बीस चीज़ें कितना करनी हैं? उनके quarter wise targets हैं. पहले quarter में हम यह करेंगे, दूसरे में हम यह करेंगे, तीसरे में भी यह करेंगे. इस तरह में यह चीज़ें achieve कर लेंगे. तो यह 41 ministries, divisions जो आपकी हैं, they उन्होंने यह मोइदा आप चीज़ें तैयार कर ली और PM साहब को दिखाया और we as a team, you know, हम दरमियान में उसको, Coordinate करते थे, organize करते थे, manage करते थे. And process को they they agreed on this. So यह this is like a, like it's a gentleman's agreement. Right. To a degree, right? Is this KPI based? This is KPI based. This is KPI. This is देखिए, it's not, like, you know, government, the KPI is not money. Right? Yeah. When you look at, it's not, like, the typical stock market, shareholder, finance, you know. KPI in government is कि what impact is it having on the, on the citizen, right? Service delivery बेहतर हो रही है कि नहीं हुई? Process efficiency बेहतर हो रही है कि नहीं हो रही है? Rules आप change कर रहे हैं, evolve कर रहे हैं कि नहीं कर रहे हैं? नए initiatives आप लेकर आ रहे हैं कि नहीं आ रहे हैं? Direction आप क्या दे रही हैं? Right. Right? So are you are you engaging the private sector or not? Or is it something that's in a total silo? Right. You know, the future of government is public private partnership. Right. Right? You, the government thinks about it,

Muzamil

designs the policy, decides on how to do it. The private sector does it. Sort of what China did, as well in a lot of areas. कि मतलब उनका वहां पर वह business ख़र्च बिल्कुल, they don't do anything themselves. But उनके business जो हैं, उनका ख़र्च बिल्कुल closely वह काम कर रहे होते They facilitate them to sort of, capture a lot of ground. Yeah. China,

Guest

The US is the perfect example. They're in The US and I think in the early nineteen hundreds, the prisons were owned by private companies. Right. Because the government said our job is to identify the prisoner. Our job is not to keep the prisoner. We can outsource it. Right. Right? So, the concept of public private partnership is was there for a very long time. Yeah. And China is a leader, Germany is a is a leader. India is also doing great at it. Bangladesh is great. Pakistan अब बहुत अच्छा हो गया, right? You know, waste management outsource हो गई है. Mhmm. आपकी सड़कियां मतलब FWO जिस तरह एक सड़क बना रही है. Mhmm. उन्होंने जैसे motor vehicle they've taken over. So they they bring in, you know, it's like a contract, right?

Muzamil

So, But what about these, like, bleeding SOEs, state owned enterprises, right? Like, उसका stuff at the start, we've been waiting to hear. Is there a lot of... What stops it from from going out? हर government में होता है यह. हर government target ना अभी कहते हैं GPI एक गया, steel मिल गया, यह गया, अबे पांच साल कुछ करते हैं and then now it's the next government's problem.

Guest

हां, so देखिए, SOV is a, is a, यह perfect example है of what happens when you disown public private partnership. Yeah. Right? Absolutely. You start doing everything on your own. Yeah. हर चीज़ी company खड़ी कर देते हैं, right? So वह देखिए, it's better than before. It's इसलिए बेहतर है. It's not something which is specific to this particular government. This is an issue which has been trying to be solved for a very long time. Yeah. Nationalization के बाद वह privatization भी हुई थी, steps में हुई थी. National bank, sorry यह Habib Bank nationalize हुआ हुआ था, Allied Bank था. आपकी bills थीं, बहुत सी जो फिर बिकी बिकी. So SOBs की जो हम जो हमारी SOBs bleed कर रही हैं ना वह primarily कर रही हैं because उसमें they HR heavy. Mhmm. भर्तियां वही मिली बहुत सारी. भर्तियां बहुत हुई मिली है. अब बंदा कुछ cab कर भी नहीं सकता, right? क्योंकि वह at the end इंसान है. Mhmm. Right? वह कोई ना कोई function play कर रहे हैं और किसी हद तक हकोमत की मजबूरी है कि वह SUV exist भी करें. Right. जितना अब national bank exist करना है, you know, it's it's ज़रूरी है in a way. फिर आपके पास हर सुबह ने अपना bank बना लिया हुआ है. Mhmm mhmm. Punjab bank, एक Heber bank, बुलान bank, Synth bank. फिर उसके बाद आपकी यह OGDC है जिसमें यह यह आगे एक काम करते हैं. So, यह there are necessary. भर्तियां पहले क्यों ही नहीं हैं?

Muzamil

हैं at the end वह इंसान. So you can't just say कि जी switch off कर दिया. But do you think even I I was just reading कि IMFP इस बार में थोड़ा strongly कहा, एक SOEs को देखें, bleeding SOEs को देखें. Do you think as part of the policy, long term, short term, however Mhmm. Are we looking at some sort of privatization of, particularly a few major, so PIA for example? Yeah. Steel mill, energy projects and energy distribution discourse particularly इस रामने ग़राची electric को देखा उस तरीके से because I feel like कि again वह एक inefficiency तो होती है ना. Government has no business running doing business to begin with. Then obviously when they're doing that and they're doing a lot of other things as well. Mhmm. अगर वह जी जहां पर average line loss ग्यारह percent है तो वह सत्रह percent है पहुंचे हुए, खैर है यार देखी जाएगी चलो ठीक है, whatever. You know, like, you you have those problems जो कि probably private sector जब आते and we saw that in Karachi as well when K Electric came in. तो they were very very different in terms of getting the money back from the people and and and, you know, making sure that the lines were working fine. I'm sure people from Karachi will will definitely say कि यार कोई इतनी फिर्टिल नहीं हुई. But macro context के ऊपर it did get better. The numbers did get better. Yeah. Do you think that would be a part of the agenda? Maybe this tenure, maybe next? No, yeah. So it has to be part of the agenda.

Guest

There is no denying that. देखिए जो आपका national carrier है ना वह आपका सरकारी रहता है. Right. You have to subsidize air travel. You have to because if you subsidize it, जो if you bring a foreign national into Pakistan on a subsidize air ticket, जितनी यहां पर आगे economy को boost दे देते हैं ना, when they land they create 12 jobs. Right. Right? So you're better off subsidizing the जहाज़ but don't run the airport. Right. Outsource the airport. ना बनाओ यह पचास हज़ारे, right? Just, just, it will cause all this bureaucracy because you build the infrastructure, you you find जितना hotel management companies होती हैं, you find a company which comes and manages your airport. चीज़ें ठीक हो जाएंगी. Right. Build the asset, outsource it, enjoy the dividends, right? This is all part of the agenda. This goes again, you know, KEIC का जब से privatization हुई है, simple concept of switching off, of not allowing, of actually cutting out, cutting the electricity to a particular मोहरला because यहां bill, unit ज़्यादा consume हुए हैं, bill कम आया है. Sorry, bill कम आया है. तो बाकी जगह भी करना शुरू कर दिया. Mhmm काफ़ी ज़्यादा करना शुरू किया and उससे एक impact आता है. So you need ज़रूरी नहीं है कि सारे को उठाकर privatize कर दो. हिस्सों हिस्सों में होता है. चार चीज़ें हमारी मजबूरी हैं. जिस तरह, जो जो जो former ex फाटा वाला area है, वहां पर private company काम नहीं सकती. Mhmm. जो कोईटा वाला area private company काम नहीं कर सकती. IASCO को यह ऐसा privatize कर सकते हैं. Right. लेकिन ISCO में आपकी already line losses इतने कम हैं. हां. Right? वह जो sorry T and D जो transmission and distribution losses भी बहुत कम हैं. Right. फिर उसके अलावा फ़ैसलाबाद की है जगह फ़ैसलाबाद and all these big big discos. Yes, a few should be privatized but it's a long and cumbersome process. Right. Had K Yasi been so successful अभी तक बाकी हो चुकी हुई होती. Right. So maybe the state might be better off holding on to these. But one could sort of privatize, other assets like यह जो oil rigs हैं इतनी ज़्यादा या I'm just throwing it out loud. There are lots of, there's a geo, there's a political economy to it all of it. Mhmm. Sometimes it's it's less painful to take the loss than to actually hand over an asset and then tell them to hit you, right? So, it's a complex problem है. I understand.

Muzamil

जो यह performance agreements हैं, do you, do you think this will improve the service delivery?

Guest

Yes, I think it it already has had some impact पीछे से. I I feel कि, you see, just the just the fact कि there is a plan and ministries हरकत firefighting होती है. You've had exposure, right? It's not the most conducive environment. It's not, it's not passive at all. It's काफ़ी hostile environment होता है. So, अगर ministries को पता है कि मैंने इस साल में क्या करना है तो उसका पहला impact भी है. दूसरी चीज़ यह है कि आपके पास एक objective assessments हैं, जो जो subjective human bias होता है ना in in assessing performance, वह कम हो जाता है. Mhmm. वह बात पसंद नापसंद वाली कम हो जाती है. It's basically कि जी, आपने यह चीज़ कही थी करने को आपने की कि नहीं की. हां हां. तो prime minister के लिए आसान है, minister के लिए आसान है, ministry के अंदर लोगों के लिए आसान है. फिर उसके बाद जब आप targets identify करते हो तो you are also very आपको पता है कि मैंने यह चीज़ करी तो मैंने किस पर, मेरी dependency किस पर है? Right. This is quite मतलब होता है ना कि you ask ask somebody कि जी यह काम कहां तक मुझे जी, वहां फ़ंसा हुआ है. Mhmm. File वहां पर है. तो वह file वहां पर है, वह मजबूरी की वजह से है, वह किसी सही सही वजह से रखी हुई है या वह भूल गए हैं. Through this, you can sort of map the, yeah. Sorry, map out the dependencies. That's cross-ministrial dependencies. So it's a, it's a very powerful theoretical tool. जहा मुझे जहा पर ministry of ministry a को पता है कि मेरी ministry b पर यह dependencies हैं, ministry a को पता है कि मैंने अगले तीन महीने में यह करना है. अब जो उसमें content है, that's where the actual value is. It's a very high powered committee. यह अरबाब शज़ाद हैं, जानसेब खान हैं, depletion and planning. एक pay review committee है, जिसमें secretary finance, secretary planning, secretary cabinet, secretary stab, They all sit and ministry comes and they they come and they present their, you know, what they have to achieve or what they plan to do. So, उसमें then there is obviously some, you know, feedback मिलती है, improvements होती हैं, fine tuning होती है, hygiene bearer होती है. Quality of outcome थोड़ा out process से outcome की तरह shift करना होता है काम को. So, यह थोड़ा सा long term होगा. This is something which has to be completed. वह cycles उसके चलते रहेंगे, चलते रहेंगे, उसी कोई institution memory बनेगी. बहुत से it's not just that the service, it's not कि वह targets में service वह बहुत कोई high impact या बहुत ही कोई serious target है. इसके all soft benefits भी बहुत ज़्यादा हैं. Soft benefit for example कि अगर एक secretary जो है उनका tenure पूरा हो जाता है. नए secretary साहब आते हैं. उनके पास पहले से plan बना हुआ है. Mhmm. एक institution memory है. You don't know कि आपने कितना time बचाया है ministry का? कि नए secretary से आपको पता है कि या नया minister आता है. Mhmm. या नई हकूमत आती है, right? तो एक system के अंदर एक Continuity basically. Continuity है. Right. And it's a very powerful thing.

Muzamil

I feel. Makes sense. जो prime minister's citizen portal था, is that through you guys as well? No, that's that's not Completely separate. That's separate. What team is looking after that? That's the, prime minister's,

Guest

delivery unit. PMDU. PMDU. Right.

Muzamil

And then last on this particular subject, but do you think and you mentioned HR, and and I feel like that's not just an SOE problem. That is a government problem. Yeah. You know, we've we've I've I've I've seen the prime minister talk about that a lot in terms of the budget and and the amount of money that's going into HR and pension and so on and so forth. Is that something that we're ignoring at this point in time, or is that is there actually being work being done to somehow figure that out? I know that there are a lot of constraints in terms of, you know, agreements with EMI app, लोगों की pension ज़रूरत नहीं कर सकते suddenly. Mhmm. But obviously कोई ना भी solution तो work around करना पड़ेगा. देखिए, I think इसका solution,

Guest

definitely there is a it's very, there's overstaffing है. Yeah. Overstaffing है और for the wrong things. But जहां तक मैं capacity की बात करते हैं, हम कोई चीज़ जाते हैं system choke हो जाता है. So, वह overstaffings explain नहीं होती. The thing is कि हमारी HR allocation, right? The human resource allocation has to be addressed. कि आपके पास अगर इतने बंदे या फिर भर्ती हैं, वह क्या काम कर रहे हैं? आप उनको ग़लत कामों पर लगा देंगे या वह उनको ग़लत job वही बात हो जाती है जो you know, कि you put the wrong man for the wrong job. Yeah. Right? So, it's a big issue. So वह थोड़ा multidimensional है. Yes, the government should stop hiring. They should go more towards contractual staff. जो task based हो, government should be leaned. There are ministries which are very lean. By the way, there is narcotics control में सिर्फ़ मेरे ख़याल में दस बारह बनने हैं. अच्छा. हां, लेकिन उनके पास इधारें हैं नीचे right right. So ministry के ऊपर ministry में इतने से बंदे होंगे. वह नीचे साथ SOEs attach, हो हो हो होकर you know they'll they'll be so many people. तो वह naturally it becomes like a बहीमत. You know, you it's impossible to manage it. Yeah. So एक cookie cutter approach नहीं चलेगी. Right. One has to be very tactical, very targeted. One in how to manage your HR, provinces play the provinces रैधा हकूमत है, रैधा मूल के अब. Right. उनकी government के रेदा policies हैं. उनकी अपनी autonomy है कि हम किस तरह इस चीज़ की implementation करें. Mhmm. Punjab बहुत heavy on contractual hiring, right? सिंध I believe is not. बलूचिस्तान is not. So जितना you have to, it's not something कि explaining the poor performance or explaining any poor performance through, excessive HR doesn't solve the problem. Mhmm. It's far deep rooted, right? Requires legislation, requires a cultural shift from, you know, establishing, setting up the autonomous bodies. नादरा is a great example. मतलब वहां पर if don't perform your route. Yeah. यही सीधी बात है. PITB में if you don't perform your route. So, वह जो culture पर जितनी मर्ज़ी बनने आए हैं. You know, अर्दुगान के office में, somebody was telling me तीन हज़ार बंदा काम करते हैं. You can't say कि वह staffing है. Mhmm. उनमें काम generate करते हैं. Mhmm. Right? So, अगर कोई कहे कि मेरे पास, you know, these, yes, it's not a metric to explain कि जी यह, मतलब हमारे पास बंदे जाते हैं तो हम बड़ी organization हैं. हां हां. Nobody says that. But the thing is, it's a sign, it's a sign of, you know, कि this is healthy organization.

Muzamil

Yeah. Efficiency बढ़ाने वाले हैं. Efficiency बढ़ाओ, थोड़ी सी. क्योंकि मेरा experience में was more mostly out of 100 people, mostly 12 people were working and हां. 80 वह बाकी

Guest

अट्ठासी का जो है वह weights are अपने ऊपर लात के हुए जा रहे होते थे and. यह हमारा थोड़ा culture भी है. हमारे मुल्क में like it's it's unfortunate. This is not just the private sector यह public sector जैसे private sector का भी issue है. आप देखेंगे आप team में जाते हैं और बंदे एक को ही काम करते हैं. बाकी जो बाकी लोग हैं वह इतने ज़्यादा काम नहीं करते. So यह सरकार ने भी issue है. आप जो हमारी जो thinking bureaucracy है ना वह बिल्कुल थोड़ी सी है. वह design ही भविष्य ऐसी बिल्कुल सही design हुई है. आपको thinkers कम ही चाहिए होते आपको ज़्यादा implementers चाहिए होते हैं. हम सिर्फ with time because of वह eighteenth amendment का issue था, provincial autonomy है, पुरानी भर्तियां हैं. अब देखिए ना we've Pakistan has been sort of unlucky. हम एक decade capitalist होते हैं, एक decade हम socialist हो जाते हैं. हां हां. एक decade हम, वह extreme हम चले जाते हैं, religion की तरफ़ चले जाते हैं. Right. So कोई वह simp नहीं मिली. Right, makes sense.

Muzamil

Before I go to the last question, the second last question, and and I know, okay, the reason why I'm asking this is you can choose to avoid it because I don't want this conversation to be very, very cabic, very political, but try to see the nonpolitical angle to it. A lot of the people who supported the current government, they were educated technocrats who were hopeful for change, right? ज़ाहिर, I I do understand कि जब आप change की बात करते हैं, particularly political system के अंदर तो वह बहुत ज़्यादा उस पर ख़ाब होता है, rhetoric होता है, बहुत सारी चीज़ें होती हैं and then all of that comes together and then you sort of create a dream and a and a vision. You've mentioned that multiple times कि you know, like, change is not easy. Change is not something जिसमें आप जाते झुक्की भी जाते वह आ जाता है. Change क्यों? आप आप direction रखते हैं and then change slowly and steadily, slowly and steadily आता है, you know, years and years and years of continuity के बाद आता है. You know, you were part of the hundred day plan as well. You were part of the sort of strategic policies जो समझ लें के जो heart and core के brain essentially चल रहा था. How do you think? What do you feel, about the performance at this point in time? You know, what's going on? Because I know que a lot of my listeners are expat Pakistanis, for example, who are disappointed. And these are non nonpolitical people. These were people who probably first time voter थ and probably last time voter Mhmm. वन गया, unfortunately. They're not voting for anyone else. Yeah yeah yeah. They're just saying कि listen, like, maybe the whole political system is just a fraud. Mhmm.

Guest

So, लेकिन, मैं भी कोई सियासी आदमी नहीं हूं. Mhmm. Right? मैं कोई vote लेकर नहीं आया हुआ यहां पर. I am here, placed here as a technocrat. Yeah. I feel exactly the same. Right. You know, when when people say कि when they when they express their, समझें, disappointment या expectations ज़रूरत होती हैं. मेरी भी बहुत ज़्यादा हुई हैं. And multiple cases जगहों पर हुई हैं. But मुझे यह भी I've realized कि मैं यह हकूमत जो है यह बड़ी मुश्किल से बनी है. Right? It's not something कि यह कोई two third majority लेकर आए. Mhmm. So footing weak थी. Right. Right? और बहुत बड़े बड़े काम करने के लिए, you know, I'll be very open. एक यह जो sugar reform में the prime minister lost a key ally. Right. Right? And it's been a big loss because वह एक reform मुकमल होते होते वह इतनी ज़्यादा तकलीफ होनी शुरू होगी कि इतनी ज़्यादा दरार बढ़ गई और फिर लोग दरमान में घुस जाते हैं and then, you know, media का एक role होता है. So, it's it's not easy is number one. You know, जितना आप मर्ज़ी तगड़े हों, like, it it's a very difficult job. Right. To do. So that's number one. So don't lose hope so soon. Right? It's then the other thing is कि government ने, देखिए, as citizens we confuse government and bureaucracy. Government का काम होता है direction देना. जहां government fail किए हैं ना वहां government को already like government महसूस कर रही है और government को पता है. If they fail in a particular policy, उसी वक़्त कोई media पर शुरू हो जाता है और सारा कुछ. एक feedback का loop exist करता है. So just saying कि जी यह चीज़, we are not being heard or the government is not understanding. The government is understanding. It's just a very slow, it's such a large animal यार उसको, you know, you can't change it overnight. The other thing is that, the government is, like, government has to do its, the the it wasn't, it's their first time. Mhmm. Right? You, मैंने भी गलतियां की हैं because मुझे नहीं पता था. Mhmm. So, आगे जाते हुए मुझे थोड़ा बहुत experience होगा. Mhmm. देखिए हमारी political class जो है वह erode होगी यह. There is जो politician एक बड़े दर्जे वाला शोभा होता था, they were change makers in society. Mhmm. उस society को track पर रखते थे. वह citizen की demand को Implementation पर लेकर आते वह लोगों की मसले सुनते थे. हमारी political class जो है वह erode हुई है. इसको time लगेगा और कभी कभी in in end यह overnight ठीक होने वाला system नहीं है. देखिए इस जो जो बात करते हैं जिसमें for example आप कह रहे थे कि, जो ग़रीब आदमी है शहर में उसको बहुत महंगाई तंग कर रही है. लेकिन एक fact है कि हमारे Pakistan या इस subcontinent में कभी famine नहीं आया. Mhmm. तो यहां खाना है, ठीक? वह distribution problem होगा या वह temporarily policy fix होगा जिसकी वजह से थोड़ी चीज़ें महंगी हो रही हैं. या अगर यह dollar और यह तेल यह बढ़ाना ज़रूरी था. No matter how much I hate it. कोई भी government आ जाती वह. Right? You don't have to. But the thing is I appreciate them कि they took this very bold step. It's a very, देखिए जब जब dollar ऊपर जाता है तो capital, political capital आपका use होता ही होता है, आप कुछ भी कर लेंगे. हां, अब जो, जो आपका waste can में जो waste, wastage में जो food जाता है ना, मतलब जो आपके गली मुहल्ले के जो जो stray animals हैं, जिनको खारा मिलता था उस can, वह भी कम मिलता है. Because people start wasting less. Right. Right? वह पहले चार रोटी होती थी, अब दो हो गई हैं. पहले वह एक रोटी 100% फेंकी जा रही थी. Right. Right? अब वह इस्तेमाल हो जाती है. So यह reform के हिस्से हैं. हां, मसले हैं. Like there's no denying that कि मसले नहीं हैं और यह overnight हल होने वाले नहीं हैं. So यह भी मैंने दिमाग़ में. मैंने अभी तरफ़ से clear कर लिया. जो लोग हैं yes, they they will be disappointed. I was disappointed too. जब मैंने बहुत सी चीज़ें देखी हैं ना I said yeah this is wrong. Right? But then वह course correct हो जाती हैं. And थोड़ा सा यह है कि यह government, काफ़ी transparent है. Right? If, मतलब हाथ से ज़्यादा है in some cases, right? So इतना नहीं होना. जिसने आप देखिए यह यह जो, जो श्रीलंका वाला incident, right? This this person, which government, पिछली governments तो इतना इतने strongly नहीं बोलती नज़र आती थी मुझे. या जो India के साथ जो narrative set हुआ है, right? अब देखिए direction जो मिसाल के तौर पर आपकी foreign policy इतनी बेहतर हुई है, इतनी बेहतर हुई है जो जो सबसे, you know, this is smart leadership. Example, if India से दुश्मन नहीं बनना, right? India का एक leader है. Mhmm. वह India को गलत election दे रहा है. Mhmm. उसको target करो. Mhmm. The narrative has to be against मोदी. Right. Not against India, right? Why should I make the Indians my enemies? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So these things, different levers, these things were dead before. Nobody was talking about them. These are all यह जितना आप you're entering into this Pandora's box where, you know, you don't know कि इसके पीछे क्या हुआ था. If I take a step, I don't know which animal will come and bite me. I, you know, so you genuinely don't know. Yeah. FPR chairmans for example, it's, you know, they keep on going. Yeah. Because you don't know If you take one reform, you pick up one piece, वह पता नहीं दूसरी चीज़ कहां से गिर जाती है, क्या हो जाता है. So it's not that easy as it looks. And economics has a big role to play. I mean, if if they're disappointed, you know, don't be that disappointed. Read the story of Turkey. Mhmm. Turkey had a very rough patch. Yeah. From 1998 to 02/1945, very tough batch. IMFK programs, I mean, people are out on the streets, but they didn't stop the reform. That's the most important. You've consistency of policy, not stopping the reform. You've taken a direction, you end up somewhere. Right. If you go in one direction, you take another direction and halfway, you will make a mistake. Right? Just the fact that, you know, there is there is, consistency. For example, overseas पाकिस्तानियों को voting rights मिल रहे हैं. It's a great thing, right? There was consistency. दरमियान में हकूमत भूल जाती. Mhmm. कि यार ठीक है, अब जो है सो है. But हां, there are I am most disappointed या consistency नहीं है. Right? You take a, you know, take a decision just पूरा करें और time पर फ़ैसला कर लें. हां, makes sense. That's that's the most thing. Makes sense. साथ last question that I ask every guest that. Yeah. We're at the one hour forty six minutes. It's the longest podcast in the history of this show. Okay.

Muzamil

So so you can understand how much I enjoyed this conversation. Good. But, you know, you how old are you right now? That is public news. 35. 35. Thirty years from now, you're going to be, 65. Probably, I would say, you know, the the peak of your power and peak of your, hopefully energy as well. Okay. How do you see Pakistan of crony fifty, thirty years from now? Knowing what you know now, seeing what you see today, you know, you're you're right there at the at the heart of the entire, call it a mess, call it reform, call it Yeah. Who you're like. But knowing a lot of what you know, which a lot of other people don't, how do you feel about thirty years from now?

Guest

Reforms are messy. Yes. Pakistan is a, I I think Pakistan is very similar, not as rich, but very similar to The US. अच्छा. अच्छा. So it's not, it's like a, it's a ultra free economy. अच्छा. ठीक? It's a थोड़ा सा state के function हैं. Ultra मैं जो चाहूं मैं कर सकता हूं यहां पर. So, Pakistan will always survive. Right. Right? And they will come up with something innovative, right? जो आप, you know, if you if you receiver कोई पुर्ज़ा खराब हो जाएगा तो आप जाओ तो कोई दुकान मत दुकान आगे कोई market बनी होगी छोटी I see Pakistan in more provinces. Right. Right? I I see it as a as a more autonomous, more more, hopefully more liberal in terms of governance. Right. Right? I think हम उस direction में हैं. I think our economy will keep on growing but, we we need to be more accepting and more tolerant. यह हमारा एक issue है. Mhmm. This can go either way. Right. Right? I'll be very candid with you. We have to, this new millennial generation, right, they've been, like, यह बहुत aggressive हैं. And it's a good thing. So I don't think they'll give up. I don't think they'll cave into the status quo. Right. My generation did, right? I do have a conservative streak. Yeah. वह निकल आती है कभी कभी. And मेरे जो साथ दोस्त हैं उनकी भी निकल आती है. वह होता है ना जब when you're dating your mid thirties तो आप कहते हो आप थोड़े से यार Sober down हो जाते हैं. Sober down हो जाते हो. They're not, right? They're continuously like, you know, pacing up. Like, they're they're setting the new standards. Right. So I think Pakistan is going to be quite an interesting place when it comes to markets and when it comes to the economy. Unfortunately, we have to be consistent to be rich. Right. Right? If you look at, Pakistan and India were the same. You know, we both, हमारी planning commission, I do critic, I like to critic them. कहते हैं कि जी हमने Korea को पांच year का plan दिया था. यार क्या करूं मैं उसके साथ? उन्होंने plan लिया. तुम्हारा plan कहां है, right? This is like few decades ago. Have to have those plans. Yeah. If you have those plans, yeah we are ultra ना, ultra in doubt. We have everything. In Pakistan, you can be quite happy. Yeah. And you have good weather in places. You have, food. You have an interesting culture. Yeah. You have decent education. Yeah. Right? Which is improving with time. It's I have only seen it improve in my lifetime. Universities भी university बनती जा रही है. Lumps का graduate जो है वह किसी का ही मुकाबला करता है. Actually frankly lumps के जो लाहौर school of economics की मैंने graduates देखे हैं, they are amazing like, नास्त, यहां पर कायदेदी अज़म university. And

Muzamil

this is all higher education. A lot of times मैं देख रहा हूं कि, जो आपका like, I was in school in the nineties and early two thousands and education का. The educated और जो आपकी population है you know over the next decades वह बहुत ज़्यादा होगी compared to what we had in the nineties तो. So 100%. साथ thank you so much for this extremely insightful session. One hour fifteen minutes. This pleasure. This is a TBD record. Thank you so much for coming in. That's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. 100%. I actually enjoyed, really enjoyed this. Glad for all of you guys. Thank you so much for watching. I grab your episode पसंद आई हो और मेरे दोस्तीयां ने साथ सुरूशिका के usual वाले like comment दबाएंगे that the इसी के साथ हमें दूसरी podcast start किया था called the Pakistan Pivot, where we have different conversations with government officials, policymakers just to sort of try to understand, कि governments जो हैं वह कर क्या रही हैं और उसकी thought behind things थोड़ा सा समझने की. So you can check that out as well. But anyways, this was again Mazamela Sunset. You were watching thought behind things. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you the next one.