Why the car scheme was the wrong gift for overseas Pakistanis

[Applause] [Music] made this happen very early in the morning uh from the prophet magazine aliba thank you so much for being part of the show thank you so much for having me uh so before we start the conversation is a star reporter at profit magazine uh you know i love her work been following her on twitter for a very very long time um and if you guys haven't subscribed to profit it's it's a great magazine apko um you know economics business um advertising industry wise uh premium content for mill they're probably the only place again they're not paying me for it but they probably showed it the second time i'm marketing them but you should definitely please please subscribe it pays our salaries subscribe to that um i'm going to start the conversation we're trying to sort of understand okay you're a major from iba uh you majored in economics and math from your high school till date how did this sort of evolution happen because generally graduated ended up in journalism which generally doesn't pay a lot um right so it's it's actually really interesting so when i was in my o levels um i i took eco math uh business studies and accounting regatta and i loved economics like from the gecko i i would score the highest marks and i would i would start reading like you know generally like leisurely as well so it was really fun i actually enjoyed it and a levels baby wee layla uh i had math accounting and economics of course and then i wanted to say so you can together i i went to serious school pf chapter so right right right that's not the so so basically they're two i i think i personally think the two types of people that went to chapter one that went through chapter through and throughout spencer okay and one joey levels right because you haven't been through chapter so um yeah but pf chapter is a really cool place it was fun um so no i wanted to go abroad so i wanted to go to scotland for my um bachelor's i wanted to go to very specific yeah i wanted to go to scotland because i've always lived in big cities and i wanted to go to saint andrews for my bachelor's and i even got a scholarship everything was going well minnesota last moment i'm gonna go on hunger strike so that my parents have to send me uh but like god had other things destined my mom got really sick when i was in my a levels like exam time my mom got really sick she even went into a coma so it was really bad and i'm an only child so i was like no i can't go and make this move so like jason yama uh surgery here and she got out of surgery the next day um was the last day for me to tell the university if i want to go or not and i was like no not the right time to ask so then i really wanted to study econ so my options in karachi were karachi university or ipa and i don't really like math to be very honest um but since i wanted to go to iba i had to deal with math so that's a given ibs economics back then we only had econ and math together it was a dual majors but right now you can you can major in math or you can major in economics or you can major in both so right right they should have done that back then but you had to go through the whole map to go through so much matter follow so topology was a course just me like more than half of the class would fail functional analysis real analysis with courses like where everyone would fail topology topology what does that entail yadny so it's like so i'll give you one line topologically speaking a donut and a coffee mug are the same thing because they have one hole okay yeah so like if you distort a coffee mug in a way with donut banjata right right right right yeah so that's that's that's like that's the summary right that's not topology there are two types of people one that can prove things themselves like a client like intuitively they know what's going to go next i'm not one of those two director i'm not one of those so like i'm i'm the third type the type that struggles and cries that's me um and i specifically remember this okay back then when i was getting my topology exam karachi miss stabbing can you die if someone stabs you and i realize the chances of dying of getting stabbed are not high if you don't pull out the the knife i said that's the thing that's the thing if you pull out the knife then you might die because you bleed to death now if you keep it in and get to the hospital you might not die and i was like you know what i think that sounds better than giving the exam and i'm i kid you not i'm not making this up that was actually what i thought and i joked about this and my friends was like yeah i'm morbid boy so yeah guys don't take topologies yeah right uh when you graduate uh when was the last year essentially 2018. um so 2018 may uh you know out of iba what uh what did you do what was the first job that you did so i picked up a corporate research investigation job uh and then following that i worked at another firm as an economic researcher and then one day i wrote an article um on petroleum and and i had already given an interview at profit like randomly i applied randomly and bubbled and sami saab karachi marathi he took my interview and i did not prepare for it it was so chill i never thought i wanted to go into journalism i i just went for the interview because i was like when i went for the interview and then i got there when i wrote that article i sent it to him and he's like oh i was about to message you um the positions open and uh we were setting up offices and he's like would you still be interested and i was like let me think about it and then i actually gave it like a week's thought could i move should i not because i never look my my best friends batman like who've known me throughout and when i joined profit they're like you never said you wanted to be a journalist yeah what happened and i'm like i have no idea but i like it so like you know like people say plan things out yes you should but like sometimes unplanned things are amazing yeah so explorative sometimes you don't even know you'd love something your campaign yeah like so so okay i love economics and i love writing so it's like both and then plus so when i in when i was um interning i interned at a brokerage firm where i learned a lot to be very honest so your internships are great opportunities as well um so when i interned there i realized okay every week you're doing the same thing so inflation numbers are you punch it in mpsrt you make a prediction it's literally the same thing at profit it's very different so like while we have the same things going on every week i get a different topic so if uh someone's complaining lotus or candy cheese hair licking cuny i can literally write about whatever i want as long as i can give it a business spin so right i like this job i never knew this existed yeah and essentially first person inside keyboard currently you're growing as a very well [Music] but [Music] so it ruins you because you you can't take part in drawing room discussions anymore because though every time some uncle says something or something economic support but every time someone says something yeah become so matter of fact that they all hate your guts yeah so the best thing i do is i just go like uh sorry i i wasn't listening so yeah very very interesting why do you think pakistan was generally business so like for instance um one jargons right uh unless they haven't studied uh they're less likely to know these dragons um or oprah said they don't need to know these based on the work they do like i'm assuming like the ones that that stay at home uh for instance there's this app i was working with i was working on a story about so they said that they changed all the titles of things on their app and added descriptions because women were not using the app you could jargon [Music] for instance um a year before i became a journalist um i still understood the economy to an extent like as in i studied economics whenever uncles would have a drawing of discussion and i would partake in it and i would go like a you're wrong and my dad would be like okay why and i'd explain to him but then when i would see other people come in and you know just like the car boomer the point is that i essentially theoretically speaking for them i'm speaking on things that men should be talking about yeah so that is a problem to some people yeah it is a big big big big problem simply because my opportunities recently hired a bunch of research journalists for our platform and one of one of the girls very smart lumps graduate um she came in one day and she was like listen like i'm unable to open my bank account and i was like why and she was like oh you know because the bank's saying and i took my valid sub and then they came in proof of income so [Music] to attest all of the documents take care now this is a lumps graduate working in a company just getting transferred because the bank doesn't believe yeah it's it's it's absolutely difficult so for instance um i was talking to someone a few days ago and we were talking about why people buy gold because essentially if you they think it's it's a store of value but like inflation cash ups it's not always a store of value in fact i wouldn't think it is um so they were like why do people buy gold like and he was a guy and i was like you know what you're a guy and you're saying this a lot of reasons why women give gold to their daughters on the wedding is primarily because it okay you know it's like immediately in your possession one two you don't need a bank account for it and right up financially including and the the statistics of women with bank accounts i would like to believe that a lot of them are also joint accounts and rather than sole accounts owned by women so there is a lot holding women back in without bank accounts without stuff like this you know ab job business allow okay there are lots of things that you need a bank account for digital box on casablanca right right it makes sense but yeah you're absolutely right it's it's banks really need to do more and pink checkbooks are not the solution optics are not the solution do more yeah i want to understand a little bit about you know being a journalist so what does your job look like right now like at least one article in every issue yeah and that's a week on week yeah so every week i submit an article but um we submit an article one at least one for the magazine every week um and sometimes that article takes like a week of work sometimes that article takes a day of work sometimes it takes like three weeks of work right and once it it took like a month of work so it depends on the article but like am i so march system we had like times like babies realized our boss he realized okay you know we're working all the time and we need a time cut off okay i'm off the clock don't contact me and we did that but like six o'clock mirror clock out of five o'clock because the thing is with writing is that you can sit in front of a computer all day long like you could research but when it comes to writing you you can't control when you write and the worst part [Music] if i write something and it's not like it's not really nicely worded or the structure is bad so we've got a really good editor abdullah abdullah is a literature grad yeah words or assess our stories like amazingly but my point is is that so even though i work nine to five so there's this and at the same time like when we were talking um if if for instance you give me like a like you know it's company and i'm like oh really so even when you're talking to your fans you're working in fact my friends don't like talking about work with me anymore so like recently as well when we were working on a story about uh we got the financials so my friend is the head of uh she works in pr and communications there and i called her like yeah perry you're going to hate me but we have your financials and we want to do a story on it and she's like yeah so it's it's really like it's even when you're talking to your fans you're working and um so uh writing is writing right like a lot of i know for a fact a lot of people when they're looking at what you do for example or even when i was looking for content uh writers or research journalists you know a lot of people who are sending in their cvs with them and i'm writing so essentially it's very hard to find people who have the ability to organically you know research talk to people interview and then put that all of that data that you sort of gathered in a form of a narrative or a story and i'm trying to understand for example you're writing one article which if you're in a flow you could probably write in in a couple of hours yeah but what are the remaining 38 hours or or 78 hours of your job that lead up to that particular article so for instance for short stories right you spend like an hour two hours going through their financials go through like three or four hours like i'm talking about short stories three four hours of people other stories that have been written about them a little background on the people that we're talking about like and an hour or two to make an excel sheet so this is very short story you could finish a short story in a day but for longer stories like for instance i wrote a story on vaccines private vaccinations so i got court documents which were this much right so it took me to go through and i didn't go through them once i went through them thrice and and believe me every time i went through them i found something new right so so that's the purpose uh and it would be good after a point your brain stops working so i i even messaged my boss i was like he constant currency and he's like it's written there the rooms and i was like oh oh sorry i i my brain stopped working because you know when you go through a lot so it actually depends so from story to story uh so there's one story that i really love which is no longer there yeah that one took a month but like not like every day a month i i submitted other stories as well during that month but it's been back and forth but 3k the first time i wrote something and then i i then played devil's advocate and wrote the other side then i added the other side so it kept going like oh favor against favor against until i felt it was good to go and my boss felt it was good to go and then love the love i did a lot right so for example would you message me as well listen what's your side of the story yes okay so that's like it's a by default yeah and if you don't respond i've done my job right right but you will reach out so essentially i got shoryati and i don't get reached out you can you can okay so if that happens um if i wasn't able to reach out to you if anyone wasn't able to reach out to you for that matter um you could contact and you could say please add my side of the story as well and if there's something wrong printed about you you can get that changed or you could i guess you could even request okay an editor's note come this was made as an error we you know didn't get in touch or you didn't get something or something something it happens um but the extent to which we do this is some there are two people that really hate me um and so i had to write a story about something else they were doing so there's one guy that hates me and i had to contact him again for another story that he would hate me more for but i messaged him i was like hey so i know that you love journalism and just because you love journalism i'm hoping that you would talk to me he did not talk to me so when i wrote the article the next one i sent it to him and my friends are like my type but i sent it to him and similarly there's a lady that does not like me she called me a snake in the grass just by the way and that lady um she did not respond um i sent it through the other side as well she did not respond i wrote the article i sent it to her that was a good article yeah right right right um [Music] legal note is coming to [Music] you get a bunch of documents you're going to read them you're going to reach out to people digitally and you're going to ask them a bunch of questions um but you're in islamabad right now for example and i know you sent the excel and there's a bunch of like uh meetings that you have excel sheet i have like i i want it to be organized the excel is not the right platform i mean there are a bunch of apps for that there was there was a column there was there was a thing that said chilling chilling time but you're here for certain interviews for a certain story or is there something different so i'm technically not working for two days oh so this is your personal trip it's a personal trip i guess so i've been i don't mean that if your personal trip looks like the what i saw on that calendar that's a sad light yeah ouch so so basically i'm moderating moderating an event for april uh tomorrow it's um it's it's a lecture series by uh russell barker it's not a lecture series by razorback raza park is delivering a lecture in that series so it's i'm moderating uh so even though that did not come through from work like my boss didn't assign it for me but it got assigned because of what i do at work yeah so there's that um i mean technically that is work that's part of not just work in terms of your one person career that's part of yeah yeah so so i'm here for that though and i'm also meeting a few people as well so [Music] and then when they come up with the narrative that our overseas pakistanis do a lot for us yeah you send remittances very good thank you thank you very much but like draw remittance vegeta that's for your family if your family does not live in yourself you're not sending pakistan key it's the pakistani current account you that is not what goes on in your mind when you send remittances right so but the counter argument essentially is pakistan essentially inherently selfish reasons right like nobody does like i'm not everybody does 20 i'm paying my taxes because i have to pay my taxes right right like would you if you if taxes were an option would you pay your taxes um i mean probably but fbr fdr i love tax um so i i i get it like self selfish to her but my point is if someone's living in a country they're they're dealing with the good and the bad right i i don't think someone else should be given preference based on some policies as in give them give them some concessions they can upgrades pure incentivization so you're incentivization so the only numbers it's purely numbers yes but it's a lot of hot money coming in um [Music] so before i go on uh you do schemes and coloring yeah just for instance the the car scheme this is not benefiting and if we if i if we go through the numbers and i know it's a proxy because it's not an approximate uh it's not an actual worker's job she drops but like around 50 more than 50 percent of our labor of our people that move abroad are either laborers or drivers abroad to be very honest they could pay the full interest rate as well they could pay the full thing as well so that is my concern so bucky you know incentivizing money coming in that is completely fine but like i just felt that a car scheme right now when the auto sector was doing really well to be very honest of that money will eventually leave pakistan and it's it's not about leaving pakistan because there are lots of people are setting up in pakistan as well so i mean they're setting up assembly yeah you're putting up a percentage into the economy my point is that the auto sector like for instance if the auto sector was doing bad and he needed a push i'd be like go for it okay the auto sector is doing really well we've got new players coming in and rebound hogia pitchless comparison things are good like you didn't need that extra push for a sector that is primarily rent seekers yeah so sorry guys but like my point is they didn't need it yeah i was on the plane and there's an auto manufacturer sitting next to me and he's like wow that she government oh that's just state banking again i was like because yeah like my critique is not kept overseas pakistanis goku encouraged kyro to send money tk encouraged them again don't make the locals feel inferior to them one do choose the right sectors man choose choose the right sectors don't and we don't need more cars on the road yeah we need public transport we do not need more cars we we need like i drive i don't uh use these ride healing apps because i feel that i'm i don't feel safe as a woman in them um but you know universities like should be going through the right area scratchy is so vast at this point it's really difficult to actually make a system that works in the sandstone they don't cover the whole city cover the whole city so essentially that's one of the reasons why the difference is yeah i'm not going to tell you what bank but like that guy he he's the perfect guy to talk about this very interesting yeah um how do you like the web yep i've been to islamabad before okay so last time i was in islamabad i was here for like 24 hours and then 24 hour scan that i saw the festive pakistan monument i saw d-chalk and the containers um i also saw uh [Music] and then i also i had an iftar i had a an event as well in the mornings today as well like i'm gonna when i'm done with this i'm gonna have lunch and then i'm gonna go checking so my heart my health go i'm gonna chill and then the next day i'm gonna do all this in two hours and then i'm gonna catch a flight and go back home very cool very cool so i like it i like how up there sorry i'm glad i got a message from a friend we were choosing where to eat not so they were like you know you should go to this place and then my other friend goes like she's from karachi not everybody she's like she doesn't miss food yeah bring her the views i hired someone who just relocated to islam but then he was the first day he was like okay disappointment going on um but i differentiate my opinions and queer opinion you get i can listen like the internet is about trolling essentially has become about trolling so apparently mujhay bola yeah using the word troll liberally is also wrong and i got trolled for using the word troll oh okay yeah so apparently someone was trolling me okay and then it was control bulla and a certain party valley all came towards me like you guys call us all trolls and you troll the word what liberally you use [Applause] so it's very weird like as a journalist uh when you talk about twitter people have like very serious personas on it like especially financial journalists so it's it's metro but when you talk about bullying and harassment so how do you differentiate trolling and harassment like what i'm trying to understand is um obviously you liberally valid why do you understand on some level because department we have internet right right everyone can be an expert on something within five minutes so everyone has an opinion on something and what we don't underst but what happens is social media discourses is difficult because the minute someone says if i go like um yeah i get there let's say for instance your policy and then the guy gives a sarcastic comment i'm going to treat it as if you know him he doesn't he's being mean to me and i'm going to give a response in that way as well so is social media there are a few people like for instance the stock market is not an indicator of the economy right right and i used to write in capital twisted mr bull beater but there's there's a few people that got really pissed off at me and they're like we're unfollowing you and yes and yeah and james said to me okay i would say this when the market's up and also when the market's down it's it's it's constructive yes constant for me regardless of who's in who's in power regardless of what's happening yeah so my point being so that is something so to be very honest i don't really understand the fine line between trolling uh and huh i think that what i'm trying is being mean but harassment like if you go on to my pin tweet like us that i would label as harassment i would label that as harassment it's like literally repeatedly of course randomly calls our masked numbers i would call that harassment um or i would also call troll this person i would call that harassment because you were like you're once organized essentially yeah i would call organized trolling harassment because app egg bundle and you're like firing like app keeper bullets are and you're like save me save me from all those places right so the best thing to do is do not respond to anonymous people or smaller accounts yeah i think something that that [Music] [Music] before i joined like when i joined twitter my friend was like oh you've got a very bad following to follow a ratio yeah is that a thing as well i that's what i learned that was a thing back then so i i followed like around 300 people and i was followed by like 20 people so they're like me yeah you need to follow less people then you know people are following i was like so yeah but like no i don't have a like i don't have a cut off it's it's based on the profile so if i see the person see the decent like i will respond regardless if the person has 10 followers right but like if the person's a random random person then number oc profile like a certain kia and comment but you think do you feel like genuinely feel like yeah your overall and you've been on twitter since for how long i think i've been on there since seven years but actively started using it since 2015. so you've been there for a good part of six years yeah man um do you think the situation online is becoming a lot more um problematic it is so so the thing is that and i don't want to talk about this because it's it's a very confusing thing um cancer culture say um there's things that were okay a few years ago are no longer okay like for instance our favorite movies um tv shows like for instance people are like friends what's up so um things are changing rapidly and you've got to stay up with the times and my personal view on this is that sometimes people don't know what they're doing and per internet people it's not someone's job of educating someone but like can we generally genuinely need patata like for instance a few days ago someone called me a girl on twitter and what does that mean so so listen to this someone called someone said oh the sariba girl is doing something right um so i got a dm from someone i really look up to she's a woman she said you're not a girl and i'm like no i identify as a woman she's like you're a woman you're not a girl and the point is that when people call you a girl they might try to dismiss you as being young or unimportant but you're a woman so these are small things that we don't notice so this person that i really look up to and i i looked at it from a different lens and i was like okay fine makes sense so the thing is that things are changing rapidly and you know i i'm not doubting that guy's you know intentions he he literally called me a girl give them second thoughts like for instance like your parents my parents kabhi khabibo and which are not acceptable by our generation so for instance my mom she was she had a salon and she's a makeup artist my mom would go like right and a year ago i sat my mom down as i'm at my friends do not mind you saying it but like now when my friends come over again but i'm telling them helping them out yeah and then i was like no mom they're going to be like hey ab johanna i'll point out very many flaws and my mom's like that was not my intention yeah and she's like tikka and then personally the thing is that but do you think the intentions matter as well absolutely and i think do you think do your political correctness environment create you can't always be politically correct um because i mean the reason why i personally have a problem with this so so i joined the internet back in 1999 dial up uh i still remember the sound dial up yeah and you half of you don't know and then 2007 i believe six five or six killer orchestra yeah so there's that sort of evolution and then facebook particularly or sort of somebody like it just by the way do you call instagram ig or instagram or the gram instagram just instagram oh so apparently it depends on which generation you're from so artichoke but you call it ig my generation calls it insta and [Music] you should ask this question from people yeah that's interesting um and suddenly you connect and you go to mirc and certainly there's like four people online and the biggest thing was there are four people online yeah so there's in some basement somewhere somewhere around the world somewhere yeah and around the world so there was a very small cult of internet worshippers and then so you said well if you you grew up when internet came right yeah like made a time period like you saw it saw it so we used to we weren't in pakistan or daddy say we would emma sent a video call so right so for me internet was always there internet but like the evolution of so on the flight today i was thinking okay within the past five years within the past decade what thing have we created which is new or which is revolutionary or groundbreaking breaking i feel like there's nothing because so so like smartphones [Music] and we fought to have to find that freedom of expression where we were like listen we can do what we want we can say what we want and it's not problematic so there was a constant problem and so we fought that and by 2015 i believe that's i would say that's the peak of free internet true free internet where you could go in you could have 2015 maintenance facebook uh facebook or youtube facebook basically things and everybody was fine in their own silo and doing what they want and and then 16 forward like post trump essentially um the left started rising and they were like problematic problematic problematic problematic and now i don't think things are as black and white as their scene again intentions matter and thora educate kanaperta about things and how they go forward so but a certain segment said says it's not your responsibility to educate so it's to be various i so so for instance if i'm ever confused about something i don't comment on it i just go like you know what but i don't think i've i don't think i want to actively partake in canceling someone unless i actually see so i would i would want to partake in canceling actual harassers right so coach redline behavior yeah actual thieves or you know but again this is for instance cricket uh armor he was spot fixing right he went through his time he went to rehab is he cancelled forever should we cancel him forever once the spot fixer always or or like rehabilitation because he went to jail he he got fined so let's say a normal harasser let's say for instance our famous pop singer i'm not going to name him um what's his thing my question probably is like if he gets for instance if he gets if he goes to jail for this or if he gets like punished for this or whatever um is he banished for the rest of his life oh yeah or is it for a time and and if it's just for that like time how do i know he's been rehabbed so there's a lot i i don't know to be very honest it's these are things that keep me up at night i know i think that right at this transitional that is a gray area in the sense to the extent of what you're trolling right and again extend b it's a gray matter it's it's a value judgment so trolling still that keeps me trolling in the psychological aspect bullying value yeah that's not what's happening outside yeah and so i feel like if there is there's that moral policing now that is coming in from the educated lot as well based on there because and i feel like that's a counter to constantly being pushed on a site sure where they're so pushed because they're like listen now we'll come up with our own set of moral code and now sometimes i think the things that we're fighting for in the grand scheme of things the bigger things are missing or the bigger things are also treated as bad because for instance like women rights as well um so if they're fighting for something that people object to which is important i'm not saying it's not important it may be important to some people may not be important like for that partic particular group that one thing is important like in fighting for that particular thing the major thing where women get equal rights or equal opportunities at work but just because it's under that brand name so these are things that everything everything is not black and white there are some gray areas but yes i'm not saying people should not be punished for what they do they should i'm i don't know if i'm the judge i don't know if i'm the judge i can cancel someone on my behalf and say follow karen but i cannot enforce it on you because unless that person has not done something extremely terrible i will not cut ties with you huh if that person's like let's say a legitimate harasser and you're still you have him on your podcast i'd be like that is something i can do i can control myself yeah make sense make sense um i know okay i had like four other pointers here yeah that you have to go for a lunch and it's a very very important line so i'm gonna cut this off here we're at the 52 minute mark yeah um ariba thank you so much for coming in this was extremely insightful and i hope that the next time you're here but again like i don't want to hold you back make sense um thank you so much for coming in and for all the insight that you shared love your voice so much i i hope that uh journalism overall journalism economic journalism and finally economy because so we're trying to when we've got this new thing i guess we're explained like i'm five right so we're trying to do that would be some chariot so every week i learned something new right so and you're able to teach that teach people like that if i learn it because i learn it because i'm mentally five right so it's easier for this um thank you so much thank you so much and i look forward to seeing a lot of great work from you thank you it was really nice being here and in islamabad but like yeah exactly and for feedback we share different articles we have interesting conversations you can join that as well but anyways this is that you are watching target thanks thank you so much for watching and i'll see you in the next one