Benazir is indeed welcome but what about Asif Zardari?

Is your husband good in national interest? Ask the nation?
This is rather embarrassing for us and must be for Benazir too. I posed this question to the hard core supporters of PPP and pat came the answer "But what to do with Asif Sain?". People are worried. Genuinely worried.

They think whatever good the lady might do will be undone thoughtlessly by this gentleman. How can people forget his exploits when Benazir was in power. However much the media may trying to sweep his deeds under the carpet it haunts people without a reminder . Let me not repeat them all here.

How can this man be stopped? Is he in national interest, is a question the lady must ask. She is getting a third shot at becoming the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Can she let this opportunity also be squandered without making good history? I think she should not take this chance.

You know what the people on the street are saying? This baggage is coming along and the guy has his eyes on the $16 billion foreign exchange reserves that Pakistan presently enjoys. Whether her husband is corrupt or not and if he is a culprit is not the point. You cannot just ignore the perception this man has created for himself and thus sullied the lady's image.

Besides huge scams this man is linked to car thefts and how they have been recovered from Bilawal House. He may not have been convicted but no body can prove that he is all that innocent. His reputation as Mr. 10% and later 100% seems well earned. As Imran Khan had put it "bacha bacha jantha hai ke Asif Zardari chor hai". (Every child knows that Asif Zardari is corrupt). So his non-conviction is immaterial if Benazir wants to make it big into history. Can the lady ignore his reputation? No.

This time the nation wants Benazir to do things the world will remember her for. Not for corruption, loot, plunder, vendetta and utter lawlessness. The chances of her doing this will improve if she keeps her husband's greed and guile away from her and power.

Benazir, you already have enough money, now don't go for it this time left, right and center. Do some thing good for Pakistan so that you make history and people remember you as some one who was honest and did something good for Pakistan.

There is a lot of good you can do like introducing land ceiling to a maximum of say 60 acres, giving land to the landless, finishing off with the decadent feudalism, solving the Kashmir problem favorable to Pakistan and the people of Kashmir, education, industrialization, exports, better foreign policy etc. to placing Pakistan high up in the list of fast developing nations.

Let your agendas be worthy of the great nation you will be representing at the world forums.

Remember, you will never make it good in history with dishonesty and corruption. Allah is giving you another chance this time do good lest you be thrown out again by Providence.

Introduce Land Ceiling

Equitable distribution of scarce resources is the key...
Land is limited and people unlimited. Land cannot increase, people go on multiplying. Arable land is still more difficult to find. That means an ever increasing demand on this scarce finite natural resource. And here we have a person or two owning thousands of acres of land. Is this fair?

The modern civilised answer is, no. More and more people should have access to these limited resources. A natural resource like land cannot be allowed to be in the hands of just a few who may and may not put it to optimum use. This may or may not contribute to national productivity. It definitely does not contribute to national revenue as they pay no taxes on agriculture.

Can land be allowed to be the fiefdom of a few? No. Why? When large tracts of land is in the hands of a few it is called hoarding. The world abhors hoarding so does Islam in no unclear terms. See the life of our prophet, what a simple life he lead. There are hundreds of Hadith that would testify to this. With one having every thing and the other nothing it creates tension in the society of haves and have not. Their results are manifest in every thing from utter lawlessness, corruption, dacoity to illiteracy, mismanagement to poor national productivity.

We cannot have a society of masters and slaves in this 21st century. It is also misnomered as the ruling class and the ruled class. In a democracy can you have masters and slaves and yet call it democracy? A ruling party and an opposition party is acceptable but not a ruling class. Give me a break.

All countries have done away with feudalism. Even the most backward of the people Egypt has also addressed this issue by abolishing land lords and the feudal system. After independence India did away with feudalism by introducing land ceiling. England did this by introducing huge death duty.

But has Pakistan taken any steps to address this anamoly? Yes there have been two attempts 1,000 acres of Ayub Khan and 300 acres by Z.A.Bhutto, the former being a little bit more successful than the later.

Now every ruling party must have in their manifesto to limit land to a maximum of 50 acres of and irrigated only say 18 acres so that more people can have land. The excess land must be taken over and distributed among the landless poor and then the Bangladesh micro-finance system introduced to help them make it a profitable business venture. Then see where the nation stands. Tall among the comity of nations.

More on this later.