INTRODUCTION

Raheem ul Haque, Assistant Professor at the Centre for Public Policy and Governance, was invited for the book launch of De-securitize, De-colonize, Industrialize: A Manifesto for Structural Reforms on February 20, 2024. Initiating the conversation, Haque stated that the objective for writing the book was to highlight that Pakistan is not simply going through an economic crisis but a poly crisis of state and society, and thus expecting that a ‘Charter of Economy’ would resolve the crisis is misplaced. Instead, he highlighted that Pakistan has been going a holistic decline since the 1980s. This decline spans all spheres of life including: education where we have both an out of school children crisis as well as an education quality crisis;
sports where other than cricket, we were once internationally competitive in squash, field hockey and boxing; our cities have deteriorated as the largest cities are either the top most polluted city or the most unlive able city in the world; in the cultural sphere, the country produces but a fraction of films that it produced in the 1970s and one rarely sees Pakistani cultural products on Netflix; our work ethic is such that there is no trust left in society; and the list goes on.