Ref: LETTER TO EDITOR Date: August 05, 2000

In good, old St. Patrick's High School, the alma mater of General Pervez Musharraf, Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto, L.K. Advani, and other luminaries of the sub-continent, the Vice-Principal at the fag end of the 1950s had a very pragmatic and effective deal with two of my elder cousins. Every morning before classes commenced, both of them would present themselves in his office, get caned on the back seats, smile, thank him, and would then get to their morning classes. The intention behind this daily ritual was that since both of them were famous for their pranks, antics, and riotous behavior, they got a pre-classes punishment and were then allowed to either behave or fool around. This worked pretty well for them and also for the Vice-Principal, who could then attend to more important duties.

The reason for narrating this nostalgic anecdote is to suggest to the government hierarchy the ensuing proposal. The government should issue a SRO under which various departments, such as Sales Tax, Income Tax, Excise, Customs, Intelligence, KESC, SSGC, PTCL, Labor, EOBI, SESSI, NAB, etc, would "raid" an industrial establishment for one week, minutely check all records, painstakingly comb around the plant, intensively interrogate the Directors, executives, and the workers, and take strict action for any intransigence. The industry would then be exempted from governmental interference for three weeks until the ritual began again. This would be exactly like the punishment given to my two cousins nearly four decades ago. 

One more thing. If Omer Saliya and his cohorts want to demonstrate their power, then they should also designate one week every month to go on strikes. This would enable all industries to be aware that there would be seven days of "protest closures", and they would plan their production strategies accordingly.

Thus, the short and sweet gist of the proposal is that the government would have one week, the strikers the other. Meanwhile for the intrepid industrialists who would have just two weeks every month to do their thing to make Pakistan a great nation, all this would be piccola morte (literally "little death" in Italian).