*The Debatewise Blog
Nadia Siddiqi’s view of globalisation
I’m from Karachi Pakistan; the Karachi Stock exchange was declared the ‘Best Performing Stock Market of the World for the year 2002’ when Pervez Musharraf our most recent resident dictator was in power; things have not been as rosy since. Karachi though is better known for terrorism during and after that period (post 9/11 2001); the place where Daniel Pearl was killed. His French wife corroborated with Hollywood’s star couple `Branjelina` to make a film on his killing by a British(son of Pakistani immigrants) terrorist ;oddly the filming was in India (no permission from the Pakistani government) and featured only two Pakistani actors (in a cast of hundreds of Indians).How is this related to globalisation? Please review the number of nationalities involved in the project.Karachi fashion week (like Pakistan fashion week) recently only featured western clothes to be worn by Pakistanis. When Benazir Bhutto (who went to school in Karachi; before Harvard, then Oxford; becoming a notoriously corrupt self-exiled politician and then getting killed in Rawalpindi) called Asia the continent of the 21st century; the influence of the west on everything from what we eat, wear and bathe with was not as evident as it is now. From the bath&body works right across the street, the airport McDonald's, Benneton, Levi Strauss, Gucci, Chanel, Armani (Shaukat Aziz wore Armani suits) and then the infusion of the west into the clothes Pakistani designers make: gowns by Freiha Altaf; there is not a single clothing item made by our top designers (HSY,Maria B,Nadia Mistry,Deepak Perwani &Ammar Belal) that does not reveal legs/cleavage: Strange when you look back a decade.
Why has this happened? because we have significantly more designer imports (clothes and accessories) than exports. People buy foreign designer wear. Women in Burqahs ubiquitously carry big fat GUCCI bags. Burqahs themselves are imported from other countries. Muslim Scarves are almost always Italian.
We’re also influenced by Arabs; Jamiat-islamia; an organization responsible for a lot of violence funded mainly if not entirely by Saudi Sheikhs. There are high-walled Sheikh palaces all over the city of Karachi. Arab terrorists have allegedly settled in Northern Pakistan.
Oriental-staffed Chinese, Thai and Japanese restaurants invaded this city long before McDonald's did. There is the French Cafe Flo and Italian pizzerias. Karachi-ites from even the most rundown localities predominantly watch Bollywood and Hollywood films. Lolly-wood alienated itself from the city as the province of Punjab did. Other than that there is the Goethe institute for German and Alliance Française de Karachi for French aficionados. Embassies house people from everywhere in the world and many families are racially/ethnically-mixed.
Other Effects: There’s exposure and tolerance of cosmopolitan diversity in this metropolis but on the other hand there is tension/conflict. Smuggled foreign-designer-wear is sold in flea-markets sprawled all over the city; expensive cell/mobile phones are robbed at gunpoint in every public arena. These cell-phones are then sold cheap and people buy them because we don’t want to be robbed of an expensive investment. Economic decline results from not cutting Imports.
Nadia Siddiqi, Pakistan
Comments
Musharraf may have been bad, but he was many orders of magnitude more compotent then Zardari et al. You may recall in 2005 Pakistan released itself from the IMF’s imperialism and was cited as a rising Asian star. Fast forward 5 years and Pakistan is in the grip of a brutal insurgency, economic paralysis and an effective global sporting and cultural boycott. Once again under IMF diktat.
Musharraf was a dictator, but firstly he was relatively mild and secondly commanded the trust of the global economic players. We faced violence in his term, but FDI kept flowing.
As for globalization, we need to embrace it. Pakistan is guilty of strategic myopia and is paying the price for losing control of its frankenstein in the form of Islamist groups. As someone of Pakistani stock, I am happy to see a progressive trend in the nation’s middle class and youth.
Now let us remove the influence of the religious right from our political and social fabric and we can march full speed ahead to a South Asian version of Turkey.