PAKISTAN: Sick

Mohamed Ali Jinnah is a skillful political leader who cannot be bothered with economics. When Pakistan was still a Moslem dream, a correspondent repeated to Jinnah the Hindu argument that Pakistan would not work because the proposed state lacked coal, industry and other economic resources. Answered Jinnah: “Why should they care if I starve?” Last week, after less than four months of independence, Pakistan was an economic wreck, and serious social unrest was rising.

If Pakistan’s government had a budget, no one could find out what it was. The country started off with about 200,000,000 rupees ($60,000,000) from the Reserve Bank of India, but that was long since spent. Two weeks ago the British Overseas Airways Corp. was paid by Pakistan Government check on the Bank of India for transporting 30,000 officials and their families from Delhi to Karachi. The check bounced. B.O.A.C. subsequently got its money, but other creditors are still waiting anxiously. Civil servants in Karachi have had their salaries cut and their housing allowances stopped.

Pakistan is getting coal only by paying three times the market rate. At that, its railroads have only enough for 20 days’ restricted operation. They are now carrying no freight—only refugees. Indian warehouses are glutted with textiles intended for Pakistan, which cannot make its own and now cannot pay for shipments from India.

Jinnah’s government, living on day-to-day receipts, has tried some desperate salvage measures. It imposed a $5-a-bale export duty on raw jute moving from East Pakistan to the jute mills of Calcutta (in India). The tax violated a temporary free-trade agreement between the dominions. This would probably provoke retaliation from India, which could stop sending all coal and manufactured goods to Pakistan.

Khan’s Lunch. India is spending $500,000 a day to take care of refugees; Pakistan cannot begin to match that. As a result, the Moslem refugees have become a fertile field for leftist agitators against the conservative Jinnah.

In West Punjab, Communist Party-Liner Iftikharud-Din was named Minister in Charge of Refugees, to keep him quiet. But he began urging refugees to demand division of the land, including estates of Moslem landlords, who are among Jinnah’s chief backers. One procession of refugees, parading through Lahore, burst into the kitchen of the fat, well-fed Khan of Momdot, Premier of West Punjab and a Jinnah man. Outraged at the contrast between his food and the four thin cha-pattis (wheat pancakes) issued to each of them each day, the demonstrators paraded the Khan’s lunch through the streets.

Iftikharud-Din later got himself elected, against Jinnah’s opposition, president of the West Punjab section of the Moslem League. This leftist victory, declared a conservative Moslem leader, “has created a serious danger to the Moslem League and . . . Pakistan. There can be no compromise between Islam and any other world philosophy or life system, be it communism, fascism, capitalism or parliamentarianism.”

No Call for Help. Despite this attitude, there have been hints that Pakistan might turn to Russia for financial help. And such hints, in turn, might be connected with reports that Pakistan would ask Washington for a loan. By last weekend, however, Washington had received no such request, and no Pakistan official had offered any public solution of the mess.

Jinnah has been sick abed for three weeks. The Pakistan Ministry indignantly said: “There is absolutely no truth in the rumors that Qaid-e-Azam [the Great Leader] is seriously ill.” They could scarcely say the same about the state over which Jinnah presided.