By Sarmad Saeed Khan Police Service of Pakistan

FREE LUNCH

According to Wikipedia, TANSTAAFL is an acronym for the adage "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch," popularized by science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein in his 1966 novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, which discusses the problems caused by not considering the eventual outcome of an unbalanced economy. Nobody would mind having a free lunch and even a free dinner or both. But there is a cost attached to every thing that apparently seems for free. The cost may not necessary be tangible: it can be in terms of losing ones integrity, liberties of thought and expression and sometimes the moral values and beliefs. God offered free lunch to Israelites in form of manna, but even it was not free of cost. In return, the Israelites were expected to do good. That aid was withdrawn by God when the Israelites did not comply with the terms and conditions. Someone may think that plucking some fruit from a wild tree is free; but, it also entails some effort that can be calculated in terms of man-hours. A Nation addicted to foreign aid is not worthy of been called a nation. Aid is like AIDS to states economy. Take example of the economy of our own country. We are dependent of foreign aid and loans since the very inception. After Pakistans alliance with the US in war on terror, Pakistan has received about 10 billion US$ as US aid. Ten billion dollars is less than a peanut for the US government but it has put Pakistan under a mountain of obligation. The US is never satisfied with whatever sacrifices we have made in terms of political damage to the government, loss of about a thousand military personnel, dozens of police officers and thousands of innocent citizens. Officials of the States Department and the elected representatives and senators of America, now and then, keep on reminding us that our efforts do not commensurate with the money we have been paid. Imperialist countries like the US extend foreign aid with dishonest intention. It is used to influence economic policy, foreign policy, education policy, cultural values and religion of the recipient states. Alberto Alesina and Beatrice Weder, in their article "Do Corrupt Governments Receive Less Foreign Aid?" published in American Economic Review of September 2002, maintain that foreign aid is used largely for wasteful public corruption and that aid money is counter productive for good public policies. The authors claim that Scandinavian countries and Australia try to avoid aid to highly corrupt regimes but the US has no such principles and that it is dished out for strategic reasons and not real needs. The US wants the Muslim world mould their religion and culture according a particular set of values. Stephen Browne in his book Aid and Influence: Do donors help or hinder? terms this tendency as dogmatic application of a particular set of moral values, which are by no mean universal even in the rich countries. Peter Bauer and Basel Yamey in their article Against Foreign Aid claim, External donations have never been necessary for the economic development of any country anywhere. Such donations, moreover, are much more likely to inhibit development than to promote it. Dependence on foreign aid amounts to selling your soul to the devil. It undermines integrity and sovereignty of nations, stunts economic growth and strengthens corrupt ruling class and bureaucracy. Therefore, it is better to skip such a lunch and eat a piece of bread earned with our own toil.