Office Of Global Education Permanent Address Local Address Current: Fill & Download for Free

I didn't have time to gather all the facts so forgive me for being so brief but here it goes:“Within his first week, he signed an Executive Order ordering an audit of government contracts, and combating waste and abuse. http://1.usa.gov/dUvbu5Created the post of Chief Performance Officer, whose job it is to make operations more efficient to save the federal government money. http://n.pr/hcgBn1On his first full day, he froze White House salaries for the duration of the Great Recession.http://on.msnbc.com/ewJUIxHe appointed the first Federal Chief Information Officer to oversee federal IT spending and efficiency. http://www.cio.govHe committed to phasing out unnecessary and outdated weapons systems and signed the Weapons Systems Acquisition Reform Act, in an attempt to limit waste, fraud and abuse in the defense procurement and contracting systems. http://bit.ly/hOw1t1http://bit.ly/fz8GAdHe created the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. http://bit.ly/hwKhKaSigned an Executive Order instructing federal agencies to review all federal regulations and remove any unnecessary and/or burdensome regulations from the books.http://1.usa.gov/Lpo5bdDismantled the Minerals Management Service, thereby cutting ties between energy companies and the government. http://nyti.ms/bw1MLuBanned gifts from lobbyists to anyone in the Executive Branch. http://bit.ly/fsBACNBanned anyone from working in an agency they had lobbied in previous years and placed strict limits on lobbyists’ access to the White House. http://nyti.ms/gOrznVHeld the first-ever first online town hall from the White House, and took questions from the public. http://bit.ly/gVNSgXBecame the first president to stream every White House event, live.http://1.usa.gov/kAgOP5Established a central portal for Americans to find service opportunities.http://www.serve.govRestored the 30-day time frame for former presidents to review records and eliminated the right for the vice president or family members of former presidents to do the reviews, giving the public greater access to historic White House documents, and curtails the use of executive privilege to shield them. http://1.usa.gov/gUetLbImproved the Freedom of Information Act and issued new guidelines to make FOIA more open and transparent when processing FOIA requests. http://1.usa.gov/gjrnp2Streamline the Department of Education’s procurement policies and made them more transparent. http://bit.ly/1r9oQvhProvided the first voluntary disclosure of the White House Visitors Log in history. http://1.usa.gov/hQ7Signed a law to completely reform NSA Data Collection program and keep phone records in the hands of the phone company. http://bit.ly/1dG34vDStaved Off a Bush Depression, Improved the EconomyPushed through and signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, also known as “the stimulus package.” He also launched http://recovery.gov, a website that allows taxpayers to track spending from the Act. http://1.usa.gov/ibiFSshttp://1.usa.gov/e3BJMkBy the end of his first year, the economy created and sustained 2.1 million jobs and stimulated the economy by 3.5%. http://reut.rs/i46CEEHe created the massive TARP financial and banking rescue plan and forced banks and other entities to pay back virtually all of the bailout money.http://1.usa.gov/eA5jVShttp://bit.ly/eCNrD6He created the Making Home Affordable home refinancing plan. http://1.usa.gov/goy6zlIn 2010, more jobs were created than had been created during Bush’s eight years.http://bit.ly/hrrnjYHe pushed through and implemented an auto industry rescue plan that saved as many as 1 million jobs and possibly the entire auto industry.http://bit.ly/ibhpxrhttp://bit.ly/gj7mt5Through his investment in GM, returned to the company to its place as the premiere car company in the world. http://lat.ms/zIJuQxIn February 2016, GM was in such good financial shape, they gave a share of the profit to each worker, with checks up to $11,000. http://detne.ws/1mk7JryDoubled funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, to improve manufacturing efficiency. http://bit.ly/eYD4nfIncreased infrastructure spending after years of neglect. http://bit.ly/f77aOwSigned the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act, which helped millions of Americans avoid preventable foreclosures and provided $2.2 billion to combat homelessness and stabilize the housing market. http://bit.ly/eEpLFnSigned an Executive Order creating jobs immediately by instructing them to reduce the time needed for review and permitting of infrastructure projects. http://1.usa.gov/GHxaYtThrough the Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act of 2009, he and Congressional Democrats provided tax credits to first-time home buyers, which helped the U.S. housing market recovery. http://bit.ly/dZgXXw http://bit.ly/gORYfLPlayed a lead role in getting the G-20 Summit to commit to a $1.1 trillion deal to combat the global financial crisis. http://nyti.ms/gHlgp5Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, saved at least 300,000 education jobs, such as teachers, principals, librarians, and counselors that would have otherwise been lost. http://1.usa.gov/ez30DWith Congressional Democrats, provided funding to states and the Department of Homeland Security to save thousands of police and firefighter jobs from being cut during the recession. http://bit.ly/g0IKWRChina’s largest manufacturer, Foxconn, is building a large plant in Pennsylvaniahttp://cnnmon.ie/1k7LT4SWorked with Apple Computer to get them to build more product here, and thecompany is building two large plants to manufacture products here; one in Texashttp://zd.net/1nkpt2O and one in Arizona http://bit.ly/1mXY5VgCreated an institute to invest in more manufacturing jobs in the technology fields of the future. http://nyti.ms/1egyXrVOrdered all federal contractors to pay a minimum wage of $10.10 per hour, leading the way to a national increase. http://wapo.st/1iaU5kdOrdered the completion of the International Trade Data System, a digital trade record book, by 2016. This move will streamline and simplify the process through which small- and medium-sized businesses set up the export of US goods. http://bit.ly/1nwSRF4Specific Examples of Economic ImprovementAs of January 2016, a record 64 consecutive months of overall job growth.http://on.msnbc.com/1TKFCPQAs of January 2016, Unemployment drops below 5% for the first time in eight years and without a significant bubble. 4.9% http://on.msnbc.com/1TKFCPQAs of January 2016, there have been 71 consecutive months of private sector job growth. http://on.msnbc.com/1TKFCPQSince February 2010, when job numbers hit their lowest point, 13.7 non-farm jobs have been created. http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/C... (Republican budget cuts reduced public employment by about 700,000)Oversaw a reduction in the federal budget deficit by two-thirds since taking office.http://bit.ly/1xKMmjYReduced the federal budget deficit from 9.8% of GDP in Fiscal Year 2009 under Bush, to 2.9% of GDP in FY 2014. http://www.cbo.gov/publication/4...Scolds Congress and gets passed a $305 billion highways bill, which will have the added benefit of created hundreds of thousands of new jobs and creating incentives for green cars. http://bit.ly/1NsL2ZqAddressed Wrongdoing in the Financial SectorSigned the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act giving the federal government more tools to investigate and prosecute fraud in every corner of the financial system, and create a bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to investigate the financial fraud that led to the economic meltdown. http://abcn.ws/g18Fe7Ordered 65 executives who took bailout money to cut their own pay until they paid back all bailout money. http://huff.to/eAi9QqAlong with Congressional Democrats, pushed through and got passed Dodd-Frank, one of the largest and most comprehensive Wall Street reforms since the Great Depression.http://bit.ly/hWCPg0http://bit.ly/geHpcDCreated and implemented rules to reduce the influence of speculators in the oil market.http://bit.ly/MDnA1tCreated and implemented rules so banks can no longer use depositors’ money to invest in high-risk financial instruments that work against depositors’ interests. http://bit.ly/fnTayjSupported the concept of allowing stockholders to vote on executive compensation.http://bit.ly/fnTayjEndorsed and supported the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act of 2009 that would close offshore tax avoidance loopholes. http://bit.ly/esOdfB http://bit.ly/eG4DPMNegotiated a deal with Swiss banks permitting the US government to gain access to bank records of criminals and tax evaders. http://bit.ly/htfDgwSigned the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act, closing many of the loopholes that allowed companies to send jobs overseas, and avoid paying US taxes by moving money offshore. http://1.usa.gov/bd1RTqThanks to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, inflation in the healthcare sector dropped to its lowest point in 50 years. http://on.wsj.com/1E6cYjFImproved Conditions for Consumers and Small BusinessesSigned the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act, to protect consumers from unfair and deceptive credit card practices.http://1.usa.gov/gIaNcSGuided the housing market all the way back from total collapse, which led to a rally for housing starts. http://reut.rs/1NTAOVU http://reut.rs/1NTAOVUBrought airline industry back to their highest profitability since before the recession. http://lat.ms/1O8H1iEBlocked a monopolistic merger of Staples and Office Depot, to preserve at least some competition. http://bit.ly/1kcY2KvStock market has reached record highs, restoring most of the economic losses felt during the Bush Recession. http://bit.ly/1z4FAtLCreated and Implemented the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau http://1.usa.gov/j5onG http://bit.ly/fnTayjConsumer confidence continues to inch up to its highest level more than a decade.http://bit.ly/1PZLRcKInitiated a $15 billion plan designed to encourage increased lending to small businesses. http://1.usa.gov/eu0u0bCreated BusinessUSA, to allow online collaboration between small businesses and experts re managing a business. (The program has since merged with U.S. Small Business Administration.) http://www.business.govTook steps to improve minority access to capital. http://bit.ly/f9xVE7Used recovered TARP money to fund programs at local housing finance agencies in California, Florida, Nevada, Arizona and Michigan. http://on.msnbc.com/i1i8eVCrafted and signed an executive order establishing the President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability to assist in financial education for all Americans. http://bit.ly/eyqsNEOversaw the most sweeping food safety legislation since the Great Depression.http://thedc.com/gxkCtPThrough the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act, extended the False Claims Act to combat fraud by companies and individuals using money from TARP and Stimulus programs. http://bit.ly/SLTcSaSet up rules for banks in handling legal marijuana money. http://nyti.ms/1b80o2KAdded greater protections to consumer financial transactions to reduce identity theft.http://1.usa.gov/1pjfUFqTook steps to prevent pirate fishing and protect fish populations, and ordered stricter labeling requirements on labeling of seafood products in stores. http://1.usa.gov/1BYhTUnSigned the RAISE Act, which should encourage more people to open small businesses and help improve the economy. http://bit.ly/1QhTqkFSigned a bill that allows low-volume vehicle manufacturers that will increase entrepreneurship among small car manufacturers, who often build replicas of classics but who often build green vehicles. http://bit.ly/1QhTqkFStrengthened the Middle Class and Fought PovertyWorked to provide affordable, high-quality child care to working families.http://bit.ly/fNfidSThrough the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, cut taxes for 95% of America’s working families. http://bit.ly/eSEI4FTax rates for average working families are the lowest since 1950. http://bit.ly/f74pD8Extended and fully funded the patch for the Alternative Minimum Tax for 10 years.http://bit.ly/eFeSdPExtended discounted health coverage under the COBRA health insurance law for the unemployed from 9 months to 15 months, and he’s also extended unemployment benefits more than a few times. http://aol.it/evtVxDhttp://nyti.ms/emrqKJhttp://bit.ly/hOtIpg http://bit.ly/fTT7kzProvided a $20 billion increase for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Food Stamps). http://nyti.ms/gfLqyMSigned an Executive Order that established the White House Office of Urban Affairs.http://wapo.st/eWECA8Included the Buffet Rule in his 2014 budget proposal, in order to fulfill a campaign promise to make sure tax rates are fair between the rich and the middle class. http://1.usa.gov/19PkdQoUsed the fiscal cliff negotiations to extend for five additional years the American Opportunity Tax Credit, which provides tax credits to families for college-related expenses, thus saving those families up to $10,000. http://onforb.es/17zYg3uIncreased protections for the unemployed who are seeking a government job.http://1.usa.gov/1jgXATuUpdated and modernized overtime regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) http://1.usa.gov/1iGDO8eSigned and implemented the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, to improve nutrition in schools and make children healthier. http://1.usa.gov/GAXkSkTo make college more affordable and accountable, will begin rating colleges with regard to affordability and value. http://bit.ly/14Dn7ULInitiated a reform of federal job training programs, to make them more relevant to the current economy and the job market. http://1.usa.gov/1kZLQHGUnder Obama, the bottom 95% of taxpayers pay lower federal income taxes than at any time in the last 50 years, including under Reagan, or either Bush. http://bit.ly/1w1W8NsSigned a presidential memorandum authorizing six weeks paid leave for all federal employees with a new baby and encouraged Congress to do the same for all workers. http://bit.ly/18613XA2014 marked the first time since 1984 that unemployment dropped in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. 1.usa.gov/1E25u0CTook steps to improve workplace safety by creating an Advisory Board to study workers’ exposure to toxic substances. http://1.usa.gov/1M4s8IGChanged overtime rules to make it far more difficult for employers to avoid paying overtime to workers. http://politi.co/1KHfiBeChanged rules for federal contractors, guaranteeing that all workers earn paid leave; this should affect about 300,000 workers. http://1.usa.gov/1LcHZWlNegotiated a law to finally replace “No Child Left Behind” and remove much of the onerous government “oversight” that caused children to stagnate, not improve, academically. http://bit.ly/1Up9pMlAddressed Civil Rights and EqualityFormed a commission to examine and make recommendations for fixing the broken voting system. http://wapo.st/16K0DAt a press conference August 9, 2013, gave up a small measure of executive power, promising to create adversarial process in FISA regarding NSA surveillance.http://1.usa.gov/1dQmnyQProposed rules to enhance Fair Housing Laws, to give HUD and other enforcement agencies more enforcement power. http://bit.ly/1qkz4uQOrdered a review of capital punishment policies after several botched executions.http://nyti.ms/RDJp58Appointed Kareem Dale as the first ever Special Assistant to the President for Disability Policy. http://1.usa.gov/fi5IY0Concentrated immigration enforcement on those who commit crimes, and vowed to stop breaking up families. http://1.usa.gov/1uTZ8gVStreamlined the visa process, to make it more responsive and humane for those who want to be here legally. http://1.usa.gov/1tgDRtiTook steps to tighten the reins when it comes to providing local law enforcement agencies with military-style equipment and exercising more control over the equipment they receive. http://1.usa.gov/1ATWV3KChanged fair housing rules to make more affordable housing available to more people. http://cnn.it/1JcR3qBHelped Democrats in Congress pass and signed the Civil Rights History Act.http://bit.ly/th0JC8Established the White House Council of Native American Affairs, to improve government-to-government relations with Native American nations. http://1.usa.gov/1cIEeEvLimited local police acquisitions of military-style equipment, to reduce the likelihood of overkill. http://n.pr/1NGkBjTSigned Blue Alert Law, which provides police officers with more information when they are threatened. http://bit.ly/1NGksgaImproved Workers’ RightsHe issued final rules that require all employers to prominently post employees’ rights where all employees or prospective employees can see it, including all websites and intranets.http://1.usa.gov/qu2EhQObama’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission clarified and strengthened rules prohibiting discrimination against pregnant workers. http://alj.am/1mo0kjVRequired companies who bid on federal contracts larger than $500,000 to publicly disclose all previous violations of labor law, including unpaid claims for back wages. http://1.usa.gov/V54qY3Made it illegal for federal contractors with more than $1 million in contracts to force employees into arbitration in workplace discrimination accusations. http://1.usa.gov/V54qY3Vetoed Republican bill that would have blocked new NLRB rules that were designed to speed up the time it takes workers to unionize. http://reut.rs/1agujMO He also added a Memorandum of Disagreement to make his reasons for the veto clear and made a major statement in support of unions. http://1.usa.gov/1NG7RuACracked down on companies that were previously denying sick pay, vacation and health insurance, and Social Security and Medicare tax payments through abuse of the employee classification of independent contractor. http://nyti.ms/fOGLcjProtected the Rights of Gay PeopleSigned and implemented the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which made it a federal crime to assault anyone based on his or her sexual orientation or gender identity. http://bit.ly/gsMSJ7Oversaw and implemented the repeal of the reprehensible “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy.http://bit.ly/fdahuHhttp://bit.ly/mZV4PzExtended benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees. http://1.usa.gov/g2RLCjAppointed more openly gay officials than anyone in history. http://bit.ly/g1lA7DAppointed first openly transgender Cabinet Official in History. http://bit.ly/58zUp7Advocated that United Nations adopt a policy supporting gay rights worldwide.http://lat.ms/pQe1RSAs soon as the Supreme Court invalidated the Defense of Marriage Act, he moved to extend federal benefits to same-sex couples. http://wapo.st/1avDjueIssued an order requiring hospitals to allow visitation by same-sex couples.http://reut.rs/llNJekChanged HUD rules to prohibit gender and sexual orientation-based discrimination in housing bit.ly/9RxEnPChanged his mind and publicly expressed support for same-sex marriage.http://bit.ly/JsiFKpIssued a Presidential Memorandum reaffirming the rights of gay couples to make medical decisions for each other. http://1.usa.gov/aUueGTAppointed several prominent gay athletes and others, and plans to show US government’s commitment to gay rights to anti-gay Russia. http://on.cpsj.com/1fckN9hDepartment of Agriculture propagated new rules to better enforce non-discrimination when it comes to USDA investigations and to extend non-discrimination to gender identity. http://bit.ly/1yChJhiBanned all federal contractors from discriminating against gay workers. http://1.usa.gov/1ok1gfHPersevered with his campaign to turn “gay marriage” into “marriage” and won in the Supreme Court. http://cbsloc.al/1M4qLKbImproved Conditions for WomenEstablishing the White House Council on Women and Girls to ensure that all Cabinet and Cabinet-level agencies consider the effect of their policies and programs on women and families. http://bit.ly/e1puTk http://1.usa.gov/rFfqMMImplemented the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which restored basic protections against pay discrimination for women and other workers. http://bit.ly/fT3CxgEliminated federal funding for abstinence-only education, and rescinded the global gag rule. http://bit.ly/eCFAI1 http://bit.ly/f92drFImproved the Paycheck Fairness Act, making it possible for employees to talk about their salaries without retaliation, and ordering salary data collection, so as to make it harder for employers to pay women less. http://huff.to/1nwVOWfSigned an Executive Order pledging support for efforts to end the global problem of violence against women and girls. http://1.usa.gov/MHTRVUShattered another glass ceiling by naming Janet Yellen chair of the Federal Reserve beginning Feb. 1, 2014. http://usat.ly/1gqMBfkExpanded funding for the Violence Against Women Act. http://1.usa.gov/dSbI0xOrdered companies with 100 employees or more to disclose pay data based on race and gender, to address the pay gap. http://theatln.tc/1Q04XPLAddressed Criminal Justice Failings and the Gun CultureMade significant reductions in drug sentencing guidelines for current prisoners. http://n.pr/1mWBLkMOversaw the first drop in the federal prison population in 32 years. http://bit.ly/1B5h8rWIncreased his use of clemency to release thousands of non-violent drug offenders from prison. http://nyti.ms/1KE8DJGOrdered a ban on solitary confinement for juvenile offenders in federal prisons.http://bit.ly/20ObRzATook executive action to promote smart gun technology, to make them safer.http://1.usa.gov/1RhK1tUAfter a failure by Congress to act, proposed executive orders to create more background checks and to fully staff the background check system. http://cnn.it/1JXmUg6Relaxed HIPAA rules enough to allow for more information to be available to the background check system. http://on.wsj.com/SX9xaZOrdered the tracing of guns as part of criminal investigations to provide data to researchers. http://on.wsj.com/SX9xaZOrder the Justice Department to look at the categories of mental health problems prohibited from owning guns to make sure people aren’t falling through the cracks, getting guns. http://onforb.es/1nUAGw3Expanded the definitions of gun dealers and expanded the information available and required in background checks for firearm purchases. http://bit.ly/1K5aXeeSet up a task force to figure out what other measures can be taken to limit gun violence in the wake of Congressional inaction. http://1.usa.gov/1QjYMGJImproved Treatment of Soldiers and VeteransProvided active combat troops with better body armor. http://bit.ly/hzSv2hCreated a Joint Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record program for military personnel, in order http://abcn.ws/1ghLrEshttp://abcn.ws/1ghLrEs to improve the quality of their medical care. http://1.usa.gov/f4yaxWPut an end to the Bush-era stop-loss policy that kept soldiers in Iraq/Afghanistan beyond their enlistment date. http://nyti.ms/e2YQ7QSigned and implemented Veterans Health Care Budget Reform and Transparency Act, making more money available to enable better medical care for veterans.http://1.usa.gov/fN4ur1With Congressional Democrats, oversaw largest spending increase in 30 years for Department of Veterans Affairs, for improved medical and extended care facilities for veterans. http://1.usa.gov/gY8O3xImplemented the Green Vet Initiative, which provides special funding to provide veterans with training in green jobs. http://bit.ly/epwUQYInitiated and signed a recruitment and employment plan to get more veterans into government jobs. http://bit.ly/b48coiOversaw a $4.6 billion expansion of the Veterans Administration budget to pay for more mental health professionals. http://bit.ly/gjzTxXSigned the Military Spouses Residency Relief Act, which ensures that spouses of military personnel who are forced to move because their spouse is posted for military duty can avoid state taxes in their temporary residence. http://bit.ly/1Gh0NXOrdered improvements to access to mental health care for veterans, military personnel and their families. http://1.usa.gov/TP7PVZGot Syria to dismantle its chemical weapons without military firing a single shot or dropping a single bomb. http://nyti.ms/1lVEkU7Along with Congressional Democrats, not only reauthorized families of fallen soldiers to be able to visit when the body arrives at Dover AFB, but also provided funding for it. Ended the media blackout on coverage of the return of fallen soldiers. Pentagon Will Help Families Travel to Dover http://bbc.in/gWSSkAFunded Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) with an extra $1.4 billion to improve veterans’ services. http://1.usa.gov/huhqfoSigned into law a bill that provides support, counseling, and breastfeeding supplies to military moms who are covered under TRICARE, the health insurance provided to veterans. http://bit.ly/1yNxL8OSigned into law a bill that makes it easier for military dogs to retire at home with their handlers. http://bit.ly/1J78Y2UImproved America’s Reputation Around the WorldVisited more countries and met with more world leaders than any previous president during his first six months in office. http://bit.ly/hZycdaAs he promised, he gave a speech at a major Islamic forum in Cairo early in his administration. http://nyti.ms/dKvY4gMade a speech at a US mosque to demonstrate his commitment to religious rights and send a message to Muslims around the world. http://cnn.it/1PGU1uIRestored America’s reputation around the world as a global leader.http://bit.ly/h743y7http://bit.ly/ho4TCrRe-established and reinforced our partnership with NATO and other allies on strategic international issues. http://1.usa.gov/e7QuDjClosed a number of secret detention facilities. http://nyti.ms/rpUc9lImproved relations with Middle East countries by appointing special envoys.http://1.usa.gov/tiGAGePushed forward the first realistic Middle East peace strategy in more than a decade, without abandoning the two-state solution. http://wapo.st/1avystePushed for military to emphasize greater development of foreign language skills. http://bit.ly/AxUCLVOffered $400 million to the people living in Gaza, while calling on both Israel and the Palestinians to stop inciting violence. http://bit.ly/9axfWhRefused to give Israel the green light to attack Iran over their possible nuclear program.http://bit.ly/xVmSZKOrdered the closure of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, although blocked by Congress.http://bit.ly/eW6CVFOrdered a review of our detention and interrogation policy and prohibited the use of “enhanced interrogation.” http://bit.ly/g6MTuCOrdered all secret detention facilities in Eastern Europe and elsewhere to be closed.http://bbc.in/h6N9axReleased the Bush torture memos. http://bit.ly/hWJ5z0On his second day in office, banned torture, reversed all Bush torture policies and put the US in full compliance with the Geneva Convention.http://1.usa.gov/dL6Zvehttp://nyti.ms/hzWWysIn response to the emerging “Arab Spring,” he created a Rapid Response fund, to assist emerging democracies with foreign aid, debt relief, technical assistance and investment packages in order to show that the United States stands with them. http://bit.ly/zfmGv9Ended the F-22 program, saving $4 billion. Though the 187 aircraft cost $358 million each to build, it had never flown a combat mission. http://slate.me/PYzmzTPassed the Iran Sanctions Act, to prevent war and encourage the Iranian government to give up their nuclear program. http://1.usa.gov/wLtNjbEnded the Iraq War. http://tgr.ph/ru0tySWorked to keep our withdrawal from Afghanistan on track, despite GOP opposition.http://reut.rs/1cIOsF1 Reiterated that commitment in 2014.http://nyti.ms/1exnmRFConducted a secret mission by SEAL Team Six to rescue two hostages held by Somali pirates. http://bit.ly/y8c9FzThrough United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, helped negotiate a peaceful split of Sudan into two countries, creating an independent South Sudan. http://reut.rs/qzE0TjHelped make donations to Haiti tax deductible in 2009. http://huff.to/6YkAVYEstablished a new U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue. http://1.usa.gov/eX28DPIssued Executive Order blocking interference and helping to stabilize Somalia.http://1.usa.gov/hxdf8UEstablished new, more reasonable policies in our relations with Cuba, such as allowing Cuban-Americans to visit their families and send money to support them.http://n.pr/hY3Kwa http://nyti.ms/emQBdeThe new policies in Cuba led to thawed relations and the first US Embassy in Cuba in more than 55 years. http://abcn.ws/1ghLrEsNegotiated a deal with Iran that will prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon anytime soon, without firing a shot or invading the country. http://cnn.it/1M3HpvvAs a result of the Iran agreement, Iran shipped pretty much all of it nuclear material to Russia. http://nyti.ms/1PrzLtyBecame the first US President to visit Jamaica in more than 30 years, worked to restore relations with the country and signed a natural gas distribution agreement with the country. http://bit.ly/1JtpFqiChanged US Approach to “Defense” and National SecurityCreated a comprehensive new strategy for dealing with the international nuclear threat.http://1.usa.gov/gDX1nEAuthorized a $1.4 billion reduction in Star Wars program in 2010. http://1.usa.gov/gLFZl2Restarted nuclear nonproliferation talks and built up the nuclear inspection infrastructure/protocols to where they had been before Bush. http://lat.ms/gkcl3iSigned and got ratification of a new SALT Treaty. http://bit.ly/f3JVtwNegotiated and signed a new START Treaty that will stay in force until at least 2021.http://1.usa.gov/cI1bC4Committed the US to no permanent military bases in Iraq. http://bit.ly/hk73OJDeveloped a comprehensive strategy with regard to Afghanistan and Pakistan designed to facilitate the defeat of al Qaeda, the withdrawal of most troops and the rebuilding of Afghanistan. http://wapo.st/ee4XcsRe-focused on Afghanistan, stabilized the country, and began the process of withdrawing troops from the country. http://bit.ly/lNXUnaNegotiated a deal with Afghan government, to withdraw troops and military support, while assisting in rebuilding and modernizing of the country. http://bit.ly/K362anTook steps to severely weaken al Qaeda and limited their ability to terrorize the world.http://yhoo.it/n5lXs6Negotiated and signed a nuclear nonproliferation treaty with India.http://1.usa.gov/aHp0CnWorked with NATO to limit the slaughter of innocents in Libya, so that Libyans could topple the despotic Khadaffy government and determine their own fate.http://aje.me/qAh4SjGot Egyptian President/dictator Mubarak to leave the Egyptian government to the people, to determine their own fate. http://f24.my/efvgNZIn 2011, reoriented American focus from the Middle East to the Asian-Pacific region by simultaneously engaging China and crafting new alliances with Asian countries uncomfortable with Chinese behavior. http://bit.ly/RGlMDiRestored federal agencies such as FEMA to the point that they have been able to manage a huge number of natural disasters successfully. http://bit.ly/h8Xj7zIncreased border security http://bit.ly/1JQDGz9Ordered and oversaw the Navy SEALS operation that killed Osama bin Laden.http://bit.ly/jChpgwEstablished the Homeland Security Partnership Council, to enhance the nation’s ability to “address homeland security priorities, from responding to natural disasters to preventing terrorism, by utilizing diverse perspectives, skills, tools, and resources.”http://1.usa.gov/VJjLXOSigned agreement with Afghanistan to end war, turn security over to Afghans.http://nyti.ms/1xSjgBdBreaking with recent presidential tradition, instead of just attacking Syria in the wake of chemical weapons attacks on Syrians, Obama ordered a full report on the decision-making process. http://cbsn.ws/184RFguInstead of holding hearings and creating a political football, he quietly captured a suspect who actually committed the Benghazi terrorist attack. http://wapo.st/1jFlmzv He is also getting a lot of useful information from the suspect. http://nyti.ms/UfE2KaInstituted rules to order sanctions against individuals and groups that threaten national cybersecurity. http://1.usa.gov/1HWcGMGImproved Education and Educational OpportunitiesThrough the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, invested heavily in elementary, secondary and post-secondary education. http://1.usa.gov/gGRIArCreated the Race to the Top program, which encouraged states to come up with effective school reforms and rewards the best of them. http://bit.ly/NHtZ7LOversaw major expansion of broadband availability in K-12 schools nationwide.http://bit.ly/fNDcj3Oversaw major expansion in school construction. http://bit.ly/fYwNrVThrough the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, put $5 billion into early education, including Head Start. http://1.usa.gov/tzT2RrSigned the Democratic-sponsored Post-9/11 GI Bill, also known as GI Bill 2.0, to improve veterans’ access to education. http://bit.ly/hPhG7JOversaw expansion of the Pell Grants program, to expand opportunity for low and middle income students to go to college. http://bit.ly/hI6tXzSigned and implemented the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which provided an extra $12.2 billion in funds. http://1.usa.gov/dQvtUeTook major new steps to protect students from ineffective for-profit colleges through “gainful employment” measures, whereby schools have to demonstrate that its students actually find work to get federal aid. http://1.usa.gov/jkzQe2Repeatedly increased funding for student financial aid, and at the same time cut the banks completely out of the process, thus us creating greater accountability.http://bit.ly/gYWd30 http://bit.ly/e9c7Dr http://bit.ly/eEzTNqReformed student loan program, to make it possible for students to refinance at a lower rate. http://nyti.ms/dMvHOtCreated a rating system for colleges, so that those applying for student financial aid know better what they’re paying for. http://bit.ly/14Dn7ULRestored the Adult View on Science and TechnologyCreated a Presidential Memorandum to restore scientific integrity in government decision-making. http://1.usa.gov/g2SDuwOpened up the process for fast-tracking patent approval for green energy projects.http://bit.ly/j0KV2UThrough the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, committed more federal funding, about $18 billion, to support non-defense science and research labs. http://nyti.ms/fTs9t7Obama EPA reversed research ethics standards which allowed humans to be used as “guinea pigs” in tests of the effects of chemicals, to comply with numerous codes of medical ethics. http://bit.ly/bKgqdSConducted a cyberspace policy review. http://1.usa.gov/gmbdvCProvided financial support for private sector space programs. http://bit.ly/fn8ucrOversaw enhanced earth mapping, to provide valuable data for agricultural, educational, scientific, and government use. http://bit.ly/dNTRyPThrough American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, provided $500 million for Health Professions Training Programs. http://bit.ly/ecQSgAIncreased funding for community-based prevention programs. http://bit.ly/frMPG3Expanded space exploration and discovery options to include more players.http://1.usa.gov/13qmZpmThrough the Connect America Fund, pushed through and received FCC approval for a move of $8 billion in subsidies away from telephone landlines to assist lower-income rural families in accessing broadband. http://lat.ms/vhRUEs http://bit.ly/129V3SYIn the wake of the West Fertilizer tragedy, formed the Chemical Safety and Security Working Group, to work on measures to prevent another such events.http://1.usa.gov/18kHSlAEstablished a Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, a recommendation made by the 9/11 Commission, to coordinate efforts to fight cyber-crime and terrorism. http://1.usa.gov/1A0aEoSThe Obama FCC, with his leadership, adopted strong net neutrality rules, to keep the Internet open and equal for everyone. http://fcc.us/1MhTlIAOrdered rules to speed up deployment of a more comprehensive broadband infrastructure.http://1.usa.gov/M7rVpeSet up a National Strategic Computing Initiative, to “maximize benefits of high-performance computing (HPC) research, development, and deployment.” http://1.usa.gov/1IN3FZaOrdered a federal level change in national earthquake standards.http://1.usa.gov/1T5wGoRImproved Our HealthEliminated Bush-era restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, and provided increased federal support for biomedical and stem cell research. http://bit.ly/h36SSOhttp://ti.me/edezgeSigned Democratic-sponsored Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Act, the first comprehensive attempt to improve the lives of Americans living with paralysis.http://bit.ly/fOi2rbExpanded the Nurse-Family Partnership program, which provides home visits by trained registered nurses to low-income expectant mothers and their families, to cover more first-time mothers. http://bit.ly/jRRRJc\Along with Democrats in Congress, ushered through and signed a bill authorizing FDA to regulate tobacco and order tobacco companies to disclose their ingredients and to ban cigarettes falsely labeled as “light.” http://on.msnbc.com/fiKViBHas overseen a 50% decrease in cost of prescription drugs for seniors.http://bit.ly/e5b1iq http://1.usa.gov/fVNkt9Eliminated the Bush-era practice of forbidding Medicare from negotiating with drug companies on price. http://bit.ly/fOkG5bTwo weeks after taking office, signed Democratic-sponsored Children’s Health Insurance Reauthorization Act, which increased the number of children covered by health insurance by 4 million. http://bit.ly/fDEzGvUrged Congress to investigate Anthem Blue Cross for raising premiums 39% without explanation. http://yhoo.it/e8Tj9CPushed through and signed Affordable Care Act, which expanded health insurance coverage greatly and ended many detrimental insurance company practices. He also established Get 2016 health coverage. Health Insurance Marketplace . http://www.healthcare.gov/Through ACA, allowed children to be covered under their parents’ policy until they turned 26. http://nyti.ms/fNB26VThrough the ACA, provided tax breaks to allow 3.5 million small businesses to provide health insurance to their employees. http://nyti.ms/fNB26VThrough the ACA, millions of people receive help in paying their health insurance company premiums. http://nyti.ms/fNB26VThrough the ACA, expanded Medicaid to those making up to 133% of the federal poverty level. http://nyti.ms/ekMWpo (Note: except for those states whose Republicans refused to take the extra money.)By 2014, the Affordable Care Act dropped the number of uninsured Americans by 22.3%, which amounts to more than 10.3 million people with insurance who didn’t have it before. Only 13.9% of Americans are uninsured, a drop from 18.9% in 2013. http://on.msnbc.com/1r4kjGnThe Affordable Care Act has increased the life expectancy of Medicare greatly.http://on.wsj.com/1yuNco6Through the ACA, health insurance companies now have to disclose how much of your premium actually goes to pay for patient care. http://nyti.ms/fNB26VMedicare costs actually declined slightly, for the first time in decades in 2011, according to the Congressional Budget Office. http://1.usa.gov/oMxpThSince passage of the ACA, health care inflation is at its lowest level since 1960.http://1.usa.gov/1vXR0LdCreated the HIV Care Continuum Initiative, to strengthen the government’s ability to respond to the continuing domestic HIV epidemic, after years of Republicans weakening the government’s ability to deal with the crisis. http://1.usa.gov/1iLED0tSigned bill that will provide health insurance premium support to workers who lose their health insurance due to foreign competition. http://bit.ly/1evvVDFIn response to the confusion triggered by the asinine Hobby Lobby decision, which essentially declared that corporations could have “religious rights” and lord them over employees, created new rules to give all women with insurance the right to free birth control. http://on.wsj.com/1O44a1tImplemented the National HIV/AIDS Strategy for 2015-2020, which is a follow-up to the first such strategy in US history, which he implemented in 2010. http://1.usa.gov/1IXknHmSigned and will implement new child safety standards for e-cigarettes.http://bit.ly/1XaFCISSet up a White House Cancer Moonshot Task Force, in order to implement ways to develop a cure for cancer. http://1.usa.gov/20AeKY4Addressed the Environment While Dealing with Energy NeedsDoubled federal spending on clean energy research. http://bit.ly/iN0sCEPushed through a tax credit to help people buy plug-in hybrid cars. http://bit.ly/j8UP5YCreated a program to develop renewable energy projects on the waters of our Outer Continental Shelf that will produce electricity from wind, wave, and ocean currents.http://1.usa.gov/fgfRWqReengaged in the climate change and greenhouse gas emissions agreements talks, and proposed one himself. He also addressed the U.N. Climate Change Conference, officially reversing the Bush era stance that climate change was a “hoax.” http://bit.ly/dX6Vj3 http://bit.ly/fE2PxK http://nyti.ms/hfeqvvFully supported the initial phase of the creation of a legally-binding treaty to reduce mercury emissions worldwide. http://bit.ly/eJ6QOORequired states to provide incentives to utilities to reduce their energy consumption. http://bit.ly/lBhk7PUnder Obama, our dependence on foreign oil has dropped to its lowest rate since 1985, and continues to drop. http://1.usa.gov/1p6kTUyMeanwhile, oil consumption is way down because of reduced driving and higher mileage standards. http://ti.me/1z4HFG8Improved siting, review and permitting stations for power plants, in an attempt to seriously improve the nation’s electric grid. http://1.usa.gov/1l8zNqnReengaged in a number of treaties and agreements designed to protect the Antarctic.http://bit.ly/fzQUFOCreated tax write-offs for purchases of hybrid and electric vehicles. http://bit.ly/glCukVEstablished a quadrennial review of our energy infrastructure, to encourage a modernization of the grid, and to encourage the transition away from fossil fuel use. http://1.usa.gov/1nx2oMoMandated that federal government fleet purchases be for fuel-efficient American vehicles, and encouraged that federal agencies support experimental, fuel-efficient vehicles.http://1.usa.gov/hmUSbk http://1.usa.gov/fLWq5chttp://bit.ly/h5KZqyEncouraged BP to pay $20 billion to establish Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, to reduce the need for taxpayer funds to be used for compensation and clean up.http://wapo.st/ds2BxT (Note: it took 20 years to get $1.3 billion for the Exxon Valdez spill. )Oversaw and pushed through an amendment to the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 authorizing advances from Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.http://1.usa.gov/yTRYVoActively tried to amend the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 to eliminate the liability limits for those companies responsible for large oil spills. http://nyti.ms/bxjDi3Became the first President to simply say “Climate Change is a fact,” and set up the first federal government protocols for dealing with the impacts of climate change. http://1.usa.gov/1b7V67BInitiated Criminal and Civil inquiries into the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.http://nyti.ms/bVuB7aAsserted federal legal supremacy to bar Texas from authorizing new refinery permits on its own.http://bit.ly/ww8eMdSet up new, stricter standards limiting power plant emissions. http://1.usa.gov/1mML2M3Strengthened the Endangered Species Act. http://bit.ly/hscjsHStrengthened protection for wildlife, and expanded enforcement of laws against wildlife trafficking. http://1.usa.gov/1fce1AiObama EPA improved boiler safety standards to improve air quality, and save 6500 lives per year. http://bit.ly/jYH7ntThrough the EPA, attemped to take steps to severely limit the use of antibiotics in livestock feed, to increase their efficacy in humans. http://bit.ly/fBuWd2Through new EPA regulations, he created a pretext for closing the dirtiest power plants in the country, by limiting emissions of mercury and other toxic gasses. http://bit.ly/rQCIgAIncreased funding for National Parks and Forests by 10% http://bit.ly/fbJPjYAnnounced greatly improved commercial fuel efficiency standards.http://1.usa.gov/oQiC1KAnnounced a huge increase in average fuel economy standards from 27.5mpg in 2010 to 35.5mpg starting in 2016 and 54.5 starting in 2025 http://1.usa.gov/qtghsWFacilitated investment in industrial energy efficiency to create jobs and strengthen US manufacturing while saving businesses $100 billion over a decade.http://1.usa.gov/WsIgbxSet up the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council to oversee Gulf Coast restoration efforts after the 2010 BP oil spill. The money to fund the restoration efforts comes from fines against BP. http://1.usa.gov/Rxjb29Engaged in the most comprehensive plan to combat climate change in a generation.http://bit.ly/13lXhETOrdered energy plants to prepare to produce at least 15% of all energy through renewable resources like wind and solar, by 2021. http://reut.rs/fV155pOversaw the creation of an initiative that converts old factories and manufacturing centers into new clean technology centers. http://bit.ly/mjnq2RGuided a 418% increase in solar power capacity between 2010 and 2014. http://bit.ly/1rHkWJCAs of May 2015, 74% of new electrical capacity was provided by solar and wind power. http://bit.ly/1T5r0LCBypassed Congress and ordered EPA to begin regulating and measuring carbon emissions.http://bit.ly/froaP5Oversaw a tripling in the use of wind power to generate electricity. The US now leads the world in increased wind power capacity. http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5448Ordered the federal government to incorporate climate resilience and climate science into all international development in which the United States engages. http://1.usa.gov/YV1EpWFast-tracked regulations to allow states to enact fuel efficiency standards that exceeded federal standards. http://nyti.ms/e8e94xFast-tracked increased fuel economy standards for vehicles beginning with the 2011 model year. It was the first time such standards had been increased in more than a decade.http://politi.co/hiaPKMOversaw establishment of an Energy Partnership for the Americas, to create more markets for American-made biofuels and green energy technologies. http://bit.ly/lZp73yObama EPA reversed a Bush-era decision to allow the largest mountaintop removal project in US history. http://bit.ly/lP3yELOrdered the Department of Energy to implement more aggressive efficiency standards for common household appliances. http://1.usa.gov/g3MTbuObama EPA ruled that excess CO2 is a pollutant. http://bit.ly/iQTSNNClosed a deal with China to limit carbon emissions to slow down climate change. http://nyti.ms/1xzyS8KBlocked all oil and gas drilling in Bristol Bay, Alaska, one of the most pristine environments in North America http://lat.ms/13xUVFDSigned an Executive Order to improve environmental efforts in the Arctic region and to combat climate change by better coordinating the efforts of the 23 federal agencies operating in the area. http://usat.ly/ZEzLzEVetoed a bill to fast track construction of the parallel Keystone XL pipeline.http://nbcnews.to/1DVDFo7Expanded clean water regulations to more stringently protect all of the nation’s waterways, even when states fail in their duty. http://bit.ly/1RdQpTcSigned an Executive Order committing the federal government to lead the way in building a sustainable economy. It’s his fifth doing just that. http://1.usa.gov/1EzO2neBanned the use of antibiotics in food served in US Government-run cafeterias and ordered agencies to only use antibiotic-free meat. http://bit.ly/1G1vUxi http://bit.ly/1KHkl4NDeveloped new rules to address climate change and to create a significant boost to clean energy. http://bit.ly/1UnQcuRNegotiated and signed a virtually Republican-Proof global agreement on climate change, with 190 countries signing on. http://bit.ly/1RkjVG8Became one of 196 countries that signed onto a UN Framework on Climate Change.http://unfccc.int/2860.phpOrdered a moratorium on new coal leasing on federal land, and they will examine the whole leasing process. http://wapo.st/23Q6en8There’s a Lot More!Nominated Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. Sotomayor is the first Hispanic Justice in the court’s history, and the women represent only the third and fourth women to serve on the court, out of a total of 112 justices.http://huff.to/eOChg6http://bit.ly/i02wgPAppointed the most diverse Cabinet in history, including more women than any other incoming president. http://bit.ly/dX6vNBLoosened the rules and allowed the 14 states that legalized medical marijuana to regulate themselves without federal interference. http://huff.to/eQfa7jSigned national service legislation, increasing funding for national service groups, including triple the size of the Americorps program. http://bit.ly/idgQH5Signed a bill that provided $4.3 billion in additional assistance to 9/11 first responders.http://bit.ly/o7cWYSSigned the Claims Resolution Act, which provided $4.6 billion in funding for a legal settlement with black and Native American farmers who had been cheated out of government loans and natural resource royalties in the past. http://1.usa.gov/dGppUaTo help those communities devastated by Hurricane Sandy, issued an executive order setting up the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force, and asked Congress to approve $60 billion in supplemental assistance to aid in storm recovery. http://1.usa.gov/134L7hlProduced 23 Executive actions designed to make it easier for law enforcement to identify those who shouldn’t have guns, thus helping them enforce the law.http://on.wsj.com/SX9xaZExpanded trade agreements to include stricter labor and environmental agreements in trade pacts like NAFTA. http://bit.ly/etznpYOversaw funding of the design of a new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History, which is scheduled to open on the National Mall in 2015. He protected the funding during budget negotiations.http://on.fb.me/fD0EVO http://bit.ly/ff5LuvOversaw and passed increased funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.http://bit.ly/dFb8qF”And Did You Know?Despite the characterizations of some, Obama’s success rate in winning congressional votes on issues was an unprecedented 96.7% for his first year in office. Though he is often cited as superior to Obama, President Lyndon Johnson’s success rate in 1965 was only 93%.http://n.pr/i3d7cYAnd of course…Despite the odds, became the first black president, and then was reelected by a wide margin of the population.

There is no simple clear cut answer to this is going to be a long one. Our problems long began before CPEC and CPEC has little to do with what’s fundamentally wrong with the Pakistani economy.First, the state of the economy:When asked about worsening fiscal position where the deficit escalated to 8.9 percent of GDP for last fiscal year, the government said that out of total collected tax revenue of Rs3.8 trillion, debt servicing consumed Rs2.1 trillion and then after providing share to provinces, the government had to borrow to meet defence, development and running of the government expenditure.A comparison of macro-indicators at end fiscal year 2018 with FY 2019 suggests that there has been a fast track deterioration of the economic situation during the last one year of the PTI rule.The following are the key indicators showing how things have gone wrong with the Pakistan’s economy.- GDP growth was recorded at 5.8 percent in 2018. As a result of slowdown in economy, growth rate for 2019 is expected to be 3 percent or even less.- Fiscal deficit has increased to Rs3.4 trillion at the end of June 2019 compared to Rs2.2 trillion when PML-N government left in June 2018. Amount wise this is the largest ever deficit in our history. In terms of percentage, fiscal deficit has been recorded at 8.9 percent compared to 6.6 percent on June end 2018. As percentage of GDP, 8.9 percent is the highest in last 30 years and 8.9 percent also has to be seen against PTI’s own set target of 5.1 percent in September last year. Missing the target by miles reflect complete lack of understanding on the part of PTI’s economic team. The high fiscal deficit has a direct consequence on the amount of borrowing as the following debt numbers will reflect.- Total debt and liabilities on the end of June 2018 was Rs30 trillion, which has now gone up to Rs40 trillion. This is the largest ever increase in debt and liabilities in one year. Pakistan’s total debt and liabilities in first 71 years was Rs30 trillion but under PTI government, one third more has been accumulated. This is unprecedented and reflects poor management of expenditure and revenue. If the trend continues like this, it is feared, the whole economic structure would collapse as our economy will not be able to sustain this.- Tax revenue was at a record level at more than Rs3,800 billion in 2018. First time in Pakistan history, tax revenue didn’t register any increase during 2019. During PML-N Government’s five years, the tax revenue increased 20 percent per annum in 4 out of 5 years. This was in spite of extremely low inflation and without significant devaluation - the two factors that automatically help increase tax revenues. It is said that the current revenue target of Rs5,550 billion seems very difficult to be achieved. It’s about 44 percent higher than the last year’s actual collection.- Inflation was at a record low at 3.9 percent in 2018. Last inflation figure reported by the present government is 10.3 percent.- SBP policy (interest) rate was 6.50 percent in mid-2018. It has been to 13.25 percent by the PTI government.- Stock Market was 42,847 at end PML-N government. It’s now hovering around 30,000 after touching 28,000.- Foreign exchange reserves were $15,913 million (SBP reserves $9,510 million) at end of PML-N government. Now it’s $15,630 (SBP reserves $8,271 million). This is in spite of around $12 billion obtained from friendly countries and IMF in last one year.- The only positive thing happened during the last one year is that the current account deficit which improved during PTI government. It was $19,897 million (6.3 percent of GDP) during 2018 fiscal year. It’s now $13,508 million (4.8 percent of GDP) in 2019. It’s ideal to reduce current account deficit by increasing exports. That has the best impact on the economy. The government, however, did it without increasing exports but due to reduction in imports. It is said that the policy to impact imports has considerably slowed down the economy.- Compared to GDP of $313 billion in 2018, our GDP has come down to $280 billion - a reduction of $33 billion only to achieve reduction of $4 billion in imports.- As a result of GDP decline, per capita GDP has gone down by more than 8 percent.- Large scale manufacturing has had negative growth during last one year.- Agriculture growth was less than 1 percent.- Massive currency devaluation took place with rupee going from 116 by end of PML-N government to around 160. This is the largest devaluation in last several decades with significant downside impact on our economy.- FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) has plummeted and is down by more than 50 percent.- As a result of significant reduction in growth and high inflation, the common Pakistani has been the worst affected. In last one year, more than 45 lac people have gone below the poverty line. In addition more than 15 lac people have lost their jobs.According to official projections, the GDP growth is expected to be around 2.4 percent while inflation will be in the range of 13 percent to 15 percent. The discount rate is expected to go further up in the range of 15 percent-16 percent.As a result, during the present fiscal year about five million people will go below the poverty line. This is on top of 4.5 million people who suffered this misery past one year. With declining growth rate, another 1.5 million or more Pakistanis will become unemployed.In the first two years of PTI rule, it is feared that about three million Pakistanis will become unemployed as against the party’s commitment of providing 10 million jobs over five years.Economic situation going from bad to worseThe Executive Summary is as follows:The debt crises of Pakistan began long before CPEC was even conceptualized. Pakistan currently is in the intial stages of a debt trap but to say it’s because of CPEC is a bad application of the correlation equaling causation fallacy.Pakistan’’s debt trap is due to its incredible inefficient and badly thought out government spending which is directed more towards plugging in leakages in it’s projects and public sector enterprises rather than meaningful investments for growth that lead to a high ROI in the future. Along with a non existent tax base that is actually shrinking even further.Lets go over the timeline first:Source: Pakistan’s Public debtSource: Pakistan’s Public debtThe following are the key insights to take away from this:CPEC was formally announced in April 2015. But Pakistan’s debt problem began in the 2007–2009 period, long before CPEC was announced.The primary cause of Pakistan’s debt is domestic debt rather than external debt. This is telling for a few reasons: External debt is normally tied to development projects. So a high external debt means that the country is borrowing loans from abroad to fund domestic development projects that spur growth and have good ROIs in the future that our coming generations can take advantage of.However, our external debt profile has not changed much. It’s our domestic debt that has sky rocketed. Domestic debt is tied closely to the government meeting it’s fiscal deficits or current expenditures. That is, the government is borrowing money from local banks or printing its own money just to meet it’s day to day expenditure.It’s ok for governments to take loans from abroad to fund major development projects and then pass on the debt for those projects to future generations as they will reap the harvest and return for those projects and it will lead to a betterment in their lives.If I borrow money today to buy a car for my son, I can make the payments for it as long as i live and then pass on the remaining to my son since he can take advantage of the car as well.But if i borrow money to pay for my booze and cigarettes and then pass on the debt i incurred for those to my son, I have curtailed his spending power in the future without passing on any meaningful betterment in his life in the future.That’s unfortunately what the Pakistan government has been doing: Borrowing from local banks to finance its day to day expenditures.Actually, we are currently borrowing to fund our entire defense, development and government administrative expenditures after paying back our debt obligations and our shares to the provinces.This has crowded out the private sector from bank capital for loans in order to grow their business as the banks would prefer to lend to the government as a safer bet. So the private sector growth has slowed leading to a lower tax revenue from businesses.Imran Khan has always been quite vocal about how Pakistan’s main problem is corruption, people not paying taxes and wealth stashed abroad. $200 billion stashed abroad in Swiss banks, which when bought back could be used to pay off our debt. Apparently the figure has been revised down to $12.5 billion and even that has not been bough back.As far as taxes go, the government keeps coming up with stats like “If every Pakistani paid 1000 rupees we could do blah blah blah”. Has Mr. Khan ever toured the rural countries from his Bani Gala residence? Nearly half of our population is below the age of 18 and earning below $2 a day. Where exactly are they supposed to scrounge up the money.Corruption then gets dragged in. I can honestly say anti-corruption drives in Pakistan and “Accountability” is used more as a political tool to keep civilian elected politicians in line more than anything. The Judiciary and Military and Civil service seem surprisingly immune from them.Also, Pakistan ranks on the same level of corruption as Vietnam which is growing at a rate of 6.8% and destined for a new Asian tiger ranking.The problem in Pakistan is legalized corruption: Where the law permits expenditures that the state has no business indulging in.An officers mess hall spending lakhs of rupees to upgrade the air conditioning of their living room and another few lakhs to maintain a pretty lawn outisde, it’s not considered corruption in Pakistan. But it is a waste.When the Director of some third rate government insitution gets a free fuel, a driver, a car, a house and perks and privileges in his formalized salary and work benefits, it’s not corruption. But it is a waste.We’ve restricted our scope to corruption because the idea of Zardari getting a 10% cut on a submarine deal or Sheikh Rashid accepting money bribes under the table inflames our passions. But most of the corruption in Pakistan doesn’t happen like that. Most of the corruption in Pakistan wouldn’t even be considered corruption.Its in the forms of perks, benefits, cars, drivers, petrol subsidies, free housing and countless other benefits distributed among elites and their networks of patronage which encompass millions of supporters for different political factions and entities.When the government distributes massive amounts of funds for discretionary spending by parliamentarians in their districts and said funds are spent on schools with no teachers, roads with no bidding and other pointless activities designed more to distribute resources among followers than actual growth, i have to ask if a poor country like ours can afford this.Pakistan’s problem isn’t a low tax base or corruption. It’s systemic waste. Legalized waste. Of precious tax payer money.On SOEs that run into billions of rupees in losses. On development projects that are offer no clear return on investments. Ghost schools. Inflated and bloated state organizations and their salaries. And countless other forms of legalized waste.Pakistan’s government institutions are often classified as “rent seeking” for a reason: they are still mired in the colonial era structures left behind by the British. The state was designed by the British colonialists to extract resources for the industrialization of England, to purchase the loyalty of local clan chiefs and tribal leaders who were loyal to the crown and to enable the aristocratic lifestyles of the ruling elite.We have barely gone beyond that way of thinking and the state currently continues to perpetuate it’s rent seeking strategy with long term economic plans being developed but continuously disrupted by political turmoil.And the political turmoil itself also bears discussion: The establishment would always prefer a weak parliament where no party has a strong majority so that civilian officials are unable to surmount a challenge to the unelected establishment.Unfortunately, weak civilian governments make weak economic policies since they are unable to gather the political will needed for tough economic measures. Especially when establishment agents are lurking around the corner to sponsor protests that cut civil leaders down to size.The military dictatorships often don’t fare much better either. While benefiting from massive amounts of US military and civil aid, their economic policies are not superior to the civilians despite protestations to the contrary.Actually, if you look at it from the data centric viewpoint, the PPP was actually the government from the 2000 to present day period that performed best in terms of boosting exports, and that too in a tough global environment during the 2008–2009 recession era.Which political party has been the best for Pakistan's economy? Trade stats reveal allOne of the core problems causing the debt crises in Pakistan is the current account deficit where imports have outstripped exports resulting in pressure on Pakistan’s dollar reserves when servicing foreign payments and debt obligations. Growing exports are a vital way to resolve this issue and to manage debt levels. Note that Pakistan’s current account deficit began during the Musharraf era and got carried on from there.Even if the trade deficit is growing, this is not necessarily a bad thing if the deficit is because of development related activities where machinery and infrastructure is being imported instead of luxury items like bulletproof BMWs (which the government imported massive quantities of). Countries like Turkey also have significant trade deficits but their trade deficits are due to productive imports that boost local economic growth.Also, the way that Pakistan has tried to reduce the current account defecit in terms of trade has been through constant currency devaluations in order to make exports more competitive. This policy has been consistently failing for a decade. Pakistan’s exports are noncompetitive because we have some of the highest electricity rates for our textile factories and other businesses. And we have failed to invest enough in small technology firms that could have made a niche out for themselves as businesses that dont require much upfront capital investment but offer immense revenues in dollar denominated currencies.Pakistan’s largest resource pool right now is its young population and if we properly trained and educated even a fraction of them and helped them set up local companies or exported them as talented man power, we could boost our exports enormously. Right now our primary foreign exchange is coming in the form of remittances.But instead we keep devaluing the currency and manage to increase maybe $500 million to $1 billion increase in exports and 3–4 billion USD decrease in imports?While inflating our debt obligations by almost 40–50%, shaving $30–35 billion USD off of our economy, choking imports and reducing economic activity to a low 2–3%?For $4 billion in account deficit reduction?In any case, growing exports won’t do much when they are matched with increasing borrowing from local banks due to high government expenditures that are mostly to cover for massive losses from 5 key elements:The five real fault-lines in the rupee-based economy are:the Rs1.7 trillion circular debtRs1.6 trillion leakages in Public Sector Enterprises (PSEs)trillion-rupee leakages in public procurement projects$2 billion leakage in the gas sectorThe Rs734 billion debt in the government’s commodity operations.These are the five sectors that need wholesale reforms. And, these are the five serious fault-lines where our reform basket is absolutely empty (resulting in the skyrocketing of our debt to Rs40 trillion).Source: ContinuityThere is no point in talking about increasing the tax base when these massive leakages in government revenue exist. It’s akin to pouring water in a jug with a hole at the bottom.Imran Khan has looked at the yawning deficits and declared austerity on the solution to our problems.Government expenditures are being slashed, the monetary policy tightened and more taxes being imposed.Thing about the tax revenue increase programs this past decade is is that they always have the same story: Government announces new tax, agriculture and retail push back, the government withdraws the tax plan and tries to squeeze out more taxes from the current, already squeezed small tax base. This leads to current tax payers start to find ways to avoid taxes and leads to tax base actually shrinking.Which is whats happening right now.Also, the imposition of taxes on retail sector has been done in the worst way possible: Indirect taxation, which is always just passed on to the end user and leads to sky rocketing inflation while eating into the already tiny margins of retailers like street vendors.Tell me: What exactly is the point of maintaining humongous tax drains like the Federal Bureau of revenue when they are incapable of collecting taxes directly from tax payers?And in some places, we area actually spending Rs 1000 to collect Rs. 100 in tax…The failure to develop an adequate tax base combined with incredibly wasteful government expenditures is at the heart of our current economic crises, not CPEC.The tendency to blame China for Pakistan’s debt problems is an angle pushed far more from Washington, New Delhi and Tokyo than anywhere else simply because that narrative suits their strategic interests.And while the irony of the Indian government excusing Pakistan’s poor economic management causing debt to blame China instead is not lost on me, it’s simply not true.As the Pakistani public is well aware of by now, crisis interventions by outside donors are no more than a stopgap solution to what has become a chronic problem: Pakistan, for all intents and purposes, does not have a tax base. Only about 1 percent of the population pays income tax. According to an IMF working paper authored by Serhan Cevik in 2016, Pakistan had a “tax revenue gap” equivalent to 10 percent of national GDP (or roughly $28 billion in 2016) and could potentially double its tax revenue-to-GDP ratio.While not even high-income countries manage to collect the full total of their potential tax revenues, the paper pointed out that Pakistan’s collection rate falls “significantly below” even countries of comparable circumstances. Not much has changed in the last two years. Pakistan’s Federal Board of Revenue confessed this past June that it would miss its original revenue collection target for the 2017-2018 fiscal year by 162 billion rupees ($1.32 billion).Until it builds an adequate tax base, Pakistan’s fiscal stability will continue to rely on outside donors. In other words: there won’t be any fiscal stability.Wanted: A Solid Tax Base in PakistanIn any case, the only thing Imran Khan has done is to impost MORE taxes on the already burdened tax base which is small enough as it is. And the reaction to that has been current tax payers taking their money abroad or finding ways to hide it because even they have reached their breaking point.Meanwhile vast swathes of the underground economy remain untaxed. Indirect taxation continues to be favored over direct taxation. Small businesses are seeing their already small margins shrink.And the end result of this sad story is that the FBR has recorded its lowest recent revenue collection in the near past. And our tax base, small as it is, is actually declining now.The Catastrophe of the IMFI could not have said anything better than what has been said by Mr. Abdul Sattar in his incredible take down of the disaster that has been the IMF and it’s economic policies. The IMF is a rapacious institution run to serve imperialist resource extraction projects across the globe and to think the IMF and it’s packages are solution to our problems is a folly beyond imagining. And the dark past of the IMF’s “austerity” mantra has a long track record of wrecking developing world economies.Long but worthy read:The US's voting share in in the IMF is 17.16 percent and in the World Bank 16.41 percent. Japan holds the next highest voting shares with 6.27 percent and 7.87 percent respectively. Washington also has the unique privilege of appointing the president of the World Bank and is the only country entitled to a permanent place among the Bank’s executive directors.So, it is no surprise that these institutions were employed as a tool to serve the interests of the global hegemon, punishing states that dared to challenge the rapaciousness of Western capitalism. For instance Salvador Allende, the first elected socialist leader of Chile, infuriated the US and its Western allies by asserting that his country should take care of its own natural resources and run the economy. This did not go down well with the arrogant modern imperial powers that are then said to have forced the World Bank to stop giving loans to the elected government in 1972, triggering an economic chaos that culminated in a military coup. Soon after the coup, the doors were opened for military dictator General Pinochet, whose brutal regime not only assassinated Allende but also decimated up to 130,000 Chileans in a 17-year despotic rule. The World Bank showered $350.5 million between on Chile 1973 and 1976, almost 13 times the $27.7 million it gave during the three-year Allende presidency.Integration of the developing countries' economies was also one of the main purposes of these institutions. To achieve this, they came up with the idea of the Structural Adjustment Programme that sought to pressure the Third World countries into privatizing industries and the service sector, cutting in government spending, liberalizing capital markets (which leads to unstable trading in currencies), promoting market-based pricing (which tends to raise the cost of basic goods) and raising interest rates.The World Bank instituted its SAPs in 1980 and the IMF imposed them in 1986. According to a research paper by Asad Sami, during 1980-93, 70 developing countries were subjected to 566 stabilization and structural adjustment programmes – with disastrous consequences. The author claims that between 1984 and 1990, Third World countries under SAPs transferred $178 billion to Western commercial banks. The enormous capital drain prompted Morris Miller, a Canadian former World Bank director, to remark, “Not since the Conquistadors plundered Latin America has the world experienced such a flow in the direction we see today." Such policies led to the stagnation of growth in developing countries besides doubling their debt burden to over $1.5 trillion by the end of the 1980s, doubling again to $3 trillion by the end of the 1990s.The ruling elite of the Western capitalist world ruthlessly exploited the developing countries, especially those of Latin America and Africa. To understand how such policies ruined the lives of millions across the world, one needs to see what happened in Peru, Mexico and other parts of the globe. In 1990, an IMF-sponsored stabilization package produced catastrophic consequences in Peru. Within no time fuel prices increased 31 times – by 2,968 percent – and that of bread 12 times – by 1,150 percent. The prices of most basic food staples increased by six or seven times – 446 percent in a single month – yet wages had already been compressed by 80 percent in the period prior to the adoption of these measures in August 1990. IMF SAPs were first imposed on Mexico in 1982 and by 1992 infant deaths due to malnutrition tripled, the minimum wage fell by 60 percent and the percentage of the population living in poverty rose from less than half to more than two-thirds.Such policies also hit Africa. The situation of the continent was not rosy prior to the arrival of the international monetary institutions in 1980 but even then during 1960-1980, Sub Saharan Africa’s GDP per capita grew by 36 percent. Between the 1980s and 2000s, it actually fell by 15 percent. Dictation by the international monetary institutions led to the rise of rampant poverty and by 2015, 413 million people were living on less than $1.90 a day. Despite following these anti-people policies, the average life expectancy for Sub Saharan Africa is only 47 years (the lowest in the world), a drop of 15 years since 1980. Forty percent of the population suffers from malnutrition that causes low birth weight among infants and stunts growth in children.Advocates of a free market economy could brag about the increasing trade that the mineral rich continent witnessed from 1989 to 1999. It is estimated that Sub Saharan Africa’s trade as a percentage of GDP (a key indicator of globalization) increased from 78.1 percent to 95.6 percent; in dollar terms, trade grew from $175 billion in 1990 to $187 billion in 1999; for the same period, foreign direct investment jumped from $923 million to $7.9 billion in 1999.But contrary to the tall claims of international monetary institutions, export expansion and rising foreign investment in Africa neither increased growth nor reduced poverty or debt. In reality, most African exports are raw materials, and non-oil commodity prices dropped by 35 percent on average from 1997 and 2004. Tax holidays and profit repatriation might have helped foreign companies to accumulate immense wealth but made very little difference to the lives of millions of Africans.Per capita income, one of the tools to measures the development of a country, also fell between 1980 – when SAPs were imposed on 36 of Sub-Saharan Africa’s 47 countries – and 2004. It fell for most Sub Saharan countries by 25 percent during the 1980s and for 18 countries these incomes were lower in 1999 than in 1975. In 1960, Sub-Saharan Africa’s per capita income was about one-ninth of that in high-income OECD countries; by 1998, it had deteriorated dramatically to about 1/18.Africa’s external debt has increased by more than 500 percent since 1980, to $417 billion in 2017. SAPs have transferred more than $229 billion in debt payments from Sub-Saharan Africa to the West since 1980. Africa spends four times more on debt interest payments than on healthcare. This combined with cutbacks in social expenditure caused healthcare spending in the 42 poorest African countries to fall by 50 percent during the 1980s. More than 200 million Africans have no access to health services as hundreds of clinics, hospitals and medical facilities have been closed.The catastrophic impacts of the policies imposed by international monetary institutions were not confined to Africa and Latin America, as discussed in the first part of this article; they also played havoc with the lives of millions in Asia and other parts of the world as well. In Asia, the IMF and the World Bank first encouraged financial liberalization that partly led to the financial crisis in South East Asia during the decade of the 1990s, and they then prescribed a disastrous recipe to address this crisis.Several experts believe that the crisis was caused in large part by South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia's heavy reliance on short-term foreign loans and openness to hot money. When it became apparent in 1997 that private enterprises would not be able to meet their payment obligations, international currency markets panicked and Asian currencies plummeted. What they forget to mention is the ideology of international monetary institutions that encourage the reliance of countries on short-term foreign loans and openness to hot money which help speculators fulfill their gargantuan appetite for profit and money.After pushing these countries towards a crisis, the IMF treated the Asian meltdown like other emergency situations, giving assistance only in exchange for structural adjustment policies, which was totally unnecessary because these states were not facing a budgetary deficit issue. Nonetheless, the fund instructed governments to cut spending, which deepened the economic slowdown. In South Korea, for example, a country whose income approached European levels, unemployment skyrocketed from approximately 3 percent to 10 percent. 'IMF suicides' became common among workers who had lost their jobs and dignity.In Indonesia, the worst-hit country, poverty rates rose from an official level of 11 percent before the crisis to 40-60 percent, and GDP declined by 15 percent in one year. Malaysia stood out as a country that refused IMF assistance and advice. Instead of further opening its economy, Malaysia imposed capital controls, in an effort to eliminate speculative trading in its currency. While the IMF mocked this approach when adopted, the Fund later admitted that it succeeded.The IMF recipe proved to be very disastrous for the common Indonesian who greatly suffered because of the policies imposed by the global financial body. Prior to the 1997-98 financial crisis, Indonesia had a relatively comfortable debt situation. The government borrowed primarily from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and a group of bilateral donors grouped in the Consultative Group on Indonesia (CGI), for funding its development budget. Jakarta approached IMF in 1997 for a $43 billion bailout and within a few years, the bailout turned out to be a great curse for the masses, adding to their miseries and making their lives difficult. In January 2003, the government of the then president Megawati Soekarnoputri raised the prices on fuel (22 percent), telephone (15 percent) and electricity (6 percent). This was happening in a country where inflation was 10 percent in 2002 and more than half of the country's 220 million population lived on less than $2 a day and burdened with more than 40 million unemployed souls.To tide over the crisis, it was suggested that Indonesia should take specific steps to liberalise trade and investment which included: reducing tariffs on all imported food products to five percent and cutting non-agricultural tariffs to 10 percent by 2003; opening banks to foreign ownership by June 1998; and lifting restrictions on foreign banks by February 1998. Despite taking these drastic measures, the country's financial woes did not decrease. The official debt burden increased from 27 percent of GDP prior to the crisis to more than 100 percent by the end of 1999, before declining gradually. In fact Indonesia, which was ranked as middle-income and middle-indebted before the crisis (at the same level as its neighbours, Thailand and the Philippines), came to be ranked as belonging to the SILIC (severely indebted low income countries) category.Such reckless policies also contributed to the immiserating of the people in the Philippines where the government kept domestic wages low at the behest of the international financial bodies. This badly affected the marginalized sectors of society, forcing 54 percent of the population to live in absolute poverty while the government debt service was eating up 50 percent of the national budget.This was the brief history of the disastrous impacts caused by the policies of the global financial institutions. It is difficult to imagine why we still insist on going to such institutions. The policies of international monetary institutions clearly indicate that they seek to benefit the Global North. Their agenda is to facilitate the plundering of third-world countries by the advanced capitalist states. Their mission is not opaque. Their purpose is not mysterious. They are very vocal in making it clear that the Structural Adjustment Programmes are meant to promote the free market. They want developing countries, including Pakistan, to reduce import restrictions, work for the advancement of exports, carry out the privatization of public industries, control wages and leave the social sector at the mercy of market forces.Which of these points could help the economy? Let us begin with privatization. The mantra of selling state concerns was used to convince people that it would help the country repay loans. We started the process of privatization in the 1980s, which gathered pace after the restoration of democracy in 1988. According to the finance ministry our total debt and external liabilities was $20.90 billion in 1990, rising to $38.86 billion in 2007 and $99.1 billion now. We have sold out more than 160 state-run entities since the 1980s, rendering hundreds and thousands of people jobless. Instead of seeing the country free from debt, what we see today is nothing but a phenomenal surge in our external debt and liabilities which is likely to haunt our coming generations for decades or maybe centuries.Did these much-vaunted reforms at the behest of international monetary institutions bring any positive change in the lives of millions of Pakistanis? The answer is not difficult to imagine. While the World Bank claims poverty has been reduced, asserting it fell to 29.5 percent in 2014 from 64.3 percent in 2002, Pakistan’s first ever official report on multidimensional poverty, launched by the PML-N government in 2016, says nearly 39 percent of Pakistanis live in multidimensional poverty. The other social development indicators that were meant to be visible after the economic reforms seem to be nowhere either. The country houses more than 25 million out-of-school children. More than 40 percent of children are stunted. Infant mortality rate was 63.3 deaths per thousand live births in 2018. Eighty percent of diseases are caused by contaminated water which is a rare commodity for the majority of the poor, and Hepatitis has become an epidemic in several parts of the country.Since the arrival of the Tabdeeli Sarkar, inflation has skyrocketed. The prices of petrol and gas have witnessed a phenomenal surge. The champions of employment creation are planning to render tens of thousands workers jobless by privatizing state-run concerns. Given all this, it is more likely that the prescription of the IMF will further add to the miseries. Therefore, it is important that we think of the alternatives. Following the IMF's dictation will do no good. If the advisers of Zardari, Nawaz and Imran are unanimous in seeking help from global financial bodies then the people must realise that they just want to draw to hefty salaries from the public exchequer but want workers' wages to be stagnated. They want to see austerity in the lives of millions of people but would love to stay in five-star hotels and make expensive foreign trips from the taxes of common people. It is time we came up with our own alternative.Source #1 :Is the IMF the cure?Source #2: Is the IMF the cure?We have been under IMF led programs for decades. They said privatize industries, we privatized nearly 160 industries since the 1980s and yet our debt levels have gone up rather than down. We have devalued a currency to the point that it’s 160 rupees to a dollar now, yet our exports are meager while our debt obligations and economic size has shrunk.We shouldn’t blame the IMF: We should blame ourselves. The IMF was never set up to help us. Their macro stabilization programs have had mixed successes and are a generalized template solution that doesn’t take into account region or country specific condition. They apply one size fits all solutions to countries as diverse as Laos, El Salvador. Egypt and Pakistan.The IMF is designed to serve the interests of the people who hold voting shares in it’s board. The IMF conditions and strings that are applied to it’s loan programs are designed to kick down the doors of protections for local, developing economies so they can be rapaciously exploited by American companies and firms. Wages are slashed, social safety nets discarded, taxes on businesses and industries withdrawn, mineral rights given away at throw away prices. The IMF is designed to enable the neo-colonial exploitation of the Global south and has played it’s part in the wealth transfer from the south to the Developed North long after those countries stopped being colonies on paper.It’s time we parted ways with this parasitic institution and looked for home grown solutions and alternative financing institutions like the AIIB.GrowthThe Austerity driven model of economic stabilization proposed by the IMF and other economic institutions had disastrous results, not just in the above mentioned states but also Greece during the recent economic crises.The incredible disaster of the Greek austerity debacle is something that will go down in history books. There are many fingers to point in this drama: The IMF (to a lesser extent this time) and the Greek government with their own bad spending and number fudging. The EU banks and the political chiefs who steered it’s fate perhaps gave the single greatest blow to the EU project when they pushed for austerity to “punish” Greece for some perceived sin.When the recession hit, and a new Socialist government exposed New Democracy’s cooked books, investors fled. The Greek government could not rollover its debt and risked default. Greek banks, which held large amounts of government debt, became precarious. German and French banks also had invested so heavily in Greece that their stability was in jeopardy. The Greek government and banks were so closely intertwinedthat a default by one could bring down the other.The sensible solution at this point would have been to compel foreign banks to write off large parts of their Greek investments. The banks knew the risks when they made their loans and presumably priced that into the interest they charged. The European Central Bank stoutly resisted this, fearing for the stability of these imprudent banks.Instead, the EU and other international financial institutions offered what has widely been described as a “bail-out.” This was not, for the most part, money to support human services or other forms of consumption. Instead, this was money for Greece to send right back to its external creditors. In essence, the international institutions were bailing out their own irresponsible banks but laundering the money through the Greek government.As a price for this “bail-out,” the EU and its partners demanded crippling austerity: tax increases, widespread lay-offs of public employees, and massive cuts in pensions and other social supports. Laying off so many workers and pauperizing pensioners sharply reduced demand, which triggered further lay-offs and wage cuts in the private sector. As the depression deepened, unemployment topped 25 percent. When austerity devastated the Socialists’ working-class constituency, the party was effectively destroyed.As powerful as the EU is, however, it was unable to rewrite the basic rules of economics. Each round of austerity further depressed the economy, reducing revenues and increasing Greece’s deficit. Even from the creditors’ perspective, austerity was self-defeating.Rather than recognizing the error of their ways, the international organizations doubled down on austerity, demanding still deeper cuts to government employment and basic public services. The hypocrisy was rich: Greece’s deficit was growing precisely because it was complying with the EU's austerity plan, whose implementation predictably misfired.With their economy in free-fall and the EU showing no inclination to reduce the pressure, Greek voters turned to anti-austerity parties. On the right, this elevated the neo-fascist, swastika-flashing Golden Dawn, whose leaders faced charges for killing political opponents. The majority, however, went to Syriza, a leftist group that pledged to stare down the EUand end austerity.The EU, however, stonewalled, forcing Syriza to choose between taking Greece out of the EU and implementing further rounds of crushing austerity. Syriza blinked in this stare-down, fracturing its membership and earning the ire of its voters. Since then, it has been governing in fragilecoalitions with small conservative parties, largely abandoning the aspirational program it ran on.Eventually, the International Monetary Fund pressured the EU to relent on austerity. But by then, the Greek economy had shrunk by more than a quarter, numerous Greek families had horror stories of losing their homes, being unable to support themselves, or lacking medical care for treatable conditions, and Syriza had been thoroughly discredited with Greek voters.Will we learn from the Greece austerity debacle?Contrast the EU’s austerity push with the Keynesian Stimulus driven economic recovery championed by President Obama in the US during the 2008 recession which urged that in the face of slowing Economic Growth the government must inject a stimulus into the economy to stir up consumption and spending and avoid a short recession turning into a long one.Another group, the Keynesians, subscribed to the policies advocated by their namesake in the aftermath of the Great Depression, when John Maynard Keynes argued that, by taking care of unemployment, the economy would look after itself: the need was to stimulate consumption and demand to prevent a negative spiral of declining confidence, lower spending, and more job losses and firm bankruptcies. This is, in effect, the policy pursued by President Obama, with large-scale stimulus packages (although the magnitude has been debated), including substantial investment in the automobile industry. A third group of supply-side economists argued that the problem was over-regulation, or ‘red tape’, and advocated massive deregulation. They believed that abolition of employment rights would enable wages to fall and unwanted labour to be shed, allowing firms to compete better in a global market. However, a new school of thought emerged, labelled ‘austerions’ by the economics Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman.Five years on, the results of the ‘great austerity experiment’ are at last becoming clear (Fig 1). In the USA, where a Keynesian approach was adopted, the economy has recovered and is now on a sustained upward trajectory. The Eurozone is experiencing mixed fortunes. Some countries, such as Germany, are also experiencing sustained growth, but those that adopted stringent austerity policies, such as Ireland, Greece, Spain and Portugal, have yet to recover. Iceland, one of the worst affected countries, held a referendum on austerity; 93% of the population rejected it and, so far, austerity has been delayed and limited. As a result, Iceland has had much better economic performance than the latter group of austerity cases (in part, enabled by its ability to devalue its currency and, in so doing, boost fishing exports). Paradoxically, the credit-rating agencies, which were once in the vanguard of calls for austerity, are now downgrading Italian banks explicitly because of concerns that austerity is choking off growth.The UK did make an initial recovery but there too the imposition of stringent austerity measures by the newly elected coalition government in 2010 arrested it. This evidence has not gone unnoticed and, in a series of elections across Europe in 2012, voters have rejected austerity and elected politicians offering an alternative, most notably in France but also in German regional elections. Yet their reasons for doing so are not simply because these policies have failed to fix the economy. They are also rejecting them because they are seeing the signs of the human cost that they incur, something that many politicians have sought to ignore.Austerity: a failed experiment on the people of EuropeWhen Austerity has been such a debacle across the Globe as a policy measure to stabilize economies, why exactly should the government engage in it yet again at a time when the economy is slowing down and austerity measures will heap unnecessary pain on already hapless masses?The Keynesian stimulus approach has already show tried and true effectiveness in the US and other western hemisphere economic recoveries. CPEC as an investment tool is an excellent way to achieve such a stimulus by spurring economic activity and growth and allowing the government to stabilize it’s finances while it works to cut away the wasteful and nonproductive expenditures and grow its tax base at the same time.CPEC transitions economy away for global warming eraRecently I shared this news clipping about Pakistani and Chinese scientists on the verge of a scientific breakthrough where they could develop a strain of hybrid rice that can withstand drought and high heat conditions:Pakistan, Chinese researchers on the brink of hybrid rice breakthroughI recall that 2 or 3 years ago when the CPEC master plan was revealed and there was a huge concern over a previously unrevealed agricultural aspect of CPEC. Everyone up until then had assumed it was an infrastructure, energy and logistics related project.In all honesty, I consider the agricultural aspect of CPEC to be the most important one because it’s based around three core objectives:Transition Pakistan’s agriculture away from water intensive crops to crops that utilize less water but contribute more to the GDPTransition from current breed of crops to a new strain that are more resistant to the drought and arid conditions we will face in the 21st century of Global WarmingTransition from the British canal based system of watering crops via flood irrigation which is incredibly wasteful to new systems like Drip Water irrigation and crop zoning etc that are more efficient at water usage.Pakistan is lunging into a serious water crisis. The country is rapidly moving from being a water abundant country to a water-scarce country.With its annual water availability falling below 1,000 cubic metres per person, it may in fact have already crossed this threshold. This is partly due to depletion of its fresh water resources because of increasing population, adverse climate variations like drought and inconsistent monsoon patterns, and lack of storage facilities. And it is partially due to the unchecked demand for these many limited available resources.The scope of the crisis can be demonstrated by a few key facts: About 92 percent of Pakistan is classified as semi-arid to arid and the vast majority of Pakistanis are dependent on surface and groundwater sources from a single source – the Indus River basin.More than 90 percent of the country’s water is being used by the agriculture sector where conventional irrigation methods are undertaken.About 90 percent of the country’s agricultural production comes from land irrigated by the Indus Basin Irrigation System, firmly linking national food security to water levels in the Indus River basin. And, Pakistan’s water storage capacity is limited to a maximum 30-day supply, far below the 1,000-day storage capacity recommended for a country with its climatic characteristics.With water availability per person declining year by year, and demand for food production continuously increasing, Pakistan faces not only a water crisis but also serious concerns regarding its future food security. This situation also has clear implications for the government’s efforts to become an upper middle income country by 2025.The relevant authorities should carry out a study to assess the national water demand which should focus on different water users, water balance, traditional and emerging demands, and the impacts of climate change on demand by 2025 and 2050. In order for the government to take informed decisions, sectoral demands have to be estimated for all sectors. This will give an idea to the policymakers about which sectors consume most water.Studies like these will also help realize the contribution each sector makes towards the national economy as per their water usage. For instance, according to a report, four major crops that consume about 80 percent of the country’s water resources (wheat, rice, cotton and sugarcane) generate less than five percent of the national GDP.Furthermore, experts suggest that rain water harvesting must be introduced in local households, in both urban and rural areas. Flood irrigation should be a criminal act that is still being practiced in Pakistan; this has to stop. Improved irrigation methods and crop zoning are the country’s need at the moment. There is a need to reuse water in houses; for example, the water used in our kitchens can be reused in our toilets.Disappearing waterI understand that agriculture is not the most interesting subject and in this day and age we have just assumed the constant availability of food.But climate change is going to complete alter the environmental, economic and social landscape of the Pakistani territories. And it is imperative that we pursue the agricultural related initiatives of CPEC at all costs and as fast as possible.Let me stress that a little more strongly: Even if we take on $100 billion of debt under CPEC, it will be worth it if for no other reason, we can get our agriculture to survive in the Global Warming era.It is disingenuous to talk about finances when we are talking about the very survival of the country. If you think I’m being over dramatic, I would urge you to read up on the catastrophic consequences of what will happen if we continue to keep our water usage and agriculture as is and refuse to adapt. We are seeing a mini version of this dark future in Karachi where water mafia must be paid to get your water tanks filled and access to clean water is shrinking every day.Imagine that on a nationwide level with violent mobs and riots over water shortages, food prices sky rocketing due to crop failures and militarization of water access to secure scarce water resources for the state and it’s elite.The Maldives are currently on the chopping block of Climate Change and people believe that they as a state will be wiped out by rising sea levels. Should we tell the Maldives that it’s not financially feasible to construct infrastructure that will adapt them to the Climate change era?Quorans who are often suspicious of CPEC as a colonization project: India is one of the key partner with Israel on how to adapt biotechnology in the agricultural sector so that water usage is optimized and crops adapt to the hot, arid and water stressed future. And even increase their yields in some cases. So if it’s ok for India to undertake such projects, then why not Pakistan?One more thing: While ~50+% of our economy stems from the services sector, the other half is predominately still agricultural at 23% and Industrial at 18%.Besides ensuring that our agricultural sector survives into the 21st century with the adaption of cutting edge agricultural tech from China, CPEC also allows us to begin to transition our economy away from sectors that are in danger from climate change towards new sectors that will surive the global warming era.An example of that is trade logistics: CPEC’s massive road, rail, port and highway network is planned to be integrated into China’s OBOR project so that we can develop new sources of revenue in the form of logistics related fees from Chinese companies and traders utilizing CPEC infrastructure.This is a good example of an economic sector Pakistan currently doesn’t have but it will definitely need in the future to diversify away from purely Agricultural related exports.Take a look at some of our exports by category data in 2018:source: Pakistan Exports By CategoryOne of the more sensible and realistic calculations for our earnings from CPEC toll fees was given at $2-$2.5 billion USD a year.CPEC toll income — myth and reality | The Express TribuneOur agricultural exports in 2018 are at $15 b USD a year.With 2.5 billion USD in toll fees, we have managed to diversify our export or dollar related earnings by around 16% away from our top earning crops.This is a good start. And we need to continue building on it. Our economy must transition away from purely agriculture related earnings in the Global Heat Wave of the future and move towards sectors that are immune or semi immune to Global Warming.This is how CPEC plans to accomplish this using a mix of financing for the agricultural sector, new plans for fertilizer usage, new watering techniques and sustainable agriculture through more revenue per crop capita:For agriculture, the plan outlines an engagement that runs from one end of the supply chain all the way to the other. From provision of seeds and other inputs, like fertiliser, credit and pesticides, Chinese enterprises will also operate their own farms, processing facilities for fruits and vegetables and grain. Logistics companies will operate a large storage and transportation system for agrarian produce.It identifies opportunities for entry by Chinese enterprises in the myriad dysfunctions that afflict Pakistan’s agriculture sector. For instance, “due to lack of cold-chain logistics and processing facilities, 50% of agricultural products go bad during harvesting and transport”, it notes.Enterprises entering agriculture will be offered extraordinary levels of assistance from the Chinese government. They are encouraged to “[m]ake the most of the free capital and loans” from various ministries of the Chinese government as well as the China Development Bank. The plan also offers to maintain a mechanism that will “help Chinese agricultural enterprises to contact the senior representatives of the Government of Pakistan and China”.The government of China will “actively strive to utilize the national special funds as the discount interest for the loans of agricultural foreign investment”. In the longer term the financial risk will be spread out, through “new types of financing such as consortium loans, joint private equity and joint debt issuance, raise funds via multiple channels and decentralise financing risks”.The plan proposes to harness the work of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps to bring mechanization as well as scientific technique in livestock breeding, development of hybrid varieties and precision irrigation to Pakistan. It sees its main opportunity as helping the Kashgar Prefecture, a territory within the larger Xinjiang Autonomous Zone, which suffers from a poverty incidence of 50 per cent, and large distances that make it difficult to connect to larger markets in order to promote development. The prefecture’s total output in agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery amounted to just over $5 billion in 2012, and its population was less than 4 million in 2010, hardly a market with windfall gains for Pakistan.However, for the Chinese, this is the main driving force behind investing in Pakistan’s agriculture, in addition to the many profitable opportunities that can open up for their enterprises from operating in the local market. The plan makes some reference to export of agriculture goods from the ports, but the bulk of its emphasis is focused on the opportunities for the Kashgar Prefecture and Xinjiang Production Corps, coupled with the opportunities for profitable engagement in the domestic market.The plan discusses those engagements in considerable detail. Ten key areas for engagement are identified along with seventeen specific projects. They include the construction of one NPK fertilizer plant as a starting point “with an annual output of 800,000 tons”. Enterprises will be inducted to lease farm implements, like tractors, “efficient plant protection machinery, efficient energy saving pump equipment, precision fertilization drip irrigation equipment” and planting and harvesting machinery.The plan shows great interest in the textiles industry in particular, but the interest is focused largely on yarn and coarse cloth.Meat processing plants in Sukkur are planned with annual output of 200,000 tons per year, and two demonstration plants processing 200,000 tons of milk per year. In crops, demonstration projects of more than 6,500 acres will be set up for high yield seeds and irrigation, mostly in Punjab. In transport and storage, the plan aims to build “a nationwide logistics network, and enlarge the warehousing and distribution network between major cities of Pakistan” with a focus on grains, vegetables and fruits. Storage bases will be built first in Islamabad and Gwadar in the first phase, then Karachi, Lahore and another in Gwadar in the second phase, and between 2026-2030, Karachi, Lahore and Peshawar will each see another storage base.Asadabad, Islamabad, Lahore and Gwadar will see a vegetable processing plant, with annual output of 20,000 tons, fruit juice and jam plant of 10,000 tons and grain processing of 1 million tons. A cotton processing plant is also planned initially, with output of 100,000 tons per year.“We will impart advanced planting and breeding techniques to peasant households or farmers by means of land acquisition by the government, renting to China-invested enterprises and building planting and breeding bases” it says about the plan to source superior seeds.In each field, Chinese enterprises will play the lead role. “China-invested enterprises will establish factories to produce fertilizers, pesticides, vaccines and feedstuffs” it says about the production of agricultural materials.“China-invested enterprises will, in the form of joint ventures, shareholding or acquisition, cooperate with local enterprises of Pakistan to build a three-level warehousing system (purchase & storage warehouse, transit warehouse and port warehouse)” it says about warehousing.Then it talks about trade. “We will actively embark on cultivating surrounding countries in order to improve import and export potential of Pakistani agricultural products and accelerate the trade of agricultural products. In the early stages, we will gradually create a favorable industry image and reputation for Pakistan by relying on domestic demand.”Exclusive: CPEC master plan revealedAnd Logistics is only part of the equation: Chinese investments are a diverse portfolio of energy, tourism, mining, public transportation and real estate to give a few examples. Most if not all of these are good diversification away from climate change impacted economic sectors that we expect major disruptions in once water shortages and droughts start to hit more frequently in the next decade.I really want to under line this point again because recall that in the beginning of the answer I talked about how it’s ok to take on debt that ensures the survival and prosperity of our future generations, we should only avoid debt that is for day to day running of current government expenses.CPEC debt is a debt that we are undertaking today to ensure that our children have a future in an era where the Indus Basin will begin turning into a desert and our children will grow up eating crops and meats that are far different from the ones we grew up eating because in their era, those crops and sources of food might not exist in our region anymore.The TLDR Conclusion:Pakistan’s Debt is because of two major reasons:Lack of tax baseEnormous wastage and leakages in government spendingPakistan has been under IMF programs for decades and they have never fixed the government’s problems because the IMF exists to push for a neo-liberal free market order that favors the US rather than fix Pakistan’s problemsAt a time of slow economic growth, embracing an IMF led austerity drive is a suicidal quest. The 2008 economic crises and government responses to it showed that Keynesian style stimulus packages to stir up the economy is what leads to recovery.CPEC is a Keynesian style stimulus for the Pak economy at a time when it’s slowing down. The OBOR, AIIB and CPEC style of infrastructure and trade led growth is critical for low growth developing countries to stir economic growth and avoid the misery of Greek austerity.Beyond just stirring economic growth, CPEC is part of Pakistan’s transition away from an agricultural/semi industrialized country to a more balanced mix of logistics/industry/trade/agriculture/consumption. It also allows the country to adapt to the water stressed, heat wave era of the Climate Change epoch of history.Not everything about CPEC is rosy. This would be a dishonest answer if I said that. We do need to investigate how much our local industries would be impacted by Chinese imports. We do need to investigate that the projects in CPEC have the right ROIs given their expenditure. That these projects are aligned with our long term aims. And that the debt repayments can be met with the ROI from these projects. These are basic precautions.But in general, CPEC is a lifeline for a country like ours thats trapped in debt and low growth in the face of annihilation from climate change. We’re supposed to face the potential heat death of the planet with our economy chained to a wall.The old Pakistan is gone. This will be our second major transformation after 71. And in some ways, it will be more dangerous to navigate and more critical to our survival. The Indus Basin has always been there in the living memory of mankind. It might not be in the near future.We will be walking our children to schools in the deserts of southern Punjab. And driving past the dried out caverns of the now dead Ravi. The very rice we eat will taste different. I’ll tell my children stories of how fruit used to be so cheap and abundant in my life time. How we’d let water run into the street while washing our cars. How Monsoon used to be a fun time to play in the canal rather than a tropical flood that washed away entire communities.A memory can only survive in the minds of the living. When the earth changes, we must change with it. The age of arrogant men telling women to stay in the home is over. The age of you turning your nose up at your neighbor because his faith is different from you is over. It’s a fight to survive the heat death of the earth, we will need all the help we can get. We need to rethink our ideas about “honor” and “Izzat” and right and wrong. The uncaring laws of the universe dont care for our mortal hang ups.CPEC will turn farmers into truck drivers, gun smiths into bio tech technicians and cloth weavers into aqua farmers.I suppose in a way, it’s like changing shape and form, changing bodies and the chemicals that animate them. CPEC will change us all. And there might be no future without it.The translucence of flames beat against the airagainst our skins. This can be done withor without clothes on. This can be done withor without wine or whiskey but never without water:evaporation is also ongoing. Most visibly in this casein the form of wisps of steam rising from the just washed hairof a form at the fire whose beauty was in the earth’sturning, that night and many nights, transcendent.I felt heat changing me. The word for this istransdesire, but in extreme cases we call it transdireor when this heat becomes your maker we saytransire, or when it happens in front of a hearth:transfire.On Trans by Miller ObermanA man drives an improvised motorcycle truck, balancing a precarious load behind him. Perhaps the best image to portray our economy, straddled by debt, innovating it’s way to survival in the 21st century.Image source: China’s $62 Billion Bet on Pakistan

HI,This is my deployment for corruption free India. Wish these could be our next ministers, Then you can see the development of every sector without having any corruption.Aravind kejriwal:- Prime ministerArvind Kejriwal is a great leader who can make a drastic change in the country. He was a government (IRS) official with a high salary. He left his job to work for the people, after became Delhi chief minister he started with basics, he cut down the rates of electricity to half, and water to free. Within 4 years he built around 200 mohalla Clinics across Delhi and all basic checkups are free in these clinics. He also made a drastic change in education system of Delhi.You will get 40 types of certificates/ documents at home by paying only RS. 50 just through a phone call.Raghu ram rajan :- Finance minister, Minister of commerce and industryRaghu ram rajan did tremendous job as RBI governor that shaped and changed the fate of indian economy.important contributor managing the current monetary policy of the country. And during his tenure never compromised any fraudulent activities.Anupama TV :- Minister of consumer affairs,food and public distribution, food processing industry.The young IAS officer Kerala’s food safety commissioner. Within 15 months in office, she took the state’s powerful pesticide lobby and food adulteration head on – triggering a healthy food campaign across Kerala.she conducted random raids in markets and check posts and seized adulterated products. At least 6,000 samples were sent for testing from various farms in one year and 750 cases were registered against defaulters.Her journey was not easy. She had to fight many cases filed against her by the powerful lobby.E sreedharan :- Railway Minister,Road transport and highways, shippingHe also known as metro man of india. From building the bridges to railways of modern India for the past 60 years, the 85-year-old civil-engineer E Sreedharan has revolutionized the notion of public projects on multiple levels- speedy completion, minimal cost, quality results and all this with zero corruption.Sachin Tendulkar :- Sports MinisterThe role model of india, god of cricket. if he is the person who as sports minister we can see Miracle changes in indian sports.Ratan tata :-Minister of heavy industries, public enterprises Micro,small and medium enterprises,Steel,Minister of Mines,coal, petroleum and natural gas, textiles,Minister of electronics and info tech, Minister o f labour and employmentMr Ratan tata never been just a businessman moreover he is a great industrialist india ever seen. He is always a great person who has ethics and values towards his business and nation. Ratan Tata can make drastic developments in all level indian industries.Kiran Bedi: - Home affairs, Law and justice, social justice and empowerment, MInister of defence.Kiran bedi is a Politician, social activist, retired IPS officer. Kiran Bedi started her career as a lecturer at the Khalsa College for women, Amritsar, in the year 1970. In 1972, she then joined the prestigious Indian Police Service, simply for her urge to become outstanding than the rest.She served as Traffic Commissioner of New Delhi, Deputy Inspector General of Police in Mizoram (insurgency prone area), Advisor to Lieutenant Governor, Chandigarh, Director General of Narcotics Control Bureau, Inspector General in Tihar Jail.She also initiated the establishment of 2 organizations, Navajyoti (1988) and the India Vision Foundation (1994) for improving the lives of drug addicts and the various underprivileged people. Kiran Bedi single handedly managed the Punjab separatist movement and fought against the sword carrying Sikh militants.Syed Akbaruddin :- Minister of external affairs and overseas indian AffairsThe Man who made a drastic change of Government Spokesperson forever. Syed Akbaruddin is India's permanent representative at the United Nations . Syed Akbaruddin is a former official spokesperson of the ministry of external affairs of india from 2011 to April 2015. He also heads the External Publicity and Public Diplomacy division of Joint Secretary.And he was the Coordinator of India-Africa Summit in October 2015.Amstrong pame :-Minister of urban,Rural development, minister of housing and urban property alleviation.The Miracle man of Manipur, In 2012, he built a 100 km road connecting Manipur, Nagaland and Assam without any financial aid from the government. This road was built with 100% participation of the local population and is aptly named the ‘People’s Road’. he has done various rural development and economic enhancements through his innovative projects.He belongs to the Zeme Naga tribe and is the first collector from the tribe.Dr. Raghunath Anant Mashelkar :- Minister of science and technology, chemical and fertilizersDr. R.A. Mashelkar is National Research Professor, Chairman of India’s National Innovation Foundation and President of Global Research Alliance. Global research Alliance is a group of publicly funded R&D institutes from EUROPE, USA and Asian- Pacific with over 60,000 scientists. He strived to unify the efforts of the 40 diverse laboratories, establishing a one-team culture and improving internal collaboration, and took CSIR to new heights.Raju narayana swami :- Minister of agriculture and farmers.Raju Narayana Swamy is an officer in the Indian Administrative Service. He was District Collector and District Magistrate of five districts in Kerala. He also served as Agriculture Production Commissioner and Principal Secretary of Kerala state government. Now he serves as Chairman, Coconut Development Board of India. His relentless fight against illegal land dealings, real-estate businessmen and political bureaucrats comes from his ‘stubborn’ nature, as he likes to put it, when things turn ‘unjustifiable’. His career may be marked with political controversies, but he has found immense support from the common man. He is well known for his sincerity and strict stand against corrupt politicians and officials. In fact, he is known as the Ashok Khemka of Kerala.Smitha Sabharwal :- Education,Youth empowerment, Child and Woman EmpowermentThe People's Officer for addressing citizen issues by involving people. She is the first lady IAS Officer, in India to be appointed to the Chief Minister's Office.When she was in the deputation of District Collector of Karimnagar, (one of Telangana’s backward district) she titled the name of People’s Officer due to her tremendous works to empower and improve the lifestyle of locals, especially in healthcare and education sector. Smitha’s ‘Amma Lalana’ scheme made periodic maternal checkups freely available to the unprivileged women and she followed this up by renovating government hospitals and also she brought all the computerised facilities, healthcare equipment to meet the required standards as she was also concerned about the sanitation and cleanliness of the environment and all these functioning was monitored via Skype. Along with this awareness campaigns were launched to attract more local women to come to hospitals for their deliveries. She also initiated several schemes that contributed to the improvement of the quality and quantity of education in the district.Smita Sabharwal is very popular on social media. She is a famous youth icon of the day having several fan pages and almost one million followers on Facebook.Tijin E Thilakan