The superficial world of LinkedIn and the old crisis that we’ll face but on new platforms
If you are a regular user of LinkedIn then you are aware of its “culture.” Quite weird that a social media platform has such a strong culture that deviating from it is like transcending some sacred boundary. However, this culture has far-reaching consequences.
According to LinkedIn, the world is always progressing. So much that, even the third world countries seem to be growing at an Nx pace. Take the example of Pakistan; what you see on the platform is that, Govt approved that budget, govt made this policy, govt is going to do that. However, on the ground, the budgets are taken by the powerfuls, policies are left on paper and all initiatives become part of “na aane wala future. (the future that is not going to come)”
The same goes for the private sector. While there are a few corporations who can get whatever they want to be done, the general trend is that nearly all industrial associations have zero unity, security, and consequently influence in any matter of the country. Still, the marketing campaigns will show that they are growing exponentially. This false characterization, usually done to maintain stocks, investors, and customers in confidence, might help once or twice in the short term, but cost a lot to the whole supply chain in the end. Usually ending up as a crisis if not handled properly.
Let me give an example to highlight the importance.
Around two decades back, Pakistan was one of the largest producers of cotton with around 11 million bales produced in 2004. Still, in 2014, it was the fourth-largest producer producing around 10 million bales annually while Bangladesh producing only 0.12 million bales. However, in 2019, it reached the local minima of two decades, and in 2020, the local minima of three decades by producing around 6 million and 4 million bales respectively. With that, it also hit its all-time maxima in cotton import which was around zero three decades back. Now, what do you think would have happened in that period, especially in the last 6 years that brought us from the production of around 10 million bales to and an all-time high import level?
You might like some quantitative answers, like bad policies, bad practices, climate, inflation, etc etc etc, but all these can be boiled down to another very significant mistake, that a qualitative researcher might appreciate, that is even though everyone saw it coming, nobody stopped it from happening.
It might sound absurd at first, but note that it wasn’t something like the 2008 financial crash that gave less than a year to the US govt, or like the COVID. It was a very slow process that span over 30 years and had started giving very strong signals around three decades back when we began importing cotton while being leaders in its production.
A short overview of what happened was that, during the golden age of agriculture, a few very strong men from an industrial background (linked with agriculture though) entered national politics. However, even though cotton was the king of all crops, the powerful men were holding relatively weak cards: those of sugar cane. Now business and politics have a very powerful pair, and they were literally like some wild hungry animals. In such a situation, one could take two routes. First, enter the cotton race and outdo everyone with their political influence. Second, turn the whole direction of the river by removing cotton from the region and literally forcing the farmers to grow sugarcane so their factories can have loads of extra and cheap raw material. And I think you can guess what they did?
That’s right, they thought it’s better to f* the whole supply chain of literally millions of people and start their own Ganga.
That’s where we are standing today.
Pakistan’s sugar cane production was around 1.1 million tons three decades back, which is around 6 million tons in 2021 with a growth rate of 13% even after the pandemic. They literally attacked cotton from all fronts; weakened laws regulating seed production, politically made it difficult for cotton industry sectors like the ginning factories, introduced fake seeds, fertilizers, and sprays in the market, made exports inconvenient, brought obstacles in the implementation of govt policies, and obviously, promoted sugar cane everywhere (now I understand why there used to be so many sugar cane trucks everywhere in my hometown Vehari).
Now although so much has happened, there hasn’t been any collective organization about the issue. Because the government works on lobbies (let’s be honest, that’s how it works — you feed them, they perform for you), and even though cotton producers had the resources to organize, they didn’t. They gave priority to short-term individual profit over short-term collective profit (which usually translates into long-term collective profit too — an example would be the American economy: the overall performance of the market over the years would result in a positive impact on everyone). This lack of unity gave the powerful men the room to play the divide and conquer method where they just kept on shifting land from cotton to sugarcane and nobody even from the cotton-producing groups questioned anything until the powerful men reached their door too (an example is Khanewal which had around 56 factories of cotton and now has only 3 which are also struggling today). The powerful men of sugar were unfortunately in both spheres of business and politics at the same time and hence didn’t need any lobbying. And long story short, cotton is no more a major crop of Pakistan and that happened because nobody stopped it from happening.
(I can give another analysis of the cinema industry, but considering space, I think it is enough and it might be redundant to make the same point.)
The same attitude persists today (which is represented on LinkedIn too). In most cases, there is no real growth happening, but the mere celebration of an idea makes them look like Pakistan is such a hot place. Just take the example of culture’s response towards the TLP situation. Just like the cotton owners who thought staying silent would somehow make the powerful men of sugar leave them out, today’s private sector is also thinking that somehow completely ignoring the fact that there is political unrest in the country over religious positions, would save them in the long run. And I’m not saying that they need to come to the road, or even publicly give some statement about it. It’s just that, there is also no attention paid to such subjects inside the companies. If that seems too political, take the issue of lack of education, overpopulation, and inflation. Do they expect that their consumer base will grow and also the profits in those demographics? Highly unlikely. This bubble will burst too, and soon the consumers would reach their endpoint at which they’ll have to cut down to bare necessities but that would be a point of no return for the companies (especially if they are producing some tech-oriented products). Another such crisis is climate change. Especially, in this case, I don’t understand what thought process the corporations follow because it shouldn’t be that difficult to understand that in just a couple of decades (or perhaps years), we might enter a point of no return from where it’d be impossible for these manufacturing companies to produce anything. And lastly, just like the cotton scenario, the companies (and the LinkedIn culture) that boast the tag of being “non-political,” isn’t that time to realize that since it didn’t work, and it’s not working, it’ll not work. (PS: One of the reasons I couldn’t adjust at one of my previous jobs was their non-political stance but I really don’t know if I made the right choice).
It’s not about criticizing some government or taking some activist-like attitude, but just taking into account all the stakeholders involved and making the right decision for everyone because actually, that’s the right decision for you. That’s fine if you can’t show an immediate effect of your marketing campaign to your CEO, and that’s necessary for you to invest let your team take such decisions that are creating a safe space for you in the next 20, 30, or 50 years. I wonder if the ginning factories were ready to face the all-time low production of cotton. I wonder if Zameen.com would be ready to face the real estate crash. I wonder if Daraz was ready for such a blockage of roads due to protests? I wonder if anyone is doing anything for the future of all of us. Because, you might think that other’s loss will hurt only them, but the reality is that it’ll also come back to you.
