Who Owns Pakistan - Yimg

Chapter Three - How they make MONEY
"There is no business in Pakistan today which can be run without
paying bribes to the ministers and secretaries".
Yusuf Haroon.
Bulk of the wealth today owned by 22 families was grown on govt trees, rooted in
bureaucratic corruption and fertilized by tax evasion, bulk loans, rebates and a bit
of sweat and tears of the founding fathers.
The leaders of Karachi-based businessmen today, the Khojas, the Memons and
the Isamaeelis are particularly a far cry from the great achievers of the Gujrati
communities described by Dwijendra Tripathi, as " exceptional men, with extra
elements (of) that touch of talent, preservence and ability which made them what
they were".
Lawrence White fond in 1974 that the fortunes of the 22 families had resulted
from a combination of "ability, initiative, influence and luck" rather than any extra
elements. But it was G M Adamjee who spoke out a great truth when he said that
creation of Pakistan was " like the gold rush in USA" that opened new
opportunities for Muslim businessmen of the sub-continent, catapulating several
of them to the commanding heights of the Pakistani economy."
This is exactly how biographers of Rockefellers had described his success to "
random collision of a man with an opportunity, as if a door had stood open for a
brief historical moment and Rockfeller who just happened to be passing by,
managed to squeeze in before it closed". To use the analogy of Rockefeller's
biographers, 22 families were thus produced by a collision of an opportunity in
history, that was Pakistan with a class of businessmen who just happened to be
around when the door opened or when the gold rush took place.
But among the founding fathers of the 22 families, one can not fail to spot
towering personalities like M A Rangoonwala, C M Latif and Yusuf Saigol who
would have left their imprint on the sands of time, even if the collision of history
and opportunity had not taken place. If one was to weigh, present-day members
of the 22 families, on the scales of that touch of talent, perseverance and ability
that abounded in their forefathers and " the combination of ability, initiative,
influence and luck", found in them by Lawrence White then perhaps only few of
them, Nasim Saigol, Syed Babar Ali and Razak Dawood might deliver few
ounces of these ingredients.
But there are no rag-to-riches stories, no self-made men," trained in the sternest
but most efficient of schools called poverty" and almost all of them inherited
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