The Business Class: The Third Requirement for the Progress of a Nation
Date: September 10, 2025
Ideas without administration are empty, and administration without resources is powerless. Once the intellectual class defines a vision and the bureaucratic class ensures its honest implementation, the business class becomes the third requirement for national progress.
The business class — merchants, traders, industrialists, entrepreneurs, and financial managers — is the engine of economic activity. It transforms resources into wealth, generates employment, and sustains the material foundations of a nation. Without a strong and ethical business community, nations remain dependent on foreign powers, their sovereignty weakened by loans, aid, and exploitation.
The Nature of the Business Class
The business class plays a unique role in society:
Wealth Creation: Producing goods, services, and industries that generate prosperity.
Employment: Providing livelihoods for workers and stability for families.
Innovation: Investing in new technologies, products, and methods of production.
National Strength: Building financial independence so the state does not remain perpetually dependent on outsiders.
Where the intellectual class gives direction and the bureaucratic class provides administration, the business class supplies the economic fuel that allows nations to move forward.
Pakistan’s Business Class After Partition
At independence, Pakistan inherited little industry or financial infrastructure. Most banks, factories, and industries were located in India. Into this vacuum stepped a small group of families — the Saigols, Dawoods, Habibs, and others — who became pioneers of Pakistan’s early business class.
But instead of being nurtured into a broad-based entrepreneurial community, Pakistan’s business sector soon became concentrated in a few hands. By the 1960s, just 22 families controlled two-thirds of Pakistan’s industrial assets. This created resentment and gave rise to the slogan of economic injustice.
Moreover, the business class became heavily dependent on state patronage: licenses, loans, and protection. Rather than building independent strength, many businessmen aligned themselves with ruling elites, turning industry into another instrument of privilege rather than national development.
Business, Bureaucracy, and Military
In Pakistan, the relationship between the business class, bureaucracy, and military became deeply entangled. Bureaucrats issued industrial licenses; the military provided protection; businessmen supplied funds for political regimes.
This triangle enriched a few but impoverished the majority. Small and medium enterprises were neglected, agriculture remained underdeveloped, and regional disparities widened. East Bengal, which produced Pakistan’s largest export — jute — received little investment in return, deepening economic grievances that fueled the demand for independence in 1971.
The Missed Opportunity of Self-Reliance
Nations that progressed — Japan, South Korea, China — did so by cultivating a patriotic business class that reinvested in national industry. Pakistan’s business elite, by contrast, often looked abroad: sending profits overseas, depending on foreign loans, or importing luxuries instead of developing local capacity.
This failure meant Pakistan remained dependent on international lenders such as the IMF and World Bank. Instead of standing on its own feet, it stumbled from one debt cycle to another, with its business class too weak or self-serving to act as the engine of self-reliance.
The Need for a Patriotic Business Class
For Pakistan to progress, its business class must transform into a truly national force. This requires:
1. Broadening Ownership — encouraging small and medium enterprises, not just large family cartels.
2. Innovation and Technology — investing in research, IT, and modern industries.
3. Fair Distribution — ensuring that economic activity benefits all provinces, not just a few urban centers.
4. Ethical Responsibility — rejecting corruption, tax evasion, and profiteering, and contributing to national development.
5. Global Competitiveness — building exports and industries that can stand on the world stage.
Conclusion
The business class is the third requirement for national progress, after the intellectual and bureaucratic classes. Where intellectuals provide vision and bureaucrats ensure honest administration, businessmen must generate wealth and opportunity. Without this triangle of leadership — ideas, administration, and economy — no nation can achieve balanced development.
In Pakistan, the tragedy is that all three classes have been weakened: the intellectual class silenced, the bureaucratic class politicized, and the business class dependent and narrow. The result is a nation unable to fulfill the promise of its creation.
But the future can still be different. A Pakistan led by fearless intellectuals, honest bureaucrats, and patriotic businessmen can break the cycle of dependency and division. Only then will the dream of 1947 be reclaimed — not as a state of elite privilege, but as a nation of living voices, fair governance, and shared prosperity.
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