Dr. Mubashir Hassan and many others claim that most of the aid money goes back to America. This is only partially true. Let us take a case where USA gives 100 million dollars in aid to Pakistan. If we spend this money to buy aircrafts for PIA from USA, one can falsely lay the blame on US saying that most of the money has gone back to USA. But what about the aircrafts that we received? Much in the same vein as Dr. Sahib, Imran Khan also claims that increased remittances from overseas Pakistanis can be a substitute for foreign aid. We have a huge deficit in our budget. While an increase in remittances will improve our foreign exchange reserves somewhat, the remittances will not contribute even a penny to the national budget. Is Imran Khan suggesting that the government should just swallow all the private funds of overseas Pakistanis? I am against our over-dependence on foreign aid. But if we want to get rid of this disease, we should follow the recent example of the super-rich Germans who have voluntarily offered to pay more taxes. And we should give up our obscenely lavish life style too. There is no use juggling the figures to deceive ourselves. -KHALID A, London, November 1.