Hello. My name is Sajjad. I’m just over 40, and I’ve been working in the NGO sector for the last 10 years. Every evening, I go back home, and I try not to think about the suit I was wearing, the two useless reports I approved, or the fancy hotel lunch meeting I had with a naïve white man (who picked up the tab). Every evening, however, despite my best efforts, I go to sleep thinking about the color of tomorrow’s tie, the three reports I still need to read through, and the planned lunch meeting with another white man. This time, I’d have to pay the bill.
It wasn’t always like this, you know. Things were different 24 years ago. Things were unstructured, unregimented, unconstrained. Things were free.
At the age of 16, I passed the matriculation exam from Government Higher Secondary School (for boys) in my hometown, Muridke. By the grace of God, my father thought I was smart enough to be sent to Lahore for further education. As I packed for the hour-long bus ride, abba ji stepped into my room and told me his plans for my future: Plan A was admission to Engineering University (formally known as UET), and then a job in the gulf through Uncle Farooq’s younger brother (who knew some people there). If Uncle Farooq’s younger brother bailed, then it was probably best I sit for the CSS exam. Failing that, I will apply for a grade 16, entry-level post in the Communication and Works department, Government of Punjab. Plan B was admission to Hailey College of Commerce for a B.Com, because, apparently, there are new banks recruiting young graduates and sending them to the gulf. Takes Uncle Farooq’s younger brother out of the equation all-together. Plan C would kick in if I failed to make the merit list after the intermediate examination results. If so, I would move back to Muridke and start work with abba ji at the shop.
Deference to paternal authority, it turned out, is inversely proportional to distance. After 5 months in college, a friend of mine convinced me to switch from pre-engineering to arts and humanities. I ditched Physics, Math, and Chemistry, and ended up taking Sociology, Political Science, and Economics. I decided I wanted to take up Plan D, which was becoming a college lecturer. Unfortunately for me, abba ji wasn’t willing to finance a Plan D, and I had no option but to turn to my eldest brother for college related expenses. Luckily, he was less fussy about my choice of subjects.
I was arrested for the first time in my life at the age of 17. One of our instructors took a bunch of us to a pro-democracy public gathering on Mall Road. We were baton charged, tear-gassed, and then finally pushed into a large police van, which took us to the police station.
It was a frightening, yet oddly exhilarating experience, and I wanted more of it.
An Inter, BA, MA later, I found myself working as a journalist for the Lahore bureau of a major newspaper. Plan D, sadly enough, fell through when the Public Services Commission interviewer, after three questions on political theory, asked me to recite Dua-e-Qunoot. The idea that the attainment of a political science lectureship hinged on my ability to repeat a certain amount of words in a foreign language seemed ludicrous. I voiced my thoughts, they didn’t like them, and I ended up working as a journalist. As it turned out, it really wasn’t such a bad thing. Four of us had taken up a small apartment in the old city and spent most of our time dabbling in plenty of radical ideas, and even more radical substances. Good times.
This is how I lived life for 12 years. The cities changed, the apartments changed, the substances changed, but life was spontaneous, and existence remained unfettered.
That Sajjad is dead now. Bogged down by a changing society, and eventually killed by the barrenness of growing old. The worst part is, there’s no new Sajjad either. No 17 year olds getting arrested, nobody making spontaneous life-style choices, nobody bothering themselves by the added weight of utopian ideals. People want straight, predictable lines, and lives they can see 10 years into the future. They want stability, fancy toys, and gated communities. The only ‘ism’ that they cherish is careerism, (Islamism too, but only as long as it doesn’t interfere with the former).
There’s a 24-year-old LUMS graduate working in my NGO. He’s doing well for himself, and he knows it. He sees a promotion at the end of this year, and a fat pay-raise too. After a while, he’ll move to some hi-fi UN type international organization, get married, rent a bigger place, and buy a bigger car. His ambition, he told me, is to become a Washington-based public policy specialist. And he tells me all of this with an earnest, sincere expression on his face. Yep, that Sajjad is definitely dead.
Originally published in Pakistan Today on 20/02/2012
Monday, 20 February 2012
Friday, 17 February 2012
A Sterile, Earnest, Sea Breeze
Before pretending to say anything substantive, it’s worth mentioning that this year’s Karachi Literature Festival (KLF), held at the Carlton Hotel on the 11th and 12th of February, was a very well-organised event. There were no last-minute cancellations, no major administrative hiccups; the organisers, and their team of volunteers had the dodgy sound system under control (for the most part); the attendees seemed interested and aware; and the book stalls, set up by publishers, both big and small, saw a great deal of business. The only blot on the entire festival was the terrible biryani vendor — an insult to a city otherwise known for its art of mingling rice with spices and meat.
If judged on such administrative benchmarks, the event ticked almost all the boxes. Some of the star-studded literature sessions, like the ones featuring Vikram Seth, William Dalrymple, Hanif Kureishi and Mohammad Hanif, witnessed packed auditoriums. Similarly, attendees became voluntary sardines to see journalist and flavour of the month Anatol Lieven, author of Pakistan: A Hard Country, talk about his book in one session, about Pakistan’s economic and political challenges in another session, and, with The New York Times correspondent Declan Walsh, on writing about Pakistan from a foreign perspective in a third.
As a friend put it, the salty sea breeze was thick with an air of earnestness. Earnestness on part of the organisers as they rolled out a fairly successful event; earnestness among the audience as they scurried around from one session to another, in pursuit of their preferred panels; and earnestness on part of the speakers as they attempted to present a human (humane?) face to go with their written work.
That said, and this is a completely personal observation, one couldn’t help but notice just how uncontroversial the entire event was. Even the most politically charged session on paper, the one where defence analyst Ayesha Siddiqa was supposed to grill Anatol Lieven over his purported admiration for the Pakistan Army, petered out into a meek affair, further mitigated by the late addition to the panel of an apolitical – and completely out of place – novelist, Mohsin Hamid. There were roughly 15 sessions on ostensibly political topics like honour killings, civil war in Balochistan, minority rights, Bangladesh, and nuclear weapons. Yet almost all were conducted in the same sterile, art-for- art’s-sake context reserved for the festival’s literary discussions. Speakers speaking for a few minutes to a largely homogeneous, upper-class audience carrying concerned expressions.
This sterility, though, is nothing new. In fact, over the last three decades, it has become entrenched in the very nature of how politics is viewed by the upper echelons of Pakistan’s urban, educated class — as a collection of “problems” meant to be resolved through technical deliberation. This essence was captured, almost poetically, in one of the sessions, when a former ambassador to the United States prophetically remarked that Pakistan’s biggest challenge is its fledgling economy, and how its salvation requires the population to set aside politics and work towards the “national” interest. A member of the audience took this as a cue, and showered us with some (derived) wisdom about how strict anti-corruption laws could solve Pakistan’s corruption problem. There was resounding applause at the mention of this technocratic, exogenous solution to what is, in reality, an endogenous, political problem.
Beyond all of this, what remains interesting is that the presence of these sessions at the Festival points towards another trend in Pakistan. Apolitical as it may be, the KLF demographic, by default or by design, has ceased to be apathetic. They recognise Pakistan’s problems: the civil-military imbalance, the question of a very public and assertive form of Islamism, the issue of provincialism and regional identity, the persistence of gender discrimination and patriarchy, and the existence of endemic poverty. And yet, they’re fairly clueless on how to go about bringing structural change. Their earnestness and new-found positivism are appreciable, but their insular existence and general mistrust of anything outside of a neatly constructed, consumerist bubble – whether trade unions, political activists, or working-class organisations – are incredibly damaging.
Writing this, one doesn’t need to be particularly clairvoyant to predict the handwringing and disapproving headshakes that will follow such a blatantly political reading of a literature festival. Yet, if anything, these observations stem from the very fact that political issues were, for whatever reason, added on the agenda. If, for example, Dalrymple had stuck to talking about his writing, as opposed to the Taliban; or there had been two more sessions on regional language verse, like Nukhbah Langah’s talk about the evolution of Seraiki poetry; or there had been more from stonemason-turned-Urdu poet and short story writer Ali Akbar Natiq on experiential expression, nobody would’ve raised any justified objections.
Based on what actually transpired though, the Karachi Literature Festival resulted in two things: apolitical sterility and insularity stifling political conversations, and, subsequently, an unfulfilled demand for more literature
Originally published in India's daily Business Standard on 18/02/2012
If judged on such administrative benchmarks, the event ticked almost all the boxes. Some of the star-studded literature sessions, like the ones featuring Vikram Seth, William Dalrymple, Hanif Kureishi and Mohammad Hanif, witnessed packed auditoriums. Similarly, attendees became voluntary sardines to see journalist and flavour of the month Anatol Lieven, author of Pakistan: A Hard Country, talk about his book in one session, about Pakistan’s economic and political challenges in another session, and, with The New York Times correspondent Declan Walsh, on writing about Pakistan from a foreign perspective in a third.
As a friend put it, the salty sea breeze was thick with an air of earnestness. Earnestness on part of the organisers as they rolled out a fairly successful event; earnestness among the audience as they scurried around from one session to another, in pursuit of their preferred panels; and earnestness on part of the speakers as they attempted to present a human (humane?) face to go with their written work.
That said, and this is a completely personal observation, one couldn’t help but notice just how uncontroversial the entire event was. Even the most politically charged session on paper, the one where defence analyst Ayesha Siddiqa was supposed to grill Anatol Lieven over his purported admiration for the Pakistan Army, petered out into a meek affair, further mitigated by the late addition to the panel of an apolitical – and completely out of place – novelist, Mohsin Hamid. There were roughly 15 sessions on ostensibly political topics like honour killings, civil war in Balochistan, minority rights, Bangladesh, and nuclear weapons. Yet almost all were conducted in the same sterile, art-for- art’s-sake context reserved for the festival’s literary discussions. Speakers speaking for a few minutes to a largely homogeneous, upper-class audience carrying concerned expressions.
This sterility, though, is nothing new. In fact, over the last three decades, it has become entrenched in the very nature of how politics is viewed by the upper echelons of Pakistan’s urban, educated class — as a collection of “problems” meant to be resolved through technical deliberation. This essence was captured, almost poetically, in one of the sessions, when a former ambassador to the United States prophetically remarked that Pakistan’s biggest challenge is its fledgling economy, and how its salvation requires the population to set aside politics and work towards the “national” interest. A member of the audience took this as a cue, and showered us with some (derived) wisdom about how strict anti-corruption laws could solve Pakistan’s corruption problem. There was resounding applause at the mention of this technocratic, exogenous solution to what is, in reality, an endogenous, political problem.
Beyond all of this, what remains interesting is that the presence of these sessions at the Festival points towards another trend in Pakistan. Apolitical as it may be, the KLF demographic, by default or by design, has ceased to be apathetic. They recognise Pakistan’s problems: the civil-military imbalance, the question of a very public and assertive form of Islamism, the issue of provincialism and regional identity, the persistence of gender discrimination and patriarchy, and the existence of endemic poverty. And yet, they’re fairly clueless on how to go about bringing structural change. Their earnestness and new-found positivism are appreciable, but their insular existence and general mistrust of anything outside of a neatly constructed, consumerist bubble – whether trade unions, political activists, or working-class organisations – are incredibly damaging.
Writing this, one doesn’t need to be particularly clairvoyant to predict the handwringing and disapproving headshakes that will follow such a blatantly political reading of a literature festival. Yet, if anything, these observations stem from the very fact that political issues were, for whatever reason, added on the agenda. If, for example, Dalrymple had stuck to talking about his writing, as opposed to the Taliban; or there had been two more sessions on regional language verse, like Nukhbah Langah’s talk about the evolution of Seraiki poetry; or there had been more from stonemason-turned-Urdu poet and short story writer Ali Akbar Natiq on experiential expression, nobody would’ve raised any justified objections.
Based on what actually transpired though, the Karachi Literature Festival resulted in two things: apolitical sterility and insularity stifling political conversations, and, subsequently, an unfulfilled demand for more literature
Originally published in India's daily Business Standard on 18/02/2012
Monday, 13 February 2012
Patronage as Present and Past
So this last weekend, I found myself amidst fairly auspicious company at the Karachi Literature Festival. Contrary to what I’d initially feared, my experience was thoroughly enjoyable (accentuated by some excellent indigenous and imported company), and despite its relative insulation, I’ve realized that the KLF remains a fairly useful platform for cultural and intellectual engagement in an otherwise sterile public realm. Purists argue, with good reason, that having sessions on terrorism, militancy, politics, and economic development in a ‘literature’ festival is a condemnable aberration. The merits of this argument aside, in a country where the best-selling public intellectual remains a man who starts his ‘talk-show’ with make-belief stories about kings and queens in a parallel universe, any form of intellectual jousting is a welcome change. And, lucky for me, there was plenty of that over these past two days.
In one of the sessions, Dr. Anatol Lieven, Maleeha Lodhi, Dr. Asad Sayeed, and Ishrat Hussain talked about our existing economic and political condition, and the various challenges that Pakistan faces in working out a shared understanding of progress. Dr. Lieven, who some of you will know as the author of Pakistan: A Hard Country, made a case for several projects that should supersede the political domain for the greater ‘national’ interest. Chief amongst them was Kalabagh Dam, closely followed by everybody’s new favorite, Thar coal reserves. On both instances, Lieven was quick to point out that a fractured and self-serving political elite has incapacitated the Pakistani economy to an extent that it cannot even take advantage of its own natural resources. That corruption has reached anarchic levels, hence reducing commercial confidence to dangerously low levels. That the spoils system on which our electoral system runs has pretty much ended the space for concrete policy-making.
On the face of it, such assertions resonate quite strongly with a small segment of people who share an idealized notion of a ‘developed’ Pakistan. This idealization, in turn, is an outcome of an entire generation of educated, middle class people bearing witness to the entrenchment of patronage politics, and, consequently, associating most of their ills with politicians (as opposed to the political structure). What Lieven and, to a lesser extent, Maleeha Lodhi were saying is what you could hear from many people, albeit in less eloquent terms.
The problem, however, with narratives about the national interest (beyond the very obvious problem of who the hell defines ‘national interest’) is that they are fairly ahistorical in nature. At one stage, Maleeha Lodhi stated with great conviction that ‘Pakistan is a patronage-ridden country and we need to make sure that people get their due rights as citizens and not as clients’. Like many other rhetorical, vacuous statements, this one has absolutely no value towards informing the actual problem solving process. Patronage, (i.e. politicians informally favoring a portion of the citizenry in return for monetary, electoral, and social support), and corruption, (i.e. re-appropriating public funds for patronage purposes), are, for all intents and purposes, phenomena that have evolved over at least 2 centuries (if not more), and have become institutionalized in the process through which political relationships are executed. Over this period, there have been several factors contributing to this institutionalization:
1) Colonialism, and specifically colonial law: By introducing laws based on their reading of tribal custom, and religion, the British codified what had previously been informal/traditional differences. This codification was backed by a coercive apparatus (policing and courts), and helped set in stone hierarchical relationships from the village level upwards. By making laws related to who can hold land, and the exact relationship a tenant, artisan, and craftsman would have with the landlord, the British set the legal premise for vertical patronage systems to emerge. These were further entrenched by the British policy of granting political office to large landlords and the traditional aristocracy in Punjab and Sindh.
2) Military Interventions: Contrary to what Dr. Lieven believes, the military, while adhering to some form of internal coherence, has played an immense part in developing patronage based systems. For starters, their policy of centralizing fiscal resources, and monopolizing policy space (economic, foreign, defense) has made federating units, and sub-national political actors heavily dependent on dole-outs, central government approved infrastructure funding, and maintaining good ties with the army. Ayub’s Basic Democracies system, Zia’s ’79 LG system, and Musharraf’s ‘01 devolution, all played their part in cultivating patronage politics at the municipal level. Clearly the irony inherent in praising the army for steering clear of patronage politics is lost on many amongst the educated lot.
3) Regionalism, rights, and identity: Patronage systems thrive in polities that have a range of existing fractures and fault lines. Since patronage in Pakistan is as much a socio-cultural relationship (through biraderi, tribe, sect) as it is an economistic one, its prevalence can be put down to the failure of our state in developing a shared sense of progress that could supersede such fractures.
All of these factors, in one way or another, emerge from distinct historical experiences, and have reproduced themselves in various ways over the last 64 years. Yet, almost unflinchingly, our mainstream, policy-developing intelligentsia is completely immune to the lessons that could be learnt from a critical reading of our history. They would still prefer to wish away patronage and corruption, which are political phenomena, through apolitical polemic, ahistorical rhetoric, and a nauseating preference for military-style order as opposed to consensual processes. Such failures have led us to where we are right now, and from what I witnessed at one KLF session today, I have little hope that this thinking will change in the near future.
Originally published in Pakistan Today on 13/02/2012
In one of the sessions, Dr. Anatol Lieven, Maleeha Lodhi, Dr. Asad Sayeed, and Ishrat Hussain talked about our existing economic and political condition, and the various challenges that Pakistan faces in working out a shared understanding of progress. Dr. Lieven, who some of you will know as the author of Pakistan: A Hard Country, made a case for several projects that should supersede the political domain for the greater ‘national’ interest. Chief amongst them was Kalabagh Dam, closely followed by everybody’s new favorite, Thar coal reserves. On both instances, Lieven was quick to point out that a fractured and self-serving political elite has incapacitated the Pakistani economy to an extent that it cannot even take advantage of its own natural resources. That corruption has reached anarchic levels, hence reducing commercial confidence to dangerously low levels. That the spoils system on which our electoral system runs has pretty much ended the space for concrete policy-making.
On the face of it, such assertions resonate quite strongly with a small segment of people who share an idealized notion of a ‘developed’ Pakistan. This idealization, in turn, is an outcome of an entire generation of educated, middle class people bearing witness to the entrenchment of patronage politics, and, consequently, associating most of their ills with politicians (as opposed to the political structure). What Lieven and, to a lesser extent, Maleeha Lodhi were saying is what you could hear from many people, albeit in less eloquent terms.
The problem, however, with narratives about the national interest (beyond the very obvious problem of who the hell defines ‘national interest’) is that they are fairly ahistorical in nature. At one stage, Maleeha Lodhi stated with great conviction that ‘Pakistan is a patronage-ridden country and we need to make sure that people get their due rights as citizens and not as clients’. Like many other rhetorical, vacuous statements, this one has absolutely no value towards informing the actual problem solving process. Patronage, (i.e. politicians informally favoring a portion of the citizenry in return for monetary, electoral, and social support), and corruption, (i.e. re-appropriating public funds for patronage purposes), are, for all intents and purposes, phenomena that have evolved over at least 2 centuries (if not more), and have become institutionalized in the process through which political relationships are executed. Over this period, there have been several factors contributing to this institutionalization:
1) Colonialism, and specifically colonial law: By introducing laws based on their reading of tribal custom, and religion, the British codified what had previously been informal/traditional differences. This codification was backed by a coercive apparatus (policing and courts), and helped set in stone hierarchical relationships from the village level upwards. By making laws related to who can hold land, and the exact relationship a tenant, artisan, and craftsman would have with the landlord, the British set the legal premise for vertical patronage systems to emerge. These were further entrenched by the British policy of granting political office to large landlords and the traditional aristocracy in Punjab and Sindh.
2) Military Interventions: Contrary to what Dr. Lieven believes, the military, while adhering to some form of internal coherence, has played an immense part in developing patronage based systems. For starters, their policy of centralizing fiscal resources, and monopolizing policy space (economic, foreign, defense) has made federating units, and sub-national political actors heavily dependent on dole-outs, central government approved infrastructure funding, and maintaining good ties with the army. Ayub’s Basic Democracies system, Zia’s ’79 LG system, and Musharraf’s ‘01 devolution, all played their part in cultivating patronage politics at the municipal level. Clearly the irony inherent in praising the army for steering clear of patronage politics is lost on many amongst the educated lot.
3) Regionalism, rights, and identity: Patronage systems thrive in polities that have a range of existing fractures and fault lines. Since patronage in Pakistan is as much a socio-cultural relationship (through biraderi, tribe, sect) as it is an economistic one, its prevalence can be put down to the failure of our state in developing a shared sense of progress that could supersede such fractures.
All of these factors, in one way or another, emerge from distinct historical experiences, and have reproduced themselves in various ways over the last 64 years. Yet, almost unflinchingly, our mainstream, policy-developing intelligentsia is completely immune to the lessons that could be learnt from a critical reading of our history. They would still prefer to wish away patronage and corruption, which are political phenomena, through apolitical polemic, ahistorical rhetoric, and a nauseating preference for military-style order as opposed to consensual processes. Such failures have led us to where we are right now, and from what I witnessed at one KLF session today, I have little hope that this thinking will change in the near future.
Originally published in Pakistan Today on 13/02/2012
Thursday, 9 February 2012
Apolitical Coalitions
Historically speaking, academics have always been interested in understanding our civil-military calculus at the level of the state. Consequently, nobody has ever really paid much attention to the way that the army reproduces its image in society. Preferring to choose the domain of ‘high’ politics, (as opposed to local or ‘everyday’ politics), people like Hamza Alavi (The Overdeveloped State, New Left Review, March 1972), and Ayesha Jalal (State of Martial Rule), have produced somewhat cross-cutting, state-based explanations for the military’s dominance in politics.
Alavi sees the army as a constituent portion of the unrepresentative state, which forms subordinate relationships with domestic political actors, bureaucrats, and the capitalists, while recognizing some foreign power (the US, and to a lesser extent, China) as its patron. Within the state, Alavi posits that the military has, over time, gained supremacy over the bureaucracy and the judiciary because of greater public outreach, its control over the coercive apparatus, and its economic strength. Jalal, on the other hand, traces the rise of the military to a set of engagements that took place in the domain of high-politics in the period following independence. Her thesis is that in 1947, the army was nothing more than a hollow shell, and was eventually strengthened by the migrant bureaucracy, scheming politicians, and the geo-political interests of the US. The security framework, which Pakistan adopted upon partition, provided the premise for this strengthening to take place.
Both explanations are plausible and, in their own way, perfectly viable. Yet the problem with a top-down lens is that it assumes the state (and its internal interplay) to be dynamic, and society to be receptive and static. The army steps into power, receives judicial cover, forms a faction of the Muslim League, and society celebrates the demise of corrupt politicians. This linear narrative needs to be problematized further to actually understand how the civil-military equation obtained its current shape.
In an article published much later on in his career, Alavi reproduced the words of a retired Major, from a letter he wrote to the President of Pakistan, General Zia-ul-Haq. He wrote that the army’s popularity, and hence its ability to step into power, is a direct result of its insulation from the rest of society, and that the current COAS/President was under-cutting this by stuffing armed forces personnel in every civilian nook and cranny. Many other retired officers, like this gentleman, were quite concerned about ‘over-exposure’.
The interesting thing is that, on paper, the army Major was probably right. Increased society-army interaction could’ve resulted in the unpopularity of the latter – a consequence mitigated, previously, by the insulated nature of cantonments and garrisons. Yet in reality, the army, specifically in Punjab and Karachi, maintained some manner of social legitimacy during the 80s, and enhanced its social capital during the 90s because of some very worthwhile investments it made under Ayub, but more so under Zia.
One such investment is the army’s relationship with the urban/peri-urban, educated middle-class, and more specifically, with middle-class institutions. Despite forming a tiny minority in the overall demographic make-up of the country, the urban, educated class has wielded a fair amount of influence in the overall trajectory of the country. Contrary to the self-perceived narrative of marginalization that many members of this class imbibe and regurgitate, members of the middle class have held important positions at the level of the state (through their presence in the post-Bhutto bureaucracy, and armed forces), and, with the result of their societal counterparts, have helped shape the dynamic of power, and its rhetoric in the country.
The willing collaborators, at the societal level, are most often found dominating two particular institutions: Higher Education and Media. This is helped by the fact that the demographic make-up of 5 institutions (judiciary, bureaucracy, armed forces, higher education, and media) is quite similar. All are white-collar professions that require some form of tertiary level education. All 5 offer, to varying degrees, the middle-class requirement of stability and perpetuity of employment. And all 5 envision, on paper anyway, an apolitical, non-partisan role in society.
This last particular characteristic, i.e. a sense of pride in being apolitical, offers the most convenient catalyst for coalition building amongst middle-class institutions. The recognition of the self as a defined, separate entity in relation to the ‘political class’, (politicians and their clients), creates a fracture that very easily outsteps democratic boundaries. A century ago, Weber predicted the creation of an ‘Iron Cage’ - a metaphor for a post-industrial, urban society completely bound by the restrictive limits of a legal-rational order. Rules will be followed at all costs, human beings will behave like automatons, and the act of exercising political choice will become a procedural activity, devoid of all substance.
Thankfully though, Pakistan’s current socio-economic make-up puts it quite far away from this Orwellian nightmare. Large parts of society, to this day, are extensively partial and extremely political. They identify their politics through a collection of lenses (class, party, caste, tribe, sect), and undercut an oppressive legal order through acts of everyday resistance (bribery, patronage, sifarish). As the footprint of middle class institution grows with urbanization, our political domain faces an interesting, and increasingly relevant question: Will our middle-class, as it continues to evolve, reconcile with the notion of democratic participation and universal franchise, or will it continue to exercise strongly authoritarian, deeply fracturing tendencies?
Guess we’ll just have to wait and find out.
Originally published in Pakistan Today on 09/02/2012
Alavi sees the army as a constituent portion of the unrepresentative state, which forms subordinate relationships with domestic political actors, bureaucrats, and the capitalists, while recognizing some foreign power (the US, and to a lesser extent, China) as its patron. Within the state, Alavi posits that the military has, over time, gained supremacy over the bureaucracy and the judiciary because of greater public outreach, its control over the coercive apparatus, and its economic strength. Jalal, on the other hand, traces the rise of the military to a set of engagements that took place in the domain of high-politics in the period following independence. Her thesis is that in 1947, the army was nothing more than a hollow shell, and was eventually strengthened by the migrant bureaucracy, scheming politicians, and the geo-political interests of the US. The security framework, which Pakistan adopted upon partition, provided the premise for this strengthening to take place.
Both explanations are plausible and, in their own way, perfectly viable. Yet the problem with a top-down lens is that it assumes the state (and its internal interplay) to be dynamic, and society to be receptive and static. The army steps into power, receives judicial cover, forms a faction of the Muslim League, and society celebrates the demise of corrupt politicians. This linear narrative needs to be problematized further to actually understand how the civil-military equation obtained its current shape.
In an article published much later on in his career, Alavi reproduced the words of a retired Major, from a letter he wrote to the President of Pakistan, General Zia-ul-Haq. He wrote that the army’s popularity, and hence its ability to step into power, is a direct result of its insulation from the rest of society, and that the current COAS/President was under-cutting this by stuffing armed forces personnel in every civilian nook and cranny. Many other retired officers, like this gentleman, were quite concerned about ‘over-exposure’.
The interesting thing is that, on paper, the army Major was probably right. Increased society-army interaction could’ve resulted in the unpopularity of the latter – a consequence mitigated, previously, by the insulated nature of cantonments and garrisons. Yet in reality, the army, specifically in Punjab and Karachi, maintained some manner of social legitimacy during the 80s, and enhanced its social capital during the 90s because of some very worthwhile investments it made under Ayub, but more so under Zia.
One such investment is the army’s relationship with the urban/peri-urban, educated middle-class, and more specifically, with middle-class institutions. Despite forming a tiny minority in the overall demographic make-up of the country, the urban, educated class has wielded a fair amount of influence in the overall trajectory of the country. Contrary to the self-perceived narrative of marginalization that many members of this class imbibe and regurgitate, members of the middle class have held important positions at the level of the state (through their presence in the post-Bhutto bureaucracy, and armed forces), and, with the result of their societal counterparts, have helped shape the dynamic of power, and its rhetoric in the country.
The willing collaborators, at the societal level, are most often found dominating two particular institutions: Higher Education and Media. This is helped by the fact that the demographic make-up of 5 institutions (judiciary, bureaucracy, armed forces, higher education, and media) is quite similar. All are white-collar professions that require some form of tertiary level education. All 5 offer, to varying degrees, the middle-class requirement of stability and perpetuity of employment. And all 5 envision, on paper anyway, an apolitical, non-partisan role in society.
This last particular characteristic, i.e. a sense of pride in being apolitical, offers the most convenient catalyst for coalition building amongst middle-class institutions. The recognition of the self as a defined, separate entity in relation to the ‘political class’, (politicians and their clients), creates a fracture that very easily outsteps democratic boundaries. A century ago, Weber predicted the creation of an ‘Iron Cage’ - a metaphor for a post-industrial, urban society completely bound by the restrictive limits of a legal-rational order. Rules will be followed at all costs, human beings will behave like automatons, and the act of exercising political choice will become a procedural activity, devoid of all substance.
Thankfully though, Pakistan’s current socio-economic make-up puts it quite far away from this Orwellian nightmare. Large parts of society, to this day, are extensively partial and extremely political. They identify their politics through a collection of lenses (class, party, caste, tribe, sect), and undercut an oppressive legal order through acts of everyday resistance (bribery, patronage, sifarish). As the footprint of middle class institution grows with urbanization, our political domain faces an interesting, and increasingly relevant question: Will our middle-class, as it continues to evolve, reconcile with the notion of democratic participation and universal franchise, or will it continue to exercise strongly authoritarian, deeply fracturing tendencies?
Guess we’ll just have to wait and find out.
Originally published in Pakistan Today on 09/02/2012
Sunday, 22 January 2012
Martial Tribes and the Pakistan Army: A response to Aakar Patel
Amidst the banal and mind-numbing spread of op-ed pages across the country, Aakar Patel’s recent piece on the civil-military imbalance in Pakistan (Express Tribune: Of Punjab’s partition, castes & martial races) was a refreshing departure from convention. Here’s what Mr. Patel had to say about the issue:
“My hypothesis is that the division of the Punjabi nation in 1947 produced a Pakistani Punjab that was heavily weighted in favour of the martial castes. The trading castes, which tend to be more pragmatic and balance society’s extremism mostly left to come to India. This has produced the imbalance which explains Pakistan’s fondness for a state dominated by soldiers. Gen Pervez Kayani runs the state’s foreign policy, security policy and most of its economic policy because the majority of Punjabis are comfortable with the idea of a warrior being in charge.”
Let’s get one thing straight though: this particular line of thinking, i.e. the association of caste with institutional ordering, isn’t new. In fact, it’s been present in the Indian subcontinent since at least the middle of the 19th century.
As the story goes, in the aftermath of the 1857 Mutiny the Empire wanted to re-structure the British Indian Army in a bid to expunge the treacherous Bengalis, and accommodate more loyal segments of society, i.e. the Punjabis. The premise for this ethnic revision, however, was less arbitrary than it sounds, and was actually based on anthropological work done by civil servants of the Raj. Volume upon volume, detailing every characteristic of how major and minor ethnic groups went about their daily lives, what they ate, how they spent their money, what were they good at, and what were their failings. These observations, put together in the shape of district gazetteers, pamphlets, and, in some cases, full book-length publications, ultimately led to the conclusion that some Punjabi tribes, i.e. the martial races (Janjuas, Awans, Ghakars etc), were best suited for military service.
This is precisely where Aakar Patel’s hypothesis overlaps with historical reality: The British, in their quest for passive consent from the Indians, skewed recruitment patterns to such an extent that 67% of all recruitment was happening in the hill-tracts of what is now Pakistani Punjab. As a stand-alone fact, this particular contingency makes Patel’s theory very believable. Punjab has a militaristic culture, it is the largest province in the country, it has, over time, achieved pre-eminence in the affairs of the state, and hence it organically supports the one institution that it both helps form, and sustain: the army.
All well and good on paper, but unfortunately, this theory falls flat in the face of everything else that’s happened in our 150 year long history. If Patel’s thesis were used to construct a counter-factual, it would have resulted in a number of things:
1) The army would’ve been popular and powerful from the day of independence.
This, as is well recorded, is not true. For starters, Pakistan had terrible military infrastructure in the first decade of independence, and a process of hardware accumulation became possible only after the CEATO-SENTO deals were negotiated with the US by a civilian government.
2) The two-nation theory, based on warrior-like posturing towards India, was a product of the Punjabi imagination.
False. While the two-nation theory is imbibed and perpetuated by a large segment of the society in North and Central Punjab, it was actually championed by the Muhajir bureaucracy in the first 25 years of independence. Ghulam Muhammad, an Aligarh educated accountant, and the first finance minister of Pakistan, gave a speech on the floor of the constituent assembly extolling the virtues of a powerful army, of diverting budgetary resources towards arms accumulation, and of being prepared to mount a credible defense (and where applicable, effective attack) in the face of an ever-looming Indian threat.
3) The pre-eminence of Punjabi caste-based militarism limited and, ultimately maligned, capitalistic growth in post-partition Punjab
Also not true. Patel, later on in the piece, cites the case of trading castes in Karachi and Indian Punjab as counter-balancing forces that keep militarism in check. This particular reading of reality completely ignores, well, reality. Pakistani Punjab, despite the large-scale flight of non-Muslim capital in 1947, now sees urbanization at nearly 35 percent, and a provincial GDP that has a greater contribution from trade, retail, transport, and manufacturing than agriculture. The Punjabi trading and artisan castes, Arain, Kashmiri, Sheikhs, Perachas, Lohars etc, not only dominate provincial politics (through parties like the PMLN), they’re also quite keen on having good relations with India.
The basic premise of Aakar Patel’s piece is correct. The military is quite popular in Punjab, and in urban Pakistan as a whole, and its role in politics is not looked upon as an indiscretion. But his explanation is essentialist, and quite flawed. The real reasons for the army’s popularity are in the historical imbalances created by the ideology of a seceding state, by the exigencies of an aloof, migrant bureaucracy, by the machinations of global powers, by the self-serving accumulation of the armed foces themselves, and most importantly, the 64 year long project of villyfying mass-politics, political parties, and politicians. A project in which, to this day, media, and segments of the elite continue to be willing partners.
Originally published in Pakistan Today on 23/01/2012
“My hypothesis is that the division of the Punjabi nation in 1947 produced a Pakistani Punjab that was heavily weighted in favour of the martial castes. The trading castes, which tend to be more pragmatic and balance society’s extremism mostly left to come to India. This has produced the imbalance which explains Pakistan’s fondness for a state dominated by soldiers. Gen Pervez Kayani runs the state’s foreign policy, security policy and most of its economic policy because the majority of Punjabis are comfortable with the idea of a warrior being in charge.”
Let’s get one thing straight though: this particular line of thinking, i.e. the association of caste with institutional ordering, isn’t new. In fact, it’s been present in the Indian subcontinent since at least the middle of the 19th century.
As the story goes, in the aftermath of the 1857 Mutiny the Empire wanted to re-structure the British Indian Army in a bid to expunge the treacherous Bengalis, and accommodate more loyal segments of society, i.e. the Punjabis. The premise for this ethnic revision, however, was less arbitrary than it sounds, and was actually based on anthropological work done by civil servants of the Raj. Volume upon volume, detailing every characteristic of how major and minor ethnic groups went about their daily lives, what they ate, how they spent their money, what were they good at, and what were their failings. These observations, put together in the shape of district gazetteers, pamphlets, and, in some cases, full book-length publications, ultimately led to the conclusion that some Punjabi tribes, i.e. the martial races (Janjuas, Awans, Ghakars etc), were best suited for military service.
This is precisely where Aakar Patel’s hypothesis overlaps with historical reality: The British, in their quest for passive consent from the Indians, skewed recruitment patterns to such an extent that 67% of all recruitment was happening in the hill-tracts of what is now Pakistani Punjab. As a stand-alone fact, this particular contingency makes Patel’s theory very believable. Punjab has a militaristic culture, it is the largest province in the country, it has, over time, achieved pre-eminence in the affairs of the state, and hence it organically supports the one institution that it both helps form, and sustain: the army.
All well and good on paper, but unfortunately, this theory falls flat in the face of everything else that’s happened in our 150 year long history. If Patel’s thesis were used to construct a counter-factual, it would have resulted in a number of things:
1) The army would’ve been popular and powerful from the day of independence.
This, as is well recorded, is not true. For starters, Pakistan had terrible military infrastructure in the first decade of independence, and a process of hardware accumulation became possible only after the CEATO-SENTO deals were negotiated with the US by a civilian government.
2) The two-nation theory, based on warrior-like posturing towards India, was a product of the Punjabi imagination.
False. While the two-nation theory is imbibed and perpetuated by a large segment of the society in North and Central Punjab, it was actually championed by the Muhajir bureaucracy in the first 25 years of independence. Ghulam Muhammad, an Aligarh educated accountant, and the first finance minister of Pakistan, gave a speech on the floor of the constituent assembly extolling the virtues of a powerful army, of diverting budgetary resources towards arms accumulation, and of being prepared to mount a credible defense (and where applicable, effective attack) in the face of an ever-looming Indian threat.
3) The pre-eminence of Punjabi caste-based militarism limited and, ultimately maligned, capitalistic growth in post-partition Punjab
Also not true. Patel, later on in the piece, cites the case of trading castes in Karachi and Indian Punjab as counter-balancing forces that keep militarism in check. This particular reading of reality completely ignores, well, reality. Pakistani Punjab, despite the large-scale flight of non-Muslim capital in 1947, now sees urbanization at nearly 35 percent, and a provincial GDP that has a greater contribution from trade, retail, transport, and manufacturing than agriculture. The Punjabi trading and artisan castes, Arain, Kashmiri, Sheikhs, Perachas, Lohars etc, not only dominate provincial politics (through parties like the PMLN), they’re also quite keen on having good relations with India.
The basic premise of Aakar Patel’s piece is correct. The military is quite popular in Punjab, and in urban Pakistan as a whole, and its role in politics is not looked upon as an indiscretion. But his explanation is essentialist, and quite flawed. The real reasons for the army’s popularity are in the historical imbalances created by the ideology of a seceding state, by the exigencies of an aloof, migrant bureaucracy, by the machinations of global powers, by the self-serving accumulation of the armed foces themselves, and most importantly, the 64 year long project of villyfying mass-politics, political parties, and politicians. A project in which, to this day, media, and segments of the elite continue to be willing partners.
Originally published in Pakistan Today on 23/01/2012
Monday, 16 January 2012
The Seen and the Unseen In Pakistan's Economy
“First winter in Islamabad?”
“I moved here a few weeks ago. Before that I was in Pakpattan, but I’ve spent some time in Multan and Khanewal as well. My mamoo taught me well; he works at an auto workshop in the main Bahawalnagar civil lines bazaar. Its the largest workshop in the entire district.”
“So you’ve been in this line of work for the last…?”
“16 years. Paid an agent 80,000 on two separate occasions for a job contact and visa in Saudia. Was refused by immigration authorities on medical grounds, both times. They said I had high blood pressure and an above average body temperature. Must’ve been because of all that time I spent playing cricket in the desert sun.”
Muhammad Shehzad now works at a small workshop in Islamabad. He gets paid, in cash, on a fortnightly basis, and rents a small room with 4 of his co-mechanics. The proprietor of his new workplace came to know of Shehzad through a local jobber (an informal employment agent), who in turn had met Shehzad a few months ago in Pakpattan.
The distance between Islamabad and Pakpattan is approximately 550 km. Shehzad had never visited Lahore, let alone Islamabad, had no relatives in the capital city, no friends, no warm clothes, and no place to stay. Yet here was, three weeks into a new job, cold and mostly hungry, but going about his business like many others across the country.
Contrary to what some of you might be thinking at this point, this column does not seek to narrate a human-interest story. In fact, this particular example has been cited precisely because of its relative tedium, its complete lack of exceptionality, and because, at any given point, it happens to be true for a very large number of individuals in Pakistan.
Let me explicate further:
These last few months, an English language daily has witnessed an intense, but mostly inconclusive debate on the nature of Pakistan’s economic crisis. In one camp are the mainstreamers; the orthodox economists who cite basic macroeconomic indicators (fiscal deficit, inflation, unemployment, growth rate, total debt) to point out the precarious position we currently find ourselves in. Crisis, they say, is an understatement. Full, unmitigated disaster captures the situation more effectively. In the other camp, there was only one man: Dr. S. Akber Zaidi. In his view, Pakistan’s economy is undoubtedly in a bad shape, but at the same time, most of this clamor and alarm about falling into an economic abyss was misplaced. The outcome, in his view, of a complete failure on part of mainstream economists to understand the nature of Pakistan’s economy.
According to Dr. Zaidi and political sociologist, Dr. Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, Pakistan’s economy exists in a seen-unseen formation, with the latter counterweighing the problems arising in the former. Most of those reading this piece, i.e. the 9 to 5, white-collar sorts with an NTN number, exist in the ‘seen’ portion. Muhammad Shehzad, the 9 to 9, paid-in-cash, auto mechanic, exists in the ‘unseen’ portion. This particular argument is premised on the fact that the unseen, or informal/undocumented portion of Pakistan’s economy is, potentially, as large as the documented portion, employs as many, if not more, people, and operates on a more nativist logic, using biraderi, zaat, tribe, and other such informal connections that produce a dynamism more capable of handling macro-economic problems. In 2003, Anwer Kemal estimated that nearly 50 percent of all employment in Pakistan happens in the informal, or semi-informal segment. Car mechanics, local shops, small-scale manufacturing units, domestic services like drivers, guards, and cleaners, all operate in the informal sector. People gain employment through intermediaries, colloquially known as jobbers, and stick around in mostly oppressive environments till they find something marginally better. This process is complemented by informal migration and subsequent remittance flows from the Gulf, which provides direct cash injection into many households in Pakistan.
The process of informalization has received several fillips since the Bhutto period: For starters, the de-regulation and de-nationalization of the economy during the 80s, and the stagnation of manufacturing in the 90s, saw a large pool of unemployed labor shift into the informal sector. Secondly, the services sector (51% of total GDP) in Punjab, and in Karachi, revolves largely around two major components: Transport & communication, and Retail & Wholesale. In the backdrop of a liberalized trade policy (as part of structural adjustment) the trading and retail, as well as transport, sector became major nodes of labor absorption. Thirdly, fueled by foreign inflows of cash (post 9/11), and a mostly artificial credit boom, the construction sector grew by nearly 48% in the last decade. Around 87.8% of all employment in this particular sector is informal and undocumented, and hence, beyond the purview of labor welfare related legislation.
Precisely because of its understudied dimension, it’s hard to pinpoint whether the visible dynamism of the informal economy is sufficient to offset Pakistan’s macro-economic crisis. The problem is further exacerbated when you consider that most people who deal with such questions (researchers, development practitioners) have failed to accord any substantive importance to the informal sector. Unlike in India, where the government has formed the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS), the academia, and the government in Pakistan continues to ignore the existence of this rapidly growing phenomenon, and consequently fails to see the very real forms of exploitation and oppression that take place within it. Safe to say, till such time that our analytical frame is broadened, all functional attempts to understand, and work with the economy will remain incomplete and hence, ineffective.
Originally published in Pakistan Today on 16/01/2011
“I moved here a few weeks ago. Before that I was in Pakpattan, but I’ve spent some time in Multan and Khanewal as well. My mamoo taught me well; he works at an auto workshop in the main Bahawalnagar civil lines bazaar. Its the largest workshop in the entire district.”
“So you’ve been in this line of work for the last…?”
“16 years. Paid an agent 80,000 on two separate occasions for a job contact and visa in Saudia. Was refused by immigration authorities on medical grounds, both times. They said I had high blood pressure and an above average body temperature. Must’ve been because of all that time I spent playing cricket in the desert sun.”
Muhammad Shehzad now works at a small workshop in Islamabad. He gets paid, in cash, on a fortnightly basis, and rents a small room with 4 of his co-mechanics. The proprietor of his new workplace came to know of Shehzad through a local jobber (an informal employment agent), who in turn had met Shehzad a few months ago in Pakpattan.
The distance between Islamabad and Pakpattan is approximately 550 km. Shehzad had never visited Lahore, let alone Islamabad, had no relatives in the capital city, no friends, no warm clothes, and no place to stay. Yet here was, three weeks into a new job, cold and mostly hungry, but going about his business like many others across the country.
Contrary to what some of you might be thinking at this point, this column does not seek to narrate a human-interest story. In fact, this particular example has been cited precisely because of its relative tedium, its complete lack of exceptionality, and because, at any given point, it happens to be true for a very large number of individuals in Pakistan.
Let me explicate further:
These last few months, an English language daily has witnessed an intense, but mostly inconclusive debate on the nature of Pakistan’s economic crisis. In one camp are the mainstreamers; the orthodox economists who cite basic macroeconomic indicators (fiscal deficit, inflation, unemployment, growth rate, total debt) to point out the precarious position we currently find ourselves in. Crisis, they say, is an understatement. Full, unmitigated disaster captures the situation more effectively. In the other camp, there was only one man: Dr. S. Akber Zaidi. In his view, Pakistan’s economy is undoubtedly in a bad shape, but at the same time, most of this clamor and alarm about falling into an economic abyss was misplaced. The outcome, in his view, of a complete failure on part of mainstream economists to understand the nature of Pakistan’s economy.
According to Dr. Zaidi and political sociologist, Dr. Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, Pakistan’s economy exists in a seen-unseen formation, with the latter counterweighing the problems arising in the former. Most of those reading this piece, i.e. the 9 to 5, white-collar sorts with an NTN number, exist in the ‘seen’ portion. Muhammad Shehzad, the 9 to 9, paid-in-cash, auto mechanic, exists in the ‘unseen’ portion. This particular argument is premised on the fact that the unseen, or informal/undocumented portion of Pakistan’s economy is, potentially, as large as the documented portion, employs as many, if not more, people, and operates on a more nativist logic, using biraderi, zaat, tribe, and other such informal connections that produce a dynamism more capable of handling macro-economic problems. In 2003, Anwer Kemal estimated that nearly 50 percent of all employment in Pakistan happens in the informal, or semi-informal segment. Car mechanics, local shops, small-scale manufacturing units, domestic services like drivers, guards, and cleaners, all operate in the informal sector. People gain employment through intermediaries, colloquially known as jobbers, and stick around in mostly oppressive environments till they find something marginally better. This process is complemented by informal migration and subsequent remittance flows from the Gulf, which provides direct cash injection into many households in Pakistan.
The process of informalization has received several fillips since the Bhutto period: For starters, the de-regulation and de-nationalization of the economy during the 80s, and the stagnation of manufacturing in the 90s, saw a large pool of unemployed labor shift into the informal sector. Secondly, the services sector (51% of total GDP) in Punjab, and in Karachi, revolves largely around two major components: Transport & communication, and Retail & Wholesale. In the backdrop of a liberalized trade policy (as part of structural adjustment) the trading and retail, as well as transport, sector became major nodes of labor absorption. Thirdly, fueled by foreign inflows of cash (post 9/11), and a mostly artificial credit boom, the construction sector grew by nearly 48% in the last decade. Around 87.8% of all employment in this particular sector is informal and undocumented, and hence, beyond the purview of labor welfare related legislation.
Precisely because of its understudied dimension, it’s hard to pinpoint whether the visible dynamism of the informal economy is sufficient to offset Pakistan’s macro-economic crisis. The problem is further exacerbated when you consider that most people who deal with such questions (researchers, development practitioners) have failed to accord any substantive importance to the informal sector. Unlike in India, where the government has formed the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS), the academia, and the government in Pakistan continues to ignore the existence of this rapidly growing phenomenon, and consequently fails to see the very real forms of exploitation and oppression that take place within it. Safe to say, till such time that our analytical frame is broadened, all functional attempts to understand, and work with the economy will remain incomplete and hence, ineffective.
Originally published in Pakistan Today on 16/01/2011
Monday, 9 January 2012
21st Century Populism
In the aftermath of the Cold War, the process of pro-market reform has, more or less, continued unabated in large parts of the free, liberated, and would-be-liberated world. Pakistan itself has seen large-scale privatization, (which, by the way, still isn’t enough for some people), de-regulation in the financial sector, and an unabashed willingness to open up for foreign investment. People have mobile phones, new cars, and 15 different kinds of cooking oils to choose from. In the backdrop of this hasty, and somewhat selective, engagement with consumerist capitalism, Pakistan has seen a huge rise in the absolute size of a middle-income group, which, according to PIDE, is now estimated to be around 30-35 million.
That’s 30-35 million people who want to live their lives a certain comfortable way.
Interestingly enough, one of the things that Pakistan’s tottering economy has exposed is the degree to which our middle classes have become accustomed to this idea of relative comfort. Historically pampered with subsidized fuel, electricity, and controlled food prices, urbanites are having a hard time dealing with financial hardship, inflationary trends, and a rapid deterioration in state-sanctioned service delivery. The obvious response, and a natural one at that, is to blame the sitting government – something that they’ve become adept at for the last three and a half years. And let’s face it, in an era of objective crises, contextualized and nuanced reactions are neither present and nor should they be expected from the populace in general. If things are bad, people will throw eggs at whoever’s in the driving seat. It happened in the late 70’s, the late 90’s, and it’s happening again in 2012.
The substantive difference between the three cases is that this time around, there’s an organized, coherent, and, most importantly, civilian instrument of opposition in the shape of the PTI.
As much as Imran Khan would like to believe, PTI’s popularity has less to do with his personality, and much more to do with structural causes that have historically given rise to dissident sentiment. A while ago, an office-bearer of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, who moonlights as an orthodontist (or is it the other way around?), wrote an opinion piece drawing parallels with Z.A. Bhutto’s rise to power, and Imran Khan’s increasing popularity. Both leaders, he said, were accepted by a cross-section of the polity, both were able to mobilize effectively, and both relied on their personal charisma to engage with previously dormant segments of society. Based on these three characteristics alone, and ignoring the substantive content of their respective brands of populism, the comparison possesses some merit. PTI, like the PPP of the late 60’s, is promising to change the current order of things and for a large number of people, the rhetoric of change is more than enough to win them over.
The PTI effect, and that’s what I’m going to call it now, is an interesting culmination of three inter-connected trends in Pakistan since the 80’s: selective pro-market reform, middle class growth, and, most important of all, the gradual dissipation of working class politics. The first two are fairly obvious, while the third one is something most of us don’t bother dwelling on despite the fact that it holds the key to explaining party politics in contemporary Pakistan.
The very fact that local heavyweights are considered to be the biggest factor in determining electoral success shows the nature of political contestation in the country. A particular big-wig, say a large landholder like Shah Mehmood Qureshi, is considered to be a representative of everyone, rich, middle class, or poor, who lives in his constituency. The imbibed assumption is that an honest, hard-working, and good-intentioned representative will bring benefits to all and sundry, while the remote possibility that politics could be a zero-sum affair is considered to be an outdated notion, something that withered away with the fall of the Soviet Union.
Unfortunately, the truth is that this has little to do with socialism or communism, and everything to do with the way our political economy functions. The patwari, which PTI will replace with the computer operator, does not hold sway over the rural poor because of his position as a Class II government employee. He’s powerful because of the relationship he enjoys with the local big-wig, with the local magistrate, and with the police, which allows him to block a tenant’s right to land, to ensure female disinheritance, and to, generally, affect the process in a certain way. Replacing the patwari with a computer and an operator doesn’t alter the way power is structured and exercised at that particular level. It will at most force entrenched interests to adapt to a new reality. Consequently, the irony of talking about ‘getting rid of the patwari’ whilst having a landlord sitting right behind him on stage is completely lost on Imran Khan.
In the 60’s, Bhutto was made a leader by the rural and urban poor because of the circumstances left by Ayub’s Green Revolution and industrialization. Growing inequality, exclusion from land, and a heavy urban bias gave people tangible issues to rally around. Bhutto responded by leading a government, which despite its many flaws, managed to make the most significant rich-to-poor redistribution in this country’s history. Today, a desire for cheap fuel, uninterrupted electricity, trains and airplanes that run on time, and national honor fuel a new kind of movement. A kind that can only be built on the premise of a pro-market, neo-liberal economic agenda; can only run when middle class institutions (media, higher education, bureaucracy, armed forces) side with a segment of the elite for their own benefit; and can only gain traction when genuinely progressive alternatives have ceased to exist.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is populism in the 21st century.
Originally published in Pakistan Today on 09/01/2012
That’s 30-35 million people who want to live their lives a certain comfortable way.
Interestingly enough, one of the things that Pakistan’s tottering economy has exposed is the degree to which our middle classes have become accustomed to this idea of relative comfort. Historically pampered with subsidized fuel, electricity, and controlled food prices, urbanites are having a hard time dealing with financial hardship, inflationary trends, and a rapid deterioration in state-sanctioned service delivery. The obvious response, and a natural one at that, is to blame the sitting government – something that they’ve become adept at for the last three and a half years. And let’s face it, in an era of objective crises, contextualized and nuanced reactions are neither present and nor should they be expected from the populace in general. If things are bad, people will throw eggs at whoever’s in the driving seat. It happened in the late 70’s, the late 90’s, and it’s happening again in 2012.
The substantive difference between the three cases is that this time around, there’s an organized, coherent, and, most importantly, civilian instrument of opposition in the shape of the PTI.
As much as Imran Khan would like to believe, PTI’s popularity has less to do with his personality, and much more to do with structural causes that have historically given rise to dissident sentiment. A while ago, an office-bearer of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, who moonlights as an orthodontist (or is it the other way around?), wrote an opinion piece drawing parallels with Z.A. Bhutto’s rise to power, and Imran Khan’s increasing popularity. Both leaders, he said, were accepted by a cross-section of the polity, both were able to mobilize effectively, and both relied on their personal charisma to engage with previously dormant segments of society. Based on these three characteristics alone, and ignoring the substantive content of their respective brands of populism, the comparison possesses some merit. PTI, like the PPP of the late 60’s, is promising to change the current order of things and for a large number of people, the rhetoric of change is more than enough to win them over.
The PTI effect, and that’s what I’m going to call it now, is an interesting culmination of three inter-connected trends in Pakistan since the 80’s: selective pro-market reform, middle class growth, and, most important of all, the gradual dissipation of working class politics. The first two are fairly obvious, while the third one is something most of us don’t bother dwelling on despite the fact that it holds the key to explaining party politics in contemporary Pakistan.
The very fact that local heavyweights are considered to be the biggest factor in determining electoral success shows the nature of political contestation in the country. A particular big-wig, say a large landholder like Shah Mehmood Qureshi, is considered to be a representative of everyone, rich, middle class, or poor, who lives in his constituency. The imbibed assumption is that an honest, hard-working, and good-intentioned representative will bring benefits to all and sundry, while the remote possibility that politics could be a zero-sum affair is considered to be an outdated notion, something that withered away with the fall of the Soviet Union.
Unfortunately, the truth is that this has little to do with socialism or communism, and everything to do with the way our political economy functions. The patwari, which PTI will replace with the computer operator, does not hold sway over the rural poor because of his position as a Class II government employee. He’s powerful because of the relationship he enjoys with the local big-wig, with the local magistrate, and with the police, which allows him to block a tenant’s right to land, to ensure female disinheritance, and to, generally, affect the process in a certain way. Replacing the patwari with a computer and an operator doesn’t alter the way power is structured and exercised at that particular level. It will at most force entrenched interests to adapt to a new reality. Consequently, the irony of talking about ‘getting rid of the patwari’ whilst having a landlord sitting right behind him on stage is completely lost on Imran Khan.
In the 60’s, Bhutto was made a leader by the rural and urban poor because of the circumstances left by Ayub’s Green Revolution and industrialization. Growing inequality, exclusion from land, and a heavy urban bias gave people tangible issues to rally around. Bhutto responded by leading a government, which despite its many flaws, managed to make the most significant rich-to-poor redistribution in this country’s history. Today, a desire for cheap fuel, uninterrupted electricity, trains and airplanes that run on time, and national honor fuel a new kind of movement. A kind that can only be built on the premise of a pro-market, neo-liberal economic agenda; can only run when middle class institutions (media, higher education, bureaucracy, armed forces) side with a segment of the elite for their own benefit; and can only gain traction when genuinely progressive alternatives have ceased to exist.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is populism in the 21st century.
Originally published in Pakistan Today on 09/01/2012
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