One of the reasons why the bureaucracy doesn't get anything done is because it spends half its time coming up with complicated letters that actually say very little (or on occasions, nothing at all). Below is one such letter.
To,
The Executive District Officer (Revenue)
Tando Muhammad Khan.
Subject: Guidance for the DCO on Coordination of Humanitarian Relief Efforts.
I am directed to enclose herewith copy of letter dated 08-09-2010, received from COS/Planning and Coordination, SPU-NDMA, PM Secretariat, Islamabad, with a request to please go through the contents of the letter under reference and ensure strict compliance of the instructions in letter and spirit as well as furnish your specific views in the matter immediately for the perusal of kind DCO and further process.
From:
Deputy District Officer (HRM/ESTT:)
for District Coordination Officer
Tando Muhammad Khan
And this is from our lowest tier of government. You can only imagine the crocked up shit they come up with at the higher levels.
Thursday, 23 September 2010
Wednesday, 22 September 2010
On Mergers and the League
If someone were to write a comprehensive book on the Punjab Muslim League, it would probably end up reading like a Judith McNaught novel. Full of one night stands, nasty break ups, and people having kids with their aunts and uncles. But to save ourselves the trouble of moaning and groaning about the way Punjabi politics plays itself out, we would do well to internalize the fact that this behavior is endemic to the way the Punjab League was created, i.e. by the mass-defection of the provincial elite from a much more institutionalized setup.
One period aside, at no other point in the history of this province has the Muslim League resembled anything other than a coterie of the rich and famous, (and the old and restless), in Punjab. The only notable exception is the PML-N, during the 2008-09 time-period, when it actually started to look like a genuine political party, but even that facade quickly gave way: first during the KPK naming crisis, and then during the course of various by-elections.
All this serves to remind us that when the PML (F) and PML (Q) merge to form one political party, it should be treated with little regard, with a slight nod of the head, maybe an odd op-ed or two, but generally with the all-round apathy that a Muslim League merger deserves.
Except in my book, this particular incident is perhaps the most important political development in Punjab in at least the last few years. To understand the general environment in which this has happened, its useful to point out that in many ways the 2008 elections were really not all they're normally made out to be.
For one, the PPP polled in roughly 40 percent of the total vote and won less than half the seats in the national assembly. No matter which way you look at it, that's really not what you would call riding a sympathy wave. Heck, they polled in roughly the same numbers in the rigged exercise of 2002.
Secondly, regardless of how many tickers you run stating 'Baray Baray Burj Ulat Gaye', the fact remains that the party most closely associated with the Musharraf dictatorship still polled in more votes, in percentage terms, than the Aamriat kay Baghi Group aka PML-N. In the context of Punjab, the PML-Q has, (give or take a few fake degrees), 81 seats. Discounting the Like Minded Group, (kudos to the person who came up with the name), the PML-Q still has a considerable presence in certain regions west of the Chenab and in the South of the Province.
From a purely objective standpoint, i'll have to admit that Nawaz Sharif's been fairly successful at monopolizing the 'Muslim League' brand name for himself. Everyone else, Q,F, J, Z etc. are commonly lumped as traitors and rebels, even though the PML-N has acted as a launching pad for a new breed of politicians, many of whom have little or no linkage with the original League of the 50's or 60's. Nawaz Sharif's second success was in creating the perception that Chaudhary Shujaat (and his band of merry men) were weak without the support of a dictator or without cover from the PML-N. This was again, not true.
Even as early as 1998, some of the more informed analysis on the PML-N government saw it as two separate vertically aligned patron-client chains loosely joined at the top. The Nawaz faction and the Shujaat faction. For a lack of a better analogy, this was not dissimilar to the way the Congress worked during the latter half of the 60's. But since Nehru was Nehru, his progeny (Indira), managed to use her bloodline to mitigate the damage caused by the eventual defection of certain sections of the Congress leadership following her father's death.
Nawaz Sharif is obviously no Nehru, so his ouster and eventual exile allowed the Shujaat faction to step in into the Punjabi limelight for the first time in nearly 2 decades. Let's make no mistake about the fact that the PML-Q is ultimately driven by a quest to maintain proximity with state power. The added caveat that i'm suggesting here though is that a lust for power, a strong enough bond on its own, is fortified by a pattern of institutionalization that's been built over the last 40 years, first by Chaudhary Zahoor Elahi, and then by Chaudhary Shujaat. Nothing was more telling of this fact than when in a reply to a question regarding the 2002 defection, Kamil Ali Agha replied 'Meri siyaasat wohee hay jo Ch. Zahoor Elahi kee siyaasat hay'. Zahoor Elahi might have died a long time ago, but his patron-client networks in Punjab have been kept alive by his progeny and loyalists.
The PML-F, on the other hand, draws its power from the spiritual leadership of Pir Pagaro and the vast familial network of South Punjab. It's actually quite strange considering how Sanghar, a district in Sindh, which is at least a few hundred kilometers from the nearest Punjabi city, serves as the base for a marriage network that counts Ahmed Mehmood, Jahangir Tareen, and Yousaf Raza Gillani amongst its ranks. After this merger, the PML-F gives the PML-Q what the PML-N never had. A relatively stable power-base in South Punjab that goes well-beyond the few constituencies of D.G. Khan and Muzzafargarh.
The Gujrat-Sanghar alliance is possibly no different than the Gujrat-Lahore alliance of the 90's. It remains an alliance of convenience, and it again shows Shujaat's tendency to take the back-seat (this time with Pir sahab becoming the President of the APML). But what it does spell out very categorically is that the seemingly comfortable position of the PML-N in the province is going to be severely tested. The second thing that it spells out is that opposition to an entrenched Muslim League party in Punjab is going to come from another League faction and not the PPP. If this alliance works out, and if the reports of the army's blessings to it are true, then that for me is the death knell to the People's Party in this province. Far from becoming a center-left vs. center-right fight, Punjabi politics is quickly (d)evolving into a reactionary vs. reactionary bout. Although, in quintessential League fashion, the odds of one party buying out the other party's foot-soldiers is an infinitely more probable possibility than a proper 'us vs. them' electoral showdown.
One period aside, at no other point in the history of this province has the Muslim League resembled anything other than a coterie of the rich and famous, (and the old and restless), in Punjab. The only notable exception is the PML-N, during the 2008-09 time-period, when it actually started to look like a genuine political party, but even that facade quickly gave way: first during the KPK naming crisis, and then during the course of various by-elections.
All this serves to remind us that when the PML (F) and PML (Q) merge to form one political party, it should be treated with little regard, with a slight nod of the head, maybe an odd op-ed or two, but generally with the all-round apathy that a Muslim League merger deserves.
Except in my book, this particular incident is perhaps the most important political development in Punjab in at least the last few years. To understand the general environment in which this has happened, its useful to point out that in many ways the 2008 elections were really not all they're normally made out to be.
For one, the PPP polled in roughly 40 percent of the total vote and won less than half the seats in the national assembly. No matter which way you look at it, that's really not what you would call riding a sympathy wave. Heck, they polled in roughly the same numbers in the rigged exercise of 2002.
Secondly, regardless of how many tickers you run stating 'Baray Baray Burj Ulat Gaye', the fact remains that the party most closely associated with the Musharraf dictatorship still polled in more votes, in percentage terms, than the Aamriat kay Baghi Group aka PML-N. In the context of Punjab, the PML-Q has, (give or take a few fake degrees), 81 seats. Discounting the Like Minded Group, (kudos to the person who came up with the name), the PML-Q still has a considerable presence in certain regions west of the Chenab and in the South of the Province.
From a purely objective standpoint, i'll have to admit that Nawaz Sharif's been fairly successful at monopolizing the 'Muslim League' brand name for himself. Everyone else, Q,F, J, Z etc. are commonly lumped as traitors and rebels, even though the PML-N has acted as a launching pad for a new breed of politicians, many of whom have little or no linkage with the original League of the 50's or 60's. Nawaz Sharif's second success was in creating the perception that Chaudhary Shujaat (and his band of merry men) were weak without the support of a dictator or without cover from the PML-N. This was again, not true.
Even as early as 1998, some of the more informed analysis on the PML-N government saw it as two separate vertically aligned patron-client chains loosely joined at the top. The Nawaz faction and the Shujaat faction. For a lack of a better analogy, this was not dissimilar to the way the Congress worked during the latter half of the 60's. But since Nehru was Nehru, his progeny (Indira), managed to use her bloodline to mitigate the damage caused by the eventual defection of certain sections of the Congress leadership following her father's death.
Nawaz Sharif is obviously no Nehru, so his ouster and eventual exile allowed the Shujaat faction to step in into the Punjabi limelight for the first time in nearly 2 decades. Let's make no mistake about the fact that the PML-Q is ultimately driven by a quest to maintain proximity with state power. The added caveat that i'm suggesting here though is that a lust for power, a strong enough bond on its own, is fortified by a pattern of institutionalization that's been built over the last 40 years, first by Chaudhary Zahoor Elahi, and then by Chaudhary Shujaat. Nothing was more telling of this fact than when in a reply to a question regarding the 2002 defection, Kamil Ali Agha replied 'Meri siyaasat wohee hay jo Ch. Zahoor Elahi kee siyaasat hay'. Zahoor Elahi might have died a long time ago, but his patron-client networks in Punjab have been kept alive by his progeny and loyalists.
The PML-F, on the other hand, draws its power from the spiritual leadership of Pir Pagaro and the vast familial network of South Punjab. It's actually quite strange considering how Sanghar, a district in Sindh, which is at least a few hundred kilometers from the nearest Punjabi city, serves as the base for a marriage network that counts Ahmed Mehmood, Jahangir Tareen, and Yousaf Raza Gillani amongst its ranks. After this merger, the PML-F gives the PML-Q what the PML-N never had. A relatively stable power-base in South Punjab that goes well-beyond the few constituencies of D.G. Khan and Muzzafargarh.
The Gujrat-Sanghar alliance is possibly no different than the Gujrat-Lahore alliance of the 90's. It remains an alliance of convenience, and it again shows Shujaat's tendency to take the back-seat (this time with Pir sahab becoming the President of the APML). But what it does spell out very categorically is that the seemingly comfortable position of the PML-N in the province is going to be severely tested. The second thing that it spells out is that opposition to an entrenched Muslim League party in Punjab is going to come from another League faction and not the PPP. If this alliance works out, and if the reports of the army's blessings to it are true, then that for me is the death knell to the People's Party in this province. Far from becoming a center-left vs. center-right fight, Punjabi politics is quickly (d)evolving into a reactionary vs. reactionary bout. Although, in quintessential League fashion, the odds of one party buying out the other party's foot-soldiers is an infinitely more probable possibility than a proper 'us vs. them' electoral showdown.
Saturday, 11 September 2010
Democratic Skepticism
Apologies for the blogging hiatus but i've been in the process of shifting up north for work so i havent had time to ferment pseudo-intellectual discourse. Thankfully, this Eid business has given me a few days off, and as they say in sarkari language, 'in subsequence of this holiday', i've finally gotten the chance to update ze blog.
For pro-democracy hacks such as myself, the hardest bit is trying to convince others that the objective benefits of procedural and substantive democracy can only be achieved in the long-run. As an underlying assumption, democracy requires patience, both from the polity and the civilian leadership - which in Pakistan's case is certainly in short supply. Let's be rational about all of this: Cut a deal with the military and you'll guarantee yourself a stake in the system. On the other hand, any attempts at expanding your pre-ordained space will be met with significant resistance. Faced with this twisted MCQ, it's quite easy to see why so many have ticked option A. This isn't rocket science people, it's just common sense.
One of the things that history does is that it creates inertia. And what we have in Pakistan right now is simply a lot of inertia as far as the direction and configuration of political and policy space is concerned. This spiral of sorts gets a push, or a tug, every now and then but the overall trajectory remains the same. The Parliament rubber stamps everything important, talks about everything unimportant, and goes home to build roads and fix sewers. We foot the bill for 342 glorified local councillors and this is what we have to show for 63 years of statecraft.
So the solution, as preached by people like me is that political continuity will fix this problem. Let this polio-ridden democracy limp along for a little while and we might see it run (sic) in a decade or so. Hell, we've had the worst kind of stage-crashing over the last 63 years, it's only fair to let this pantomime go on till the end. Sounds peachy on paper, except two things are troublesome enough for me to retain an adequate amount of skepticism.
The first is entrenched short-termism in the classes that matter. The media has a short fuse, the urban classes can't stand a lax government, and the apolitical elite couldn't care less about the unwashed, uneducated sorts. You see broken roads, out-of-control inflation, poor social sector service delivery, and the charm of casting a vote gets worn off pretty quick. Bring in the army, they say. Why? Because apparently it gets the job done - (apparently being the operative word here). As Ahsan puts it, this fetish with a savior on horseback is pretty damaging to our infantile democratic process. You have cult figures and demigods in every country's history, but we should all know, institutions aren't built around people, they're built around rules that continue in perpetuity. There was a time when i used to shorten arguments with Musharraf supporters with a brief retort: 'For every one Musharraf that goes out, who's to say that the next one won't be a Zia.'
Point being that sometimes the man on horseback will actually be a dog on a mule.
The second thing that bothers me is slightly more technical and less rant-worthy. Democracy, unlike what some people say, is a functional phenomenon. Democracy for the sake of democracy is pretty useless. You basically put your money on this system because there's a (somewhat forced) consensus of sorts that it's the best option for a fractured planet. It helps people live together, resolve conflict peacefully, potentially creates good vibes for economic growth etc etc. So without substantive democracy, elections are just a showcase event for people to put up life-size mug shots in random spaces across the country.
Let it continue and we'll try to dig out substance.
This is the part which troubles me a lot. Let's imagine a Pakistan where you have civilian elite consensus in favor of a democratic political process. (Read Ahsan's post for more detail on the current dynamics). Every major political player agrees that we won't support another martial law. We see the PPP - Zardari et. all - finish their 5 year term in office. We head back to the polls, we get another government. Add 5 more years to the process. Sounds good so far. But what if we're perpetually stuck in a purely procedural political process?
Let's not kid ourselves for even a minute by suggesting that we have anything more than procedural democracy in this country. We had a pretty fair election in 2008, we have a parliament and we have our elected leadership exactly where it should be. Except we all know that it's not doing any of the things it's legally ordained to do. And no, i'm not talking about how they're too stupid or corrupt to do those things, i'm simply saying that their real jobs are outsourced to the multi-lateral institutions, segments of the bureaucracy, and the military leadership.
It's what i call a mid-level equilibrium of sorts. The civvies strike a deal with the army that we won't touch what you hold holy (defense budget, military aid, foreign/defense/economic policy), and in return, you let us keep our parliament and the cars and the shoddy little Population-Welfare-type ministries.
So Pakistan, as its history shows, has had two kinds of democratic equilibria: The first is military-rule with localized democratic power, and the second is procedural democracy with highly constrained policy space, or what my former instructor, Aqil Shah, termed 'Armored Democracy'. In 63 years, we're yet to see an equilibrium position beyond these two. The issue with being stuck in this ping-pong of sorts between a rock (martial law) and a slightly less hard place (sham democracy) is that we're simply adding to the inertia of how civilians perceive the army with regards to the political process. If you live your entire political career knowing that the army can bite anytime it wants to, there is no chance in hell that you'd even think about creating, or supporting, an agenda of rupture. Let's take into account that we're almost into the third generation of our political leadership, and lest we forget, tunnel vision is hardly genetic. It's got everything to do with the fact that the civvies only know one kind of politics: i.e. the politics of finding a small corner in a room with a tank. To get that tank out of the room, you need to push and it's that push which will probably take you to that elusive third equilibrium position.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is what bothers me the most about democracy in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. I will continue to rant and harp about continuity, perpetuity and electoral accountability, but if at the end of the day, the only democracy i see in action takes place in the hallowed corridors of the Ministry of Sports, Culture, and Tourism, all this talk about letting the system run is nothing more than baseless sloganeering.
For pro-democracy hacks such as myself, the hardest bit is trying to convince others that the objective benefits of procedural and substantive democracy can only be achieved in the long-run. As an underlying assumption, democracy requires patience, both from the polity and the civilian leadership - which in Pakistan's case is certainly in short supply. Let's be rational about all of this: Cut a deal with the military and you'll guarantee yourself a stake in the system. On the other hand, any attempts at expanding your pre-ordained space will be met with significant resistance. Faced with this twisted MCQ, it's quite easy to see why so many have ticked option A. This isn't rocket science people, it's just common sense.
One of the things that history does is that it creates inertia. And what we have in Pakistan right now is simply a lot of inertia as far as the direction and configuration of political and policy space is concerned. This spiral of sorts gets a push, or a tug, every now and then but the overall trajectory remains the same. The Parliament rubber stamps everything important, talks about everything unimportant, and goes home to build roads and fix sewers. We foot the bill for 342 glorified local councillors and this is what we have to show for 63 years of statecraft.
So the solution, as preached by people like me is that political continuity will fix this problem. Let this polio-ridden democracy limp along for a little while and we might see it run (sic) in a decade or so. Hell, we've had the worst kind of stage-crashing over the last 63 years, it's only fair to let this pantomime go on till the end. Sounds peachy on paper, except two things are troublesome enough for me to retain an adequate amount of skepticism.
The first is entrenched short-termism in the classes that matter. The media has a short fuse, the urban classes can't stand a lax government, and the apolitical elite couldn't care less about the unwashed, uneducated sorts. You see broken roads, out-of-control inflation, poor social sector service delivery, and the charm of casting a vote gets worn off pretty quick. Bring in the army, they say. Why? Because apparently it gets the job done - (apparently being the operative word here). As Ahsan puts it, this fetish with a savior on horseback is pretty damaging to our infantile democratic process. You have cult figures and demigods in every country's history, but we should all know, institutions aren't built around people, they're built around rules that continue in perpetuity. There was a time when i used to shorten arguments with Musharraf supporters with a brief retort: 'For every one Musharraf that goes out, who's to say that the next one won't be a Zia.'
Point being that sometimes the man on horseback will actually be a dog on a mule.
The second thing that bothers me is slightly more technical and less rant-worthy. Democracy, unlike what some people say, is a functional phenomenon. Democracy for the sake of democracy is pretty useless. You basically put your money on this system because there's a (somewhat forced) consensus of sorts that it's the best option for a fractured planet. It helps people live together, resolve conflict peacefully, potentially creates good vibes for economic growth etc etc. So without substantive democracy, elections are just a showcase event for people to put up life-size mug shots in random spaces across the country.
Let it continue and we'll try to dig out substance.
This is the part which troubles me a lot. Let's imagine a Pakistan where you have civilian elite consensus in favor of a democratic political process. (Read Ahsan's post for more detail on the current dynamics). Every major political player agrees that we won't support another martial law. We see the PPP - Zardari et. all - finish their 5 year term in office. We head back to the polls, we get another government. Add 5 more years to the process. Sounds good so far. But what if we're perpetually stuck in a purely procedural political process?
Let's not kid ourselves for even a minute by suggesting that we have anything more than procedural democracy in this country. We had a pretty fair election in 2008, we have a parliament and we have our elected leadership exactly where it should be. Except we all know that it's not doing any of the things it's legally ordained to do. And no, i'm not talking about how they're too stupid or corrupt to do those things, i'm simply saying that their real jobs are outsourced to the multi-lateral institutions, segments of the bureaucracy, and the military leadership.
It's what i call a mid-level equilibrium of sorts. The civvies strike a deal with the army that we won't touch what you hold holy (defense budget, military aid, foreign/defense/economic policy), and in return, you let us keep our parliament and the cars and the shoddy little Population-Welfare-type ministries.
So Pakistan, as its history shows, has had two kinds of democratic equilibria: The first is military-rule with localized democratic power, and the second is procedural democracy with highly constrained policy space, or what my former instructor, Aqil Shah, termed 'Armored Democracy'. In 63 years, we're yet to see an equilibrium position beyond these two. The issue with being stuck in this ping-pong of sorts between a rock (martial law) and a slightly less hard place (sham democracy) is that we're simply adding to the inertia of how civilians perceive the army with regards to the political process. If you live your entire political career knowing that the army can bite anytime it wants to, there is no chance in hell that you'd even think about creating, or supporting, an agenda of rupture. Let's take into account that we're almost into the third generation of our political leadership, and lest we forget, tunnel vision is hardly genetic. It's got everything to do with the fact that the civvies only know one kind of politics: i.e. the politics of finding a small corner in a room with a tank. To get that tank out of the room, you need to push and it's that push which will probably take you to that elusive third equilibrium position.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is what bothers me the most about democracy in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. I will continue to rant and harp about continuity, perpetuity and electoral accountability, but if at the end of the day, the only democracy i see in action takes place in the hallowed corridors of the Ministry of Sports, Culture, and Tourism, all this talk about letting the system run is nothing more than baseless sloganeering.
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