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
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