I DON’T remember that in my younger days the term “civil society” had entered the on-going political discourse. We encountered the term mostly in classics of political theory. There is little reference to civil society in developed political systems, because there its existence and operations are taken for granted. Talk of it is much more common in developing countries where it is still in the formative stage.

As students we understood that society was a body of individuals linked together in a vast and seamless web of relationships of interdependence. It became a civil society when it acted in a political capacity, that is, to create (or accept) systems of governance. In certain theoretical formulations, a number of persons, living in a “state of nature,” came together, made a contract with one another, and, through common deliberation and consent, established political systems of their choosing. In about half a dozen recorded instances such contracts were actually made, and governments established — in the American territory of New Hampshire during the seventeenth century.

In more recent usage, however, the term (“civil society”) refers to non-governmental associations, organizations, and institutions which act as intermediaries between groups of individuals and government, even if this activity is a peripheral aspect of their primary mission. Such organizations will not flourish in autocratic systems of rule, which by their nature are inhospitable to assertions of people’s rights. Institutions of civil society and democracy go together and have a mutually reinforcing interaction.

These institutions should not be confused with the NGOs that have mushroomed during the last couple of decades. The two may, or may not, be identical. Speaking literally, every mosque, school or college, private corporation, club, literary society, and gambling house, among a hundred others, is a non-governmental organization, but it is not necessarily an organ of civil society. One may also want to exclude political parties since they are avowedly in the business of pursuing governmental authority and power, and thus too close to the institutions of governance.

All professional and occupational associations that have an interest in influencing law and public policy relevant to their own particular interests, and/or generally to the public good, may be counted as organs of civil society. Included, for instance, would be chambers of commerce and industry, bar associations, medical associations, labour unions, student unions, associations of teachers and journalists, and organizations working for the protection of human rights or the rights of a specific group.

How are these organs of civil society doing in Pakistan? Their success would have to be assessed in terms of both their achievements in advancing their own respective interests and any contribution they make to the articulation and promotion of public good. Some of them — for instance, the physicians — are not known for their interest in public policy outside the area of their professional concern, and we can therefore leave them out.

Pakistani businessmen do periodically launch campaigns to resist sales taxes and import and export duties. But it was not their custom to try to influence the government’s broader economic policy, not to speak of its policy in the areas of defence, foreign affairs, education, health, and so forth. If a policy did not suit them, they tried, as individuals, to obtain an exemption from its application by bribing the concerned bureaucrats. Generally speaking, they remained aloof from politics, and their contribution to the nurturing of democracy in Pakistan would have to be considered as minimal. It may be puzzling but it is nevertheless a fact that they have prospered more under dictators than they have during the tenures of democratic regimes.

In many developed polities labour unions are a political force to be reckoned with. In terms of both financial contribution and votes, the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organizations), the Teamsters (truckers’ union), and several other unions lend significant support to the Democratic Party in the United States. Labour unions are an even more potent political force in Britain and the Scandinavian countries.

Unions surfaced in pre-independence India in the second decade of the twentieth century at the government’s initiative when it transpired that Indian delegations to meetings of the International Labour Organization (ILO) had to include workers’ representatives. In Pakistan unions have been more active in the public than in the private sector — for instance, the postal services, railways, Pakistan Steel, and the Pakistan International Airlines. There are no nationwide, or even industry-wide, labour organizations in the country.

Pakistani political culture is not especially known for its friendliness toward workers. The PPP is the only party which began its career with a specifically worker-friendly manifesto. But within months of coming to power, the late Mr. Bhutto’s government launched a severe crackdown on workers in Karachi and elsewhere to subdue their excessive enthusiasm and self-assertion. Workers have not done much better under the subsequent regimes. The labour movement and unions in Pakistan cannot be regarded as political actors of any noteworthy consequence.

Students in both developed and developing polities have participated with considerable effect in movements to force policy changes or bring down governments from time to time. The American students’ role in opposing the war in Vietnam, and their endeavours in support of equal rights for black people and women, will always be remembered. One may recall also the role of students in forcing the resignation of President Charles de Gaulle in France, the overthrow of governments in Turkey and South Korea in 1968, and in the ouster of President Ayub Khan in Pakistan in March 1969.

Student Unions have functioned in the subcontinent since before independence, and students played an important role in the drive for the establishment of Pakistan. Their concerns have always extended beyond issues of their well-being as students and included the state of politics in the country. But since as far back as the mid-1950s their organizations have not been able to work independently, because both ruling and opposition political parties infiltrated their ranks to use them as their instruments.

In this connection the role of the Islami Jamiat-i-Tulaba, an affiliate of the Jamaat-i-Islami, on university and college campuses deserves to be noted. It has often won student union elections, but it has been a formidable force even when it has lost them. It has commanded a great deal of muscle power and used it to coerce or intimidate fellow students, faculty, and campus administrations. Student wings of other parties, especially the PPP and the PML, have had similar inclinations but not the same organizational cohesion and physical force.

Proceeding from the unwarranted assumption that politics is none of the students’ business, heads of universities and colleges, acting at the behest of governments, have often suspended or banned student unions. During the last fifty years or so they have remained out of commission longer than they have functioned. This negative attitude has made student leaders more rebellious and rowdy than they might otherwise have been. Student unions have a large potential for contributing to the development of a democratic culture in Pakistan, but regretfully it must be said that circumstances have not been propitious enough for them to have realized it.

Let us now take a look at organizations whose role has been more positive. The ones that come to mind are associations that representing lawyers, journalists and newspaper editors, and those concerned with the protection of human rights. All three of them have a vested interest in democracy. The business of lawyers depends on the rule of law, which is likely to be more secure in a democracy than under a dictatorship. In the latter situation courts will not observe the niceties of due process. Consider also that many lawyers specialize in constitutional law, which becomes virtually inoperative under an autocratic or dictatorial regime, even if it does have a written constitution stashed away some place.

Bar associations and other groups of lawyers have traditionally championed the cause of democracy in Pakistan. They have gone to court to protest against violations of the constitution even when it was being held in “abeyance.” Barring those few who were hired to speak on behalf of the usurper, they have argued against the generals’seizure of power each time it took place. They have been urging General Musharraf to step down, return the country to democratic rule, and refrain from meddling with the Constitution. He won’t listen to them. But that is not the measure of their contribution. It lies in the success they may have had in awakening the people to the relevance of democracy to their well-being.

The profession of journalism, likewise, cannot prosper under a dictatorship. Newsmen cannot tell their readers anything interesting or exciting unless they are free to report newsworthy happenings beyond the pronouncements of government dignitaries. Nor can editors and columnists provide revealing and instructive analyses of political and other developments, express the aspirations of the people, or interpret public good unless there is freedom of the press, which is usually anathema to authoritarian rulers.

Government has traditionally owned and controlled the electronic media. It has considerable leverage with newspapers also insofar as they depend upon public authorities and corporations for much of their advertising revenue. In spite of these limitations, some of the Pakistani newspaper editors and columnists have been valiant in defending and promoting democracy.

Organizations concerned with human rights are going forward and their voice is being heard clearly enough both within the country and abroad. Once again, by the very nature of their mission, they act as a force for democracy, for in its absence rulers are not likely to place much value on human rights and the work of those who want to protect them.

THE disputed ballot count apart, the presidential referendum of April 30 has given rise to many worrying questions about the parliamentary elections ahead. The elections are the real event. The referendum was a distraction which proved costly for the people, the treasury and, most of all, for the president himself.

Will the elections be held at all is a question which now rankles not with the cynics alone. If held, some among the many subsidiary but agonizing questions arising would be: first, will all parties and individuals be allowed to contest? Second, will an unusual criterion like a degree from a university or corruption disqualify a candidate? Third, will General Musharraf and his administration be neutral irrespective of the personal or party affiliations of the contestants? And, lastly, will the voting and the activity, preceding and following, be fair?

In contemplating all these questions the history of elections in the country, the constitutional changes that the Musharraf government intends making before the elections and the experience of the referendum will weigh heavily.

Holding the elections by October next is not a direction of the supreme Court alone; it is also General Musharraf’s commitment to his own people and to the world at large. Put off on any pretext howsoever plausible, Gen. Musharraf’s credibility, already damaged by the referendum, will finish altogether. Held on time and fairly, he will be back in the stride with his image and bona fides restored.

The likely events or actions which may jeopardize the elections are the tension on the Kashmir border escalating into incursions by the Indian troops to retaliate against the militant attacks in the valley and, secondly, the protest or boycott that the constitutional amendments ahead of the polls may cause. A lesser threat could come from the on-going and intensifying armed pursuit to expel or kill the Taliban and Al Qaeda guerillas sheltering in the tribal areas adjoining Afghanistan.

Peace with India is crucial not for the elections alone but to a stable democratic order and the economic progress which must follow. It is also a political necessity independent of the elections.

In the presence of continuing insurgency in Kashmir, the world community, our allies and friends included, is not willing to pressure or even to persuade India to negotiate a settlement with Pakistan.

They may if normality returns. It will also give some respite to the people of Kashmir from injury and death inflicted on them by the Indian troops and mujahideen alike.

Who would stake his investment in Pakistan when it is in a state of confrontation with India, and is hunting for desperate guerillas in its tribal area and the terrorists kill all over? The economic indicators, improving through austerity and concessions won from the international creditors, will not help the people in distress if the economy does not grow, and it would not grow unless investment comes and that would not come unless we are at peace with our neighbours and with ourselves in a stable democratic order.

If there is no economic growth, unemployment and discontent will continue to worsen notwithstanding the poverty alleviation and micro credit programmes and construction plans for motorways, bypasses or flyovers. They are all reduced to publicity gimmicks. Holding elections in October, thus, has implications more far-reaching than just fulfilling a commitment to the courts or to the people.

Lest a violent protest or boycott thwarts the elections, the Musharraf administration should give a cool second thought to its idea of a nominated National Security Council acting as a watch-dog over the parliament and prime minister.

The politicians will more readily accept the president vetoing the legislation and dismissing the prime minister (or the cabinet) rather than a council exercising these powers which would effectively place all the representative institutions under the surveillance of the armed forces.

The political parties at this critical juncture should also show practical wisdom by acquiescing in a constitutional amendment which assigns the intended role of the NSC to the president, albeit unelected at present. For the next term the Constitution should provide for direct election for the president by the people to institute a check-and-balance arrangement which all agree is necessary to prevent the prime minister from becoming a despot or a caliph as he tended to do in the decade of the 1990s.

The absence of an understanding between the president, the army and the political parties on a new constitutional system may put the general election in jeopardy with all its serious consequences for national stability. The time left is just enough for a cordial understanding reached through negotiations in which the raw skills of NRB, said to be now dealing with the subject, may only delay things without being of much help.

No party or its factions should be barred from participating in elections nor should individuals be excluded unless disqualified under the Constitution an election laws. The politicians disqualified by a special executive decree, as it is apprehended Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and some others would be, should have the right of appeal to a special tribunal comprising retired judges. The names that come to mind for this impartial adjudication are Fakhruddin G. Ebrahim, Shafiur Rehman, Javed Iqbal and Mamoon Kazi, all former judges of the Supreme Court.

The retired judges are being suggested because the sitting judges, with their month-to-month extensions, impending confirmations, the prospect of being shunted out to a Shariat Court or a tribunal or the threat of going through a new oath, are expected to be less confident in their judgment which will have an obvious political dimension.

The referendum, besides its many other harms, has thrown up a legion of president’s foot soldiers recognized only by their pictures on the campaign banners and posters.

They would all demand to be rewarded with winning tickets and jobs to enable them to recoup the expenses they had incurred. It could be the beginning of Gen. Musharraf’s end if he does not become chary of them.

Then there are parties or their factions which support him only because they have fallen out with their leaders Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. Among them are good and honest men but their election should rest with the people and not with the police.

A dark shadow hangs over the independence and competence of the Election Commission for conducting the referendum as it did. Nothing would help restore the trust of the people in the election process more than replacing the present commission with a new one. To our shame no accusing finger was ever pointed at the election commissions of India headed by Seshan and Gill through a series of acrimonious elections. Both were administrators not judges. Our law requires they must be judges. The choice thus is limited. It should be exercised nevertheless.

The gregarious whiz-kids of Islamabad assume an air as if they know the best and all the rest, the columnists in particular, speak as if from a Jurassic park. The country needs deliverance from them before they make elections into another referendum. The test of Gen Musharraf and his future will lie in restoring democracy by holding elections in the same fair manner, as Yahya did in 1970, and yet hold the country together.

IN politics, the window of opportunity has very temperamental shutters. Or, if you want to shift the metaphor to a door, opportunity does knock when it wants to, but it does not keep hanging around waiting for you to complete your ablutions. If you do not respond, opportunity simply transfers its attentions to someone with better response systems. Fickle thing, opportunity.

At some point during the last fortnight, enough political parties could have got together and served as a magnet to break the ruling National Democratic Alliance and possibly even dislodge the government. Consultations did take place, and once again agreement seemed to be growing on Jyoti Basu as the head of an alternative alliance that could induce the TDP, DMK and many of the variety of Dals out of the BJP’s embrace.

However, these parties were ready to hop out of one government only if they could hop into another. No one was interested in another general election. Sonia Gandhi spiked the idea.

The Congress put it out that it would rather wait and make Sonia Gandhi its prime minister than join or support a coalition under Basu or anyone else. They say that a week is a long time in politics. Sonia Gandhi has just gifted Atal Behari Vajpayee about a hundred weeks more of power.

This is not the first time that she has been so generous. Cast your mind back to the first moment of what might be called the Assembly Syndrome. Sonia Gandhi was still new in her job.

The halo behind her coiffured head could almost be photographed. This was in the “pre-272” era of Congress history. On one magic day in autumn the Congress swept to power in five states.

The NDA looked hobbled. A push was all that it needed to topple and Jayalalitha was ready to push. Sonia Gandhi, suffering from bad advice and poor judgment, decided to wait.

The prime minister should have sent her a personal letter of thanks as he went to Lahore, pushed through a reform budget and seized the political high ground. Sonia Gandhi decided to strike when he was on high ground after having left him when he was in the dumps. Vajpayee lost his government in parliament and won it back from the electorate. The gods could not have timed the general election better for him.

Wafting once again on assembly euphoria, Sonia Gandhi has chosen to repeat herself, with one extra twist in the story. She has decided to personalize the battle between the Congress and the BJP into a battle between Sonia Gandhi and Atal Behari Vajpayee.

I have no idea who is responsible for such naivete; it is quite possible that this is her own decision. Someone should tell her a simple and even stark truth.

In any confrontation between the BJP and the Congress, the Congress is likely to win. That is why the Congress wins assembly elections and could continue doing so.

In any confrontation between Vajpayee and Sonia Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi will lose. It is a no-contest. In fact, the battle may not even be fair. Mohan Bagan may be a champion in Calcutta but it is not fair to expect it to defeat Manchester United. The two are not in the same league. Leave aside experience and political skill, Vajpayee is an Indian and Sonia Gandhi is not. A passport can give you citizenship.

To be prime minister requires more than a piece of paper acquired late in life, long after it might have been taken.

It is a strategic mistake on the part of the Congress to personalize the battle. In marketing terminology, the Congress brand is much stronger today than the Sonia brand.

A party as wedded to dynasty as the Congress will find this hard to accept — publicly. Privately Congress leaders see much more clearly. They know that the Nehru-Gandhi family has been an asset to the party. But this asset is not a magic wand. The circumstances have to be right for the asset to pay dividends. Would even Nehru’s magic have worked if the general elections of 1962 had been held after the China debacle? 1967 would have happened in 1962.

Indira Gandhi became prime minister in January 1966 but in her first electoral test, in 1967, she barely scraped through in parliament and lost every single assembly between Amritsar and Calcutta.

It was in 1971 that Indira Gandhi became a winner in her own right, and only after she had changed the nation’s agenda and placed the poor at the very top of our national concerns. Indira Gandhi became synonymous with hope, and no political muscle can be stronger than that. That muscle wasted in less than five years.

When elections were held in 1977 the Congress was erased, literally, all across the main artery of Indian politics, that highway between Amritsar and Calcutta.

It is a moot point whether Indira Gandhi could have won re-election in 1984-85 after the havoc of Operation Bluestar. (Curious fact: two architects of Bluestar, Arun Singh and Arun Nehru, are now with the BJP.) All the family charisma and his own youth could not save Rajiv Gandhi from defeat in 1989.

His tragic assassination in 1991 tilted the balance just enough for the Congress for it to become the largest party and rule for five years. Sonia Gandhi thought that the magic of the family name would deliver the electorate to her the moment she announced that she was the claimant for the prime minister’s august chair rather than a Sitaram Kesri. She brought in thirty seats less than the man who had sunk the party into a trough.

You cannot become Indira Gandhi by wearing a sari in the same fashion; you have to represent what she did. So far at least Sonia Gandhi symbolizes nothing that the poor can believe in. Her only Unique Selling Proposition is that she is better than the BJP. This works, but only up to a point. The minorities might be motivated by their intense fear and anger to accept this as enough reason. But that does not add up to victory in a general election.

There are indications, on the other hand, that Vajpayee knows what he wants to do over the next fifty weeks. He has begun by rebuilding his vote base in Uttar Pradesh, and quelled a minor revolt to hand over power to Mayawati in return for an electoral understanding that will add a new chunk to his party’s vote. True, dealing with Mayawati is like making friends with dynamite; you never know when it will blow up in your face. But Vajpayee has obviously calculated the risk and taken it.

That was the easy part.

Narendra Modi has done incredible damage to the BJP’s credibility. The hawks (young ones, I gather) who protected Modi against Vajpayee’s own judgment had the vision of the hawk. It specialized in the immediate kill. It is not famous for perspective. Vajpayee is now faced with one of the most difficult challenges of his political career. He has to reinvent his own government. This is not going to be possible through a tickle here and a shuffle there. He has to present a fresh visage and purpose, and recreate a rationale for his power. I would not be surprised if Modi goes in the process. Modi cannot govern Gujarat any more. That is obvious from every day’s front page. If you leave him too long in Ahmedabad no one may be able to govern Gujarat in the foreseeable future. The legacy of hate, poison and distrust he has fomented would be too much for anyone to clean up.

There is a third, discernible side of the emerging Vajpayee plan. In fact, you could call it the 3M Plan: Mayawati, Modi and Musharraf. The dialogue between India and Pakistan is being quietly resurrected. India will soon send a high commissioner to Islamabad; Pakistan has left its envoy in place in Delhi.

The second track of deliberations, by which governments test the waters without the need to commit themselves, has been reactivated. Vajpayee has chosen to visit Kazakhstan for a summit at which Pervez Musharraf will be present. This time they might actually smile at each other and mean it. Simultaneously the prime minister has set in motion a process that could see Mirwaiz Umar Farooque of the Hurriyat become chief minister after an unmanipulated assembly election, while the National Conference is accommodated in Delhi as a partner of the NDA.

The differences between India and Pakistan will not be resolved in a hurry, but they could be narrowed down enough to permit space for other initiatives. If Vajpayee can restore the peace momentum with Pakistan he will be back in charge of the national agenda. He has shown in the past that he knows how to use power.

There is a qualifying “if”, of course. But he has got the opportunity to revive his government only because it survived.

Sonia Gandhi prevented Jyoti Basu from becoming prime minister in 1999 and sank in the general elections that inevitably followed. Those who do not understand the past are condemned to repeat it.

The writer is the editor-in-chief of Asia News, New Delhi.