It is all very well to say that many late developers in East and South East Asia were not democratic countries even though their totalitarian or authoritarian governments successfully led them towards economic development.

So long as such governments were able to bring about people-centric development, they are considered effective and their effort is commended. For such countries well on their way towards economic development, political development in terms of people's participation in political life will follow as the next logical outgrowth of their process of overall development. For, many other political and social prerequisites in these countries took roots almost in sync with economic progress under less than perfect regimes.

These included enabling regulatory and legal framework and capable public institutions that would provide good enough governance thereby creating an enabling environment in which private individual initiative could express itself.

To say that the 1997 South East Asian financial crisis was, inter alia, due to institutional weaknesses and lack of transparency that were ignored due to a lack of democracy is to draw a relationship between institutional strength and democracy that may not bear out consistently in the world. European currencies also experienced a speculative attack in early 1990s as they were trying to overcome the hurdles towards a 'European monetary system' and were trying to come out of a recession following the German unification.

These were all industrialized democracies. And, developed countries do experience upswings and downswings in business cycles despite being democratic. The recent corporate scandals of Enron, World Com, and Arthur Andersen also brought institutional weaknesses on the surface in a democratic US. And, the most glaring institutional weakness has recently surfaced in none other than the elaborate intelligence network of the US that could not pre-empt the intelligence failures leading up to the war on Iraq. Fluid intelligence information provided by the American CIA cannot be attributed to a lack of democracy there.

This would, in turn, imply a lack of correlation between institutional health and democracy. Having said this, the not-so-democratic late developing countries did show results on the economic front by unleashing individual enterprise. This, however, does not imply that the converse may also be true and justifiable in all cases. That is, to show economic results in an underdeveloped country, a government need not necessarily have to be undemocratic or need not justify its lack of democratic dispensation.

The individual initiative in late developers was unleashed through social restructuring following effective land reforms that sent out a strong signal against concentration of assets that had hitherto worked against the interests of the multitude. This social reform provided the basis on which a new economic infrastructure would be erected to the exclusion of none.

This was the single most important contribution of these governments that were undemocratic politically but laid the ground for fuller socio-economic participation of the people. It is in situations like these that the people at large may tolerate a lack of democracy in the interim only.

If a country is neither developing economically in the strictest sense nor is a socio-political ground being prepared for it by a government not perceived as democratic; then such a government cannot bank for its legitimacy on the lack of empirical relationship between democracy and development. These are also the kind of situations in which democracy is simplistically equated with elections irrespective of the forces at work behind the elections.

The electoral outcomes too may be a foregone conclusion in such situations with favourites predetermined for key positions by the powers-that-be. Unfortunately, free and fair elections in such countries may also throw up yet another power group from the country's socio-economic power wielders. The highest government positions are thus tossed from one group to another.

The impoverished multitude merely watch from the sidelines as they remain excluded from country's active economic and political life. Recipe for their inclusion in the mainstream does not feature prominently on the agendas of any power group, however they may have assumed office.

In the above situation, it is immaterial to determine whether a government is democratically elected or otherwise. For, even the term democracy is partially appreciated as adult franchise that might actually throw up a government of the elite and by the elite instead of the people that democratically held elections ought to be doing. And, this is likely to carry on unless there are social and political reforms.

While, to some extent, political reforms in the direction of good governance are underway in Pakistan at the behest of external financiers, it is social restructuring or social reform that has yet to surface without which people's participation in the country's economic life will remain inhibited. This will also continue to choke off their political participation in the future and we will continue to equate democracy with elections for the elite for a long time to come.

The upshot will be that we will neither have developed socially, nor economically, nor politically. The circle runs like this that, at least, with a bare minimum thrust in the direction of good governance, economic inclusion needs to be sought through social reform for a fuller eventual political inclusion as well otherwise it will only be the elite who will remain included economically and politically. The elite will then view their own economic and political development as national development almost as though they are the whole country with the majority existing only on the periphery.

For economic inclusion, therefore, social reform is required as brought about by all the late developers whose examples we give for not only economic progress but also for lack of democracy. Since we take a partial view, we fail to see social reform undergirding their development process. And, then we argue and believe that we do not need social reform as "feudalism" in Pakistan is dead.

The Pakistan Study Centre of the University of Karachi brought the issue of feudalism out in its biannual research journal Pakistan Perspectives, Jan-Dec 2003. It carries articles, notes, and reviews from 13 scholars on the subject of feudalism. Except for a couple, the remaining scholars held that feudalism in Pakistan is far from dead. Out of the two opponents, Dr. Abdul Ghaffar Jatoi is of the view that big landlords are unnecessarily blamed as a part of a campaign even though they have rendered services to the society.

Ms. Themrise Khan contends that agrarian social relations have undergone a transition towards capitalism and feudals of pre-partition era are targeted by those neglected by the state. While she accepts that landlords still hold immense power despite technology and mechanization, she views "feudalism" as a mere political label.

The "demise of feudalism" proponents in the country believe that the demise occurred in the last four to five decades due to capitalist transformation. Dr Jaffar Ahmad asks them if the pre-partition agrarian economy was capitalist. Since their response is in the affirmative, Dr Jaffar wants to know how a mode of production (feudalism) may cease to exist that never existed in the pre-partition period. "Demise of something dead" is a false claim to begin with as argued by Dr Jaffar.

Renowned historian Dr. Mubarak Ali traces the emergence of feudalism in India and its strengthening in the post- independence era. He believes that feudalism still exists. And, Professor Hamza Alavi elucidates the nature of capitalist "transformation" that the demise theorists think would be transformative enough socially, economically, and politically!

Professor Hamza Alavi finds glaring remnants of the feudal order in the dependent capitalism of third world countries whereby surplus is extracted from peripheral capitalist societies in the third world and siphoned off to the core economies of the world. The upshot, obviously, is untold social, economic, and even political exploitation and deprivation in the third world existing on the world's periphery where people live almost as they did under the feudal mode.

If objective conditions have not undergone a change for the better, it is immaterial what the mode of production is. And, if the outcomes are similar to the feudal mode's, the new mode too is "feudalistic" although under the cloak of capitalism.

Other scholars gauged the existence of feudalism primarily according to the criteria used by the "demise of feudalism" theorists to assert that feudalism is dead. They found its manifestations to be still in existence and some strongly advocated land reforms.