THE passing away of Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi signifies not just the death of a litterateur who had spanned almost an age but hastens the end of a tradition of scholarship and a way of life that was woven into the subcontinent’s cultural heritage.

Perhaps the tradition lives on in bits and pieces in other parts of the region, but in Pakistan certainly it is in sad decline. A certain mediocrity has settled like a blight on our political, social, cultural and academic life. The deterioration in academic standards and the disappearance of respect for learning are particularly appalling facets of this decline.

The world has changed; it has become far more competitive than it was 60 or 70 years ago, when Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi must have embarked on a serious pursuit of literary writing. We have time only to study what we must to get a job and get on with our careers. We have no time to learn the languages or read beyond what is prescribed. Perhaps this is a practical attitude. What good will a knowledge of Persian do if we want to become a rocket scientist? But the old emphasis on literature and languages and the learned arts made people part of a well rounded culture.

It leant a civilised dimension to living, and with it came a mildness of manner, a tolerance of the opinion of others, a readiness to accept that others may be different in their religion, their customs and their habits but nevertheless deserve our respect. This is what a secular outlook meant, and it was part of that great synthesis that Amir Khusrau so nobly and so eloquently personified.

The link may appear far-fetched. But surely it is the way we are reared, the atmosphere in which we grow up, the way we are taught that make us what we become as members of a society. If middle-class Muslims learnt Saadi and Hafiz from their elders, irrespective of what they were later to become — scientists or engineers or journalists or doctors — that made them better and more civilised human beings. One has heard of a young man in the Old City of Lahore in the early 1920s who worked as a low-paid clerk in a government office during the day and in the evening sat among neighbours and friends and recited Heer. Perhaps he was a more efficient clerk for that.

Most urban Muslim households had an educated feel to them even if not all members of a household were educated in the accepted sense of the word. Most women did not have the benefit of formal schooling, but the folk lore they knew, the ‘daastans’ they intoned, the proverbs they would drop at every step in ordinary conversation, and the tales they would tell to the children comprised an education that is hard to get nowadays. The women of the taluqdars, feudal lords, of Oudh had no schooling; they spoke among themselves and to the women in their employ in the Poorbi dialect of the countryside, but would switch to the most sophisticated Urdu when in the company of strangers or at social gatherings.

When unexpected house guests in large numbers would turn up without notice, there was sure to be some old lady who would cackle: “Chimgadron key ghar aye mehman, hum bhi latkein, tum bhi latko (guests have come to the house of bats, we hang from the rafters, you do the same, or you will have to make do like us).” The learning process, or the unconscious imbibing of a respect for learning, was part of growing up, and that sadly is no more the case.

The decline of universities is the saddest part of this story, although universities have proliferated in Pakistan and old degree awarding colleges whose names were inscribed in history have been upgraded and called by strange nomenclatures, such as the Government College University in Lahore. The vice-chancellor of the university in North India where one studied in the mid-1950s was a reputed economist. He was one of the few on the academic staff who had a motor car.

His was a wheezy old Austin whose engine would mostly refuse to be cranked into action and which had to be pushed by students and peons when it was time for the VC Sahib to go home. Many dons came on bicycles, their trouser cuffs pinched with a clip to prevent being stained by grease from the cycle chain. They didn’t consider this to diminish them in anyway, and indeed they enjoyed as much respect from their students as better off professors.

In Pakistan at one time vice-chancellors were even given flags of their own that flew from their limousines. This elevation in material standards, welcome otherwise, has not been accompanied by higher standards of teaching or administration. Far from making sure that we have eminent educationists as vice-chancellors, we have imposed military men on some universities. This is one indication of how much we value learning.

Wherever we look, the scene is much the same. The stature of politicians and the level of debate in parliament bear no comparison, with a few notable exceptions, to the parliamentarians and parliament of 1970 or the parliament suspended by Iskander Mirza/Ayub Khan in 1958. Today’s parliamentarians are all supposed to be graduates or hold degrees equivalent to graduation. But the speeches made in the National Assembly or even the upper house often fail to reflect a clear understanding of issues or involvement in the subject under discussion. Few legislators do any home work before taking part in a debate. You have instances of almost juvenile behaviour, such as the recent incident of a silly note being scribbled and sent to a woman legislator. Attendance in legislative sessions is thin, with ministers and members of the sarkari party all but indicating that the assemblies are a nuisance to be barely tolerated. The feudal attitudes that colour Pakistani politics have never been seriously recognised or tackled.

Perhaps nostalgia for the past, when everything seemed rosier, is common to every age. The world after all has made tremendous progress. Forms of political, literary and social expression have changed, but they have in many cases been more vigorous than before. The present generation of Pakistanis is much more wide awake than their elders. It is simply that their interests lie elsewhere. It doesn’t really matter, does it, if a young person enjoys rock music more than a ghazal? Both reflect the presence of a finer sensibility.

But whether on the whole we have become more civilised and cultured individuals for all the progress we have made is another matter. For instance, in terms of matters concerning religion, are we today more tolerant than our elders were? There is a harshness in today’s discourse that makes you wonder whether it is due to the absence of the kind of atmosphere we have talked about earlier. Military and autocratic rule has blocked and distorted the democratic and political process, and this too has had its own debilitating and stultifying effect in brutalising society or at least in making it more impertinent. The military is especially contemptuous of intellectual inquiry, considering it to be a luxury best dispensed with.

The civil and foreign services till not so long ago had men and women in their ranks who respected learning. Now a writer in India can be shabbily denied a visa on the advice of some spook sitting in Islamabad. (It is strange that the Ishrat Hussain commission on governance does not appear to be overly concerned with why the civil services structure and the federal public service commissions have been decimated, and with what effect, by the installation of a new system of governance at the district level.)

So, progress in terms of material advancement is not necessarily accompanied by an improvement in the human condition or a higher level of sensibility. Look at the world’s most materially powerful nation: it has never had such a boorish president as its head as now. It is the demise of civility that we should mourn. We need democracy to have a free and inclusive society, and with freedom and inclusion will come a more cultured society. It is the way of life and the values that people like Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi represented that need to be cherished and, if possible, revived. That is one way in which the surge of philistinism, whether of the political kind coming from the military or the religious kind coming from the political right, can be kept at bay.

THE freer movement of trade and capital has been a fundamental characteristic of the past 25 years of globalisation. The Doha round, initiated in 2001, was the latest attempt to keep the process rolling. It now looks doomed.

The deadlock between the US, the EU, Japan and the developing countries seems final. And with the fast-track powers of the US president — which enable trade agreements to bypass Congress — scheduled to come to an end in 2007, any agreement later than this year will be subject to the unpredictability and delay of Capitol Hill. In other words, it is now or never, and it looks more and more like never.

The implications are profound. It was the Uruguay round in the ‘80s and ‘90s that underpinned much of the process of globalisation and helped to establish the terms on which it took place. The failure to reach agreement on its successor, the Doha round, suggests the era of multilateral trade agreements is coming to an end. The US some time ago switched its attention from multilateral to bilateral deals and has, over the past decade, concluded a battery of them.

The reason is not difficult to fathom. When negotiating bilaterally, the US can use its economic power to impose far more unfavourable terms on its negotiating partner, which is what it has done. In deals with Singapore and Chile, for example, it insisted on these countries renouncing the use of capital controls, which Malaysia deployed with such effect during the Asian financial crisis. In its treaty with Australia and other countries, it insisted on extending the time period for which patents are valid, thereby extending the monopoly privileges enjoyed by its companies.

The American turn from multilateralism is linked to developments at the World Trade Organisation. Over the past decade, the political character of the WTO has changed markedly. During the Uruguay round it was relatively easy for the developed countries to get their way with the developing world by a combination of bullying, cajoling, dividing, bribing and threatening.

But the admission of China as a full member in 2001, the growing power of India, the election of Lula as president of Brazil, and the willingness of South Africa to join forces with them has meant that the developing countries have begun to acquire a powerful voice, substantial bargaining presence, and a self-confidence in their ability to resist western and Japanese pressures.

The developing countries torpedoed the meeting in Cancun in 2003, insisting on far greater concessions from the developed world than were being offered. The emergence of the G-20 — as their loose negotiating group is known — has transformed the politics of trade negotiations.

Whatever the grand principles and the pontificating, the US only favours multilateralism when that suits its interests. The previous trade regime may have embraced 123 countries but, in practice, the developed world enjoyed overwhelming power. The WTO, in contrast, has come to resemble, at least in a small way, the UN; and the US has long been inimical towards that body because it is frequently unable to get its own way.

This turn from multilateralism parallels the trajectory of American foreign policy under George Bush. Many thought that trade would be an exception to this, but the growing US proclivity for bilateral deals and its unwillingness to make the necessary concessions to keep the Doha round alive suggest the contrary: Washington has become disaffected with multilateralism.

The implications of the collapse of Doha are profound. Symbolically, its death is likely to mark the end of the process of globalisation that began in the late ‘70s and has served to shape the main contours of global development ever since. This is not to suggest that the global regime as we know it today is about to unravel, but the project has ground to a halt. Nothing particularly dramatic is likely to happen, though it might if the dollar begins to go through the floorboards.

Much more likely, for the time being, is stagnation in the global economic regime, combined with a slow but steady process of fragmentation and regionalism. Doha will be quietly buried without honour and more than a little recrimination. The WTO, having failed in its first great mission, will be quietly relegated to the backburner, to join a host of other international bodies. Its relegation, though, will be redolent with significance: the WTO was the most important institutional creation of the modern era of globalisation.

The death of Doha may be the first and most dramatic casualty suffered by the modern era of globalisation, but it is unlikely to be the last. Its demise will be the result of a shift in global economic power from the developed to the developing world, with the former unwilling to countenance any diminution in its ability to determine the terms of global economic exchange.

The world may be finally waking up to the rise of China and India, but compared with the state of affairs likely to prevail in, say, 20 years, so far little has happened. If Doha has been derailed by what has transpired hitherto, then the effects of the rise of China and India are likely to draw down the curtains on the modern era of globalisation.

Until now, China’s rise has been seen in largely virtuous terms: it has led to falling consumer prices in North America and Europe, while providing an enormous investment opportunities for western and Japanese firms. The voices of the losers — those in the West who have suffered from Chinese competition — have mostly been drowned out.

But as that competition grows, the demand for protection is likely to grow louder and, ultimately, prove irresistible, as James Kynge argues in his book “China Shakes the World.” Over the past year, protectionist demands on both sides of the Atlantic have grown more numerous.

The irony of Doha is that it is being killed by western disinterest in the face of the growing power of the developing world. The rise of China and, to a lesser extent India, is likely to be accompanied by a parallel irony. The West, which has been the traditional defender of free trade — because free trade always favours the most powerful and advanced economies — is likely to run for cover and put up protectionist barriers, unable to cope with the political, social and economic implications of the rise of China.

In a sense, the death of Doha is a dress rehearsal, albeit an early one, for the end of globalisation. And those who bury it will be those who designed it and proselytised for it — the US and Europe.—Dawn/ Guardian Service

The writer is a visiting research fellow at the Asia Research Centre, London School of Economics.