A WRITER in this newspaper (Sept 3) would have us believe that the middle class has all along played a ‘pivotal’ role in Pakistan’s political development. It leads the lower classes and, as in other countries, it operates as a defender of national sovereignty, stability and democracy. I also saw two opposing views in another publication.

Professor Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a political scientist at LUMS, attributed to the middle class the role described above, whereas another analyst said this class took interest in nothing except self-indulgent ‘consumerism’.

But none of these gentlemen has told us which people compose the middle class and what specifically they do. We cannot then know in what way the role of this class has been ‘pivotal’.

While family line, education, schools attended, accent, manners and occupation may have a bearing on one’s class status, income has come to be the more important distinguishing factor. The middle class is not a single homogeneous group. It may be sub-divided into lower middle, middle and upper middle classes.

Monetary figures of income are one way of assigning a person or family to a class but, because of inflation, they don’t mean the same thing with reference to different periods of time. Living styles and patterns of spending are another and probably a more meaningful criterion.

I cannot be sure where a certain income level will place an individual. The figures that follow are rough approximations based on impressions formed during recent visits to Pakistan. Needless to say, I am open to correction. I should say also that this exercise in matching income with class should be taken primarily as one of the ways of exploring the subject of social classes.

In my reckoning a family of five in one of the larger towns that has a total income of Rs15,000-30,000 per month may be rated as lower middle class, that with an income between Rs30,000-70,000 as middle, and that around Rs100,000 as upper middle class.In rural Pakistan a family owning between five and ten acres of good irrigated land may be counted as lower middle class, between 10 and 40 acres as middle and between 40 and 100 acres as the upper middle class.

These and the above monetary figures may be adjusted if the family is larger than five members or if the ‘Dubai factor’ (remittances from relatives working abroad) is involved.

Let us see how the other criteria (living style and spending patterns) will work. Let us say we are talking of Lahore. A family of five living in a two- bedroom house with some kind of a lounge and a kitchen will probably be placed in the lower middle class. Add a third bedroom and make the lounge slightly larger and the family enters the middle class. It will move up to the upper middle class if it has all this plus a guest bedroom and a drawing room.

Folks who live in the more expensive neighbourhoods — Gulberg, Cantonment, Garden Town, Model Town and one of the six Defence Housing Societies — are likely to have fairly spacious homes, costing somewhere between Rs15 and 30 million. They are almost certain to belong to the upper middle and upper classes.

They go out to dinner and tea parties, and entertain friends at their homes; eat at reputable restaurants fairly often. Their diet contains more than adequate amounts of proteins (chicken, meat, fish, eggs, cheese). Their children go to private schools. They travel abroad for fun. Each of these families owns one or more automobiles.

Quite a few of the middle class families own cars and send their children to private schools but at the cost of other amenities. Once in a while they may visit one of the ‘food streets’, but mostly they eat at home, and I suspect their food intake tends to be protein deficient. The lower middle class does not own automobiles, does not have adequately nutritious food, sends its children to public schools, and barely makes ends meet.The middle class is generally believed to be a force that sustains democracy; the implication being that it participates in politics and keeps it on the right track. Since the mid-19th century, many persons in the English middle class have voted in elections and supported parties of their choice.

Leaders in the Liberal and Labour Parties in the 20th century have come more from the middle class than from the aristocracy. The founding fathers and the first several presidents of the United States were aristocrats, but starting with Andrew Jackson, who initiated mass politics in America, a number of American presidents, including Abraham Lincoln, have come from lower middle or middle class backgrounds.

The middle class participates in local, state and national elections, supplies candidates, takes interest in the organisation and internal elections of political parties.

What does the Pakistani middle class do besides making a living and spending its money? There are three main modes of political participation in this country: attendance in political meetings (jalsas), street demonstrations to express opposition to, or support for, a certain individual or course of action, and voting in elections when they are held.

I am inclined to agree with Dr M. Sayedain Jaffery (letter to the editor, Dawn, Sept 13) that the middle class in Pakistan does little of any of these things. It considers it beneath its dignity to rub shoulders with the masses in street demonstrations or stand in line outside a polling station waiting for one’s turn to go in and cast one’s ballot. It is indeed rare that any of its members will contest the election for a seat in parliament or even a provincial assembly.

Members of my own clan in Lahore are middle or upper middle class people and I am ashamed to say that, to the best of my knowledge, none of them has ever voted, let alone shout slogans in a rally. The Pakistani middle class may discuss politics in drawing rooms but otherwise, as Dr Jaffery says, it chooses to remain aloof and, therefore, it has no say in the conduct of national affairs.

The middle class in Pakistan does not supply top level political leaders. With the exception of generals who seized power and bureaucrats who were either appointed to high office or reached it through intrigue, all of the nation’s heads of state and prime ministers came from the upper class: Mr M.A. Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan, Khwaja Nazimuddin, H.S. Suhrawardy, I.I. Chundrigar, Firoz Khan Noon, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. The same is true of most of the provincial chief ministers and even many of our legislators.

Some pf the political parties in this country are composed largely of middle class people. There are, for instance, the Islamic parties but their commitment to democracy, as commonly understood, is problematic. Then there is the MQM in Karachi and some of the urban centres of Sindh, which is said to be mostly a middle class party. Its commitment to democracy is also doubtful for it considers resort to physical force as a legitimate means of waging politics.

Lawyers in Pakistan, most of whom are middle class people, have recently emerged as a formidable force for the rule of law, and they could be a formidable pro-democracy force if they were so inclined. Journalists, middle class people for the most part, have also emerged as a pro-democracy force. But democracy will not be secure from the grasping hands of potential tyrants until the larger non-aligned and apathetic part of the middle class accepts politics as an essential component of good governance.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, US

Email: anwarsyed@cox.net

THE annual surveys of Transparency International find a strong link between corruption and poverty. Corruption cripples public institutions which, in turn, takes a toll on governance. The toll is heavy when the poor country is also riven by internal conflicts or is threatened by external aggression. Pakistan is one such country.

It is tempting to test Transparency’s hypothesis with a comparison between India and Pakistan. The poverty levels in these two neighbouring countries were the same when they became independent, and remain nearly the same today 60 years later. India has many more billionaires and entrepreneurs than Pakistan, and its technology-based economy is also growing much faster, but its poor appear poorer.

The institutions of governance that the two countries inherited from the British in 1947 were exactly the same and so were the structures and traditions of public services and competitive procedures for the recruitment of the men who ran them. But in the perceived levels of corruption in the 180 countries surveyed by Transparency this year, India stands at number 75 and Pakistan 63 places below at 138.

The poverty levels in the two countries being alike, the explanation for greater corruption in Pakistan is to be found in its endemic internal strife, chiefly sectarian, and almost continuous hostile confrontation with the neighbours to the east and north which, as a percentage of national income, compels Pakistan to spend twice as much on defence as India.

Thus the resources, both of money and manpower, which could be used to reduce poverty are diverted to deploy paramilitary forces to maintain law and order and to keep the army alert on the frontiers to deter incursions.

If poverty were the chief source of corruption, governance should have suffered equally in the two countries. It has, however, suffered more in Pakistan (a fact too obvious to be denied) because successive authoritarian rulers, both civil and military, have been tampering with the state institutions only to tighten and prolong their hold on power.

In the name of checks, balances and accountability, the present government has mangled the Constitution to introduce a system which is neither presidential nor parliamentary nor Islamic but incorporates the worst features of all three — it is authoritarian, chaotic and doctrinaire.

Accountability, after following a long, vindictive and unproductive course, is now succumbing to political expediency. The administrative service has been abolished and the other services politicised.

If the constitutional and political stresses caused by the new system are not resolved soon through a combination of impartial judicial verdicts and fair elections, the institutions of governance will keep declining and corruption will keep rising. The administrative measures to check corruption, however, must not wait for the resolution of the constitutional tangle and the emergence of a stable government.

The widespread feeling among the people is that maladministration and consequently corruption have increased faster since the implementation of the devolution plan. This feeling is borne out by the surveys of Transparency International conducted since 1999. The ranking of Pakistan in Transparency’s table which had improved somewhat after Gen Musharraf took over has been falling since 2003. Interestingly enough, India’s ranking has been improving since that year.

The public feeling and Transparency’s ranking aside, the government, aware of the damage caused by the laws enacted under the devolution plan, formed the National Commission on Government Reforms in April 2006. In 18 months of its existence, the NCGR, instead of repairing the damage, has been seen to reinforce the follies and mischief of the National Reconstruction Bureau.

The NCGR has been dealing only with peripheral issues like the ‘clustering’ of training institutions and establishing information systems. Its only substantive proposal, which is to exclude large government organisations from the purview of the public service commission, would only pave the way for recruitment on nominations rather than on competitive merit. Surely, the NCGR knows that when appointments are not made on the recommendation of independent and secure public service commissions they are made by ministers and party bosses.

To learn more about the recruitment ruse, the chairman of the NCGR would do well to exchange views with some of the former ministers, more particularly with his one-time colleague in civil service and later president of the country, Farooq Leghari. When he was the water and power minister, he admitted that the pressure of his party men and legislators persuaded him to allocate to them all available posts of engineers in Wapda. He laid down certain conditions of eligibility for their nominees but those too, on his departure, were waived.

Examples abound of such deviations from the rule of merit. The NCGR’s proposal will only legitimise this practice.

The problems that the devolution laws have created are chiefly three: one, continuous conflict between the provincial and district governments over jurisdiction and control of officials; two, politicians controlling the police and not the independent commissions as was envisaged in the scheme; and three, the nazims, who are all politicians, being made responsible for law and order in their districts when political rivalries are the main source of lawlessness and disorder.

None of these problems has attracted the attention of the NCGR nor does the growing indifference of the talented youth to the public service seem to bother the government.

In the latest federal public service commission examination for recruitment to the superior services, just about 3,500 candidates appeared and less than 200 qualified in the written part. In times when the services commanded authority and respect, around 10,000 would compete for less than 100 posts.

Lastly, the Transparency’s survey seems to suggest a link between corruption and religion as much as between poverty and governance. No Muslim country figures in the top-ranking 31 least corrupt countries. Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam and the world’s largest oil producer, ranks lower than poor Hindu India and much lower than Buddhist Bhutan.

The tail of the corruption table is preponderantly Muslim. The ongoing political manoeuvres will make sure that Pakistan remains there.

THIRTY-five-year old Irom Sharmila of Manipur, India, has been on a fast-unto-death, for the past seven years, demanding the removal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958.

With her piercing eyes, lips stretched tight in pain, nose covered by a swatch of medical tape, dependent on the yellow plastic nose pipe that provides her the liquids that keep her alive, Sharmila may have lost her physical strength, but not her determination.

‘This is the least I can do. It is my bounden duty to protest,’ she says in a voice barely above a whisper. One of the longest peaceful political protests ever recorded, Sharmila continues her one-person struggle, even when she knows that the risk to her life is considerably higher than the chances of her success.

Just across the border, Pakistan suffers from far more serious predicaments. Its 160 million people have been relegated to the status of bonded labour. Their many future generations must slave to pay back the $40bn foreign debt that was collected on behalf of the ordinary citizens of Pakistan.

The people of Pakistan are now ruled by a serving commando who simultaneously heads a political party and also contests elections while still retaining his uniform. No one protests even at the dichotomy of the law that will punish a thelaywala for the slightest misconduct, but will pardon the criminals and thieves who looted billions of dollars to build palaces in foreign lands.

The people of Pakistan excel in the art of suffering. Affliction and adversity are seen as divine compensation for local misdeeds or simply a part of the Lord’s higher order pre-ordained strategy. To challenge, protest or question are clearly not a part of our temperament or tradition. The educated middle classes, loaded with cynicism, disillusionment and apathy, unwantedly become part of the very problem they grumble so much about.

Protests are considered futile and better left to political parties, NGOs or volunteer organisations. Discussions often come around to a familiar foregone conclusion: ‘There is nothing we can do that will make a change. In any case what can we do?’

How do ordinary citizens raise their voice, make a contribution or lodge a peaceful protest on issues ranging from a complaint about the special VIP check-in counters at the airports, a protest against a serving military general fighting elections for a political post, or dissuading the government from taking fraudulent foreign loans?

How do citizens stop these unlawful activities? Recent movements by the lawyers’ forum, women’s groups and journalists have shown that citizens when operating under organised platforms can have a much greater impact.

Therefore, the first option that the citizens could choose is to organise and raise their voice through platforms such as doctors, engineers, architects, teachers, retired military personnel, businessmen, traders, writers and similar professional groups. Public action litigation by individuals and groups is another powerful but much under-utilised method of taking up public causes. Inviting the courts’ attention for suo motu notice on important issues is another option open to all citizens.

Finally, how do citizens not belonging to any formal group find a space for their voice or actions? While every citizen cannot emulate Irom Sharmila, there are umpteen modes of protest that are an everyday possibility.

Citizens can refuse to participate in events organised by corrupt officials and politicians. They can make formal complaints to organisations against specific wrongdoings. They can resign from their government posts as a mark of protest. They can form like-minded groups and make collective representations. They can write issue-based articles for the press. They can boycott products and activities that degrade the environment. They can use websites and emails to form and organise protest groups.

Surely, it is time to explore these and other such options. Even the silent protest of wearing a black band can begin to create a contagious movement. Imagine the impact of a few million persons wearing black bands every day to protest against a specific issue. Clearly, a forerunner for larger civil protest movements.

Email: naeemsadiq@gmail.com