IN the present context, fudge means to ‘adjust or manipulate (facts or figures) so as to present a desired picture’ or to mislead. Parenthetically, a more pleasant and tasteful association of fudge is with that yummy chocolaty stuff, favourite of many, made of cream or milk, butter and sugar.

A word of caution is in order. Almost all statistics, however honestly and competently collected, can be used to make a god or devil. However, this is not always the case and should not be allowed as an excuse for fudging.

In countries like Pakistan, fudging data for political ends is neither new nor surprising. It is well known that the blame game is a popular, almost gladiatorial sport among competing politicians: those who take the reins of power blame the outgoing adversaries for the sins that the latter may or may not have committed during their tenure. It seems to give politicians a false sense of satisfaction and creates a perception of what a bad situation they have inherited to start their act or show.

It is fair to add that, given a polarised political and social system, this game is not going to end any time soon. A far more serious aspect of this almost perpetual circus is the role often played by government officials (so-called public servants) as providers of information and data (figures) to their masters, elected or not.

Many of them tend to act as their master’s voice no matter who the master is, given the prospect for high personal rewards and a slim chance of personal accountability.

I will not comment here on the act of fudging itself or its temptation: material and non-material rewards or gains are the obvious culprits. I intend to focus, instead, on some of the important reasons that create the opportunity to engage in this act. Monopoly is probably the most important reason. Almost all statistics pertaining to economic and social indicators rest with one or another government agency at the federal or provincial level. These agencies have almost unchallenged, if not unchallengeable, control of the information and data they possess.

An associated and necessary aspect is the secrecy with which the monopolist protects the numbers (data) with impunity. In fact, it is secrecy that empowers the holders of information. A third reason is the dubious competence and lack of rigour with which the data is gathered, processed and disseminated.

There are several ways in which the opportunity for and ability to fudge the numbers can be reduced significantly. For one thing, there are various kinds of hurdles, some almost insurmountable, for the public (outsiders) to getting access to information that the public sector agencies collect and keep. The public’s right to this information should be protected by appropriate laws and rules. To this end, at the legislative and administrative levels, these laws should be enforced effectively, while protecting the privacy of individuals, to give ordinary people access to data that the government agencies collect and keep in their files.

At the same time, governments should protect those of its officials who are willing and able to ‘blow the whistle’ to serve the public interest. The whistle blowers should be aware of the legal and administrative penalties which they would be subject to, in case they are motivated by personal gain or revenge, and the information they give is found to be untrue.

In addition, the national and provincial assemblies, through their multi-party committees, should act as watchdogs equipped with legal powers to oversee the quality of information — data included — that the government agencies collect, maintain and disseminate for public consumption. Of course, this will require the assembly committees to use independent third-party expertise as and when required. It does not, however, mean that the legislative branch should interfere in the functioning of government agencies responsible for data collection, etc. The purpose here is to have in place a mechanism for transparency and accountability.

The agencies responsible for gathering, compiling and disseminating data (figures) need at least three changes. First, they should enjoy legally protected autonomy with a governance structure that includes public representatives, especially those with expertise in the relevant fields, on the governing boards and as advisors. These representatives should be drawn preferably from both the public and private sector research organisations.

Second, the professional and functional capability of government agencies and organisations should be assessed and strengthened. They should have an adequate number of competent professionals who are given the necessary resources and merit-based incentives to produce reliable results of quality without avoidable delay.

Third, public sector resources and support are required to encourage the development of research institutions or organisations outside the government to use their expertise as partners and not adversaries. In fact, credible and strong non-governmental institutions can also act as a check on the quality of information and data that the government agencies gather, process and disseminate. The federal and provincial bureaus of statistics and similar public sector agencies can then collaborate with these non-governmental institutions to enhance the credibility of their output.

The rather skeletal agenda for change proposed here would help bring the data-producing institutions in Pakistan at par with similar organisations in many other countries. More importantly, it would help policymakers receive credible information and data on which they can base their decisions with confidence and reduce the space for fudging. In the long run, it may even help develop a culture of trust based on transparency and accountability.

QUITE a few threats to Pakistan’s stability are regularly mentioned in public debate. Among the less seriously acknowledged is the danger of implosion due to the people’s violent temper.

The roughing up of Arbab Ghulam Rahim without regard to the dignity of the venue, the thrashing of Dr Sher Afgan in a lawyer’s protected chamber, the lynching of poor Jagdish in defiance of the bar to killing a human being, and the setting on fire several innocent people are all symptoms of a malady that can, if left untreated, completely consume the state of Pakistan, its society, and whatever good the people have managed to gather to their credit. Common responses to acts of depravity such as those witnessed over the past fortnight prevent the community from realising the gravity of the threat these occurrences pose.

First, take the pathetic refusal to believe that any Pakistani Muslim, supposedly a paragon of virtue, could have decided to blow up fellow Muslim Pakistanis, including women, children and defenders of the national frontiers. Countless newspaper headlines can be recalled in which such disclaimers have been issued by people whose lack of intelligence has not obstructed their rise to eminence.

Secondly, instead of uncovering the cause of an ugly happening and the hands behind it, all blame is placed on two scapegoats — the intelligence agencies of external adversaries or the rulers at home. Neither of the two is incapable of committing the heinous atrocities attributed to it but the tendency to stop at the most convenient theory of conspiracy prevents a rational diagnosis.

Thirdly, containing violence is usually put down as one of the law-enforcement agencies’ routine chores and certainly not the most important one, as the highest priority must always be the protection of the VVIPs, however worthless in comparison to Jagdish or anyone of those burnt alive in Tahir Plaza some of them may be. Thus, the agonising self-appraisal that the rising level of violence in Pakistan demands is avoided.

What needs to be grasped is the fact that Pakistani society has not only become thoroughly intolerant, the tendency to eliminate all dissenters through violence is becoming stronger and more and more socially acceptable. Resort to violence to resolve any issue is no longer an aberration on the part of a few outlaws who can be effectively dealt with by the law and order agencies. It is a social phenomenon and needs to be addressed as such. The exercise must begin by assessing the various factors that have contributed to the Pakistani people’s descent into the abyss of violence.

The fact is that we have been living by violence for centuries. The long period of Muslim rule in the subcontinent was based on the ability to subjugate a more numerous people, and to wrest the crown from a fellow Muslim by force, which is another way to describe one’s potential for killing and pillage. All such violence was justified, according to contemporary wisdom, as violence by states, applied through their recognised instruments for their protection or expansion.

Let us leave history aside, although dreams of conquering new lands can still be observed in the psyche of our people, and concentrate on our community’s increasing indulgence in and social approbation of violence since 1947.

The Partition riots marked the beginning of a new fall from sanity when men were butchered and women raped for no wrong done to the culprits. Apart from the heavy toll of life and large-scale destruction of property, significant harm done by these riots — leaders of the Muslim community were no less guilty than their counterparts on the other side — there was legitimisation of violence by non-state actors.

That experience provided a psychological foundation for violence, which has been legitimised sometimes in the name of religion and sometimes as state necessity. It is the latter phenomenon we are now concerned with because it is the legitimisation of state violence against citizens that gravely undermines all efforts to overcome criminal gangs and pseudo-jihadis.

At its inception, the Pakistan state might have been deficient in many ways; but it was not lacking in the theory of imposing itself upon the people by force. If the Pashtuns refused to submit to Qayyum Khan’s oppressive measures they could be bombed. If the Khan of Kalat did not understand the governor-general’s command he could be shown the long barrel of a cannon. If Sheikh Mujib was not amenable to the rulers’ diktat, the entire Bengali population could be put to the sword, no matter if all of them were Pakistanis and most of them Muslims.

The atrocities committed in 1971 in East Bengal in the name of the state and with the fullest possible approval of the people in the western wing, sanctified the gospel of violence for as long as the people took to purge their minds of the notion that violence was a legitimate means of securing an objective. The people in today’s Pakistan made the terrible mistake of identifying themselves with the perpetrators of the state’s war against its citizens living in Bengal and thus grievously destroyed their sense of revulsion at the wanton and gruesome killings.

Much is said about the brutalisation of society during military regimes. True, Yahya Khan’s war against the Bengali Pakistanis and the hanging and whipping in public during Ziaul Haq’s reign brutalised society. But to concentrate on such events is to miss the point that all martial law regimes in Pakistan have been innately brutalising. Scrapping the Constitution is one of the worst forms of violence.

The state by definition is an apparatus of coercion but dictatorship is the most vicious form of an oppressive state. Every time an elected authority has been overthrown, the message to the people is: any violence one can get away with is legitimate. The element of violence in the state has been directly proportional to the degree of civilian exclusion from public affairs. Violence is not bad, only getting hauled up for it is. We thus find violence in Pakistan rooted in the nature of the state.

Another spring of violence has been kept running by the state’s failure to convince the people that it deals with them justly and on the basis of merit. The have-nots believe they cannot get justice from the courts or the police; they go to the local mafia to secure what is due to them. Karachi’s takeover by the mafia proves this. The poor are also convinced that the affluent owe their luxuries to force, favour or fraud. At the slightest provocation, they are ready to vent their anger on anyone who is better dressed or looks better fed than them.

The struggle against pro-violence tendencies in Pakistani society will be a long haul. Mere police action will gain little. The solution lies in changing the nature of the state, in humanising it, and convincing the disadvantaged that their needs are being addressed according to the merit of their situation.

THE 90-minute drive from Pittsburgh to Uniontown winds and dips through rural western Pennsylvania, flanked by bare trees waiting to be clothed by a late spring, and drops you at the Appalachians.

Historically at least, Uniontown (population 12,500) is an all-American town. Thanks to its mills and coal mines it boasted more millionaires per capita than any other town in the US at the opening of the last century. The town centre is littered with tributes to its favourite son –– George Marshall, the architect of the Marshall Plan. The Big Mac was invented and test-marketed here.

Uniontown could do with a Marshall Plan of its own. More than one in five families here live below the poverty line; the household median income is less than half the national level; over the past 70 years the town’s population has shrunk by almost half.

“Back in the 50s and 60s there were people, people, people all over town,” explains mayor Ed Fike. “We had stores like Sears, Roebuck, Murphy’s, Kaufman’s. Now all of those stores have gone and so have the mines and mills. If you can find work it’s in Kmart, Wal-Mart, Target ––minimum wage jobs in retail. People are struggling.”

With little more than a week to go before the Pennsylvania primaries, the economy is the biggest priority for voters and, barring a deterioration in Iraq, that is where it will stay until the presidential elections in November. The issue for the Democrats is not whether Hillary Clinton will win here, but by how much.

The race is tightening. Barack Obama stemmed his decline over comments of his pastor with a landmark speech on race, sparking a national conversation. But America doesn’t need another national conversation on race –– it already has too many and most of them are asinine. It needs a dialogue that could lead to a better conversation. Obama’s speech contributed to that.

White working-class Americans are justified in their resentment about the way in which their needs and concerns are airbrushed from the national conversation or discussed in ways that bear little relevance to the root of their plight.

Obama, who unlike Clinton does not have an office in Uniontown, has proved himself to have a tin ear when it comes to addressing these voters, which is why he has struggled to win them over.

Their scepticism towards him is not primarily racial but cultural. Last week at a private fundraiser in San Francisco, Obama was asked why he wasn’t doing better among working-class voters in places such as Uniontown, which is 84 per cent white. “You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them,” he said. “And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

Clinton immediately seized on his remarks, handing out “I’m not bitter” stickers in North Carolina and casting Obama as a cultural elitist. “As I travel around Pennsylvania,” she said. “I meet people who are resilient, who are optimistic, who are positive ...”

That does not make such a conversation about class any less vital. It would carry the dual benefit of being both timely and strategically savvy. Timely, because the economic problems of many Americans are particularly acute right now.

Moreover, most people are heading into this bust without having enjoyed any of the benefits of a boom. Since the last recession the median wage has declined slightly.

A Pew survey reveals that most people feel they have been stuck in place or fallen backward over the past five years –– the most gloomy short-term appraisal of personal advancement in almost 50 years. Thanks to the credit crunch, the days when people softened the blow by borrowing massively on their homes and credit cards are over. Americans are heading for a huge slump in their standard of living. n

—The Guardian, London