LAST week in London, Indian Minister for External Affairs Salman Khurshid spoke on the challenges facing democracy in India. While the content of his talk was interesting, the partisan lilt underscoring many of his statements provided greater contrast for the inevitable India-Pakistan comparison.

There was no doubt, at any point, that the man talking was not just a representative of the Indian government, but also of the Congress party, and its (stated) politics of redistribution and rights. His Oxford education, and years spent teaching in the UK, his status as an appreciated English-language playwright who wrote Sons of Babur, mattered little.

At that, and I’m assuming every other point, he performed his role as a representative of a political party, which is home to many other characters of decidedly less literary, and considerably more awami dispositions.

The odds of a person with Khurshid’s class, education and professional background being a partisan, committed political actor in Pakistan are considerably low.

The withdrawal of the urban professional classes from party or organisational politics, and their tacit-often-active support for strongman authoritarianism has long been cited as a cause for the country’s democratic deficit.

Further compounding the issue is a fresh wave of ‘centrist’ glorification, which sees all extant political parties (and their ideas) as primitive or incompetent structures, unable or unwilling to govern. Unfortunately, what we have in Pakistan is the consolidation of — as a friend put it — the ‘independently occurring phenomenon’.

This would be a person of well-established skill and ‘repute’, who floats in and out of Islamabad’s power circles waiting to be roped in by the government of the day for technocratic advice on matters of national or local importance.

The ‘objective’ technocrat, like many other undesirable inheritances, is a legacy of authoritarian rule in this country.

First charted out by economists and planners under Ayub and Zia, this career trajectory has developed under the false notion of how managing growth, development or foreign policy is a solely technical, as opposed to a technical plus political exercise.

As a result, Pakistan has had a string of advisers — in the finance and privatisation ministries, and in embassies abroad, with no partisan affiliation or requisite patience for politics.

In the last 15-odd years, the catchment area of aspirational hangers-on has expanded to include journalists, ‘development specialists’, and strategists peddling supremely vague, yet important-sounding skills.

Displaying dexterity most often found in whack-a-mole arcade machines, and a non-stick coating, some have remained wedded to various state offices through successive regimes.

Maybe it’s fair to ask whether this is, unequivocally speaking, such a terrible thing. Should one really blame technocrats and policy specialists for charting out successful career trajectories in and outside government? Is it not the expedient, constituency-driven nature of political parties, and the patronage culture of government which provides an enabling environment for individuals to loan out their services?

Maybe offering the benefit of doubt to some, in the name of their proclaimed patriotism, and their inability to construct partisan affiliations, is justified. What must be noted clearly though is the two-pronged damage a culture of outsourced, consciously anti-partisan professionalism does to democratic politics in the country.

In the first instance, disengagement of middle-class practitioners from partisan politics weakens political parties as organisations in and out of government. The latest instance of gross oversight and party failure — the Tharparkar famine — proves to be fairly instructive in this regard.

It is apparent that the party’s electoral needs — ie the act of accumulating votes and undercutting opponents — remain the dominant logic even in government. This is, without exception, true of democratic politics everywhere in the world.

What is problematic though is that technical, politically embedded knowledge of how to engage in redistributive functions or delivering services remains outsourced to consultants or an outdated, under-qualified and indifferent bureaucracy.

As a result, parties are constantly fending off accusations of incompetence with expedient, polemical responses — something they wouldn’t have to if they possessed internal resources providing committed thinking and planning.

The second, perhaps more dangerous, outcome of celebrating non-partisanship is the insistence of a ‘national interest’ that magically evolves outside active party politics and ideology. Instead of determining rules and administration through the democratic system, the ‘national interest’ becomes this transcendental, largely spotless code of government.

Politics is thus perpetually consigned to the gutter, while institutions of the permanent state — the military, higher bureaucracy and judiciary — become desirable principals for administration, rule, and delivery.

Facing this analytical strand of questioning, many middle-class individuals respond to accusations of disinterestedness by pointing out the venal, narrow nature of political parties that makes engagement difficult.

The prevailing culture of privileging relatives and electoral bosses pose barriers to middle-class partisanship, they say.

That, though, remains a poor excuse. India’s party culture (like other democracies) is similar — they’re run like family fiefdoms, are expedient, and populated by characters, which many white-collared types find unsavoury.

It, however, hasn’t stopped a significant segment of the professional class from owning up, engaging with them, and helping them deliver on a wide variety of fronts.

Frankly, there is nothing wrong with being partisan. Pakistan’s democratic deepening hinges upon its political parties’ ability to think through policy, and deliver on ideologically coherent socio-economic programmes. Celebrating non-partisan politics, and perpetuating the existing culture of technocrat-for-hire will accomplish neither.

The writer is a freelance columnist.

Email: umairjaved87@gmail.com