OVER the past few weeks, Islamabad and Rawalpindi have started to feel the full fury of Shahbaz Sharif’s latest development binge. The capital in particular is literally crumbling under the weight of the vaunted Metro Bus project, with roads being dug up all over the city and dust clouds of a kind commonly associated with Karachi littering the skyline.

It wasn’t as if the residents of the twin cities were actually consulted on whether or not they wanted the Big Red Bus, but then again neither were the residents of Lahore before the original sin was committed. The younger Sharif does, apparently, have a symbiotic relationship with urban populations in the central and northern parts of Punjab, and so takes for granted that his grand initiatives are welcomed by all and sundry.

Development, of course, is never good for everyone. As the reality of the Metro Bus project has hit home, more oppositional voices are making themselves heard. Among them are small bazaar vendors whose businesses will have to be relocated to make way for the Big Red Bus.

The Sharif brothers — and whoever else constitutes this government’s decision-making hierarchy — are unlikely to listen. They have already refused to respond to innumerable protests by thousands of katchi abadi dwellers in the capital who have been threatened with eviction by the interior minister.

It is thus that there is talk that disenfranchised classes within the otherwise placid Punjab might respond to renewed calls for ‘revolution’ being put out by that bespectacled Islamic scholar who these days calls Canada his home. The good professor — or allama if that is what one prefers to call him — is making his annual pilgrimage to Islamabad, replete with promises to eliminate corruption and replace sham democracy with a truly people-centred system of government.

It is another matter that Tahirul Qadri’s last visit to the capital ended in a damp squib. What matters is that ordinary people are still willing to entertain his antics, an indicator of how Pakistani politics can be manipulated and that everyday frustrations with a system that is biased against those without money and influence can translate into unlikely and desperate support for the shenanigans of those such as Qadri.

Having said this, I suspect those who might support Qadri — aside from his made-to-order students — will do so via the television screen in the comfort of their homes.

The x-factor could be Imran Khan, who declined to jump on the bandwagon the last time Qadri was in town, but has this time decided to join the anti-corruption crusader with a call for accountability of his own.

That the PTI chief continues to harp on about rigging in the general election a year after the fact speaks volumes for how much progress he and his party have made. Everyone else appears to have moved on but not the PTI. It would do well to focus on running a functional government in KP, but then again, popularity is arguably based less on actually delivering and more on making promises.

It is perhaps coincidental that the Khan-Qadri combo is crystallising around the same time that civil-military ties are said to be at their lowest ebb since the PML-N came to power.

There is as yet no indication that a grand plan to unseat the government is being operationalised, but in Pakistani politics anything is possible.

What is clear about Pakistani politics are the ideological postures of its major players. In power, the PML-N has proved itself to be fully committed to neo-liberal policies, and firmly believes that brute capitalistic logic is what should drive democracy. Whether or not this logic is sufficient to ward off evil designs against the government — be they in the shape of Qadris, Khans or the proverbial men in khaki — remains to be seen.

The truth about this brand of democracy is that it is ignorant of the needs of the poor, and committed to securing all measure of economic opportunities for private business operators, particularly in Punjab. This is not to suggest that any of our mainstream parties is pushing the boundaries of socialism, but only to point out that the PML-N is a party of the rich (and budding) entrepreneur and that its populism serves only to confirm this.

Soon the Big Red Bus will be a permanent feature on the streets of the twin cities, as it is in Lahore. Such populist initiatives — mind you, highly profitable ones — might trump the even more hollow populism of Qadri-Khan, but it does not bode well for democracy in the long run.

The writer teaches at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.