“She had been dismembered and disembowelled. But she had not been interfered with.”

At the start of the Second World War, to forestall a German invasion, the French constructed a seemingly impregnable defensive line, peppered with bunkers, machine gun emplacements, pillboxes and fortifications. The so-called Maginot Line, named after the French defence minister, Andre Maginot, was thought sufficient to slow down the German blitzkrieg. The Germans countered by outflanking the Maginot Line and invading France via Belgium.

In 1973, Pakistan’s constitutional assembly gave the country its first unanimous democratic constitution. Since its conception, however, rather than being regarded as a sacrosanct document, it has been treated as the Maginot Line by a pantheon of ‘constitutional democrats’, venal politicians, corrupt bureaucrats and ambitious generals. (The starting quote from an 18th-century British police crime report sums up our contemptuous and self-serving treatment of the Constitution very well — with one exception: we have interfered with ‘her’ as well.)

The result has been an ‘omni-shambolic’ decline of the state, extending from the dissolution of the social contract by the non-provision of basic services to citizens, to the lacklustre performance of the economy. In fact, the weakening of the state has spread like a cancer, with its more recent manifestations including shenanigans in unexpected (but entirely predictable) places: the Pakistan Cricket Board, the nosedive in hockey and squash, and the pathetic, petty self-serving squabble in the Pakistan Olympics Association.

The refusal to understand our stagnation through an ‘institutional’ prism has cost us dearly

More dangerously, it has given cause to citizens to manifest their discontent and neglect by the state in often violent ways. It is of little surprise that the fires of secession rage in Balochistan — it remains the most neglected and backward region of Pakistan, with the colonial model of governance applied by the centre ensuring appropriation of resources — and ‘voice’ — by a corrupt elite. To what extent the TTP-led insurgency has similar roots is moot at this stage, given that its leadership has an external agenda and support, but the drawing of thousands of angry men and women to the streets of Islamabad on the call of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) and Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) certainly represents the failure of the state at multiple levels.

The ongoing saga on Constitution Avenue has highlighted our institutional decline in many instructive ways. The selective application of the law — and its selective forbearance — was demonstrated in the run-up to the protests by both the expedient serving of retroactive tax notices on Dr Qadri, several years after the alleged commission of tax evasion, and removal of barricades from around his Model Town residence. Rather than that these simple administrative actions were taken in an impersonal, impartial manner as a state response to a transgression or violation of law, they had to be initiated at the discretion of the highest authority in the province, and that too only after Dr Qadri emerged as a political ‘threat’. The non-registration of the FIR against the powerful in the province for the killing of 14 PAT workers, in an unnecessary, excessive show of force, is another reminder of how the system is designed to help those at the helm, and the connected, to evade the rule of law.

The refusal to understand our stagnation or decline as a state — and of the economy — through an ‘institutional’ prism has cost us dearly: we have been left groping for tactical-level ‘administrative’ or anti-cyclical responses to larger issues. (In 2005, in response to my analysis of the then recently-launched ‘Failed States Index’ by Foreign Policy magazine, which included a plea that the underlying analysis should be taken more seriously, the prime minister sent me a message. His response: I should stop thinking ‘like an Indian’ ie being deliberately disparaging of Pakistan!)

Even today, while the creeping institutional atrophy has become increasingly clear to even the most sceptical, its impact on our economic performance remains less clear. I have now been engaged in a low-key debate with some noted economists for the past three years about the notion of Pakistan being a ‘resilient’ state and whether the decline of the economy is secular or not, and to what extent this is related to institutional factors.

Against this backdrop, what do the two separate protest marches that have congregated in front of parliament in Islamabad, mean? Both the parties believe that the non-implementation of the Constitution and rule of law have led to the present state of affairs, and since members of the current political dispensation are ‘insiders’ who benefit from the status quo, and hence have little or no incentive to change, only ‘people’s power’ can bring about meaningful change.

It is both ironic as well as unfortunate, that those who believe in constitutional democracy should resort to bringing a mob of several thousand onto the streets to press for their seemingly just demands. The unintended consequences of these actions have clearly not been thought through. While the electoral system is indeed set up to favour ruling elites, and the judicial system has not given too much confidence that it is not co-opted and working for the protection of the status quo, the demand for genuine change has been growing — not least due to PTI’s emergence as a force for change. Abandoning the path of constitutionalism, negating parliamentary practices and norms, and resorting to mob rule sends a perverse signal to the multitude of aggrieved groups in Pakistan: the only way to redress your grievances is through a demonstration of street power.

The call for a civil disobedience movement can lead towards fiscal anarchy as it inadvertently reinforces the narrative of tax evasion dominant in the country: why should I pay my taxes, what does the state give me in return?

Another negative consequence of bringing people onto the streets is that it may potentially slow down much-needed economic reform by making the government even more cautious. Finally, perhaps the most damaging unintended consequence could be that these protests could undermine the very agenda for meaningful institutional reform that the PTI stands for. By losing its core support base, PTI could weaken as an electoral force and end up strengthening the forces of the status quo. While institutional reform is imperative, how we achieve it is equally important.

The writer is a former economic adviser to government, and currently heads a macroeconomic consultancy based in Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, August 22nd, 2014