AMONG the many casualties of the propaganda war that continues to play out on our TV screens in the name of ‘revolution’ and ‘azadi’ is a meaningful countrywide debate over one of the elected government’s few consistent policy initiatives, the privatisation of state-owned enterprises.

The planned floating of shares of the highly profitable OGDCL and PPL on the London and New York stock exchanges should, in particular, be garnering a great deal more attention than it currently is.

Privatisation has arguably been the flagship of the neo-liberal counter-revolution over the past three decades. Across the world, the state has slimmed down into a lean, mean capital-friendly machine, relinquishing res­ponsi­bility for public services such as transport, education and unemployment insurance.

The religious right wing is dominating basic services.

Since the end of the Cold War multinationals have made a beeline for oil, gas and minerals in the former Soviet republics, as well as regions previously untouched by foreign exploration. For example, during the Musharraf years unprecedented access was provided to Chinese and other companies to initiate intensive extraction of natural resources in Balochistan.

Indeed, the ongoing mini civil war in the Baloch heartland cannot be understood without reference to what is a ruthless international struggle for control over a wealth of untapped minerals and energy resources. The Pakistani state is but one player in this game; even military functions that states previously monopolised can be subcontracted to serve larger profit-making purposes.

Oil, gas and precious minerals may be the most high-profile targets of private capital, but it is the divestment of basic services — those that directly affect ordinary people — that give rise to the process’ most insidious effects.

Privatisation of the health sector has arguably been the most scandalous affair, both because of the stealth with which it has been accomplished and its widespread impact. Today private foundations are amongst the biggest sources of money for research and actual provision of health services. The Gates Foundation itself contributes almost as much as the US and UK governments to global health, which gives it tremendous power to mould health policy regimes.

Quite aside from the preposterous resistance that exists in this country to rudimentary preventive healthcare such as polio vaccination, the political economy of international donors and NGOs that these donors fund demands serious interrogation; for instance, the CIA’s tracking down of Osama bin Laden under the guise of a vaccination programme seriously compromised the presumed neutrality of NGO activities in the country.

Privatisation of welfare in this country is significant for a different reason altogether. Anyone with some exposure to the Pakistani street knows that the religious right has a significant presence in everything from emergency health services to the collection of hides (ostensibly for the poor) during qurbani season. This has not happened by chance.

Progressives, my­self included, spend a lot of time eluci­dating the Pakistani state’s historic patro­nage of religious militancy. In doing so, we often neglect the just as important development of the right wing’s welfare capacities that have allowed it to capture social and political space to complement its militant presence.

While the relatively apolitical Edhi Foun­dation was for a long time the only credible provider of health services outside of the state, since the 1990s groups such as the Falah-i-Insa­niyat Foundation (read: Lashkar-e-Taibaa/Jamaatud Dawa) and Al-Khidmat Foundation (Jamaat-i-Islami) have emerged as significant players in the field.

Over the past few years these groups have grea­tly enhanced their visibility and reach in the immediate aftermath of earthquakes, floods etc. Eyewitness reports confirm that the religious right is given privileged access to otherwise restricted areas, which is to suggest deliberate manipulation by state functionaries.

A glaring example of this was in Awaran following the devastating earthquake there in 2013; the entry of foreign aid workers, journalists and even provincial government operatives was regulated by paramilitary and army officials, but the Falah-i-Insaniyat Foundation was allowed unrestricted access.

These fronts for the religious right do much more than provide the health services which they otherwise discharge.

Certainly the handing over of the state’s responsibilities for health to the religious right is a deliberate political act, above and beyond standard neo-liberal orthodoxy. It is thus that many Pakistanis have internalised not only that basic services are the right of those who can pay for them, but also the legitimate claims of the religious establishment to being a parallel government because it is religio-political groups that demonstrate at least some political will as far as addressing working people’s everyday needs is concerned. This is why the struggle against the right wing is about much more than just defeating obscurantism.

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

Published in Dawn, October 10th, 2014