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FOR decades now, we have been hearing voices in our midst arguing that Pakistan is on the brink of collapse and that the misdeeds of the politicians are responsible for all our problems. I recall hearing people around me saying in 1991, when Operation Clean Up began in Karachi that this is it, this is the end, if the army fails in its operation Pakistan will slide into chaos because there is no resort beyond the army.
I recall columns written in various papers in 1996 again repeating the same line, that this is it, the country is now taking its last breath. Then we heard Pervez Musharraf’s famous words in his televised address following the coup in 1999: “we have hit rock bottom”.
In fact drawing up a list of all the times when the death knells have been sounded for this country would make for a very long list indeed. And yet here we are, for better or for worse. Yes things are bad, yes the Sindh government is ineffectual, yes the PML-N is obsessed with mega projects and ignoring or shying away from undertaking the real reforms, and yes the MQM is in the cross hairs again, struggling to explain itself.
But we’ve seen all this before. Is the Sindh government of today more ineffectual than that of Jam Sadiq or Arbab Ghulam Rahim? Did the last military operation against the MQM in 1992 end the party’s presence or support base in Karachi? Have military governments been more effective in dealing with the rising tide of extremism or even with ameliorating poverty in the country?
In all the years I’ve been hearing people speak of doom for the country and wishing large-scale destruction upon it as a way of sorting out its problems, there is one common theme that runs through all of these attitudes: an obsession with people.
Who will solve Pakistan’s problems, people ask. Zardari is corrupt, they say, and Nawaz is mercurial and unpredictable. ‘If only Moeen Qureshi could have stayed a few years more’ lamented many back in 1994, ‘he would’ve sorted things out.’
Read more: Zardari ignoring advice to pursue his policy of reconciliation
An excessive focus on the personal attributes of leaders, results in missing the importance that systems play in the evolution of society.
This obsession with individuals is misplaced, primarily because contrary to what many believe, the man at the top can make only a marginal difference to the direction a country takes. And to set the record straight: a fish does not, in reality, rot from the head down. It rots from the inside out.
But ancient proverbs aside, I feel compelled to bring all this up because we’re hearing all the same talk come pouring forth all over again. It has been a quarter century now since the key transformations that have shaped our country got under way. These were the end of the Cold War and the beginning of globalisation.
Both of these events set in motion a large-scale restructuring around the world and every country faced the challenge of having to adapt. Our idea of adapting was to find new and novel ways to continue with Cold War habits while eschewing any attempts at reform in our economy. So we continued to nurture extremism, thinking it to be a useful tool in the pursuit of regional rivalries. The economy was left to its own devices and policymaking was focused most energetically on two core objectives: arranging multilateral inflows to build reserves and struggling to keep the fiscal deficit from spiralling out of control.
Hardly any strategic change of direction was attempted, and whenever it was, it was aborted quickly because it ran up against a political economy of patronage that had become a basic survival strategy for all political players, civilian and military included.
What the generation of people that grew up pronouncing doom and searching for salvation in individuals and great leaders missed was the two most important and powerful forces that operate in any open society, and that alone can set things right in this country. These forces are: the self-correction of democracy and economic growth.
An excessive focus on the personal attributes of individual leaders, coupled with a highly immature and emotional disposition, has caused us to miss the importance that systems play in the evolution of any society, and in shaping its capacity to respond to challenges that come from a changing world.
The changing world over the past quarter century challenged us to develop tools other than force to settle our disputes and pursue our objectives. We failed to do so because we had no functioning system of government, given the repeated dissolutions of parliaments in the 1990s leading up to the coup. Of course, the leadership in those parliaments did much to discredit themselves by their own actions, but it was the people’s will that was supposed to have delivered that message to them, not the president casually wielding an amendment in the Constitution introduced by a dictator to keep his grip on power.
The self-correction of democracy is the only force today that can teach these inept parties that if they don’t deliver, power will be taken out of their hands. It might take time, but there is no alternative. Repeated attempts to find a military solution to the problem prove this.
Growth is a trickier subject, because the whole world is currently trying to figure out how to get the engines of the economy to restart, not just Pakistan. Nevertheless, durable growth, of the sort that isn’t paid for by outsiders and doesn’t disappear at the slightest whiff of bad news, will only come when there is stability in politics and people are not left guessing whether those in power today will indeed still be there tomorrow. Without getting these basics right, no number of military interventions, law and order operations or vilification campaigns will solve any of the core problems.
Read more: MQM minus Altaf will mean war on streets, says Altaf
The writer is a member of staff.
Twitter: @khurramhusain
Published in Dawn, July 2nd, 2015
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