Of Pakistani democracy I do not despair. I stopped grieving for it a long time ago having realized through personal observation that as a nation we have no genius for the thing. The virtue of consultation and a tolerance for the vagaries of human nature, the two essential prerequisites for democracy, we quite simply lack. We are a nation of individual fanatics each of whom wants to convert everyone else, at the point of the gun or the bayonet if it comes to that, to his point of view. This evangelical strain sits ill with democracy.

What I despair about is Pakistani dictatorship. With our long and repeated experience of this phenomenon we should have succeeded in producing a workable dictatorial model. But we have done nothing of the sort. Each dictatorship begins from scratch. Reinventing the wheel is a metaphor or rather cliche worked to death since the latest military takeover. But it describes our predicament best. Pakistani would-be redeemers do not begin from where the last one left off. They begin from the beginning, which is not only a waste of time but also productive of boredom. How many times can you watch the same performance, the same bumbling steps and the same promises to usher in a golden age?

Authoritarianism can be efficient. It can also be corrupt and enervating. After all, who fires its engines? Military and civil bureaucrats plus a sprinkling of civilian collaborators out hunting for jobs. As simple as that. If the quality of this intake is good, the results will be good. If not, God help you. How do we fare in this regard? Whether earlier times produced a better class of mandarins (the myths in this respect being very potent) I cannot say. But what I have seen with my own eyes, from the Zia era till now, leaves a dispiriting impression behind: higher bureaucrats who in any clime would be considered as astounding specimens of human incompetence. The official obsessed with rank, protocol and a sense of his own importance is an enduring literary type. But the asses we manage to produce would take the prize anywhere.

As if civil service asses were not bad enough, military officers who should be proud of their uniform and the profession of arms want nothing as badly in a military government as to win a civil service posting. It should therefore surprise no one if a veritable horde of officers have seized supposedly cushy civilian jobs since the Musharraf takeover. Obviously, the dictum that all politics is about jobs remains true whether democrats or dictators are running the show (or the pantomime) in Islamabad.

What is also true is that Pakistan's governing class is knit closely together by a sense of shared values: plots, houses, land in Bahawalpur and a foreign education for the loved ones, with nothing remotely approaching culture leavening this mass. This is one side of the picture. The other side is provided by the blurring of any distinction that might have existed between public service and private gain. In fact, public office has come to be taken as the surest way of getting rich. That is why till very recently bright lads wanted to get into the civil service, police and customs because these jobs brought perks and privileges and the prospect of future gain.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to get rich. Did not Comrade Deng say 'to be rich is glorious'? The problem is different. Wherever the spirit of enterprise flourishes, a different sort of individual pursues the paths of wealth and an altogether different sort goes in for public service. H. L. Mencken (perhaps the only journalist who will ever sup with the gods) says this of the early American Republic, "Setting aside religion, (politics) was literally the only concern of the people. All men of ability and ambition turned to it for self-expression." In the 18th and early 19th centuries, politics drew "the best literary talent into its service - Franklin, Jefferson and Lincoln may well stand as examples..." A far cry from Pakistan where, exceptions apart, third-raters enter politics proper while the more talented enter the administration (which is also a form of politics) not for any fantasy about self-expression but simply to get up the ladder of self-advancement.

How do we draw a line in the sand? How do we get the national renewal for which the patriotic classes in their cups pine so much? It will be hard getting this revolution from the standard-bearers of the governing morality which is the true ideology of Pakistan.

And what about the people, whose poverty and helplessness every incoming government, with sonorous if repetitive platitudes, promises to alleviate and indeed in whose name the skullduggery of the Republic is carried on? To say that the people are lost, miserable or despondent, some of the favourite adjectives which leader writers and columnists deploy when the breast-beating mood overtakes them, would be wrong. The drawing room gliterati have only to emerge from their shells to see that in the real Pakistan, alongside the pain and squalor, there is also a great deal of purpose and bustling energy. But, vile contradiction, it is also true that the people are not fully in control of their lives. The state does not provide for them. It only makes life more difficult for them - just as under the Sikhs or the worst Muslim rulers.Its true functions the state has abdicated providing neither quality education nor quality health care. Nor indeed equal opportunity or justice of any kind. But it continues to oppress and thwart the people in every aspect of their lives. Just look at the police, an extortion agency; the district administration, all pomp and show and no purpose; the so-called nation-building departments, hives of corruption. It is a fine soup we are in: the country in hock to the IMF and other external creditors, the people kicked around at every turn by the state. If the people of Pakistan are still cheerful, as indeed they are (newspaper prophets of doom notwithstanding) their resilience and patience deserve to be applauded.

What about the larger picture? The generals are in control and doing what anyone else in their place would do: strengthen and perpetuate their hold on the levers of power. The three years' timeframe for the conceiving of that mythic animal called 'real democracy' is a bit like that thought about which Ghalib said that it was good to beguile the heart. Do military saviours surrender their batons or robes of office just like that? It has never happened before in Pakistan but the nation, even as it tries to adjust itself to over-priced sugar and a worsening economic situation, is being told to suspend disbelief and await the unfolding of this miracle at the hands of this military government.

Meanwhile there is the devolution plan which promises to empower the grass roots. A long night (or day) of the generals at the top and devolution below may seem a contradiction in terms but then this is the only show on offer: take it or, if you nurse political ambitions, be prepared to be sidelined when this process gets going.

Meanwhile there is also the reported reshuffle underway in the army's higher echelons. Much ink is likely to be spilt about the likely implications. But never mind. When the rest of the national picture remains the same, what does it matter whether a particular general goes here or there?