IN Pakistan we might not have arrived anywhere else but we certainly have reached the end of criticism. Just as talking is useless and indeed a strain if no one is listening to you, a critical standpoint is of no use if it leads to nothing, least of all to any kind of change.

Pakistani rulers, or at least the crop we have had since the re-birth of democracy (some joke, this), are averse even to reading newspapers. Praise and sycophancy they consider their due, a merited tribute to their talent and genius. For criticism they have no patience. Nor, much of the time, the required understanding. How then do you construct what in other climes, more salubrious than ours, is called a national discourse? There is no such animal in Pakistan.

Indeed over here the printed word is an anomaly. It feeds the waters of cynicism, angst and despair. It gives a powerful boost to the passion for breast-beating which is one of our foremost national characteristics. But the printed word has no effect on national policy. It has never stopped a government from committing a blunder or otherwise traversing the paths of folly. It has never stopped anyone in a position of authority from behaving in a wilful, corrupt or even self-destructive manner.

Consider the records in office of Pakistan's leading monuments to democracy: Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. They have bristled at criticism, considering it either opinionated or driven by selfish motives (which in many cases, alas, has been true). But they have never, not once, thought it expedient or sensible to mend their ways because of the power of the printed word.

The press is far from being perfect and it has more than its share of blackguards in its ranks. But generally, from General Zia's time onwards, the responsible press has successfully, and with some ability, pointed the finger at governmental blunders and transgressions. But to no effect. Only the quality of wilful behaviour has changed.

In her first term Benazir Bhutto and Asif Zardari were amateurs in corruption. In her second term she and her husband became sophisticated and bold, stepping into places angels would have feared to tread.

Nawaz Sharif's first term was distinguished by the cooperatives' scam (its victims still holding on to their useless pieces of paper), the yellow cab scheme (which drove a nail into the banking sector) and the motorway, Pakistan's idea of what a white elephant should look like. In his second term the proclivity to go for grandiose schemes has become more daring.

As proof there is the 'Maira Ghar' scheme which required audacity to conceive. With land seized for free, the government, having become the biggest qabza group of all, and with construction costs put at an astronomical 650 rupees a square foot (a rate at which palaces of Italian marble could be built), it is hard not to see who stands to make a killing from this enterprise: the construction mafia. But will criticism or even well-meant counsel make a difference? Not the slightest.

In countries more fortunate than ours resoluteness and determination are usually applied to enterprises of some moment. In Pakistan resoluteness stands for persisting in folly even when every available sign suggests that it will lead to self-destruction.

Politicians of course are not the only ones to blame. Since the mid-eighties the English press, to the extent it could make its voice heard, has emphasized the disastrous consequences of Pakistan's Afghan policy. But without the slightest effect on the godfathers of this policy, the army and the ISI. We have reached a point where no one has any idea of how to deal with, or curb the messianic zeal of, the jihadi organisations whose proliferation and strength are a direct consequence of our ambition to become the chess-masters of Afghanistan. Yet there is no attempt at re-examining the doctrinal foundations of an approach which poses a serious danger to Pakistan simply because it lacks the strength to sustain the external adventurism implicit in this thinking.

Or take Kargil. So much has been said and written about Pakistan's deep humiliation in this crisis. Elsewhere heads would have rolled, hara-kiri would have been committed. Not in Pakistan, where a complete absence of humility on the part of the prime minister and his team serves only to pour salt over open wounds. The sad truth is that in a milieu which lives on certainty, and where to ask questions is not part of the national culture, nurturing a spirit of scepticism is a useless undertaking.

In brief then, the press in Pakistan can neither influence policy nor affect the behaviour of individuals in authority. What it is good at doing is at painting 'impressions': Benazir's corruption, Zardari's flamboyant behaviour in financial matters, the cupidity of the Sharifs, their skill in turning public office to private advantage, the drugs-and-guns legacy of the Afghan war, the disaster of Kargil.

While these are powerful impressions, with a great deal of emotional content in them, they are of no use unless exploited by someone and used as levers of change. Ghulam Ishaq Khan and General Beg used the widespread perception of Benazir's corruption to oust her from power in 1990. Ishaq Khan exploited the perception of Nawaz Sharif's cluelessness in office by ousting him as prime minister in 1993. When Leghari dismissed Benazir in 1996 few tears were shed because of the widespread impression that by her actions she had brought about her own downfall.

Events have come full circle. Despite sinister attempts to control the press, the press has been successful once again in exposing the inadequacies of Sharif's second coming: the total ineptitude of his government and its lack of direction. Kargil has only served to fix this perception in stone.

The Sharif government is thus vulnerable but there is nothing around to take advantage of its weakness. The system of checks and balances enshrined in the Eighth Amendment lies in our constitutional junkyard. After Kargil the army is licking its wounds and is unsure of itself. If the lack of leadership is total, so is the lack of alternatives. In this situation revving up the engines of criticism is little better than hurling javelins into a void.