| February 16, 2008 | Saturday | Safar 08, 1429 |
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‘Yes, we can!’
AMONG the many differences between the election campaigns in Pakistan and the United States, perhaps the most striking one is the involvement of young people.
Even during the long primary phase of the American campaign, students are involved in campuses across the country. This is especially true of Barack Obama’s bid for the Democratic nomination, but the other candidates have an elaborate network of student activists, too.
Sadly, the younger generation in Pakistan, particularly in the cities, seems largely switched off. This is in stark contrast to the many young people who have thrown their weight behind the lawyers’ movement to restore the independence of the judiciary. In this task, I am glad that so many young men and women are involved. Many have been beaten up and jailed, but bravely continue to protest.
Karachi has been the exception, as the MQM has a stranglehold on campuses in Pakistan’s biggest city. And the party’s collaboration with the Musharraf regime ensures an eerie silence on Karachi’s streets and its educational institutions. Efforts by lawyers to welcome Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry on May 12 ended in a bloodbath as nearly 50 people were killed when gunmen went on a rampage.
A few months ago, I was invited to speak about the political situation to a large group of students at a private university. Among other things, I made the point that they owed it to themselves and the country to get involved with politics to the extent of informing themselves of what was going on, and why. In the discussion that followed, I found them to be completely disinterested.
Many of them repeated the mantra that has been drummed into them over the years: all politicians are crooks; democracy does not work in Pakistan; nothing changes. I tried to convince them that nothing would change unless they got involved, but I could see I was making no impact on their closed young minds. Practically since birth, they had been brainwashed by the propaganda put out by the army and its supporters in business and in the media.
In contrast to this depressing apathy, we saw hundreds of thousands of young PPP supporters turn up at the airport to welcome their leader on Oct 18 last year. So clearly, there seems an urban-rural faultline opening up in politics with cynical, disillusioned young urbanites opting out of the political process, while their poor rural counterparts participate actively.
In a sense, this reflects the socio-economic divisions that have opened up between our cities and the hinterland. In parts of urban Pakistan, there is relative prosperity, and apart from the very poor, the middle class is satisfied with the status quo. In some cases, they have just given up on trying to change things.
Poverty is far more pervasive in the rural areas, and people there need to make the political system work if they are to have any hope of a better life. Dictators know if they can control the cities, they can control the country. Politicians realise that if they are to come to power, they need rural votes, and therefore have to provide basic facilities to voters in the villages, or at least promise to.
But clearly, no democratic system can work if the educated youth of the country opt out. Politicians are at a huge disadvantage in the face of the non-stop propaganda they face. And although they are certainly to blame for their predicament, the fact remains that for all the decades the army has wielded power, the generals are given a free ride by the media when it comes to allegations of corruption and mismanagement.
Most young people simply do not grasp the role the intelligence services have played over the years in smearing politicians and the political system. Indeed, even their parents do not look behind the newspaper headlines and, more recently, the glib formulations on TV chat shows. Rather than examining the unpleasant truth, we have chosen to swallow the standard line put out by GHQ.
This lazy acceptance of lies and half-truths has depoliticised an entire generation, making it cynical and desensitised to the grim realities around them. Even intelligent and sensitive young men and women have chosen to close their eyes to the grinding poverty the vast majority live in. At an age when they should be motivated by idealism, they are thinking only of their careers and material possessions.
Looking beyond the coming elections, the challenge then is to make this generation more aware of the wrongs being committed all around them. In my dealings with students over the last decade, I have attempted to tell them that there is a wider world outside their narrow self-interest.
However, I was forced to admit the extent of my failure to open young eyes when recently, I interviewed six students for the annual Eqbal Ahmed Award that is given to one student every year at the educational institution I have been involved with. The criterion for this award is not just academic excellence: as Eqbal, the late political thinker, activist, teacher and much-missed friend used to admit cheerfully, he got a third division at graduation. The winner of the award is the student who most closely shares the concerns that drove Eqbal through most of his life.
Six students were short-listed by the faculty, and a small committee interviewed them. I asked each of them if they were involved in any NGO, social uplift programme or charity work. Another question I put to each of them was whether they had any views about the judicial crisis that was boiling over then.
Without exception, they all replied that they were involved in only themselves, their friends and their families. They had no interest in politics, and were disinterested in the independence of the judiciary. That was when the extent of my failure to inculcate the concept of a social conscience in these young men and women sank in.
However, I am glad to note that others have been more successful. Students at the Lahore University of Management Sciences have organised themselves, and have been participating in the fight for judicial independence.
High school and college students in Islamabad have been marching regularly with lawyers and human rights activists. So there is some hope.
But ultimately, politicians will have to provide the spark that ignites the anger lying dormant. Until that happens, there is no prospect for real change, and we will be unable to chant, as Barack Obama’s supporters do: “Yes, we can!”
