When dictators or rulers - the same thing in our case - turn lazy or find themselves short of answers, they come up with the magical phrase, 'Pakistan first'. After intoning it they feel they have resolved any moral or intellectual dilemmas they may be facing.

Impressive words, dripping with patriotism, but what do they stand for? If Pakistan comes first then it follows that all other countries, including the United States, come second, if not further down the line. But when we regularly see Pakistan allowing itself to be pushed this way and that by the US, and Pakistani presidents and prime ministers going out of their way to be nice to even middle-ranking officials from Washington, anyone could be forgiven for thinking that these words are hollow.

For 55 years Pakistan has been pursuing policies which have made it progressively sicker. True, in some fields it has forged ahead. It grows more food than in the past although whether everyone gets an equal share of the pie is another matter. Communications are unimaginably better than, say, 20 years ago. You can be sitting in a Pakistani village now and be talking to New York, which is saying a lot for a people living not too long ago in the dark ages. People are more mobile than ever before. The size of the economy has grown.

But in crucial respects we have also regressed. Listening to the quality of our national discourse - the language used and the ideas purveyed by the ruling class - a visitor from Mars would be hard put to think that this was a land where rationality was highly prized. Look at the content of our newspapers: a lot of hot air but very little to stir the imagination. Which is no fault of the newspapers because they cannot invent intellectual ferment where none exists. At their best they reflect the national condition.

The quality of our politics is poor, that of the leaders thrown up by the political or coup-making process even poorer. In which Valhalla of the just or the pure would guys like Jamali and Shujaat find a place? Self-proclaimed military reformers have been no better. We only have to look at the mess created by them to come to this conclusion. Is there something in the air of Pakistan, or indeed that of the subcontinent, hostile to the production of first-class leadership? Research on the subject is badly needed.

We don't seem comfortable with fresh, let alone vibrant, ideas. The prevailing ideas in any case mirror the concerns and worldview of a myopic ruling establishment. Without debate or discussion these ideas are then foisted on the country, there to distort and corrupt national thinking. Blind confrontation with India, the pursuit of arms in Kashmir, the search for shadows in Afghanistan, the glorification of the Bomb: we've carried this baggage over the years. And underpinning this grandiose agenda, absurdly high levels of defence spending that our economy cannot sustain.

We haven't become more secure as a result, only more paranoid. Far from creating a rational republic - which, presumably, was the aim behind the creation of Pakistan - we have built a state dedicated to the pursuit of national security as an end in itself. Everything can be justified at its altar. Why the Bomb? National security. Why fight the wars of Afghanistan (now mercilessly ended under American compulsion)? To acquire strategic depth. Why fight direct or proxy wars in Kashmir? To complete the unfinished business of partition. These are metaphysical notions that resist examination on the plane of common sense.

As if all this wasn't enough, since the Zia years we have witnessed a spurious kind of religious revivalism which, far from making Pakistan a purer place according to the lights of Islam, has only encouraged bigotry and intolerance. This is no fault of the people of Pakistan who, given half the chance during elections, always took good care to marginalize the religious parties. It is the failure of the political or military process - in Pakistan both things being interchangeable - to address national issues which allowed these parties to score big in the recent elections.

'Pakistan first' should mean rolling back the frontiers of intolerance, curbing excessive defence expenditure, and working for a better relationship with India because, if anything justifies the national security state, it is the unending confrontation with our eastern neighbour.

Here it is time for the ritual disclaimer which, if not made in such discussions, soon leads to charges of being anti-national or soft on India. To question the belligerent components of our national policy by no means amounts to absolving India of its share of responsibility for stoking the fires of subcontinental hatred and rivalry. Indeed, being the bigger country it has more to answer for.

The rightward shift in Indian politics, the rise of the BJP, the rhetoric of its leaders, the agenda it is pursuing, or such grisly events as the Muslim pogrom in Gujarat cast a lurid light on Indian democracy and Indian secularism. To some extent or the other, most of us share the same racial stock. We also derive many of our impulses from a common pool of stupidity and misery. When Indian and Pakistani leaders get together in the same room, the last thing they remind anyone of is statesmanship.

Be that as it may, the cussedness of one side should be no excuse for the intransigence of the other. If India is wrong on Kashmir - and it is, because it has failed to soften the alienation of the Kashmiri people - it should not mean that Pakistan too should pursue a self-defeating policy. 'Pakistan first' should mean a hard look at what is in Pakistan's best interests without seeing everything through an Indian prism. What if the BJP practises the politics of hate in India? That should be all the more reason for Pakistan to eschew the same tendency.

Is there a feasible solution of the Kashmir dispute? None is likely in my lifetime. We are not that lucky. But should this mean we give up hope and resign ourselves to a mutually-destructive confrontation? While keeping the dispute frozen, and without conceding any point of prestige or principle, why not strive for a civilized relationship which eases the plight of the Kashmiri people and also makes things easier for both countries?

Free travel between both parts of Kashmir, opening the Srinagar-Murree highway, easing travel restrictions between India and Pakistan so that it should be possible for anyone to travel by road from Lahore to Delhi or from any point in Sindh to the Rajasthan desert. We need not surrender our patriotism in the process. We can stick to our respective stands on all divisive issues and even carry on the propaganda war at which both our countries are so good. But we can take a fresh look at the policy of spiting ourselves in order to hurt the other side.

The BJP or right-wing Hindu chauvinism is India's problem. We should not be in thrall to it. We can even turn it to our advantage by ridding our own body politic of chauvinism. If we are really to take 'Pakistan first' seriously then we have to get on with our national life without making it hostage to the India factor. Pakistan's shadow does not loom as large on Indian life as India's on ours. The balance needs to be redressed.

'Pakistan first' also should mean taking a hard look at the role of the army in our national life. Should it be the army first or Pakistan first? Seeing the way the national security establishment has spread its wings, and the way the military continually expands the area of its privileges, it sometimes gets confusing to know what the true aim of national security is? To strengthen the nation's defences or keep the bishops of national security in clover?

The civilian government, alas, has nothing to do with this debate. Democracy and civilianization are still orphans in Pakistan. The adult decisions remain in army hands. So, ultimately, it is the army which has to define what 'Pakistan first' should mean - an empty catchphrase or a spur to some fresh thinking?