FOR many people in Pakistan the downing of a naval plane by Indian fighters is not one of those regrettable but understandable accidents which can happen between two testy and hostile neighbours. It is the latest blow to what remains of our national pride.

As backdrop to this thinking looms the shadow of Kargil. Humiliated in that crisis and subsequently humbled in Washington, our circumstances are now so reduced that India thinks it can push us around and get away with anything. So not only does it shoot down our aircraft, it also has the gall to send in helicopters and steal the wreckage. It is a measure of our helplessness that we cannot completely stop this theft.

If this is a morbid strain of thought the people of Pakistan are hardly to blame for it. Their paranoia has been fed by the government's handling of the Kargil disaster. They feel humiliated and, not surprisingly, blame the dispensation presiding over their sad destiny as the architect of this humiliation.

Official drum-beaters, who have a job to do, of course dispute this conclusion. They say that since there have been no mass protests and no Zulfikar Ali Bhutto looming on the national skyline (who decamped from Field Marshal Ayub Khan's cabinet and led the protest against his patriarchal rule), dissatisfaction with the wisdom of the heavy mandate is not as deep as some sections of the press make it out to be.

This is a blinkered approach to take. Our own history tells us that in the life of every Pakistani government there comes a time when its husk or outward form remains while its kernel or substance is gone. So constant is this development that it can almost be taken as an iron law of Pakistani politics.

Ayub Khan lasted in power till March 1969. But much of his moral authority was eroded after the 1965 war. General Yahya Khan was a considerable figure, looked up to by all sides, till the 1970 elections. When he ordered the crackdown in East Pakistan his moral authority was gone. Bhutto was a vibrant figure in the first three years of his rule. But as he put on weight and arrogance and became less tolerant of dissent, his earlier lustre was lost. Zia, the longest serving ruler in the country's history, may have thought of himself as a divine warrior but very few of his countrymen shared the same conviction. He came in the night and for the next eleven and a half years ruled by a mixture of stealth and deviousness. When he departed into the clouds he left a bigger mystery behind him.

These examples from the past should provide some perspective for the present. The people may not be protesting, something which may have more to do with their weariness and cynicism than their love for anyone, but the process of de-mystification (the iron law of Pakistani politics) has happened sooner in the case of Nawaz Sharif than even his detractors might have expected.

Just six months ago all the talk in the country was of how powerful Nawaz Sharif had become. Today he looks a figure with feet of clay. While this image had already started to form in the public mind because of his government's poor performance--all promise and no delivery-- what completed it was the Kargil adventure. If the government's drum-beaters do not realize this, they are living in a world of their own.

It is not as if in Pakistan's history there have not been governments before which have groped in the dark and erected monuments to confusion. But seldom has this process gone as far as with this one which was billed, if the heady atmosphere of February 1997 is recalled, as the harbinger of a new dawn. It is not just its record in office or U-turns over Kargil which are responsible for this perception. At the heart of the problem is a total absence of direction.

Indeed compared to it on this score Benazir Bhutto and Asif Zardari stand as models of clarity. They may have gone about filling their pockets and plundering the exchequer but at least they were clear in their minds about what they wanted. In contrast Nawaz Sharif and his homespun brigade present a picture of confusion. While wanting to do good by the country, they are torn between their public and private interests. Talking loudly of financial probity, they are unable to honestly face the fact that the knights of their round table are the country's biggest loan defaulters. While they have amassed power and disposed of all competitors in the process, they have no sense of the uses of power beyond shaping a dispensation whose dominant characteristics are its regal overtones.

Small wonder then that in the absence of definable goals or policy objectives, the preoccupation should be with mega-projects such as the Lahore airport terminal and the motorways which the country can do without at this stage or with gimmicks such as self-employment loans, transport schemes and, the latest in this bag of miracles, the prime minister's housing project.

A cursory examination would reveal that this last scheme does not make any economic sense and will about as much kick-start the economy, or provide mass employment, as the Lahore-Islamabad motorway. Nor does it make political sense because even if everything goes according to plan, five lakh houses for middle-income groups will not put a roof over everyone's head. But who is to quarrel with Pakistan's variant on Kubla Khan?

As with every other big decision in the kingdom of the heavy mandate, this scheme too has neither been debated nor put through the wringer of institutional scrutiny. Having caught the imperial fancy it has been handed over, like so much else, to the indispensable Senator Saifur Rehman. While it is the prime minister's privilege to rely on whom he pleases, a question yet to be answered is about the valuable public land -- railways, PIA, etc -- which is being seized for this project without compensation. With what authority?

At issue is not the government's survival or its longevity. Most people, tired of political experiments, are past caring about who stays in or comes to power. Of greater importance is the direction the country is taking. Where are we headed? Countries with greater riches and potential than us are on the path to ruin because of mismanagement and governmental corruption. Is this the fate staring us in the face?

Even when the sky was overcast Pakistanis never lost hope in the country's future. This optimism is giving way to a feeling of hopelessness largely because of the cluelessness to be seen in all the places where the good and great of this country congregate.