WHEN women want to organise, vocalise, come out and agitate for their rights, there is a much stronger reaction from the state and society than, say, when religious groups come out onto the streets and even immobilise cities.

When students want their rights and a voice in governance, or wish to be effectively heard as decisions about them are taken, the same thing happens. Tremendous pressure is exerted against allowing any space for students to organise around. Unions are banned, student involvement in politics is decried and legitimate demands are delegitimised. Even when absolutely unacceptable issues such as video surveillance and blackmail have surfaced, they have been suppressed and not investigated properly.

Arbitrary rules and regulations (distance between males and females, dress codes for women, the question of student participation in public protests and so on) continue to be applied by various universities to the young people. Though the Higher Education Commission (HEC) tends to over-regulate space in various areas, even on issues such as how long an academic year should be, or for how many months should the summer semester extend, it has not come forward with any guidelines for addressing the students’ demands and legitimate concerns.

When geographic or ethnic groups talk of human rights abuses and attempt to start conversations on rights for all, the state comes down on such people as hard as it can. The leaders and activists of the Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement have been experiencing the full weight of state authority, power and monopoly over violence for some time now.

All these recent movements ask for rights that are enshrined in the basic document of the country.

Is there something common across these movements? A number of things suggest themselves. All these movements ask for rights that are enshrined in the basic document of the country. All these movements have a lot of young people involved in them. All these movements are from groups that are outside the entrenched powerful groups that currently hold power in Pakistan. All these groups are relatively new or have started to come together quite recently so that established power centres have not had time to penetrate some of them in the same way that the more established groups have been able to.

This takes us to the debate about whether anyone is ever ‘elected’ in our democracy, or are all ‘selected’ by established power centres? Recently, a politician said that in his opinion all established political parties had been penetrated by the intelligence agencies of the country.

Some of these groups are not yet organised enough to have structures that could be penetrated. The Aurat March conversation is at this stage. There are some organisers, and there is some organisation, but there are a whole lot of people who are just volunteering. If this gets more organised, in any shape or form, it might also become more manageable for entrenched power groups.

But the key aspect of all these movements, organisations and groups is that in asking for their ‘rights’, they are challenging the power, privilege and entrenched status of established groups, and this is causing significant ripples of reaction in these circles.

Why should universities have a problem with the student demand that they should have some effective representation on governing bodies? University students are over 18 years of age. They can marry and have children. They can drive cars and vote in elections, but they should not have a say in how their universities are run? Seems like a strange position to take. We are training them to be the leaders of tomorrow, yet we do not want them to become politically involved when we are training them for life. Can we train doctors and lawyers without a practical aspect to their education and training?

But university administrations, the HEC and society do have a problem with giving the students this space. Recent debates on whether or not student unions should be allowed on campus highlighted these issues quite clearly. ‘Unions should be allowed, but students should not get involved with political activities’ is a common refrain.

The conversation around Aurat March has similarities as well. The social media persona of those organising for and/or supporting Aurat March is largely made of women and seems to be quite young as well. Women do not want to be harassed, raped, or married off without their consent. They want access to public spaces, the ability to move around, to have opportunities for education, employment, and growth. They want most of the things that most humans want to do. Why would any person have any objection to any of this?

Yet the detractors make it a point of trying to argue that women are trying to undermine and destroy the moral fabric of society. The appeal, from detractors, is to religion, Pakistani values and local culture. Some of the entrenched groups must be quite threatened, otherwise the voices of protests would not be this shrill and frenzied.

The youth bulge is a reality, and one that all groups are well aware of. Governments, the state and even political parties have been talking of the potential of the youth and the need to harness the ‘demographic dividend’. But they have been trying to do it on their own terms and to tap the youth potential for their own purposes. The youth, increasingly, has different ideas. Clearly the established political parties have failed, by and large, even allowing for the PTI’s efforts, to engage the youth. And they will continue to fail if they see the opportunity as only using the youth for their own purposes, as opposed to creating space for them to pursue what they want to do.

Things are simmering. Will they come to a boil? Will the entrenched power groups in society be able to ‘manage’ the simmer/boil and will they be able to do it without denting the existing structures, or will effective change take place? We live in interesting times indeed.

The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives, and an associate professor of economics at Lums.

Published in Dawn, March 6th, 2020