WE often hear people expressing concern about our nation lacking unity and a common perspective. Our history with the separation of East Pakistan further exacerbated these fears. However, looking at the present-day Pakistan, one feels our deepest problem is not lack of consensus but its opposite: too much of it.
We differ on trivialities with fervour, but when it comes to important issues, we all, or let’s say most of us, think and talk alike. Did anyone notice the tone and tenor of our politicians, intellectuals, and religious leaders, as they condemned the tragic Sialkot incident? It was frustratingly homogenous with variations that could easily be explained in error terms. One can argue that on such acts of barbarianism, any other state of affairs would have been more worrying. But this unanimous condemnation, and the underlying convergence, is also a way to ‘close the case’ without any serious policy reflections or prospects of change.
Societies grow if they hold or are allowed to hold divergent views about important issues and debate them. These debates are the raison d’être of political parties who organise social space on antagonistic lines: the proverbial ‘us’ vs ‘them’. The debates around these issues, no matter how shallow, allow people to develop, at least in theory, a deeper understanding of their society and politics. Imagine the Sialkot incident taking place in a social landscape where political parties would have held opposing views on the role of religion in shaping the policies of the state towards its people. The canvas of debate, in such a situation, would have been much broader; and the analysis much deeper. Admittedly, the lines of antagonism in such debates run the risk of oversimplifying complex issues. However, any debate where multiple perspectives are pitched against each other is much better than a monolithic chorus. At least it has chances of allowing some segments of the population to develop a much more nuanced understanding of issues.
Think of our major political parties and decide for yourself, if they differ, even in theory, about any important social issue. Forget religion. Take economics as an example. How do our political parties vary in their position on how and from where will the state collect its revenues and where will it be spent?
If only our nation had serious divergence of views on important issues.
When there were chances of the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party coming to power in the UK’s 2019 general election, the ultra-rich in that country were extremely anxious at the prospect of heavy income and inheritance taxes that represent the antagonistic lines dividing the two big political parties in the UK.
In the 2020 US presidential campaign, the Democrats promised $200 per month extra social security payments, raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour and waiving federal student loans — economic policies that run counter to the Republican economic ethos.
What are the differences in the fiscal policies of our major political parties? On what basis can the social or intellectual classes within Pakistan associate themselves with a particular party? Admittedly, with the ascendance and domination of neoliberal ideology on the global scale, leftist political parties have gradually moved towards the centre and the fiscal space generally available in developing countries to pursue a more leftist agenda is also limited. Yet, we know that socialist parties in developing countries in Latin America and Caribbean have had partial success in redistributing wealth.
Consider the case of Pakistan. The absence of ideological differences in economic policies of parties gives rise to such comical situations that most people elsewhere will find them outrightly hilarious. The finance minister of one party becomes the finance minister of supposedly the arch-rival party; or the opposition leader offers to forge a ‘charter of economy’ with the leader of the ruling party, ie no matter who comes to power, the economic policies of the country wouldn’t change. My favourite is the banker turned finance minister worrying that the ‘trickle-down’ may be insufficient for the working class. Famous German writer Bertolt Brecht, who once said “What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?”, would have been most amused on hearing this!
In Pakistan, political parties vary only in name and leadership, a distinction without a difference. These are parties belonging to different people, not ideologies. What passes for ‘ideology’ in this state of ideological bankruptcy is, for one party, ‘building roads’ and, for the other, ‘curbing corruption’.
Looking at this, I wish, if only our nation had serious divergence of views on important issues, and, if over the years, we would have maintained these differences. In terms of economic prosperity, social justice and equality, we would likely have been in the same position; but in terms of knowledge of why we are in this condition, we would have probably been much better.
The writer is associate professor, Suleman Dawood School of Business, Lums.
Published in Dawn, January 9th, 2022
