DAWN - Opinion; 04 February, 1999
The Real Crisis
By Dr Mubashir Hasan
THE crisis of governance in Pakistan is not merely due to inept political leaders, an exploitative economic order, corrupt bureaucracy, unjust distribution of state power between the federation and provinces, lack of democracy, illiteracy or our backwardness. All these factors are there and do contribute to the prevailing lamentable state of affairs.
However, in the ultimate analysis, the crisis of governance is much deeper. It is a crisis of the state. The crisis is the same in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Some may term it the crisis of legitimacy while others may call it the absence of a social contract between the state and the populace. However, "legitimacy" and "social-contract" are terms borrowed from western political thought based on different political and economic orders. These terms do not fully embrace the specific situation of the states of South Asia.
The crisis of the state is not a new crisis. It had existed long before Pakistan came into being. Its manifestations are all over in every sphere of activity and in many ways. The people refuse to help the police in tracing a criminal or curbing what the state calls crime. It means that they refuse to be a party to getting an accused convicted. In doing so they are really rejecting the prevailing system of justice.
They refuse to pay taxes and avoid paying government bills and land revenue. They are reluctant to return money borrowed from financial institutions. They consider state property to be alien property. They are happy to steal stationery from offices, fuel from vehicles, money from contracts, wood from forests, stores from government warehouses. They would occupy and usurp state land whenever they can. Their mobs would attack government vehicles, smash traffic lights, put police stations on fire whenever they can. There is hardly any sphere of life where non-cooperation between the apparatus of the state and the people is not deliberate and discernible. It is quite according to our tradition of the last two centuries of being against the state in our own particular way.
The people of South Asia refuse to accept the regimen of the modern industrial and commercial civilization as it has developed under the capitalist system. They refuse to accept the imperialist state based on perpetrating mass violence and large-scale enslavement of people directly or indirectly. They never work wholeheartedly in factories and offices. They refuse to produce any extra for their employer or their landlord. They refuse to recognize that an increase in production in the country would help reduce their poverty. They would have nothing to do, if they can help it, with the industrial and commercial culture of modern times.
They refuse to be punctual. They would run a piece of machinery but would not care to put in lubricant or change a part as required by its maintenance manual. Rules and procedures do not mean much for them. It is more important for them to attend the marriage ceremony of a distant relative of the wife's brother's wife than the performance of duty at their place of work. They have to attend funerals of their friends, relatives and members of their extended families rather than engage themselves in productive work. The clash of values between the two civilizations, modern Western and not so modern, South Asian is patently manifest.
They hate the state in their guts but refuse to organize rebellion against it. As if by instinct, they wisely believe that the organizers of the rebellion, if successful, would most likely become the state they are rebelling against. Our people decidedly refuse to cooperate in the management of the state. They refuse to demand proper performance from the government or the local bodies.
Our people are great at silently sabotaging and hacking away at the state itself. Lo and behold, now they elect hackers, demolishers and saboteurs as rulers of the state.
Eis sadgi pay kaun na marr jai ay Khuda
Larhtay hain aur hath mein talwar bhi nahin
It is no wonder that the crisis of the state in South Asia seems to have acquired dangerous proportions.
The character of the elites of the subcontinent used to be different from the practice of the people. Until 1929, when the Indian National Congress declared 'purna swaraj' (complete independence) as its goal, the elites would have been satisfied by India becoming a dominion of the British empire like Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In those days they had no serious objection to becoming agents of the imperial raj. They were not against the culture of industrialism, commercialism and parliamentary democracy. They were not opposed to New Delhi's highly centralized control over the life of the people through its system of civil services, police, judiciary, land revenue, etc.
Those among the elites who leaned towards the socialist creed did not challenge the fundamentals of the western way of life. Only Gandhi, when he adopted non-violence as his creed, came nearest to the culture of the peoples of the subcontinent. However, he did not quite understand or assert that violence was the essence of the capitalist-imperialist state and needed to be rejected.
However, the attitude of the elites of today is no different from that of the people in general. They also do not cooperate with the state. As elites, they refuse to discharge their responsibility of serving as a model for observing and upholding the rule of the laws they make. Every evening they consume alcohol knowing full well that drinking is prohibited by law and they do not raise a little finger to get the law changed. Their Pajeros and Mercedes run through red lights as if traffic signals are meant for some other creatures. They behave as if they are a law unto themselves. The elites do all what the poor and middle classes do and a little more. They have little faith in the state or the country. Whatever they save or steal they send abroad. They get dual nationalities and encourage their children not to return to Pakistan.
The gulf between the people on the one side and state and the elites responsible for running the state on the other has continued to widen since independence. With every passing year the people and the elites are nearer their goal of demolishing the state.