Modi and Mian: Will Both Make or Mar Their Countries!
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA
“Everyone can be great. Because everyone can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.” - Martin Luther King Jr.
One common thing about politics and the football game is that both are result-oriented. No score and no applaud. In the football game, it is the legs that speak; and in politics, it is the mind and management, and not the mere wagging of the tongue. Service to people now overrides all other considerations. Nominal democracies, like the one we have in Pakistan, easily slip into autocracies, “maintaining the outward appearance through elections, but without the rights and trusts that are equally important aspects of a functioning democratic system.” (The Economist, March 1, 2014). Money in such democracies begins to talk louder than the voters.
The rot starts in the system when merely winning the elections becomes the definition of the whole system. Individual rights get sidelined; justice remains elusive. Robust democracies strengthen the constitution that in return ensures long-term stability by stopping the disgruntled minorities in the coalition from taking undue advantage of the regime. In our case, the minority parties, the MQM, ANP, JUI, and PML (Q) etc., become exploitative. For them, self-interest is above national interest.
The first sign that comes, hinting that the fledgling democracy is heading for the rocks, is when the elected rulers begin to act like Roman kings and start eroding and evading the check on their powers. The solution, according to the Economist, lies in limiting the number of goodies that the state can hand out (Benazir Fund; loans, subsidies and reliefs etc.). Less government and more governance, as would say, Modi, is the litmus test that proves that the system is working. Modi is just unknowingly repeating what Madison famously had said, “The great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the government, and in the next step, oblige it to control itself”.
The two M&M’s (Modi and Mian), who shall make or mar the fortunes of some 1,300 million people living in India and Pakistan share many things in common: both have been keen to be in power; both are exceedingly ambitious; both are arrogant and self-righteous; both are of the same age; both represent a break-away from the values and traditions espoused by the Founders of the respective countries. These similarities are far-fetched, and they end here.
Mian Nawaz Sharif is a different brand of politician. For him, persistency in politics is not a virtue; being in power is. He confuses maneuvering with effective management and takes a lull before the storm as a sign of peace. He faults the facial getup for change. He wants to control the raging bull of problems by holding it not by the horns but by its tail. The result is that he gets dragged along. For him, longevity in power is a true sign of a great leader and of democracy.
Well! Turtles do not die because they do not grow old. They die only when they get sick. As regards the priorities, he thinks big is always beautiful. Riding in a Metro can make the poor forget that they are hungry; by trumpeting about a Terrorist Act, he assumes that terrorism has ended; by spitting on the feet, he wants people to believe that it is raining. Progress projected in figures equal real progress. His finance minister, the other day, hit upon a novel technique to appease the IMF loan-givers. In an answer to a question why the government was importing very expensive BMW’s, he innocently said, “You do not get loans by moving the IMF people, and foreign dignitaries in Corollas”. He claims to have brought down the dollar value just to prove wrong a loud-mouthed rival politician. Even the menial clerical staff would not indulge in such frivolous talks on national TV. They are the “King Lears” of Pakistan - exhausted and disconnected, regimented and uncreative.
Often I am reminded of a classic story of a philosophy teacher who one day walked into a classroom with a glass jar, two-inch rocks, a pail of pebbles, handful of sand and a certain amount of water. He silently put the two-inch stones in the jar and asked the class if the jar was full. They all said it was. “Really?” he retorted. Then he pulled out a pile of small pebbles, and added them to the jar. He gently shook the jar and the pebbles settled in the space between the two-inch rocks. He repeated his question. “Is the jar full now?” The students said it was. Next, he added a scoop of sand to the jar, filling up the space between the pebbles, and repeated his question. Once again the answer was, “yes”. Last of all, he added the water.
He taught the students the moral of the experiment. “The jar represents your life, and the rocks stand for the BIG things (aims and problems) that you value at the end of your life, like your family, health, hopes and dreams. The pebbles bring meanings to life, like your job, your house, hobbies and friendship. The sand and water stand for the “small stuff” that fills your time, like entertainment, running errands.
The problem starts when people start filling the jar of life with sand and water first and leave out the big things. Big issues must be tackled first, the small ones will fall into place automatically.
Terrorism, law and order, power shortage, education, health, job creation, infra-structure etc. are the rocks of Pakistan. But Mian Sahib has the knack to start filling the government jar with things that glitter and catch the eye. He reminds me of Rajbaber’s famous movie, Bheghi Palkein, in which the hero being of a high caste, thinks big and ignores the important things necessary for survival. His wife needs flour, lintels and sugar, and he brings home a pressure cooker. And then he insists that what he has done is right, “You come from a low caste, so you think lowly. You are visionless”. The people of Pakistan under these billionaire politicians are like the heroine of that movie.
Mian spends more time on planning how to survive than on solving the problems. For him, the construction of big, mega projects like the metros; the new cities and new freeways etc. override the urgency to tackle poverty, law and order problems; terrorism, etc. first. The new budget targets the poor more than the rich. He reminds me of an incident that took place in Germany in 2004. A certain truck driver was transporting a fifteen-ton load of jam jars through Berlin that a wasp landed in his cabin. He tried to swat the wasp by sweeping his hand. The wasp did not go anywhere, but his heavy truck did swerve to the mid-road guardrail. The truck overturned and spilled his cargo of jam jars over the freeway.
The freeway remained closed for about two hours because the clean-up was made arduous, not by the spilled jam as much as by the swarms of wasps that arrived from nowhere to feast on the sweetness of the mess. Rivals like the swarm of wasps shall feast on the sweet spilled jam jars of problems facing Pakistan. (Continued next week)
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