Pakistan Rebounds: An Eye-witness Account
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg, CA
“A poor man gets access to chicken meat twice in his life: once when the chicken gets sick, and second when he himself gets sick.” - Ibn Insha, a well-known writer.
I visited Pakistan after six years in November, and I found it remarkably changed, presenting an entirely different look. I had an option to live in Islamabad, but I deliberately chose to live in my ancestral home located in the inner city of Rawalpindi. I wanted to spend as much time as possible at a place where I had spent my childhood; where my children had been born, and where my parents had lived. Besides this emotional back-pack, there was another cogent reason to live there as well. I wanted to get a first-hand knowledge of how the people in the inner cities lived; what their attitude towards life was, how much they invested in human relations, and how cohesive they were in day-to-day life, etc.
Positive things first. It is well said by Mr A. P. Gouthey, “To get profit without risk, experience without danger, and reward without work is as impossible as it is to live without being born”. The law of nature and of ethics is that there is no success without sacrifice. Sacrifice is not just parting with something; it is a long-term investment too. The people of Pakistan very genuinely feel thankful to the ultimate sacrifice made by the 144 children and their teachers at the Army Public School in Peshawar on December 16, 2014, that put Pakistan on the sane track. This incident alone finally shut all those mouths that exhausted themselves by convincing that poison is also good in a way; that there is a hidden virtue in extremism; that all evils in Pakistan are the imported ones. The civil governments, including the incumbent one, known for foot-dragging, could never have taken such a firm action as was taken by General Sharif, and that has finally put Pakistan back on the right track. This is not an opinion; it is the general consensus of the people, ranging from a barber to a bureaucrat.
Pakistan, currently is going through a process of sloughing itself of what is dead and rotten. But the poisonous residue being sticky like the chewed gum, is still holding on in certain quarters. Still every second madrassa is unregistered; still intelligence sharing is not total; still educational reforms are wanting. One thing is sure, it was observed, the resolve of the army and of people against extremism and terrorism is rocky firm. 80% crimes relating to these two evils have been brought under control. Religious sickness, fanaticism, intolerance of each other’s views, and the general practice of propagating divisive and hate-filled messages through the platform of religious places has been brought to an end. In the Friday prayers that I offered at five different places during my stay, I heard some very insightful and enlightening Khutbas. For the first time, I moved around in all places without any inhibitions, and without any sense of fear.
Fear had actually robbed the people of Pakistan of their creativity, of their potential, and of their freedoms. It was so remarkable to observe an acute sense of self-awareness reemerging afresh in the people. Politicians, however, just looked so out of tune when they were heard making lofty and meaningless pronouncements. Even a street vendor now would know that such statements mean nothing. The politicians must change themselves or they would become just redundant. The distrust of common people in the political parties and in politicians has disturbingly reached a very high level, which is not a healthy sign. What, however, was very encouraging to notice was that the people in general appeared sprightly sanguine; bravely facing the brunt of life with stars in their eyes. A very healthy change clearly was perceptible in most of the cities I visited.
These common people in essence constitute the real Pakistan, not the one I met with in such posh localities as the Defense; the Bahria; the Faziaia and many more. They are good developments, but they are mockingly in contrast to the lifestyle of the common people. Real people living in the inner cities of Pakistan seem to have been abandoned by the rich and the powerful and by those who govern them. The children of these common people attend sub-standard schools operated in houses; their health conditions also did not appear very satisfactory. Most of them were found suffering from life-threatening diseases to which they got exposed due to the polluted drinking water, and due to the unhygienic clinics they visited. Their miseries were pathetic in the sense that they appeared to have been left at the mercy of the doctors who fleeced them with a sense of vengeance.
The street in front of the house I lived in was re-surfaced due to the reasons known best to the government that released the funds just before the local body elections. They did re-surface the street, but damaged the under-ground water pipes. The result being that in one street alone I spotted the water leaking out at four different places. And this was a common phenomenon. In all the 27 days that I lived there, no effort was made to remedy the situation. A kind of passivity and resignation appeared to have settled in the people. Clearly there was lack of unity among the people even on an issue that impacted all of them, and all my efforts to highlight the need, and to bring it jointly to the notice of the authorities that mattered was seen as just irrelevant. They as usual cursed the municipality and the government, and went their way, leaving the problem as it was to get further compounded.
Was it due to the lack of time, or was it the result of the impact of the onslaughts of hardships that had buffeted these common people that I found in them a clear lack of warmth, both in relationships and in the attitudes that once characterized these streets. The hello signal came only when physical encounter took place, otherwise even the close relatives did not feel obligated to make a planned visit to each other, unless a gift exchange was the bait.
But life bristled in all its colors and shades in a different part of Pakistan where just 10% of the population lived. Their wide and well-lighted streets, big palatial houses, teams of servants, cooks and drivers, and ladies wearing designers’ suits, and men talking of good restaurants, of latest car models, and of their visits abroad, and of shopping, all this and much more made even the American way of living appear ordinary. I can safely bet all my life-long earnings that it is just not possible for any person in Pakistan to maintain that kind of lifestyle unless he is ditching the government somewhere, or if he is not corrupt. Corruption, like the vanilla flavor in the ice-cream, is just inseparable from the main recipe. It is an integral part of the milk and sugar; even when separated, it would still leave behind its flavor.
Another change that I noticed this time was that most of the youth now can be spotted moving on the motor-bikes, thanks to student loans. In the evening, and it is a favorite pastime, it was a common scenario that these young people in gangs would begin what is called wheeling on the roads, endangering the lives of their own folk, who could be making their way to a chemist, or to a store. At night, another kind of curse would befall these tired people, preparing to rest after a day’s hard work in those dark and over-crowded homes. Some very young teenagers would take out their motor-bikes without silencers, and in groups would begin displaying their acrobatic skills in those narrow streets. Stress and blood pressure both would rise, but nothing could be done. When I attempted to rally a few people, urging them to get together and visit those homes from where this curse was emanating, they would tailor excuses. Leaving things as they are is a very familiar response.
There was total disregard on the part of the law-enforcement agencies, who, mired in corruption, would nab such miscreants only to fleece the parents. I dropped my jaws in wonder, when one such teenager amusingly told me how once he got detained by the police, and how his parents paid for his release, starting from feeding the police on the way to the court, to the filling of the gas tank, to even paying for the key that would get lost in the court room, and would finally be found in order to unlock the hand-cuff in the court, in front of the judge. Either the parental control over their children had been reduced to the minimum, or the grip of the government had become non-existent; in either case, it was not a good sign.
Pakistan is bulging out of seams in all directions. It seriously needs a sense of discipline in all walks of life which was not seen anywhere. Mr Nazir Naji is right when he says the row between the Sindh government and the Rangers is not over the modality of the operation; it is all about corruption. What use is it in being in power, if one does not have a free hand in corruption. This is the general perception of democracy and politics in Pakistan. Mr Larry Diamond in his book, “The Spirit of Democracy”, quotes the former Singapore PM, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, who so aptly once summed up the Asian values. What he said is matched by most analysts who also endorse that Asian values do not fit well with the Western liberal notions of democracy. Asians do not care much about individualism as much as they do about community; they are suspicious of authority; they stress loyalty to the family and group over individual freedom and needs; they defer and respect authority, and they have deep cravings for the security of dependency; they value order over conflict. This is one reason that the true spirit of democracy is often not found missing there, it is often just a semblance or a shadow of it, because it mutes criticism of authority, and scraps the essential tools of checks and balances that keep the democracy in its true form. Worst, in Asia democracy centers power in individual leaders… passive obedience is what is construed of a good rule.
It was felt that Pakistan needs to understand, sooner than later, that corruption is not like an icing on the cake; it is the mother of all evils, be those terrorism, or extremism, religious fanaticism, or sectarianism, extortion, or kidnapping. Our behavior is very much tied to our economics. We do not even go to a movie even if planned with the family, or even if the weather turns bad; but we would definitely go if we had bought the tickets that could not be returned; we need to overcome our temptations and fancy desires, leading to adopt corrupt ways, like Ulysses did. Temptations are often irresistible. The Greeks equated them with evil spirits appearing before us like beautiful women. Once Ulysses reached an island he discovered that it was inhabited by evil spirits who appeared before his sailors as beautiful women, playing tempting tunes on a magical musical instrument. One by one, his sailors began falling prey to them. He finally instructed his crew to fill in their ears with wax so that the bewitching tunes would not reach them. This was a good strategy, but a faulty one. What about his own self? He asked himself to be tied to the mast because it was not enough to just discipline the sailors, and himself stay free to get lured.
The political leaders in Pakistan want the people to plug in their ears to the luring tunes of corruption, but are not willing to tie themselves to the mast. It is not working, and it is not going to work.
Nations do not fail overnight, say Daron Acemoglu and James A Robinson in their book, “Why Nations Fail…” The seeds of their destruction are sown deep within their political institutions. Often countries do not fall like a thud like Afghanistan did; most taste their destruction through a slow process; they fail not with a bang, but with a whimper. They fail when they become utterly unable to take advantage of their society’s huge potential for growth, and condemn their citizens to a lifetime of poverty, to a state of inequality, to injustice, to corruption. Pakistan will be choosing failure by design if it retreats now from its resolve to crush the corrupt; to destroy the fanatics and extremists and the intolerant ones.
One painful aspect revealed to me during this visit was the curse of child labor. The so-called posh and planned localities in big cities now get a regular supply of small children to act as servants. They live there and stay in the serving mode for 24 hours. Poor families have invented this callous way of making money by producing children and handing them over to the rich. I saw a few coming and getting advance of four to five months to the tune of 20 thousand rupees, as these children get hired for 5-6 thousand rupees a month. Such children get abused in all manners. Very few families treat them as human beings. It needs to be checked. Forced labor and child labor are a surefire way to fail as a state. Uzbekistan is one such example.
Severity of punishment is not as effective as the surety of punishment. Pakistan should not turn into a country like Somalia where law and order either does not exist, or it exists only for the poor. A powerful centralized state has no substitute. The 18 th Amendment should not have been a conduit for the elite of Sindh, Punjab, Pukhtunkhwa and Baluchistan to prosper through corruption; nor should it have given them a free hand to loot and plunder the resources of the country. With the exception of the Armed Forces, all other institutions of the country are neither strong nor effective. And the weakest one is the central government and the judiciary. Pakistan could be another Columbia or Nigeria if its central government fails to exert its effectiveness. Political exploitation in Pakistan is taking an ugly turn like it did in Bolivia. The country’s resources are falling into the hands of the politicians as if they were their personal assets. They abuse them with immunity.
The country needs to immediately reform its judiciary. In order to award a simple power of attorney to my brother, it took me two visits to the court. First time I learned what a jungle of entanglements our court-yard is. It was found teeming with a huge crowd of touts, agents, munshis, lawyers and what not. One simple power of attorney, a job of 15 minutes, consumed my full two days and 6,000 rupees, with each person on a robbing spree, and all this taking place under the nose of the judges and magistrates. When was the last time that some judicial reforms were introduced! Even Dickens’ in his Bleak House could not have visualized what I saw in the Kutchery yard. Just to reform the criminal law is not enough; the urgent need is to reform the whole judicial system.
On the whole I found this visit rewarding. Former students of the class of 1976, on the initiation of Mr Arif Azim, a Federal Secretary and a former student, assembled in a house to honor me. It was just so refreshing to see those faces after a period of some 40 years. Values still count quite tangibly in determining the inner strength of a country. Pakistan, notwithstanding all its failures, is a country where the family system works; where illegitimacy is viewed as a sin; where parents are respected, and where sincere teachers are still valued. High rises and metros may be necessary in order to give Pakistan a modern look; but the urgent need is to address the basic problems of the common people. Wearing a festive look with borrowed smiles is not reflective of the hidden ugliness. When was the last time that these ruling people of Pakistan visited those dark streets where once they lived themselves too! Real Pakistan lives there; not in the Defense or in the city of grades, Islamabad. When people get clean water to drink; when their children go to good schools; when they get reasonably good health care; when they get equal opportunities to rise; when they sleep well and in security; then it can be said that Pakistan has made progress, and Pakistan is strong.
