November 18, 2011

What Ails Thee, My Native Land?

 

What we have today is certainly not the state that the Quaid had visualized. He was a great visionary and what his superb leadership could achieve for his people has been well summed up by Stanley Wolpert, an outstanding American authority on South Asia, in the following words: “Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation. Muhammad Ali Jinnah did all three.”  

Let us just recall briefly the trend of events over the past several decades to assess how his followers have handled this great gift of the Quaid.

With the demise of the Quaid and the assassination of Liaquat within a few years of the creation of Pakistan, the governance of the state fell into the hands of a bureaucracy that had been nurtured on the service ethics of pre-Partition days and a Constituent Assembly still pulsating with the spirit of the Pakistan movement.

The army, the feudal aristocracy and the noveau riche followed meekly, as expected, the decisions formulated by the bureaucracy and the Assembly. Accountability was held supreme; corruption was disdained.

Enormous problems such as the rehabilitation of millions of refugee and of a crippled economy started moving fast towards solutions. Pakistan found a respectable place in the comity of nations. It played a prominent role at the UN in the anti-colonial struggle, in securing for China its rightful place in that forum and for the independence of several Muslim societies. What an ego-building sight it was to witness the press galleries filling up with correspondents from all over the world whenever Sir Zafrullah or A.S. Bukhari was to address the Assembly or the Security Council.

Even during the decade of Ayub Khan’s rule, prominent civil servants were his chief advisers. Things worked well and the country registered high growth rates.

Ayub did introduce land reforms but in a half-hearted way. He missed the opportunity of cleansing the society of the canker of absentee landlordism. Soon, the Generals too got themselves allotted government lands in Guddu and Kotri barrages thereby strengthening further the feudalistic structure.

Z.A. Bhutto, himself an arrogant landlord, hamstrung the bureaucracy by deleting the constitutional guarantees to civil servants in his Constitution of 1973. These guarantees that provided the civil servants the security of service had remained a part of all earlier constitutions. That enabled them to check the excesses of feudal lords turned politicians without any fear of retaliation.

Being deprived of the sense of security in service, they sought it in pelf through corruption.

Bhutto cut down the influence of industrialists through his nationalization of basic industries. But, he pampered the military by more than doubling the defense budget. That folly cost him a few years later his life.

He encouraged the feudal lords to enter the political arena. Consequently a ruling triumvirate emerged that comprised: (1) higher echelons of the military and civil bureaucracies, in that order, (2) feudal lords and tribal chiefs, and (3) wealthy business barons.

This triumvirate has played the game of musical chairs for power and pelf, ensuring at the same time that no outsider ever got anywhere near their domain. They have networked into a self-serving, self-preserving system.

Z.A. Bhutto in his lust for power, stirred up the emotions of the public by calling them ‘the fountainhead of all power’. The extensive public response to his call astounded even himself. It reflected the outburst of the pent up emotions of the public. Riding on the crest of the massive support, he climbed into the seat of power by deposing two military dictators, one after the other. His oft-repeated empathy for the downtrodden, despite its sincerity being clearly open to question, did give the poor a sense of self-esteem but an unforgivable offense to the ruling elite. He was sent to the gallows by a military ruler in a moot murder case.

The common man could merely squirm, on his hanging, under the jackboot. Yet, years later, when he got the opportunity to vote, the same devalued common man elected his deserving or undeserving daughter to power not once but twice.

Benazir realized soon after assuming power that she could not survive politically by rubbing on the wrong side any sector of the well-entrenched elite, the brass in particular. While the problem-ridden common man, the voter, looked up to her for the mitigation of his plight, she concentrated on what her husband called ‘the pleasant pastime of making money’. On occasions, her arrogance surpassed that of her father.

The Sharifs, who succeeded her by paving the way to power with grease money, continued to denude the public exchequer to the brink of bankruptcy. The image they projected for public consumption was that of a God-fearing family. Benazir too would put on Hijab and even carry a string of beads while in public view. Both families personified hypocrisy. The VIP culture they promoted, allowed even a minion of theirs to park his car in the middle of any road, pay no bill or tax, take bank loan without surety, never be punctual at any official function, call back a PIA flight after it had taken off, and even take a second wife without the legal permission of the first. If a pedestrian was run down by a VIP’s car, the police report would cite the dead man for jay walking.

Law making in the country was and still is done through ordinances; for, privilege motions, protests and walkouts took bulk of the time of the Assemblies. Not unoften, the parliament gave the impression of being a zoo of primates run by the inmates.

The feudal spirit that permeates the society now has spawned the dynasty system in the political parties too. The Muslim League, the PPP, the ANP, BNP, PKMAP, and JUI are all controlled by dynasties! Benazir went to the extent of getting herself declared as the ‘Chairperson for Life’ of the PPP so that she could hang on to leadership till her son Bilawal came of age. That is feudalism at its worst! What an irony that she kept projecting herself ad nauseum as the champion of democracy.

If Murtaza Bhutto had no pretense of being the legitimate heir to his father’s political mantle, he might still be alive today!

A new category joined the group during the Afghan war. That is of the gunrunners and drug barons. They may not be in the parliament, but they manage to have a good number of surrogates there. The crisis of governance has already reached a stage where the leaders constitute themselves the major part of the nation’s problems. Highest number of those elected regularly to the national and provincial assemblies belong to the upper feudal class. Their continuous appearance on the political scene is due to the well-entrenched tribal and feudal setups where chances of broader participation by even mainstream political parties are remote until these feudal lords assure them of their support.

The non-party elections of Gen. Zia enervated further the mainstream parties while strengthening the hold of the tribal and feudal elements. His protégé, Nawaz Sharif, pandered to this class, subjugated further the civil bureaucracy, terrorized the judiciary and showed a community of interest with the rich, but miscalculated or mishandled the most important component of the ruling elite – the army. He tried but could not domesticate it.

The military takeover of October 1999 was essentially a change of command within the elitist framework – a kind of ruler derby. It led to the militarization of almost all civil departments. Men in uniform became ubiquitous.

The common man had hailed the military takeover in the hope that it would effect a basic change in the decadent and oppressive system. The feudal spirit continued to permeate the society. No wonder, the urban luminaries continue to emulate, even after the advent of an elected government led by Mr. Zardari, the rural aristocrats by donning highly starched white shalwar kamiz, sporting flashy wrist watches, walking with a swagger with a couple of bodyguards in train and being driven on the paved and carpeted city roads in the four-wheel Pajero jeeps used normally by the rural aristocrats.

Can the society, the people at large, continue tolerating indefinitely such false and pretentious values and suffer for long such an antiquated elitist system? Nature is said to abhor the status quo as much as illogicality. Until nature takes a turn, the people of Pakistan will have to suffer the domination of the ruling elite.

And, the avaricious, self-centered and feckless elite that is in power now, is perhaps the worst that the hapless people of Pakistan were destined to suffer. The much devalued common man, aspiring for just a place under the sun, keeps uttering like Alexander Pope: ‘How long, but how long, O Lord’.

arifhussaini@hotmail.com