A fortnight ago, the government called upon the people through big ads in newspapers to concentrate on its achievements and observe a Day of Gratitude; the PML(N) asked the people to observe Black Day. Both calls were pointedly ignored. This charade has gone on since 1989. The government in power works under conditions of siege, its governance scandalously below par; the opposition ceaselessly calls for its overthrow, its discourse scandalously undemocratic.
As politicians fight, the state itself is coming apart at the seams. Because of the emasculation of state institutions, people have started ‘solving’ their problems on their own. Karachi’s disorder has depended because of intense polarisation between the government and the opposition. Politics in the provinces is characterised by partisan savagery of such intensity that old feuds have started looking like the beginning of a civil war.
The national economy bears the scars of this conflict. Since 1990, the state has seen its revenues shrink as governments concentrated only on their survival and politicians in power focussed only on feathering their uncertain nests. Tired of the politics of schism, of long marches and wheel-jam strikes, the people are turning to more parochial issues. The leaders they are listening to are not those who win elections but adventures who promise to overturn the system.
Economic hardship is at the root of this turning away of the people from democratic institutions. This hardship cannot be explained to them because of the polarised gloss put on it. That democratically elected governments have been corrupt has been amply demonstrated, but the economy as a continuum has not been explained. Popular imagination is now locked on revolution, and revolution is fixed in the minds of the people as a utopian solution of all ills.
A great danger lies herein. Deeply involved in local religious politics, the masses are beginning to imagine all sorts of panaceas in the promises made by the Ulema and born-again Islamic messiahs. At home, the bite of the price spiral is eroding trust in democracy. Outside, all kinds of paranoias fanned by the ‘revolutionaries’ incline them to war. They believe that the economy is in hock to international agencies run by Jews, that the ‘jehad’ in Kashmir has been betrayed by dishonest politicians; and that the West, led by America, is responsible for our collective misfortune.
Nobody can rule a nation peacefully when its mind is full of such alarms. The party in power in Islamabad is inexorably losing its legitimacy in the face of this indoctrination. The only way it could reinstate the system was by patching up with the opposition, which it failed to do, pointing to credible evidence that the opposition’s only conditionality was the government’s partial or total demission. But accommodation and just is needed when both sides see their decline in their entrenched positions.
This decline is there for all to see. The PPP and PML(N) are in error if they think that the collapse of the system will bring either of them to power or that the new order will rely on either of them for its legitimacy. The PML tasted this medicine when its IJI majority was whittled down within one year of its stay in power. Support accepted from circles opposed to democracy is a hostage given to chaos masquerading as ‘revolution’.
That this ‘revolution’ will bring nothing but shipwreck is obvious to those who see global trends clearly and perceive Pakistan as a part of the international economy. Pakistan is not a city-state that ideologues can immediately turn around. It is a large ship which will sink if it is allowed to list for too long. It requires careful navigation, and its navigators have to agree among themselves on the course which is already set by the national economy and its global linkages.
The people are no longer listening to the navigators. They are beginning to turn to religious leaders who know nothing about the economy. Fed to the armed forces as a convenient motivating device, this world view is now spawning madcap adventures amongst officers. To anyone who is unsullied by this reductionist creed, Kashmir will not be ‘conquered’ by overthrowing democracy; in fact, our real misfortunes will begin after we have overthrown it.
Let us put it bluntly. The PPP and the PML(N) are losing ground to a patchwork ‘third force’ which will put an end to Pakistan by giving it the identity of Afghanistan. In our neighbourhood, states are falling apart, and we are being seduced by this process. After our adventures have achieved their end of replacing democracy with ‘benign’ authoritarianism in the name of Islam and ‘self-respect’, the world will turn against Pakistan. We will then tilt into war saying the world is against Islam.
The truth of the matter is that our religious leaders and Islamist adventurers don’t have the full picture or prefer not to see it. Over 120 million people need an economy with sustainable growth rates; and the economy is always a coward, scared of war and slogans of sovereignty. The Pakistani mind is on the wrong track this winter. We are allowing all chances of pulling our national economy together to be overwhelmed by our militaristic passions. It is perhaps the most dangerous winter of our discontent.