Parallel worlds beginning to collide

By Shafqat Mahmood

The disconnect between different layers of Pakistani society has never been more visible than today. The political elite and intelligentsia are celebrating the passage of the 18th Amendment. The people are angry and on the streets, rioting.

The elite have good reason to be happy. The virtues of democracy need advertising in a state that has seen frequent interruptions of military rule. And what better commercial than a broad political consensus that has endorsed a National Finance Commission Award and now the 18th Amendment.

The people have good reason to be angry. Inflation, particularly of basic food items, has decimated their savings. Without electricity, the summer heat is boiling their bones. And there is no care in hospitals, no education in their schools, no security, no justice, and no relief, anywhere.

The concerns of the elite are mumbo jumbo to the people. Strategic depth in Afghanistan, nuclear parity with India, supremacy of parliament, independent judiciary, provincial autonomy, etc., are all worthwhile pursuits. At some level they affect the lives of everyone.

But go and tell this to the parent whose child is visibly dying and no decent care is available, or whose earnings can no longer feed the kids. Say this to the family that lives in fear of qabza groups, neighbourhood gangsters, swindlers and cheats. Pass this on to those who have to deal with a marauding police, uncaring bureaucracy and a corrupt and inefficient justice system.

This is the reality of their existence. The elite, in one form or the other, are insulated from this. Not that they do not have issues; their children need education and family members do fall sick. Occasionally someone gets into trouble and has to deal with the police, the courts or the bureaucracy.

Money takes care of some of these problems. Private education and private hospitals provide a reasonably decent service. And confronted with the state system, the social and familial network comes into play. Everyone knows someone in the police or the bureaucracy. And good lawyers can be hired to manage the courts.

This framework of comfort and support frees the mind to focus on abstract reality. Structures of democracy and their philosophical pillars occupy the thoughts. The country’s place in the world and how it can be enhanced becomes a justifiably patriotic concern. Not unimportant, yet so divorced from people’s existence.

Our accidental prime minister Shaukat Aziz and his cohorts believed in the trickledown theory or what the development economists call unbalanced growth. Its basics were that economic progress, even if it makes the rich richer, would eventually find its way to the poor. How long will it take and how much disruption it will cause before the trickle is felt, was never full explained.

The same trickle down model can be applied to alternative realities of the elite and the people. No doubt, a better democracy is good for everyone. A fearless judiciary and a truly paramount parliament will eventually improve lives; as will enhanced security, impregnable defence and a better image of the country in the world.

The question is what happens in the interim? If we had a small population, the discontent could be contained. But we don’t, we are a hundred and seventy million. Most of this population is poor and there is a huge youth bulge: people between the ages of 15 and 24. Since we did not do much for them, we have anarchy, if not a revolution, on our hand.

While the elite were busy building fancy castles in the air and fighting grand strategic battles, some of the poor were finding their way into schools of hate and terror. It took a while for them to get organised and realise their destructive potential. But they have, and with devastating effect.

The elite, blind to the blowback capacity, helped them in this task. They used them to fight some of the elite’s strategic wars. Once the strength of the alienated had been built up and their understanding of the state better, their attack against it was inevitable. Now we are busy fighting the children of our own creation.

Fighting organised terror groups is very tough, but at least there is an identifiable enemy. More dangerous are spontaneous eruptions of public anger and random acts of destruction. This can neither be anticipated nor contained. We see this happening every day.

The easy way to look at the turmoil in Hazara is that it relates to marginalisation of the Hindko ethnicity. Some of it is there, and it has been shamelessly exploited by out-of-work politicians. But underneath it lies people’s anger with the quality of their lives.

In essence, these eruptions signify failure of the elitist state. One example of it is the way we order the priorities of our public expenditure. People who own cars in the country are maybe ten percent of the population, or even less. Yet the amount of resources being spent on improving their driving experience is scandalous.

We need better roads and motorways and ring roads around our cities, but how many people truly benefit from them? Railways are universally seen as the mode of mass transportation. Yet, how much do we spend on that? We were lucky to inherit a very good railway system from the British, and what have we done to it? It is in a shambles, and deteriorating by the day.

Within cities, how much time effort and money have we devoted to public transport? It is true that the state does not have to do everything, but it can create the enabling environment for the private sector to fulfil this and other public needs.

It boils down to priorities. Elites have their needs and their capture of the state is nowhere more obvious than in our part of the world. Hence, state resources are targeted towards priorities that the elites have.

This does not mean that elite control is not happening in Europe, the US and other parts of the developed world. It is, but there is a strong realisation that the people have to be given the basics, or they will revolt. Thus, public education and health, public transportation and basic food items are kept within everyone’s reach.

We are failing in this. The result is insurgencies and spontaneous eruptions of violence. India is in the same trap. Maoist insurgency in 300 districts is a revolt of the poor. Its global ambitions and horrendous domestic reality is a classic example of elite priorities underneath the facade of democracy.

The elites in Pakistan have to wake up in their own self-interest. They are barely safe today in their protected homes and air-conditioned cars. The flames of anger from below are already singeing their safe cocoon. If priorities are not turned towards the people, the flames will engulf them.