Daily Times

There are individuals and organisations that plan their journey through time. They settle their goals, identify and gather the ways and means of achieving them. They anticipate the impediments they might encounter on the way and devise remedies. Then there are those who deal with problems as and when they arise and to that end employ the resources at hand. This second approach may be called that of muddling through. The Labour government in the UK and the socialist government under Jawaharlal Nehru in India were known for their five-year development plans. Pakistan followed their example and its second five-year plan was reputed to have been well made and considered a model that other countries might use. One does not hear of five-year plans with reference to any of these places anymore. They appear to have gone out of fashion and yielded to the procedure of muddling through.

The makers of time-bound plans have often been guided by theories or principles of action. In Britain and India this has been the case with socialist governments. Conservatives are more inclined to be pragmatic than theoretical. Edmund Burke, the grandfather of modern British conservatism, taught that theories and general principles were of no avail in the conduct of government and politics. Problems that have to be met are not always entirely identical. The existing state of affairs is the product of many generations of experience. The ruling authorities use their contemporary knowledge and the insights they have inherited to deal with problems as they arise. Pakistani politicians like to claim that theirs is an ideological state. This may be an aspiration on the part of some of them but it is not a statement of the ground reality. They also claim that they are committed to certain principles, which they will not compromise in making alliances and deals or in the process of building support. One would want to know what these principles might be. One of them may be that a politician should tell his constituents the truth of where he stands on specific issues of public policy, and that he should fulfil the promises he makes. Needless to say, politicians across the world actually follow these principles in varying measure. Telling the truth and keeping one’s promises are not standard operating procedures in Pakistani politics.

There is nothing wrong with the disposition to cross a bridge when we come to it, that is, meet problems when they surface and confront us. But it would be infinitely more comforting if we did not acknowledge their existence. If left alone, they will in the course of time be internalised and made part of life. Let us say that prices of the necessities of life have risen beyond the ordinary citizen’s reach. He cannot give his family reasonably nutritious food in adequate amounts. Instead of having three meals a day they must now settle for one, consisting of a couple of slices of dry and stale bread. They will be malnutritioned, fall sick, and possibly suffer premature death. This has become the new way of living. The problem, which was the oppressively high prices, has disappeared mainly because it was left unmet.

It appears to be the approach that the present government in Pakistan has adopted. There are shortages of oil, electricity and water. People must live with long and frequent power outages. Many of them have lost their jobs because their employers had to close down their shops. Life has become harder and Mr Gilani’s government figures that the people will become used to it. The course of events may not go this way. The transition from a relatively easy to a hard way of living will be agonising. Folks may lose patience, their pain giving rise to anger, and they may revolt against the guardians of the status quo. Some observers believe that the people of Pakistan have almost reached that point and a revolution should be expected very soon.

Among the known political forces active in Pakistan at this time there is no credible bearer of revolutionary zeal and a programme. A revolution cannot materialise without a leader with a vision, programme of action, organising skill, and ruthlessness in enforcing conformity within his own ranks and in suppressing opponents. The greater likelihood also is that a revolution will be bloody because its opponents will have to be killed. It may be recalled that many millions of them were indeed killed in the Soviet Union, China, and Vietnam.

One may argue that given the absence of relevant leadership, a revolution is not likely to occur in Pakistan. But then how shall we describe the recent ouster of several governments in North Africa and the Middle East? It may be said that the people in these countries, possessed of a democratic spirit and tired of despotism, revolted against tyrants who had been ruling them arbitrarily and capriciously for decades. These were rebellions, not revolutions, which left chaos in their wake. The rebels had no designs for replacing the regimes they were overthrowing, and the arrangements that followed were not what they might have wanted.

We encounter an interesting situation in Pakistan. The ruling party, the PPP, has fallen precipitously in popular esteem. Several individuals who used to be its tall leaders have been sidelined, and they are no longer active in its decision-making processes. Leaders of the other mainstream parties would want to get rid of the present government, but the normal parliamentary procedures for ousting it are not available at this time. Mr Nawaz Sharif says he will organise and lead a mass movement to force it out. But he shows no signs of actually doing so, possibly because the difficulties facing the country are much too daunting for him to take responsibility for removing them. One cannot be certain that the people of Pakistan have reached the brink of a revolt. But if they do revolt, the result may be chaos rather than a better government.

The writer, professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, is a visiting professor at the Lahore School of Economics. He can be reached at anwarsyed@cox.net