Daily Times

Much toil is required to successfully achieve both the ‘nation and state building’ objectives. In ‘nation building’, achieving demographic coherence as integrating force is essential in which lingual, racial and ethnic contours are handled to symmetrically look as a conglomerate of socio-cultural values and beliefs leading to a national identity. ‘State building’ involves raising and nurturing of institutions to become watchdogs so that they can regulate the departments under their ambit, which are mandated to provide goods and services to the populace. Thus ‘state building’ is the raising of vibrant public institutions whereas in ‘nation building’ different components of socio-cultural paraphernalia, essential for national identity, are coalesced to form a single mass. A failed nation’s identity remains in jeopardy and state institutions of that country also lose lustre giving way to chaos, anarchy and lawlessness. Failure occurs when institutions cease to serve the purpose they are created for. Institutional disruption ruptures national cohesion. In the ensuing mishmash, people lose faith in institutions. Resultantly, ethnic, racial, lingual etc divides stand accentuated.

Twentieth century saw a number of states getting independence in the wake of the withdrawal of colonial powers but most of these initially remained stranded and could not properly take off mainly due to lack of robust institutions, which complicated their teething problems both in magnitude and in intensity. Similarly, the end of cold war also paved way to independence of a number of states. On the other hand, some functioning states lost their governance vibrancy due to interference of world powers under one pretext or the other. Iraq should be the typical example here. The country, despite some internal discomfort, was still having buoyant economy and functioning governance structure but America, under mere suspicion of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), invaded it causing instability in the country, which is still alive and kicking with even wider ramifications. Nothing different happened in Libya, whereas in Afghanistan more or less the same nature of volatility is raging ever since the end of the cold war era. Though the country had a monarchy with Zahir Zhah being the last king who governed over large functioning state institutions, but all of this institutional shine was lost after the Soviet invasion, which was followed by internecine infighting within erstwhile Mujahideen. After 9/11, America invaded Afghanistan, and currently, chaos is reigning in the country, with the writ of the state restricted to Kabul or few nearby major cities.

Post-colonial era, end of cold war and internal chaotic situation in some countries invited the attention of world powers to extend and deepen their respective influence for so-called national interest. Thus, more focus remained on pursuit of vested interests than on the promotion of stability in such countries. Foreign powers’ efforts for nation building or even state building have hardly proved successful due to multiple reasons. No reconstructive and rehabilitative efforts could stabilise the internal situation of Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The major reason for this is the local populace’s non-acceptance of governance system imposed from the outside against its will. Moreover, the meddlesome role of the other countries with vested interests is also inhibiting true institutional growth. The current situation of Syria fits well as an example of the ‘pull and push’ of different countries advancing their respective narrow interests and weakening state institutions in the process.

United States entered Japan in 1945 and made efforts for nation building and thereby to promote democracy but its efforts did not bear fruit. Attempt to revamp Japanese bureaucracy under the leadership of Blaine Hoover, then head of American civil servants assembly, had also failed. Trying a governance module specifically designed and successfully implanted in one country is unlikely to work in another country due to its incompatibility in the given socio-cultural and bureaucratic milieu. Similar experiments have failed in Afghanistan. Francis Fukuyama in his book ‘State Building’ rightly says, “We should be arriving with resources to motivate the natives to design their own factory and to help them figure out how to build and operate it themselves”.

Under the garb of reconstruction and rehabilitation, both the nation and state building responsibilities are partly taken over by ‘non-governmental organisations,’ which are not intimately conversant with the demographic dynamics of the concerned country. Demographic sensitivities have a lot to do with the acceptance or rejection of the governance system offered. Efforts should rather be focused on capacity building of the indigenous population in such countries. Enhancing the capacity of the local populace would go a long way in strengthening the basics of bureaucracy and technocracy. Social capital holds immense importance in a country and that should be exploited to the benefit of state and its nation.

‘Domestic demand’ for institution building is elemental in a country as without such desire one cannot create strong institutions. For this to happen external aggression or active internal polarisation or conflagration of political, cultural, and ethnic sentiments act as catalysts. Most of the institutions in developed countries were raised as a sequel to major conflicts. World War-I, World War-II or other major internal crises created the realisation in nations for institution building. Institutions introduced social, political, economic, and even cultural reforms in the society by being the bedrock of functioning governance. State institutions are accountable to people as it is the people who are the recipients of the services these institutions render. Therefore, people are the relevant source of monitoring them. Any unrest, be it socio-political or cultural awakens the government to re-evaluate the institutions so that these are capable to manage such eventualities. Political and cultural values are also one of the important supply lines in which people to people contact among the countries is encouraged thereby both political and cultural goods impacting basic system of governance are transferred.

Aliens landing in a country and delivering lectures to the locals to copy certain administrative skills and build the institutions must understand the intimate local dynamics like cultural compulsions and opportunities, habits, customs, rites, taboos etc. practiced and followed by the people. The imported governance modules usually have problems with local conditions. Institutions are to be built and nurtured with input by the locals (masses).

Non-governmental agencies financed by international donors deliver services to people with no or little attention to basic skills that need to be imparted to indigenous population so that it might be able to run departments and institutions. Malaise lies in the methods adopted by the non-locals in handling the projects for hurriedly produced results. As a matter of fact indigenous people should be involved in handling the administrative units/institutions in spite of the apprehensions of corruption and malpractices. Institutional lustre gradually shines even more, encouraging vibrancy and robustness in departments and thereby the desired goods and services are delivered to people to their satisfaction. And the fulfilment of masses’ expectations helps the institutional strength, in effect stabilising a country and a nation living in it.

Writer is freelance and presently working on a paper researching rural crime and causes.