Daily Times

There are shades and names of democracy all over the world. President Ayub Khan once said we want friends, not masters. The United States of America was a true friend of Pakistan during the government of President Eisenhower when Pakistan made significant progress in socio-economic development and infrastructure for the Welfare of the people. That was the real way forward to national development, the building of dams, and other projects along with socio-economic mobility and visible progress in Industrial and cultural development in both Wings of the country. Conspiracies can make or mar good opportunities and prospects for advancement and friendship and many unanticipated consequences for peace and security.

President Mohammed Ayub Khan’s book, Friends not Masters is a case study of relations between nations, particularly Pakistan and the United States of America, which had enduring commitments for the development of Pakistan as a new nation.

General Eisenhower and President Mohammed Ayub Khan worked behind this project and friendship. One would only wish that President Joe Biden had the same commitment and spirit for democracy and development as reflective of General Eisenhower and his colleagues, in relations to Pakistan in the past.

We may catch or let go of RAW agents, but the difference between covert and overt behavior of Indian leadership will continue to lead us to confusion, uncertainty, and destabilization. Political and religious extremism and radicalism are now an international phenomenon having implications for crossing the limits of freedom.

Street politics and protests are not likely to solve the complexity of our problems.

What Pakistan needs is an objective evaluation of the current social-political and economic scenario. Street politics and protests are not likely to solve the complexity of problems that have constitutional, legal, and leadership implications. Then non-serious attitude emerging from anywhere does not contribute to anything useful.

The dangers of corruption around the world and what that does to fuel extremism and to increase economic instability and negative impact on societies need to be taken very seriously. However, it is better to take up such issues at the community level or international level.

Our cabinet ministers and the worthy Prime Minister give statements and make commitments that don’t seem to have arrived at a definite conclusion yet.

The commitment like democracy by Joe Biden is good and our foreign office has endorsed it but what will be the outcome is not known to anyone. Even not the American president himself.

All our commitments are somewhere logical and meaningful in terms of plans and projects. A theory of people-related commitment and development takes into consideration certain logical areas of thought which we must ponder on.

All formal organizations are molded by forces to rationally order structures and stated goals. every formal organization Trade union political party and corporation etc attempts to mobilise human and technical resources as means for the achievement of its ends. However, the individuals within the system tend to resist being treated as means; they interact as a whole, bringing to bear their special problems and purposes, the organization is embedded in an institutional matrix and is therefore subject to pressures upon it from its environment, to which some general adjustment must be made. As a result, the organisation may be significantly viewed as an adaptive social structure, organisation in an Institutional environment, independently of the special goals like economic military and political which called it into being.

It follows that there will develop an informal structure within the organisation which will reflect the spontaneous efforts of individuals and subgroups to control the conditions of their existence; there will also develop informal lines of communication and control to and from other organisations within the environment. It is to these informal relations and structures that the attention of the sociologist will be primarily directed. He will look upon the formal structure, e.g., the official chain of command, as the environment within and about which the informal structure is built. He will search out the evolution of formal relations out of the informal ones.

The informal structure will be at once indispensable to the consequential for the formal system of delegation and control itself. Wherever command over the responses of individuals is desired, some approach in terms of the spontaneous organisation of loyalty and interest will be necessary. In practice, this means that the informal structure will be useful to the leadership and effective as a means of communication and persuasion. At the same time, it can be anticipated that some prize will be paid in the shape of a distribution of power or adjustment of policy.

Adaptive social structures are to be analysed in structural-functional terms. This means that contemporary and variable behaviour is related to a presumptively stable system of needs and mechanisms. Every such structure has a set of basic needs and develops systematic means of self-defense.

The writer is former Director (National Institute of Public Administration); a political analyst; a public policy expert and a published author.