Daily Times

A state fails when its polity is sick and in the grip of structural violence. According to famous Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung, structural violence is a more insidious form of violence than the direct violence evidenced by wars and bloodshed. It is a system of inequity embedded in the social, political and economic structure of a country that perpetuates inequality between the dominant and the dominated. State writ atrophies when the iron grip of the structure of inequality asphyxiates access to equal opportunities, education and health to deprived segments of the population that keep getting poorer as the rich get richer. A quick glance at Pakistan’s development landscape yields disturbing indicators about social polarisation and income inequality. Vertical inequality induced by apathetic governance is inexorably leading towards horizontal inequalities where communities are discriminated against on the basis of ethnicity, fuelling communal disharmony.
According to a report by the US State Department, Pakistan’s Gini coefficient is 0.60, indicating significant income inequalities. A latest ER index that measured Pakistan’s social polarisation also yielded unflattering results about the gulf between the affluent segment and the middle class with a disturbing 10 percent of the middle class having joined the poor category by mid-2014. The above is corroborated by a recent household survey report that measured income disparities between the rich and the poor in the last 25 years. According to that report, the income of the richest 20 percent of the households has been a whopping seven percent higher than the poorest 20 percent in the last 25 years. Several factors ascribed to the above polarisation include bad governance, regressive taxation, changing patterns of the economy and demographics, and the rise of a “comprador mercantilist” political leadership that views extraction of rents for personal enrichment as a justifiable dividend of politics. This category of leadership in cahoots with feudal and tribal interests in smaller provinces has established an entente cordiale with a crime oligarchy that uses politics as a fig leaf for personal enrichment. The result of this soft governance is a crime-politics duopoly thriving on an informal economy and weak state presence. The biggest victim of the above is delivery of public goods to a population bound in a skewed disharmony of interests and incompatible goals between the political elite and the poor. It does not need much to see how this structural violence against the population leads towards preventable deaths, an ever-increasing gap in living standards and deprivation of public goods.
Structural violence that is failing our state is evident on our roads, our hospitals, our schools and even in our food now. The runaway population and the ever-shrinking infrastructure to absorb the rapid addition of transportation and housing needs is clogging our communication arteries and urban spaces. If one needs any proof of the above one only needs to drive on any of the roads in our cities and towns during peak hours. The water that we drink has been polluted and air quality index is a concept yet to be registered on our national health radar screen. With national debt ranging in the region of 68 percent of the GDP and retrogressive taxation squeezing the already stressed middle and poor classes, the state continues its steady slide away from the delivery of public goods. When the state becomes a hostage in the hands of a rapacious elite that is out to extract rents at the cost of a gullible public, the vicious cycle of structural violence comes full cycle. The political leadership of almost all major political parties has its business and familial roots outside the country. Their children study, do business and get jobs abroad and are called to national duty only to come and rule the dispossessed of this hapless nation. The country therefore resembles the Titanic where the wealthy and powerful have reserved lifeboats while the second and third class passengers wait to drown.
A myopic elite with focus on narrow self-aggrandisement displays a bunker mentality that hamstrings its ability to break the vicious cycle of structural violence. Public policy interventions informed through equity and vision are the need of the hour while our leadership builds gated communities and islands of opulence to live comfortably, far away from the madding rush of traffic jams, highway robberies, water scarcity and air pollution. Any aspect that impacts upon the interests of the elite is rapidly securitised as a national security threat except what impacts upon human security. Public dissent on issues threatening elite interest is therefore readily converted into a security threat while lack of harnessing of the cheapest energy source for an energy-starved nation is never treated as a national security matter. Our political elite lack vision to understand that the death traps outside their islands of luxury will ultimately prove to be their nemesis too.
In order to find a way out of this predatory morass, the state will have to break the vicious cycle of social, political and economic inequities embedded in our polity, socio-economic structure and justice system. A political structure that relies on the members’ feudal and corporate interests to keep a prime minister hostage to their manipulations is not configured to deliver public goods. Social stratification based on politico-economic rights is destined to fail while a justice system geared not towards justice but garnering of unearned rents for a legal and judicial bureaucracy is headed for failure. Lack of economic egalitarianism coupled with rising social polarisation is leading the nation towards a precipice that is well pointed out by the US Fund for Peace’s Fragile State Index’s rating of 13th place out of 178 nations for Pakistan. We as a nation need to sever linkages with corporate and feudal greed to break the stultifying grip of structural violence that has denied us development and security. Will the present political elite at the Centre and the four provinces be able to break this structure to deliver public goods in real earnest?
The answer is obviously no because of a political structure that, instead of empowering the head of government, weakens his ability to govern with justice and equity. Lack of capacity and will to provide good governance by the political elite has created a leadership vacuum that is thriving on an iniquitous governance structure. Is a revolution, a quasi-rebellion or an evolutionary political incrementalism (a euphemism for inaction) the answer? Who will deliver the push for fundamental reforms in governance? The disempowered masses or an external actor? There is definitely a need for deus ex machina that will break the vicious cycle of oppression through much needed political, economic and social reforms along with stiffening the soft tissues of state governance. A new political architecture through constitutional reforms is needed to create a polity accountable to the people of Pakistan where executive and legislative functions are separated through a finely balanced system of checks and balances.
On the social and economic planes an equitable distribution of national resources and public goods should aim at reducing social polarisation and economic inequality, the two most harmful consequences of structural violence eating into state stability. The antidote therefore to this implacable wave of violence and conflict assailing our country is a direct attack on the structure of inequity and injustice through radical reforms in our political, social and economic system of governance. Whether it is done by our politicians or any other institution is not important. What is important is that it needs to be done as per the aspirations of a people who have remained mired in misery for far too long to care too much for the constitutional propriety that justifies an oppressive structure of violence adversely affecting their lives and property.

The writer is a retired brigadier who holds a masters degree in Defence and Security Management from the Royal Military College, Canada