We Pakistanis talk endlessly about corruption, profiteering, the black market, fake medicines and lawlessness. We trust no one ,except those with whom we have connections. Impersonal rules are viewed with suspicion and our first response is to get around them. The glue of morals and trust that binds societies is melting away from our public life. We have collectively come to this state of affairs by our political practices and national narratives over the years. But I want to focus on the past few years as an illustration of the process that has brought us to what l believe, Hamid Mohsin so rightly has expressed as a state of learned helplessness.
Words matter, beliefs guide actions and national narratives condition people’s outlook. For long partisan sentiments have overwhelmed our thoughts. The newspapers, TV and social media are all full of verified and unverified claims of wrong doings. The PTI’s government has gone hoarse accusing the previous rulers of corruption and the theft of the public treasury. It has promised to bring them to books and recover their ‘loot’.
There is no credible forum to deliberate national policies in the public interest relatively free from the politics of personal enmities
Yet little has happened. Not much has been recovered from from the previous rulers and their associates. They have been periodically arrested, continually tried but have only suffered short detentions, relieved by bail from the courts, without major actionable proofs being found so far. The opposition parties and politicians offer their own accounts of the government’s self-dealings. The war of accusations promotes national despair and the feeling that nothing can change. ‘All are corrupt, and no one is trustworthy’ is the common refrain.
Cycles of politics and public despair
A wave of enthusiasm swept when Imran Khan came to power. He particularly enthused the youth. But the divergence between his claims and reality has reinforced the long-established public mood of hopelessness. Yet this outburst of hope pinned on a person is a periodic phenomenon in Pakistan.
In Pakistan, cycles of hope and disappointment have occurred almost with clockwork regularity. The rise and fall of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Muslim League (ML) governments have followed three cycles of elections, mostly indulging in politics of revenge and mutual accusations leading to the military coups ending the political instability. The promises of every cycle raise hopes only to be dashed by their failure to materialize. Pakistanis can’t be blamed for being cynical about the possibility of change in public life.
The media, particularly Urdu medium, has fed the hopelessness by its conspiracy theories and person-focussed blame games. Our national and provincial assemblies have long ceased to be deliberative bodies for policymaking. There is no credible forum to deliberate national policies in the public interest relatively free from the politics of personal enmities.
That events have causes other than the personal behaviour of leaders is an outlook not found in our media and political discourse. The prices may be high because of the low productivity or supply not keeping with demand but this understanding is seldom discussed in our popular television shows .Our population may be growing beyond the carrying capacity of our land and resources. Yet you will rarely hear about it.
Incompetence and irresponsibility are factors that escape our public discussions, though they stalk all of our national institutions. We suffer their effects every day in hospitals, on roads ,in the electric supply and almost everywhere else. Yet our analysis of problems is primarily couched in terms of officials’ corruption and immorality. A vivid current example these days is the rapidly rising prices of food and other necessities. Our portrayals blame unnamed hoarders, black marketers or corrupt public officials. A few more police raids and prices will come down, we are promised. Obviously, it has not happened .
Changing narratives to reduce social desperation
We are cultivating collective desperation. Our narratives have to change, to be informed by facts and guided by ethical rules. We need to hold back our tongues and promote fact-based arguments.
Despite our low trust society, enterprising and energetic people of Pakistan have channeled their energies to the no-holds-barred pursuit of self-interest, by legitimate and illegitimate means. Our booming cities, rising sales of expensive cars and houses, filtering down of motorcycles and cell phones to the lower classes are expressions of unrestrained pursuit of personal gains.
Pakistanis have created a form of the 19th century free enterprise society, where the solidarity of family, clan and social networks has become the basis for personal advancement. Yet without a fair as well as trustful collective life our personal success will not bring us security and satisfaction. For example, one may have a nice house but without sewers, drains and safe streets, it is a hazardous place to live. Presently for Pakistanis , private comfort comes at the cost of public squalor. To build a strong and equitable society, we have to begin by changing our ideas and narratives. An enforceable ethics of public discussion has to be agreed upon as a first step in reducing our pervasive discontent.
Mohammad Qadeer is a professor emeritus of Planning in Queen’s University, Canada