Pakistan: democratic governance is the only way forward
(Also published by The News) Given the average shelf life of any civilian government, it is almost miraculous that the incumbent government has survived and there are signs that its removal is not immediate. The longevity of civilian order has less to do with the inherent strengths of its style of governance or delivery of public goods that it had promised in its manifesto. The survival of this government is an outcome of the lack of options for the establishment as well as its international allies, notably the Western powers. Leaving the conspiracy theories and the excessive over-reliance of the analysts on the American factor, we can safely argue that the military establishment of Pakistan and its intelligence agencies has found themselves in a unique situation since the assumption of the presidency by Asif Ali Zardari.
The truth is that Pakistan People’s Party, an anathema to the civil-military bureaucracy, has assumed the most important and powerful offices that a civilian government can aspire for. Two years ago, when the Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani was
How instability is garnered
My latest analysis published by The News
We continue to bemoan the failure of democratic norms to take root in our governance culture. True, that the repeated extra-constitutional interventions and direct or indirect military rule have rendered democratic governance as a distant and seemingly unattainable goal. In addition, the emergence of non-state actors, sometimes more powerful than the state itself has also led to formidable and multiple centres of power. In such a milieu, achieving the sustainability of democratic process is a Herculean task. Whilst the intentions of our unelected state institutions and their overt and covert non-state partners are clear, the behaviour of the political elites is confounding.
Not unlike the past, the divisiveness of Pakistan’s political elites has entered into a decisive phase. Fissures are apparent in the post-2008 political accord that led to the unanimous election of the Prime Minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani. The first cleavage, now a recurrent pattern, has emerged in Sindh where the coalition partners — the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) — are pitted against each other for political control of urban Sindh. The latest skirmish is rooted in the evolving arrangements for the local governments and who will end up controlling the third tier of government. However, there is an ethnic dimension to it as well. Karachi remains besieged by sectarian, provincial, and 
linguistic ghosts that apparently are alive and kicking.
The second disruption in the political compact that led to a transition towards representative rule is unfolding in the shape of a brewing discord between the ruling PPP and the opposition Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz). The PML-N rules the Punjab and thereby has a stake in the system and power matrix but it is also striving to maintain its ‘opposition’ status. This is why a dual strategy is evident where a few firebrand leaders of PML-N take a hard line against the federal government and the President Asif Ali Zardari. The party does not want to rock the system it says but also considers ‘options’ that lead to a mid-term election or even the premature exit of the President from the office in the wake of Supreme Court rulings on the National Reconciliation Ordinance.
Should we bid farewell to democracy in Pakistan?
It is still not too late that PML-N and PPP and the regional parties sit together and agree on the way forward says Raza Rumi
Many decades ago, our Governor General-President Iskander Mirza had rather contemptuously stated that democracy does not suit the genius of Pakistani people. Immediately after these words of wisdom were uttered, direct military rule not only exiled Mirza but also became a norm rather than aberration. For the last six decades or so we have not been able to overcome this political reality. The unelected institutions of the state are not willing to give up the power they inherited from the might of the colonial state. At best, they are willing to share power to a degree that they deem fit.
It is now clear that within a few months Pakistan is due for another political upheaval. Barely two
years after an election took place, the political elites are back in business: bickering, wrangling and oblivious to their historical role in strengthening the fragile democratic process. The unelected institutions have traditionally been contemptuous of democracy and their conduct in the last two years has not been surprising. The losers at the hand of the military rule – the PML-N and the PPP ought to have learnt their lesson: no matter how adverse the political climate was, the political forces had to stay united for a common cause.
However, the brief interlude of political cooperation led to mistrust and misgivings among the political players. First the restoration of judges and a partisan interpretation to the issue of independence of the judiciary created a rift between the two parties. Second, the imposition of ill-advised Governor’s rule led to widening of the gulf. This was followed by the long march that led to the restoration of the deposed judges. In the process, the co-chairperson of the PPP was termed as a leader who did not keep his promises and time and again betrayed the trust of Mian Nawaz Sharif painted by a prejudiced media as an innocent victim.
To undo the vicious past
It's about time a civilian Pakistan functions as a peaceful country with fair share of resources put into people's welfare by Raza Rumi (published in the News on Sunday)
That Pakistan's endemic political instability is a function of its inherent power imbalances is well known. The continued spells of authoritarian rule have also retarded the growth of political parties and other necessary institutions essential for democratic governance. We are a country trapped in our history, our self-fulfilling conspiracies and intrigues that are also rooted in the various phases of colonial era. Our geo-political situation, celebrated by a rentier state, has not helped us either. From the 1950s we have been in close partnership with global powers that are viewed as the ultimate saviours of a dysfunctional polity.
In 1971, we lost half the country. While the seeds of discord in East Pakistan had been laid by West Pakistan's ruling elites, our vengeful neighbour took full advantage and supported the Bangladeshi liberation movement. By all accounts, this was an avoidable tragedy had the national security-obsessed state dominated by West Pakistani vested interests could have seen the writing on the wall and fixed the issues of federalism that still haunt us.
What is the threat? What is the way out?
By Raza Rumi (The News on Sunday)
Not unlike good old Nero, who carried on with his self-involved pursuits while Rome burnt, our enlightened brigade from the Urdu and the English medium worlds have been quite busy with their hobbyhorses. With thousands of homes churning out a suicide bomber per minute, the national discourse or the flimsy excuse for it, has been truly remarkable. First came the minus one formula, backed by the 'be-ghairat' Kerry Lugar bill and now the centre of universe has shifted to the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO).
If one were to follow the trails of verbosity and poisonous write-ups in the print and electronic media, the storyline is as simple as follows: one fine day, late Benazir Bhutto and her 'corrupt' husband sitting thousands of miles away from Pakistan issued the NRO to 'protect' their wealth. As if these political leaders in exile and wilderness had the legislative and executive authority to issue an Ordinance.
US assistance needs an alternative paradigm
An oped published by The NEWS
The gods are smiling at Pakistan's development industry once again. Such a moment was experienced almost a decade ago when Pakistan's strategic location made it into a hub of post-9/11 investments to secure the world peace. However, this time the United States of America has undertaken a historic step of aiding the civilian government and addressing the structural imbalances such as poverty, unemployment and lack of opportunity that quite rightly fuel militancy and promote factories of suicide bombers. Some would think this is naive in view of the imperial occupation of Afghanistan and the rather schizophrenic and counterproductive policies of the US elsewhere in the Muslim world.
This is not an invalid position taken by the rejectionists of US assistance. But this is an equally naive postulate for it is far more important to invest in civilian governance than hi-tech arms and domestic war machine. Haven't we reaped the disastrous
The devolution saga
My op-ed published in the NEWS yesterday
The debate on the scrapping of Musharraf’s devolution experiment cannot hide or ignore two key imperatives. First, that all military dictators have a penchant for local democracy at the expense of provincial autonomy and the country’s parliamentary structure. Second, never has Pakistan been so vulnerable to state’s fragmentation and erosion of trust in public institutions. This is why the elected government, with bipartisan consensus, has proceeded to restructure the 2002 Local Government Ordinances.
But, the debate remains obsessed with the district management group (DMG), a cadre that is a much weaker and tainted inheritor of administrative structures instituted by the Mughal and British empires. Therefore, the proposed restoration of executive magistracy has been termed yet another big conspiracy by the supposedly powerful DMG, which allegedly has influenced the political elites to revive the colonial institution of the district magistrate. The simple question is if the DMG were so powerful, it would have saved its field structure and magistracy nearly a decade ago.
The question of Pakistan’s provincialism
My piece that appeared in the 'political economy' section of The NEWS on Sunday.
The elites drunk on the status quo have expressed two major reactions to the proposal of creating another province within the mighty Punjab. First that this is akin to opening a Pandora's box when we are at war against terrorism. Second, that this is a planted controversy whereby the ruling PPP wants to harm the house of Raiwind; or a conspiracy by those who want to destabilise Pakistan's political system.
Both these arguments are spurious for nothing is more important for Pakistan than to make the federation work. The argument that the British drawn provincial boundaries are sacrosanct is as nonsensical as the reality of the Durand Line or for that matter the line of control itself. If anything, South Asia has experienced territorial and demographic shifts through the centuries. When resisted, the sweep of history has blown away the resistant elements and when carefully manoeuvred such shifts have resulted in commonsensical political and administrative solutions.
Pakistani state: reform or perish
My op-ed for The NEWS
Raza Rumi
On the face of it, the Pakistani state with the clear endorsement of political parties and the majority of its citizenry is fighting a battle against militant Islamism. However, it is not as simple a formulation as it appears to be. The state is also cracking under extreme pressure for having lost its capacities and effectiveness a long time ago. The central tenet of state policy and implementation is adhocism that keeps a mammoth, oversized, under-paid and snail-paced elephant going. With Mughal and pre-industrial social structures reflecting in a colonial organisation, the Pakistani state is an unattended patient lying on an Elliotesque table, waiting for a surgery.
The fact that ragtag groups have the audacity to challenge the state and its mighty armed forces speaks a lot for where we stand today. That a relatively small number of bandits can wreak havoc and make us look like pariah country with nervous neighbours is by itself a parable of our times. Add to this the dysfunctional police that simply cannot discharge their functions let alone tackle the suicide missions launched by jihad laboratories. Services – health, education, water and justice – are abysmally delivered to the lucky ones who have access to them. Otherwise, it is pretty much a jungle out there. In a context where insecurity and lack of faith in the state pervades the body politique, the current war can accentuate the pressures on the state, leading to a near-collapse situation: assuming, rather charitably, that it still functions as an arbiter between citizen interest and the legitimate use of violence.
Pakistan’s martial state is a self-perpetuating reality
The Taliban phenomenon was erroneously, and rather dangerously, projected as a herald of a new dawn
The Pakistani state policy of nurturing jihad factories over the decades is staring back at its architects, supporters and sponsors. Zafar Hilaly, a close aide of the late Benazir Bhutto, recently divulged in his memoirs that BB had confessed how the support to the Taliban was perhaps her most regrettable mistake. She could recognise it was more of a function of being out of the power ambit for nearly a decade. The compulsions of exercising power and playing it by the rules set by the national security obsessed state are perhaps germane to Pakistan's creation as an insecure postcolonial state that was neither prepared not committed to reverse the colonial modes of governance.
This is a long war
Published in The NEWS
By Raza Rumi
This is a critical moment in our history perhaps unmatched for its severity and its brutal reality. The experiential nightmare that our country is passing through is perhaps unparalleled for the enemy is neither foreign nor fully identifiable. At the same time, never has there been a clear backing of a military campaign against domestic agents of subversion and anarchy. Forget the doctored samples of opinion polls, often conducted by foreign agencies. That by itself should make us ashamed for our proclivity to accept what others have to analyse and determine for us. Even ignore the fringe voices of dissent led by those who neither have credibility or sagacity to comprehend the existential crisis faced by Pakistan. The army has shown vision and displayed courage in tackling a menace that alas is a home-grown cancer due to our short-sighted strategies in pursuit of phantom depths. The battle to be won is now the country itself.
The political consensus of sorts that has accompanied the military action against the Taliban is also remarkable. Notwithstanding the spin doctors posing as analyst-anchors on the idiot box, the political class has recognised that its survival is embedded in the battle against extremism that predicates itself on elimination of sane, moderate and secular politics itself. This was the Swat model – blow the polity to bits and create a vacuum for a takeover. An age-old recipe employed by the hordes from Central Asia that invaded Muslim Delhi again and again during Sultanate and Mughal periods of our common histories which refuse to be partitioned.
Loveable Murree
I was recently asked to write where I would spend my summer. For a few minutes I kept my anguish at Pakistan's situation aside and wrote the following lines for the NEWS. Indulgent and nostalgic, it was fun nevertheless.
Hackneyed as it may sound but Murree remains my favourite destination for the summer.
Alas, the luxury of spending months at the alluring foothills of Himalayas is no longer available with the day-jobs, and other commitments. But there was a time, over a decade ago, when I lived in Murree for three glorious years. It was May when I moved there with a wild rose bush joyously waving with the
Suicide Democrats
Raza Rumi
I am appalled by the recent events that have yet again stirred instability and uncertainty into Pakistani politics. Those of us who voted in last year's elections expected that the political leaders and Pakistan's political elites would learn a lesson from our unfortunate history.
We also expected the lawyers' movement, headed by men of extraordinary calibre, to display sagacity and vision and contribute to the consolidation of a democratic culture. However, what we witnessed was a complete rejection of the Feb 18 polls by the leading lights of the movement, and a few other naïve political actors. When the electorate voted in large numbers and returned the two mainstream political parties to the parliament, the lawyers, instead of accepting that they were wrong to boycott elections, insisted on their narrow and bourgeois interpretation of the term "rule of law."
Say no to war
by Raza Rumi
Little did we know that the imminence of war between India and Pakistan would once again become a possibility, howsoever faint or misguided? The ruling political junta in India is talking war following the media frenzy over Mumbai carnage. Once again it is time to be ‘tough’ with Pakistan. This is a surprise given that the interlude of peace under General Musharraf and all the offers of conflict resolution were either stalled by the red-tapism of Indian bureaucracy or a victim of political inaction. At home, we have the air-force planes hovering the wintry skies of Lahore causing consternation not only to the peaceniks, shrinking each day, but to the overwhelming majority of the common citizens. After all what have they got to do with the power game in Islamabad and Delhi, the media hysteria or even the terror cartels?
True that circumstantial evidence points to the fact that the metaphor of our times, Ajmal Kasai socially upgraded as the Urduised Kasab, is linked to the little Faridkot in the Pakistani Punjab. However, much of the international community has reminded India that there is little or no evidence of any direct involvement of the Pakistani state let alone its fragile civilian government. Yet, the rhetoric of unilateral strikes by the Indian foreign minister and now the venerable Sonia Gandhi is having the right effect here. Of war mongering, preparedness assessments and the much trumpeted security strategy through the nuclear option.
1971: the forgotten silence
The NEWS: Friday, December 19, 2008
by Raza Rumi
This week marks the 37th anniversary of the tragic events of 1971 that led to the dismemberment of Pakistan and creation of Bangladesh. This time the sixteenth day of that deadly December invited little attention in the mainstream media as the new Pakistan struggles to manage the multiple crises of statehood, governance and cohesion.
Whether we like it or not, history and its bitter truths have to be confronted. When the united Punjab was being ruled by the Unionists and the Congress and the NWFP had a chief minister from the congress-Khudai Khidmatgar alliance, and almost all the custodians of South Asian puritanical Islam were opposed to Pakistan, the peasantry and the intelligentsia of East Bengal were spearheading a movement for Pakistan. There were indeed economic reasons, but there was an unchallengeable mass support for and belief in Pakistan. What happened after 1947 is well known; and within two decades or so, those who wanted Pakistan in the first place were subjected to state excesses and brutal treatment by the groups and elites that had actually little commitment to Pakistan or its idea. Nothing could be more ironical.
It is of little significance to remember the exact chronology of events or to indulge in a blame-game. The truth is that we as a state and society lost our majority province after pushing its people into a situation where independence through a War of Liberation was the only choice. India, of course, played a huge role in transacting this deal, but the West Pakistani elites had prepared the ground, sown the seeds of mistrust to a great degree. Thus the Pakistan created by its founding members was no more in 1971, further subdividing the Muslims of the subcontinent. A bitter lesson of history was in the making. If only, we were capable of paying heed to it.
Who will win the game?
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Raza Rumi
I have been amazed at the reaction that my little piece, "Policy shifts not war" published on these pages on Dec 4 has generated especially from the other side of the border. My email inbox was inundated with a wide variety of views and comments, some of which were quite unsavoury and abusive. However, the silver lining is that there were many voices from the other side that called for regional cooperation and finding alternative solutions to mindless jingoism. Most Pakistanis, while disagreeing with my interpretation of partition, expressed their sadness at the Mumbai mayhem and reiterated that a war had to be avoided at all costs.
The media factor has been much analysed over the past few years. As a powerful player in the game, the role of Indian, and to a great extent, Pakistani media industries has been far from satisfactory. As another formal institution with charitable rhetoric, it is emerging as yet another tool for reinforcing conformity, boundaries and the famed refuge of the scoundrels.
Media polls with shady sample sizes are confirming that the 'public' in India wants revenge thus isolating the sensible Indian leadership that has tried to undo the legacy of the past. Similarly, the prediction of surgical strikes and eliminating the so-called hideouts for terrorists in Pakistan is a magic bullet that would create a terror-free region. Nothing could be farther from reality, if only the lessons from US misadventures, bloody at that, are kept in view. Aggression and violence breed further violence. The relative degree of failures in Iraq and Afghanistan are rude reminders of how the neo-con, or its ideologically equivalent Hindutva strategy, is bound to create more problems than solving anything.
Policy shifts not war
Raza Rumi
The dastardly attacks in Mumbai have irritated the old wounds and replayed the familiar, jingoistic tunes across the Indo-Pak borders. The Pakistanis, clamouring for friendship with their larger and problematic neighbour, have condemned these attacks in no uncertain terms. Who could be a worse victim of terrorism than Pakistan in these extraordinary times? Yet, the Indian media and sections of its establishment are quick to involve ‘Pakistan’ as the key perpetrator of the terror regime. This has obviously angered some and allowed a few Cold-War practitioners to call for self-defence and fighting with India till the last. The truth is that much of Pakistan does not want war. Hopefully, the Indian citizens are also not looking at war as a solution, or so it seems.
It is almost a cliché to state that war is not a solution to the current imbroglio despite the hysterical calls by the Hindu right to ‘neutralise’ Pakistan. The saner elements in India have already pointed to the implicit and deep-seated issues of misgovernance, short-termism and the mess of Partition that were neither carefully deliberated nor rectified during all these decades. The non-state actors in both India and Pakistan have gained ascendancy due to the power distance of the Raj induced steel-frame structures of governance. If there are dozens of districts in India that operate beyond the writ of the formal state, there are areas in Pakistan that are not just outside the scope of the formal state but in a state of rebellion due to the war on terror.
The native returns
Unaffected by the prophets of doom, a Lahori decides the city is the place to be
Twenty years ago, I left Lahore. Excited by prospects of quality higher education and the adolescent yearning for freedom, this was a moment that only with age I have understood. A flash that alters the life-path even when one is not aware of it. As I grew up and visited Lahore from a multitude of cities and continents, Lahore's provincialism and inward-looking ethos irked me. However, the splendour of its lived history and multi-layered present fascinated me endlessly. A false sense of fatalism whispered that my exile was going to cover a life-span.
The last few years were spent abroad: so dejected I was that not living in Lahore would mean living just anywhere. When I decided this summer to return to Pakistan, I was astounded by the reactions from all and sundry. I was told that I am 'mad' to have chosen to return to a burning, imploding and crashing Pakistan. Such is the power of global corporate media that even the discerning and schooled Pakistanis have started to believe in the failed state mantra scripted outside Pakistan.
My own parents, temporary residents of Islamabad, scared by the blasts advised me against it. Others from the more indulgent school of thought were aghast with my decision to return to a country where power outages, crumbling urban infrastructure and pollution define urban living. Of all the nightmares cited was that who knows if the country would survive? Such cynicism and unmasked pessimism about Pakistan is always disturbing, yet familiar. My question is when was the country not about to unravel since 1947?
Such has been the level of insecurity propagated by the state and of late its international partners or the ubiquitously infamous band of its 'friends'? After all, if this was such a grave situation then I might as well be with the loved and the familiar instead of living a life of an unrequited exile?
Fahmida Riaz: A neglected genius
My op-ed for The NEWS
Whilst my earlier piece on the IMF programme and the tremendous discussion it has invoked deserves a rejoinder, I want to write on a completely different subject this week. I am perturbed by the fact that thousands of jobs have been recreated for those who were rightly or wrongly dismissed in the earlier dispensations; there is silence about one luminary, a towering one at that, who lost state employment twice. Fahmida Riaz's name is yet to appear amongst the reinstated ones.
Following the physical departure of the leading Urdu poets – Qasmi, Munir and Faraz – Fahmida Riaz is arguably the greatest living poet of Pakistan. Controversial though this statement might be, her originality and path-breaking poetry has yet to find an equal in the turbulent waters of the Pakistani cultural river. It is hardly surprising that Fahimda Riaz has been targeted all through her otherwise illustrious creative career by state and society alike. She was branded as unpatriotic when she had to run for her life in the Zia-ul-Haq days and live in exile. In India, she was termed as a Pakistani agent since she criticised the communal tensions that the Indian state had encouraged.
Pakistan: IMF Programme needs to be debated
Debating the aid plan
Raza Rumi's op-ed published in the NEWS (Pakistan)
The not-so-inevitable is about to happen. After weeks of groping in the darkness of global financial mess, the Pakistani government is negotiating with the International Monetary Fund. Admittedly, Pakistan's options are limited, given its intractable dependence on oil imports for survival. The civilian government moving from one crisis to another has elevated indecision to a policy status. This does not imply that we start echoing the unwise cacophony of impatience with an elected and far more legitimate government than the eight-year-long authoritarian regime. But then who cares: if recent history is a guide, PPP governments come with a brand or at least get branded as incompetent comprising coteries of cronies, as if the rest of the country is a fair, rule-based haven.
The plain truth is that the power-wielders of Pakistan have been following a set of disastrous policies for decades that have now put the survival of the state, or as we knew it, in question. From the great hunts for strategic depth and Jihad, and from nurturing domestic oligarchies and pampering a delinquent industrial sector at the expense of land tillers and equitable irrigation, we are now paying the price for policy making by the elites for the sustenance of the elites.
Confronting militancy
The unedited version of my op-ed published in the NEWS today:
It is time that the vocabulary introduced by the global imperial projects is changed in Pakistan. The infamous and rotten coinage – war on terror – needs to be trashed. It was constructed by an imbecile global leader, whose vision defies basic standards of human intelligence. And, in our case the frontline-state status is a passé title as well. The war has now entered the Pakistani consciousness, has consumed thousands and continues to destabilize the country to a point where its citizenry is insecure and bereft of hope. We have to now protect Pakistanis and Pakistan first. All else is secondary.
The gravity of the situation is however not shared by many. The rugged militants are artfully backed by the ‘urban Taliban’, a term that has emanated from Sindhi intelligentsia. There are political parties and their leaders who downplay the threat to Pakistan, and few journalists and TV anchors brazenly eulogise the Taliban bravery and, believe it or not, ‘sound’ governance. Even some on the residual Left term this extremism as an anti-imperial struggle. We are being reminded that the destruction of private property and daylight murders of innocent civilians are nothing but a ‘reaction’ to our policies and Western diktat. Ironically, a key religious party now train-marching across the country on a was ruling two of the war zoned provinces for nothing less than five years tacitly supporting Army operations as well as legitimizing a military ruler through a constitutional amendment.
Poverty and Inequality – the brewing storm
By Raza Rumi
(My op-ed first published here)
As I sipped the tenderly brewed coffee facing the lush green golf course of a relatively new Lahore Country Club, the new reality of Pakistan became a little clearer. The sprawling premises of the club were a preserve of the Railways Department until the inefficient Pakistan Railways could not manage it and doled it to the new, oligarchic big business of Pakistan. Much ado was made when the land owned by the Railways was privatised and questionable deals were transacted in that moderately unenlightened era. Nothing came out of the public questioning and today a lavish country club, far removed from its downmarket environs, has sprung out for the affluent and the upwardly-mobile classes of Lahore and Punjab.
The classic barriers to entry created by the cliques that lord over Pakistan's elite clubs is being undone. Pay a handsome fee now (way over a million rupees) and you are a member to this new "club" built on the ashes of the Raj steelframe, albeit, reminding one of the nasty remarks of Churchill on how the brown, rapacious Rajas would appropriate the space created by the wise and just colonists. As my host elaborated on the entry procedures to Lahore's richy-rich club, I could not help but remember the compensation to a suicide bomber that has also increased over the years and now hovers between one to two million rupees. A grossly-overlooked fact is that the grinding poverty in the pockets of Pakistan, seemingly unaffected by the consumerist prosperity, is the key to our current turmoil and violence.
The Zardari conundrum
by Raza Rumi ( published in the NEWS)
By all statistical estimates and anecdotal evidence, Pakistan's middleclass has grown during the last decade. The visible manifestation of this historically significant trend was the spontaneous outrage at the dismissal of the chief justice in 2007 and the robust movement that followed. However, the other side of this sociological transformation has been the capture of the "opinion" in Pakistan by the overdriven urban middleclass segment now backed and voiced through a powerful and not always responsible electronic media.
Amid the torrential attacks and doomsday predictions on Asif Zardari's candidature for presidency, a few reasoned voices have attempted to remind the country that fortification of a fractured democratic process requires civilian ascendancy. No, say our wise ones. They are enraged at the corruption tales, and media and real trials. There is a deafening silence over the fact that without a single conviction an accused has spent 11-and-a-half years in jails and suffered solitary imprisonment, torture and pressure that could have easily broken a common back. Admittedly, our president-to-be is hardly an angel. But this is not about morality or middleclass affront or even a thousand stories of international media that have suddenly become so credible. Not long ago, the vanguard of middleclass morality were telling us how biased the international media is about Musharraf and how twisted its reporting was on the US-led war on terror. All of a sudden Zardari tales have become legit, true and worrying.
Capital shock
My op-ed published in the NEWS. This was also posted at ATP and a robust discussion took place there.
A week long sojourn in Islamabad just came to an end. It was not the Islamabad that I had lived in or the one that my memory was intimate with. It has changed and perhaps forever.
I have been an accidental resident of Islamabad as I was thrown into the sleepy folds of the capital by imperatives of securing a livelihood. Lahoris can never be content with any other city. But Islamabad's serenity as a stark contrast to the urban mess of Pakistan was most endearing to say the least. Even its cultural wastelands were forgivable for the communion with Nature was a splendid alternative to civilisation. Thus the sprawling greenbelts of Islamabad and its wild foliage became a source of inspiration and muse. I left the city three years ago with fond memories.
Delhi by the book
Writing about the textbook enemy, the 'other', is but a daunting task. Facing the grandiose Humayun's tomb on a chilly January morning this year, I decided to write a book on Delhi.
It was not before I had visited the ancient city that I knew what it symbolised. In Pakistan, we were influenced by the glories of Lahore, my beloved city. Reconstructed histories had kept Delhi invisible. The seat of the Sultans, Mughals and the Raj, precursor of the modern united In
dia and originator of the Indo-Islamic civilization was a mere phantom, best ignored.
Over several visits to Delhi, I realised that invisibility was also a shared curse. A good number of Delhi wallahs I met, had no clue where they lived or crossed the streets. Erasure, blank spaces in textbooks had rendered their own city a mythical other-world existing only in erudite books, rare cultural soirees and among the fading memories of old-Delhi.
When I looked for the house where Urdu's legendary poet Mir Taqi Mir lived, no one knows it. Those living in Hauz Khas are unaware of what it was. There are thousands, perhaps more, who have never visited Nizamuddin Bastee let alone the dargah there. Tracing history through books resembles a two-dimensional vision. Lived histories add other dimensions to the inner kaleid
oscope. But there are so few who can help me.
I am pained when I am taken to the tomb of India's first female ruler Razia Sultana (1236 - 1240). Only centuries later another woman Indira Gandhi was to rule the Centre. Razia's grave languishes on an abandoned, filthy cul-de-sac. Many don't care. I wonder, should I?
As I have ventured out to write, the enormity of Delhi -- the idea -- haunts me. Where do I start? The layered construction of Indian, and Muslim identities in the subcontinent emanate from the ridges and Hades of Delhi. The saints buried under
Civil Service is no longer an alluring career for Pakistan’s youth
The captioned article of mine appeared in News on Sunday a week ago. I was quite glad to note that the NEWS wrote an editorial on this subject and picked up a few concerns highlighted in my longer piece. I have reproduced it at the end of this post.
A little news item that appeared a few weeks ago was ignored by our all-knowing analysts and TV channels. Reportedly, the Federal Public Service Commission failed to recruit all the vacancies that were advertised for the CSS competitive examination held in 2007. Out of 290 available posts, the number of successful candidates in the 2007 CSS competition was merely 190, leaving almost 100 vacancies unoccupied.
In the photo above Founder of Pakistan Mohammad Ali Jinnah is seen talking to Pakistani Civil Servants (circa 1947)
Last year, too, the government could not get enough number of successful CSS candidates to fill in the available posts and 47 vacancies could not be filled. Such instances have occurred before but given the state of unemployment this is, to put it mildly, shocking.
The truth of the matter is that entering the civil service is no longer an alluring career option for the talented young men and women of this country. Perhaps, the greatest damage to the attractiveness of the civil service came in the wake of the devolution plan that rendered the most coveted service group — District Management Group – unpalatable. Within days, the district administrators had no prescribed career-paths and that they had to be subservient to small time political cronies of the central political elites.
Pakistan’s ruling coalition must not splinter
My op-ed piece that was published in the NEWS, Pakistan
On these erudite pages, and elsewhere, there has been much ado about the fact that now the ruling coalition should split in response to the great betrayals perpetrated by Asif Ali Zardari. In classic machismo laden bravado, the honorific narratives have been urging Nawaz Sharif and his party to take the bold step and stick to their “principled” stand. What is interesting about these exhortations is the brazen rendering of political discourse in black or white terms.
Many a former ambassador, the recent cohort to jump into the fray of political activism, has found a great post-retirement vocation. Once the plush tenures are over and all that could be extracted from the holy state cow, now is the time to speak the truth and condemn military dictatorships. Convenient and most opportune! This low-risk strategy is paying its dividends: a great whitewashing of all that they were a party to, and all that they let happen in front of their red-taped offices. The ex-servicemen whose record is even more dismal are even more vociferous in their advocacy for a democratic Pakistan.
Therefore, the confused citizens with a shred of historical sense are simply bewildered. Gen Chishti, the key player in toppling Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government and unleashing of eleven years of mediaeval darkness, talking about resistance to army rule. Surely, the realisation took three decades of lasting damages and fissures within the body politic. Another retired Army chief, Gen Beg, is also at the forefront. His vitriole cannot hide the years when he actively sabotaged the democratic process, admitted before the Supreme Court that he had “advised” a bench not to restore Junejo’s government; and disbursed astronomical sums of money to undermine civilian government raised through another shady character heading a dubious financial institution.
Pakistan Suicide Bombings: The narratives of terror
An overwhelming majority of Pakistan's population finds itself hostage to narratives of terror that are either alien to its ethos or are constructed by its home-grown theologians and opinion-makers. This is not to say that the issue of suicide bombings is easy to define and understand. They are essentially complex and located in decades of Pakistan's evolution into a society that is difficult yet again to label: Islamic in name, struggling to be democratic and a republic it is not, well, not yet.
If we take the viewpoint of liberals, it is our war as much as a war of others. If we were to hear the west, it is about countering terror and preserving world peace; and if we listen to Pakistan's right it is someone else's battle fought on our land 'the land of the pure' lest we forget.
Where does this leave the confused, battered citizen who now has to strive for personal security among other daily struggles of existence? There are no clear answers and if one were to probe further, the questions are as murky as their geneses.
One thing is clear though: to identify the recurrent suicide bombings in the name of theological, tribal and imperial grievances is at best a half-truth. The genie is far more complex than a response to the reductionist narrative of âwar against terror and such other imperial phraseology. At the core of this phenomena, if one were to be rather blunt, lies an exclusive, bigoted ideology of a few men of holy intentions orchestrating a script written by others.
Pakistan’s media opinion – the column industry
On the flourishing 'column' industry despite the slow growth of readership
What is so peculiar about the Pakistani media opinion factories churning out problems and solutions products day after day? Frankly, they are self perpetuating oligarchies and boring at best. The slightly discerning mortals who browse the daily newspapers in English and vernacular languages or bother to engage with the electronic media discussions are struck by certain repetitive trends. Let me map them out before rambling any further. On a note of caution, there is no intention of making generalisations here. Exceptions, they say, prove the rule!
The curse of self-importance
Nowhere else would you find brazen references to the importance of a writers' opinion particularly among the Urdu language newspaper columnists. Despite the slow growth of readership, the 'kalam-navees' industry is flourishing. A few years ago, a new Urdu newspaper with a hefty advertising budget, ensured that a few big names in the column industry were under its wings.
Utopia for me- Pieces of my heart
My piece published in the News on Sunday yesterday -
Karta hun jama phir jigare lakht lakht ko (I seek to gather the scattered pieces of my heart)
Not long ago, say two decades ago, we the Zia"s children yearned for a country that treaded the Malaysian path for prosperity; and somehow were to transform a tolerant, inclusive society. Such were the dizzying dreams. We wanted the Hudood laws to vanish, the witch-hunt under the blasphemy laws to end and sectarian-ethnic monsters buried. We were inspired by the likes of Mohtarama, for some the charitable cricketer appeared the redeemer. The road to utopia also emerged when a bus took off from the other side of the border and landed in Lahore. The brothers Sharifov became new faces of a moderate, booming Pakistan. Mr. Vajpayee"s chant on the ancient roads of Lahore, "ab jang nahee ho gi" was enough to willingly suspend our disbelief. For many a precious day, we forgot the corruption stories, the political squabbles and incompetence all around.
And then the utopia signs dwindled as the battles on the white peaks of Kargil turned red, a VVIP plane hijacked re-invoking the sorry state of martial rule. We could not live without the dream however. So the new goals -- accountability, devolution and economic miracles -- weaved a new chador of delusions. Like that mythical chador, this new age of globalised Pakistan made reality invisible. We had technocratic solutions spun once again and the opening up of imperial coffers gave us a false sense of moving towards the dream-path.
Yet again, the ideal was snatched and smashed as the myriad myths of unequal development started exploding with imported and local bombs.
This time my utopia seems painfully distant, blurred. I have forgotten what it was. It slipped from the vision when the suicide bombers started visiting the idyllic Islamabad. I now suffer from a mild amnesia. I don"t know what I hoped for in those naive, uninformed days when Faiz"s Hum dekhain ge outlined its contours; and the daagh daagh ujala was destined to transform into sheer resplendence of a vibrant society future.
How do I gather the slipping grains of what was the cherished utopia. I had heard that human memory vistas theoretically are seamless and clear. But that vision of those vast green fields is now blood-stained. Suicide bombers are omnipresent and my dear friend in Waziristan tells me that the queue is long and restive. The streets of Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi are potted with excess blood choking the civilization arteries.
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