Why is it that the front rows of economy class of almost every domestic flight, especially of those coming from or going to Islamabad are always filled with bureaucrats, politicians, connected businessmen (and women) and those who want to be seen with this group. Ordinary mortals are seldom allowed there. This is surely not random. So, here we have a commercial organization that, instead of giving benefits to its more frequent flyers, gives benefits and extra attention to those who do not even pay the full fare most of the time.
This is symptomatic of how most Pakistani institutions work. We seem to have developed a system of discrimination and class that is as rigid as any caste system, is as entrenched as well, but is less visible so that it can be less of a target for social reform. People talk of slaves, bonded labour, minorities, women and other disadvantaged groups, but we seldom see crusades against the form of discrimination that has been described above.
And you can be sure that this discrimination that I am talking about is so prevalent that it can actually dwarf any other form of discrimination any day. We can take as many examples as we like. Why is it that electricity supply is more regular for richer areas like G.O.R.s and Defence and less regular for other suburbs and very irregular for most rural areas? In a recent meeting in Quetta, Nazims from some of the more far flung areas said that the electricity infrastructure is so poor in their districts that electricity is only supplied to the people for 4-6 hours a day. And if there is a fault, it can take days to get it fixed. Are these not customers of QESCO?
Who is likely to get more police protection and who is likely to be more harassed by the police? This too is related to connections and money. Only a couple of days ago it was reported that the police in Lahore has been asked to set up more pickets. Who do you think is going to be stopped more often? It is motorcyclists more than car drivers, and of course there is a hierarchy in cars as well. Who do you think gets better treatment even in government hospitals? Who has access to better schools, even in the public and semi public sector: just imagine that the government has given 170 odd acres of prime land of Lahore to a school that is mostly meant for the rich. And the government sometimes gives it additional subsidies too. What do the poor children get, and what do poor children in the rural areas get from the government? If the rich want Aitchison College to continue, why do they not buy it out? But then, who does not like a subsidy?
But most damagingly, even access to and delivery of justice is conditioned by connections and money. Judges are themselves cognizant of the fact and have, in their own speeches, talked about this often enough. There is corruption in the judicial system, there are delays in the system and often the courts have cooperated too much with the connected parties to allow people to maintain the belief that the justice system is indeed just.
So the current system favours the rich and the famous at the cost of the ordinary person. More importantly, since the very people who are benefiting from it dominate the system, there is no impetus for reform as well. The democracy we have, the ‘public representation’ that is done by our MNAs/MPAs and Senators, and even the public representation done by elected members of local governments is all superficial and is being used as a justification for maintaining the system. It is not for reforming it. If the top guys believed in genuine reform and genuine representation, they would not have talked about the National Security Council, uniformed President, non-party Nazims, and even entities like the National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB). What function do these things have if we have genuine representation, and when a Constitution is there to provide balance between powers?
The real problem is that every person, wherever he or she might be in this hierarchical system, thinks and acts as if he or she is above the system, and should not be subject to it. Almost every person is willing to sabotage any institutional development that stands in the way of achieving private gains. Nawaz Sharif undermined the Supreme Court for his short-term benefit, not realizing that that was the very institution that could protect him. Benazir did the same in her time, and now General Musharraf is doing exactly the same. His insistence that he is the best judge of what kind of democracy ‘fits our genius’ is just one example of his intellectual blindness. What is not realized in the process is that not only are institutions undermined by such actions, these actions also show how the class interests of the elite always remain supreme, irrespective of who is on power, and irrespective of what is at stake.
Recently I had to catch a flight to go to Islamabad from Lahore. It is a half an hour flight. I had to leave home some 2 hours before departure time to get to the airport in time. The Canal is blocked so all traffic is topsy turvy anyway, but in addition it was one day before the time when Shahbaz Sharif was supposed to land in Lahore and so there were police pickets in all sorts of places. And then there was some VIP movement (the Chief
Minister) and traffic was blocked for ten minutes because of this. A normal 25-minute journey took us more than an hour and created tremendous tension as well. But is there any way one can address the problem? Of course not. The entire cost of the traffic mismanagement was being borne by commuters like me, and not the people in power. The same happened once in Islamabad too. We were going to the airport when suddenly all roads were blocked as VVIP was on the move. We nearly missed our flight there too.
There will be those who will defend these things by saying that this is the cost we have to pay, and there have been attacks on General Musharraf and so on. But that is all hogwash. The simple fact is that it is just easy for people to undermine rights of others, and with impunity. If General Musharraf knew that he could not have gotten away with these things, he would have shifted to Islamabad long ago.
Over the last few weeks a group of us have been discussing the need for democracy with businessmen from various cities of Pakistan. A couple of issues have cropped up repeatedly. Almost everyone has said that democracy is needed, but many have also said that they do not see the benefits of democracy when ‘democratic’ governments have been in power in Pakistan. This raises an interesting question. What ‘form’ does democracy need to take to ensure that benefits, of secure rights and equal opportunity, are passed on to the people?
There are two conditions that need to be met here. One is that the formal structure of rights, with legal recourse that has decent level of fairness and response-time, has to be in place to ensure that citizens are well protected. This is, borrowing a term from Berlin, more of the notion of negative freedom: where laws are used to guarantee some basic freedoms and rights. The second is that there has to be an effective feedback loop from the people to the representatives, in all institutions, so that rules, laws and norms can be made responsive to the needs of the people and the circumstance under which they are living. This is the more dynamic aspect of things, leading up to accountability of the people. Sadly, we have severe system deficiencies at both levels. Rights are not protected, and the feedback loop is almost non-existent. In other words if rights are violated, there is no recourse, and if rights need alteration or re-interpretation, there is no mechanism for that either.
There are few societies where class is, or was, as entrenched as in England. Yet, the political system there has been able to not only keep people involved and interested in governance, it has also been delivering acceptable levels of satisfaction. And all this without even a written constitution. One reason for this has been the fairly good system of rights that is within the grasp of most people most of the time, and the second reason has been the fairly strong feedback loop from the governed to the elected/selected. The fall of Thatcher was one fairly recent example. In India, though the first mechanism, of rights and opportunities, has been relatively weak, compared to some of the more advanced democracies, the recent elections have shown how strong is the feedback loop. If the parties had been complacent, they will think twice about it in future.
The world is too cozy for the rich and the connected in Pakistan. But this is at the cost of the larger society. Till this is changed, and we guarantee rights to all and provide stronger accountability loops connected to the people (and not just NAB), our democracy will remain a sham, and our institutions will remain open to favouritism. The more we delay changes, the harder they will become since norms get more entrenched with time. Can the new Muslim League and General Musharraf realize and internalize this, or will they continue to play the personal game: that is the question.
This article was originally published at The Nation website.
