What do we understand by political vocation? Very early on in my career as a civil servant I went with a delegation to India and I found that most of the politicians had been in politics for more than 30 years. They were still going strong. The average life of a civil servant is between 37 to 39 years unless the age is fudged. In our country, politics is rather naively held to be an infant existence. We always talk of a fledgling politics. Politics is about leadership situations and unless the democratic process for leadership determination is put in place there will remain this concept of a Mughal emperor in position of authority with hardly or no accountability to the people of the country. So how do we influence our leadership positions? There is no public consensus and anyone who is backed by some kind of manipulation becomes a leader. There have been serious reservations on the perverted election by selection process as it is not equitable in nature. Nor does it provide equal opportunity or of conditions to make the grade as a leader.
Today I heard about being responsible to the state by the politicians and the bureaucrats. So what is a state sociologically? The state cannot be defined in terms of its ends. There is scarcely any task that a state has not tried to perform and there is no task that is exclusive in the domain of the political institutions. If one were to go to Trotsky then every state is founded on the basis of force. If this force is not there then the state would be one of anarchy. But this force is there only for the purpose of peaceful coexistence. But what happens when this state power is used for the purpose of creating that anarchy? Since the public at large are unable to organise themselves, this anarchy goes on unchecked and ultimately results in violence that seems to be unending. The relation between state power and violence has thus become a very close and unending one. That this power cannot be exercised alone but has to be circumscribed to other institutions of the state and other political powers is beyond the comprehension of the state power that has started a loot Bazaar. The political power is augmented in Pakistan by economic power and financial well being. Shaheed Benazir understood this and lamented the fact that she could not match the financial resources of the opposite party. We see the lack of clarity in the current lot of ministers but there are significant differences here. There are some ministers that have been used to vilify and distort the statements and views of the opposing political forces. There are others that do it for loyalty's sake as they do not want to lose their power and well being. There are others that are ethnic-based and the SC would be well informed on these matters. Pakistan does not have an Ambedkhar or a Gandhi to espouse the cause of the poor. Our caste system is not as rigid as the one in India so that we can expect some degree of social vertical movement. But that is very difficult to achieve. A people that have been vilified since 1857 can hardly stand up to the sociological stress that the mutiny brought about.
The issue then was that Pakistan's institutions should be so designed and the HRD in those institutions so placed as to minimise misuse of discretion. Morley-Minto reforms of 1860 had already provided the framework for district governments but those were undone in the 1950s. Basic democracy and the other experiments that were undertaken were done so because the intentions were to keep power and not to solve the problems of the people. There is a distinction between political decision and something that is politically determined. Politically determined is about power structures and their distribution and maintenance while a political decision is about the ministers themselves. It is possible to strive for an improper selfish behaviour in which the politically-motivated are only interested in making for themselves and their unborn grandchildren otherwise how can you explain assets worth billions of rupees when they have had virtually no income from where these assets would be accumulated. Where there has been an institutional failure is where the legal institutions that supervise politics have failed in their endeavour to check malpractices and keep a strict vigil. I put to you that that in power will never be challenged for their misdemeanors much less for their criminality and criminal actions.
The PM's entrepreneur scheme was ill-conceived and worse still was implemented poorly. The definition of an entrepreneur is one that takes on risk. The price of failure is serious and not taken as our politicians take it. Why should foreigners take our economic risks as their own? Frank Knight the originator of this word will be turning in his grave by the way we have misused the concept. People were keen to take the money and use it for other than the purpose of taking risks. Were the politicians serious when they made this policy or was it one of those gimmicks and trickery that the governments of the day employ? The conditions are terrible and if those conditions are within the grasp of the lot why should they take formal loans with such restrictive conditions. The reason is simple. People take on future risks for getting over their present difficulties and not because they are particularly interested in industry of whatever category. Now the political party in power is at it again stating that jobs will be created by the energy sector. Even recently the CM Punjab has given an order to create thousands of jobs per month. King Canute is back and he will roll back the waves. Energy sectors are capital intensive and therefore not conducive to countries with large labour force. Lewis the economist is to be believed. Yes, but what kind of jobs? The future policies are always projected as a success. Human memory is short. The politicians are a great success at telling lies. They hope against hope that people will forget the miseries that they have caused in the long run; to hell with governance and the rights of the people. It is only when the law of the people is brought into play that matters of law and justice are solved.
In my playing days I was extremely lucky to have met and played with Justice Cornelius (founder of Pakistan Eaglets), Saad Sood Jan and a host of others including Justices Lone and Khalilur Rehman not to mention Justice Ortecheson. One learnt a lot from their conduct and the discussion that one had with them. Life in law is one of exponential experience and not one hairy fairytale.
Must the state use its power to further illegitimate ends? Can the state then be of immature parentage? The current argument is on this - the paradox of legitimate and illegitimate. So how are the state institutions going to resolve the issues? It cannot be resolved by force unless the situation is further worsened and law and order already fragile breaks down. East Pakistan was a case in point and we destroyed whatever decency we had in the process. The reverberations are still coming through. So what does happen is that when social conditions are destroyed by whatever means the pain and the suffering remain ad infinitum. The action in Karachi can never be successful by simple use of force. There are other soft and humane options but the tragedy of this country is that we take decisions that are critical either from the world powers or their developed institution such as the WB and the IMF. Our own minds have suffered a stroke of mammoth proportions. We deny everything unfavourable and we take credit for anything done by others; plagiarists that we are.
There can be much more on this and other options that politicians must take note of and not shoot from the hip all the time. Credibility once lost is lost forever.
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