New leadership, it is said, emerges from five breeding grounds: military, corporate, sports, civic (including NGOs), and political. Ideally, leadership emerging from the realm of military should not spill over to the civilian. Equally ideal, however, is the development of other breeding grounds that ought to supply leaders to any nation.
In Pakistan, corporate leaders have made some name for themselves in the public space. Think Asad Umar, Jehangir Tareen, Sherry Rehman, Murad Ali Shah, Marvi Memon, and Miftah Ismael amongst others. They have all had some kind of corporate leadership experience that they brought to the political table. Intuitively, the corporate sector could have produced more leaders had Pakistan’s business environment been more competitive than one based on rent seeking and other unfortunate ethos.
As for the other breeding grounds, the latest National Human Development report by UNDP Pakistan offers mixed insight. The meta outlook appears divided if not entirely dull. “I think it’s the perfect time to be young in Pakistan”: said a male participant in UNDP’s National Youth Consultation in Peshawar.
This cheerful view is dampened by the fact that one-third of young adults who responded to UNDP’s National Youth Perception Survey (NYPS) 2015 believed that Pakistan was becoming worse as a country for young people to live in. The report cites another (2012) survey according to which half of Pakistan’s youth believe that they have little autonomy over their lives. The overwhelming belief of Pakistani youth is that “chance of birth or geography or fate determines outcomes, and that powerful others control their lives.”
Indeed, as the report said: “increasing pessimism can affect agency and dull aspirations”. Such an environment does not beget lions; it produces sheep. Now consider the state of other grounds of leadership.
Youth’s affiliation with any political party affiliation is weak; only 11 percent in the case of men (aged: 15-29) and 7 percent among women, according to the UNDP’s NYPS 2015. Young people’s trust on politicians is the second worst after ‘patwari’. This could be attributed to the banning of student unions in 1984, criminalisation of student wings of political parties, and undemocratic internal structures of the political parties.
The UNDP sees some hope in “past voting behaviour, a strong willingness to vote in future elections, and high levels of interest in political events” that appears to be the hallmarks of Pakistan’s younger generation. However, hope should not be a forgone conclusion.
Findings of the same NYPS survey reveal that in youth’s opinion, protection of political rights, accountability, and freedom of speech are the least critical issues that need immediate attention. This reflects an understating of politics that is different from what democratic disposition demands: political rules of the game first, economic, inflation, education etc later.
The sports ground is equally disappointing. According to the youth survey, 93 percent don’t have access to sports facilities; 79 percent don’t have access to parks; and only 38 percent of the youth said they were involved in any physical activity at least once a week.
There is one silver lining though. And that’s growing civic engagement by the youth, where civic engagement is defined as the “individual and collective actions designed to identify and address issues of public concern”. The report cites examples of youth’s participation in 2005 earthquake, 2010 floods, increasing participation in schools and other NGOs where there are surely a host of examples: The Citizens Foundation School, the Karachi-based NGO Shehri and so forth.
Drawing on this, the UNDP makes the following assessment: “the youth are now reclaiming civic life in Pakistan”. And there is hope to be had in that, because “voluntarism leads to better understanding of collective decision-making, participation in formal political processes and higher demand for effective service delivery from the government.” But this assessment too should not be construed a foregone conclusion.
Pakistan is estimated to be one of three countries that slipped from medium to low levels of youth development between 2010 and 2015, as measured by Commonwealth’s Global Youth Development Index. “This decline – the largest in the world – is attributed mostly to a fall in political and civic participation, especially in terms of expressing opinion to an official and low likelihood of helping a stranger.”
The UNDP Pakistan has not measured the level of tolerance and acceptance in Pakistani youth on a wide array of indicators outside of religion. But the following offers a sneak peek: on average 45 percent of Pakistani youth believe that people of other faith should not have the right to build places of worship.
Whether the same levels of intolerance also exist for people of other identities, ethnicities, class etcetera, one can’t be too sure. But if civic engagement is to graduate toward political engagement, then tolerance, acceptance, and freedom of speech will have to be the hallmark of that progress. The stories of Wali Babar, Sabeen Mahmud, and the likes do not encourage heightened civic engagement, and by virtue of it, new and potentially vibrant leadership is muffled before it speaks.