Matters of legitimacy
{An account of a plethora of multidimentional problems in Pakistan}
Shahid Kardar
IN an earlier article contributed by one of us in these columns it was argued that Pakistan is passing through a difficult phase, confronted by multiple challenges. And instead of being contained these are on the rise.
On the one hand, the population is growing exponentially with opportunities for a decent living not keeping pace with the rising numbers. And on the other, the gap between diminishing state capacity and people’s expectations is making this task formidable. The civilian institutions on which the structure of the state rests, are largely dysfunctional, contributing to general pessimism and demoralisation.
Maintaining order is a basic duty of the state but recent events are showing ominous weakness of this capacity. An insurgency is seriously threatening Balochistan, reflecting a failure of sermons on patriotism to create a sense of togetherness. This sense of alienation is fueled by a perception among the people of political marginalisation and lack of any effective control over their resources.
Elsewhere, sporadic, but lethal, attacks continue in the old tribal areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and are now spreading to D.I. Khan, Mardan and Swat. The situation in the riverine areas of upper Sindh and south Punjab is also alarming. Outlaws seemingly reign supreme with their area of operation expanding.
The ability of the state to provide justice has also declined. This is reflected in the judicial system’s diminished ability to enforce a contract, arbitrate a dispute or hold criminals to account. This has seriously undermined the rule of law, another pre-requisite of a functioning state.
To summarise, the overall structure of governance barely seems to be working and is not responsive to today’s challenges. While attempts at reform have been few and far between, even these have successfully been foiled by the bureaucracy.
The battle for rulership of the state presents an equally disconcerting picture. Irrespective of the text of the Constitution, the unfettered establishment effectively rules, through its active involvement in the functioning of all state institutions.
To provide itself a thin veneer of civilian respectability, a civilian set-up with anaemic roots among the people has been foisted on an unwilling nation. And to preserve this status quo and to thwart all challenges to it, the ECP has been commandeered, the Constitution defied, judiciary threatened, and parliament emasculated.
The result is that ‘presiding’ representative and supporting institutions lack moral legitimacy and general public ownership. The actions against the PTI and its leader Imran Khan have further estranged millions, who having lost trust in the integrity of the electoral system, and are discontented on being disenfranchised. With severe alienation already visible in Balochistan, this denial of a people’s mandate adds to the overall disaffection among the people with the state.
In our view, headway on issues of economy, security, justice and service delivery can only proceed if the basic organisational arrangement of the state has not just legal but also moral legitimacy. Today, the representative and supporting institutions lack this and therefore have no public ownership.
The lack of legitimacy is engendering resentment and alienation, making governance difficult. Several elements of administration require active participation of the people, without which any task, be it development or security, becomes much tougher.
This is particularly crucial in fighting an insurgency because it cannot survive without popular support. This is also true of terrorism in general. An existential challenge to the state is thus directly linked to legitimacy and people’s participation.
Legitimacy by most definitions would mean rule of law. And the fundamental law of any state is its Constitution. The legitimacy of the systems will come only from its rigorous implementation. While this may be a necessary condition, it is not a sufficient one. The Constitution can still be manipulated to merely observe its form, and sometimes not even that, to deny popular will and infringe on fundamental rights.
The February election is an example of form over content and substance. While every part of it was manipulated, an appearance of democracy was maintained through minimum constitutionality. How can state institutions demand others to remain within the ambit of the Constitution while themselves flouting it?
An attempt is now afoot in parliament to introduce amendments to the Constitution with the purpose of undermining judicial decisions and packing the court with handpicked judges. The Supreme Court can strike these down being violative of the basic structure of the Constitution, but this would mean a standoff between different organs of the state. This too is not desirable.
When we are suggesting a reset of the state it cannot be done through hostility and stand-offs. A realisation has to dawn on all stakeholders, and particularly the establishment, that the path we are on cannot be sustained. The way forward has to be collaboration not confrontation. All stakeholders need to sit together and chart a new course. Only then will there be a chance of moving forward.
A lot needs to be done but to begin with we have to ensure legitimacy. It means a recognition of people’s right to choose their representatives, and thereby who should govern them, through a free, impartial and transparent election. This has to be accompanied by the acceptance of results and a peaceful transfer of power.
Every state on the rise has been able to cross these two hurdles. We have almost never done so. This mindset has to change. Only then it would be possible to commence the long process of renewal.
Admittedly, sustained support for civilian institutions will only become ingrained from improved performance. To date, the record of matters essentially in the civilian domain hasn’t been inspiring. Examples include the poorly negotiated IPPs, the quality of education delivery and the massive losses of state-owned enterprises. But, to begin with, the fundamental question of legitimacy has to be resolved before moving forward.
Shafqat Mahmood is a former federal minister.
Shahid Kardar is a former governor of the State Bank of Pakistan.
Published in Dawn, September 9th, 2024
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Zarar Khuro
FOR 15 years India put all its Bangladeshi eggs in a Hasina Wajid-shaped basket and, by extension, in her autocratically-led Awami League. No matter how rigged the elections held under the ousted ruler of Bangladesh were and no matter how repressive her rule became, the Modi government was always the first to offer support and succour. India has always been keen to assert its influence over smaller states in South Asia (hegemony is heady) and with a seemingly secure and strong Hasina firmly in their camp, strategic planners in New Delhi could be forgiven for thinking that Bangladesh would remain a firm ally for many years to come. After all, a friendly or subservient Bangladesh is critical to keeping India’s perpetually restive north-eastern states in control, not to mention securing a decent return on Indian investments and lines of credit to Dhaka itself.
And then, in the space of just a few weeks, a prized asset turned into something of a liability when massive student-led protests forced Hasina to flee Dhaka and seek refuge in India.
Now the former prime minister has become a sticking point in relations between India and Bangladesh, where the protesters quite rightly accuse India of propping up Hasina’s autocratic rule and harbour suspicions that she may attempt to stage a comeback with the help of New Delhi or will, at the very least, try and destabilise the interim setup.
This suspicion is not eased by the fact that Hasina also refuses to stay silent: from her shelter in India, she has called for “justice,” demanding that those involved in “terror acts” be “investigated and punished.” It was quite a stunning display of chutzpah from a woman whose security forces reportedly gunned down hundreds of protesters and who was forced to flee after close aides and family members finally convinced her that the game was over.
This raised hackles in Dhaka; Muhammad Yunus, the head of Bangladesh’s interim government, called allowing Hasina to speak an “unfriendly gesture” on the part of India and said that Delhi should at the very least keep her quiet until Dhaka formally asks for her extradition. “She has been given shelter there, and she is campaigning from there,” said Yunus, who added that “she has to be brought back, or else the people of Bangladesh won’t be at peace. The kind of atrocities she has committed, she has to be tried in front of everyone here.”
But quite apart from New Delhi’s own arrogance, the BJP’s toxic use of religious nationalism (used with great success domestically) spread through both social media and mainstream Indian media, is also proving to be a major stumbling block in developing good relations with the new Bangladesh.
Even as the revolution was unfolding, Indian channels and social media dubbed it an ‘Islamist’ uprising while laughably also accusing Pakistan of playing a part in orchestrating it. A narrative was developed that Hindus in Bangladesh are being systematically targeted and India’s massive fake news machine swung into action, using old and out-of-context videos to paint a few isolated incidents as a nationwide pogrom.
Trained to hate Muslims regardless of their country of origin’s ties with India, these rabid social media cadres would routinely target Bangladesh with fake news and vitriol even when Hasina was in power. Nor was the disdain limited to social media warriors; Home Minister Amit Shah routinely referred to Bangladeshi migrants as ‘termites’ and the Indian Border Security Force was notorious for targeting Bangladeshis.
Thus, even as Indian ties with Hasina flourished, a sense of resentment began to be fostered among the Bangladeshi people who saw India not only side with their oppressor, but also target and belittle them regularly in its pro-paganda campaigns. As a result, long before the revolution, an ‘India out’ campaign was alr-eady underway in Bangladesh, calling for a boycott of Indian products to protest “India’s relentless meddling in Bangladesh’s domestic affairs.”
The campaign echoed an earlier such movement in the Maldives, which has traditionally remained in the Indian orbit. Here too we see that the new leadership was bold enough to strike a new path in its foreign policy, moving away from dominance by India to a more balanced approach.
Nepal, another small state that — simply by dint of relative size and strength — should easily be in the Indian orbit has also sparked a new feud with its giant neighbour over the issuance of bank notes that show disputed territory as part of Nepal.
One cannot change geography and all three of these states will have to do business with India regardless of their inclinations, but New Delhi would do well to recognise that while hate and derision may provide domestic dividends, they are not effective foreign policy tools.
The writer is a journalist.
X: @zarrarkhuhro
Published in Dawn, September 9th, 2024
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The generalists {Not important for Examination but a good read for pleasure}
Adeel Wahid
“[A] CALCUTTA clerk in the mid-nineteenth-century Public Works Department of the colonial government would need little formal retraining for service in the contemporary CDA”, observes Mathew Hull in his book, Government of Paper — The Materiality of Bureaucracy in Urban Pakistan, published in 2012. As Hull puts it, the “normative formal procedure for handling communication and files has changed little over the last hundred years”.
Our bureaucratic practices are stuck in the past. But that is not all. The entire bureaucratic framework seems defective, afflicted with major design flaws. Broadly, it is an inheritance from the British colonial system, aping the governance structure put in place by those who bore deep antipathy towards the “uncultured” locals. Dogs and Indians were not allowed in many places.
From recruitment to retirement, our bureaucratic system just does not make sense. The bureaucrats are generalists. They take exams in a varied number of subjects. During the entire process, there is immense focus on form, and little on substance. Margins, headlines, diagrams, spacing, different colour markers and pens — all this is of major concern. Meanwhile, the subjects that are rote-learned rarely have anything to do with the offices that the candidates eventually occupy. This run-up is not a preparation for the job, but a test of nerves for surviving an archaic exam process. It all boils down to cracking the code, mastering how to write in an absolutely bland passive voice, in rigid and archaic English, probably not written or spoken anywhere else, other than in the postcolonial subcontinent.
From this gruelling process, only a few emerge successful. Almost all who put themselves through this ordeal choose this path because it ensures a life of relative dignity, with protection against the heavy-handedness of those with disproportionate power. Hull, in his book, refers to one seemingly powerful bureaucrat who confesses: “You know, when you have a big post, it doesn’t mean you get anything done. It just means that you and your friends don’t have any personal problems”.
During the training process, again, the focus remains on form and not substance. To create that wedge between the bureaucrat and those he would govern, a bureaucrat is taught to dress a particular way, act and speak with a particular sense of authority. Training is not primarily focused on honing skills regarding what needs to be done, or inculcating an ethos of public service. It is about transforming a bureaucrat into a being who envisions himself entirely distinct from the common man, for whom the bureaucrat is encouraged to develop a sense of disdain. In the initial postings, a bureaucrat is equipped with guards, four-wheelers and colonial-era mansions, with massive walls, away from the residences of ordinary people.
The bureaucrats are not, in any meaningful way, beholden to the public. They are responsive only to their superiors, the politicians in power and obviously the men in uniform, thereby perpetuating a governance structure, which is by the elite, for the elite.
With years, as the bureaucrats are elevated, the generalist credentials are, at best, marginally helpful in running the various important ministries, whose backbone they form. The cabinet takes its decisions on the basis of reports and summaries prepared by the bureaucrats and their underlings. They are often thick in bureaucratic speak, and thin on substance. Major decisions, of monumental importance, are taken on the basis of whatever level of understanding these generalists are able to develop.
Worse, these generalists do not stick around in one place for long enough to develop any in-depth understanding with regards to any one subject area. With every new government, and even in periods of relative political stability, the bureaucrats keep rotating. One day, a bureaucrat might be dabbling in agricultural policy, the next, he might be charting out the future course of higher education in Pakistan. And then, each bureaucrat may have his or her own style, understanding, and approach to the subject matter. As secretaries, at the helm, these bureaucrats get to exercise major influence in decision-making.
Not surprisingly, then, there is little consistency in policy. The random flip-flop from one course of action to another is extremely damaging. Even though the files stock up, gathering dust in nooks and corners, guarded from the public, the ministries are unable to develop any substantial institutional knowledge. Each bureaucrat gets to make his own mistakes, all over again.
The discourse, therefore, that ties all issues to the lack of integrity of those in power is overly simplistic. There has to be a focus on our design flaws.
The writer is a lawyer based in Islamabad.
awahid@umich.edu
Published in Dawn, September 9th, 2024
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