Dear Messers Babar Sattar and Zahid Hussain.
I had the good fortune of hearing your discourse on the current situation in Pakistan, when you discussed the subject with Mr. Mazhar Abbas and Ejaz Haider on Capital TV at 10 pm on 21 Aug.
Compared with much “noise” which strains to pass itself as informed discussion on most TV talk shows, your discussion was sane, educative, unbiased, and erudite. And I thank you for it.
I would be grateful if you could please convey my gratitude to Messers Abbas and Haider as I do not have their email contacts.
Apart from conveying my thanks to you, I also want to posit a proposition for you to examine, and hopefully address, sometime in the future. And this is that whereas it is true that our political leadership is often hamstrung with problems which are not of their own making, theirs is more often the case of self-infliction of maladies, the pain of which is shared out among the people of Pakistan, while the leadership picks off the benefits of the causal determinant of this pain.
For example, when Mr. Zardari says, and Nawaz Sharif repeats the following, they are both correct in their assertions:
- that the situation in the power sector is not of my making–I merely inherited it.
- I am not responsible for the massive unemployment–I inherited it.
- I did not create the non-functional state of PIA nor am I responsible for bringing Pakistan Railways to a grinding halt. This too is a part of my inheritance.
And similar are their alibis in the case of Pak Steel etc. etc.
However, the question that public intellectuals need to ask of them is, ” who put a gun to your heads which made it your compulsion to rob the country blind, to protect the interests of which was your sacred trust?”
I believe that unless massive corruption is first seen as the mother of all evils, of which the situation in PIA and Pak Railways etc. are mere symptoms or results, the situation cannot even begin to correct itself.
Corruption is a part of the flawed human state. It exists, has existed, and will continue to exist in all human societies. Despite corruption many societies continue to progress and prosper.
But there must come a stage beyond which the acceptance and scale of corruption must tip the balance, and this cancer will start corroding the vitals of a society. This is the point beyond which every aspect of governance and of public morality becomes a victim of this poison, and so do most policies driven by it. There is no mathematical or economic formula which can determine when this point has been reached and crossed, but it may fairly be surmised that for poorer countries the threshold of this point is much lower than for the richer ones, for the simple reason that in a poor country the wealth to be looted without causing it serious existential harm is much lesser than in a richer one.
Thus, for example, the “lootable” wealth in Pakistan is much lesser than in Italy, and if the appetite for theft of our leaders is higher than those of Italy, we will reach our tipping point much earlier.
As public intellectuals it is people like you who need to bring to the people of Pakistan this consciousness. I feel that since Zardari came to the helm, we have crossed this tipping point. I feel this to be the case because I do not even hear concerns about corruption being discussed in our drawing rooms or in the media. When acceptance of a fatal disease which spells the death of a society reaches this point, all other discussion on what ails the nation becomes merely academic. I hear discussions about law and order, about our failed education policy, about the absence of provision of justice etc etc. But I have seldom heard how deadly and direct the correlation of corruption to these issues is, i.e. when the administration is so entirely dedicated to theft, that they have neither the time nor the inclination for anything constructive.
People do not seem to realize that corruption does not simply hallow out our national coffers, not leaving money for education etc, corruption changes the total mindset, so that issues like education etc. have no priority for those who are responsible for it. And this is where corruption becomes a double whammy. It is not restricted to the fact of theft alone. It entirely changes the direction of emphasis and priorities of the ones who are indulging in it. Among the leadership of any society, the level of dedication to theft therefore is the direct measure of what shape governance is likely to take.
And now just take a closer look at what is being called “the system”. What is this, if not a partnership among people who, with an odd exception, have banded together for the sake of mutual immunity, to save “the system” which has enriched them immensely? Just look at the Sharifs, Zardari, Fazal ur Rehman, Altaf Hussain, Sherpao–all so frightened and therefore so committed to saving their “system”; and we had to see the day when it would be Zardari leading the charge to save ” democracy”!
Does this not make it abundantly clear that for a huge majority of our political leadership, shorn of all cliches, what “democracy” really means is the opportunity to plunder Pakistan with mutual support and total immunity?
And now let me leave you with my quintessential dilemma. I quite understand the compulsion of the Sharifs and Zardari etc to call this dispensation a “democracy”, but why are honourable, sane, educated, and obviously committed people like you so compelled?”