39
AT times, you need the silence of a hospital room to achieve clarity and perspective. Of course, there are frequent disturbances: the appearance of a nurse seeking yet another blood sample, or wanting to check your blood pressure, or wanting to know how you feel at three in the morning. In cracking form, thank you very much.
In 1999, I ended up in a cardiac care unit, and wrote a column called ‘The View’ from the CCU. As you can see, I take my deadlines very seriously.
One of the things that has been bothering me in the still of the night is what democracy means for common people. Does it really matter to a Punjabi peasant or a Sindhi farmer what party or general is in power in Islamabad? After all, it doesn’t make any difference to him and his daily life.
A change in government should matter to all of us.
The point here is that in a democracy, a change in government should matter to all of us, and not just the chattering classes who normally return to their normal evening activity of sniping at the new government over a glass (or three). But if democracy, with its Greek root of ‘demos’, or people, does not deliver any benefits to the exploited souls of Pakistan, we need to find out why.
A basic reason is that, by and large, organised parties hesitate to share power, and have consistently resisted delegating genuine authority and funds to city and union councils to make them truly effective.
The reason thousands broke out on to the streets of Turkey to send the coup-makers back to the barracks was because of the majority’s belief in the system, as well as in Erdogan’s personal popularity. Like it or not, he has transformed Turkey within a generation.
In sharp contrast, ordinary Pakistanis are ignored by ambitious would-be leaders, who only return to meet their constituents when elections roll around.
It is this disconnect between the rulers and the ruled that has created the breakdown of democracy.
The higher judiciary has chosen to make itself the arbiter of who is to lead — thereby marginalising the ‘demos’. So we are now in a situation where politicians need the support of the military, as used to be the case earlier, but the judiciary and the electronic media now play a growing role in determining who will form the next government. In the middle of all this jockeying, ordinary voters have little say.
I have met many people who loudly denounce democracy on the grounds that it does little for ordinary people. But I reject their solution — a return to military rule. Sadly, though, martial law has proved no panacea. Because our elites are too busy seeking or defending their power, they have no time or political capital to spend on the truly dangerous disasters that threaten us like the population bomb, water scarcity, pollution, and growing millions of uneducated and unemployed Pakistanis. Compared to them, whether it is A, B, or C who is in charge is largely irrelevant.
Given our selfish, greedy ruling elites, it is unlikely that things will change until poverty and hunger finally drive the people to rise up. It probably won’t happen in my lifetime, but there is no way that people will put up with the kind of daily suffering that has been their fate for generations.
So given the obvious failure of democracy, why was I beating the drum for it in column after column? After all, I know little about the lives and problems of ordinary people. So who was I to write on their behalf? Am I, in truth, a fraud who writes because I enjoy the work?
Friends often ask me why I plod along, churning out at least two columns a week. Write a book, they suggest, or take up gardening. But the writing bug, and the discipline of meeting tight deadlines even in a hospital are not something I would choose to give up.
Another thing that has contributed to our crisis of democracy is the unspoken consensus that the bulk of our resources will be used on defence and debt servicing. The second is the result of the vast loans we have contracted over the years to finance often useless projects. These were built without any consideration for local needs, and continue to act as anchors on the economy.
So while the bureaucracy is bloated beyond belief, and astronomical defence budgets pass without parliamentary scrutiny, there’s no money for clean drinking water or schools.
And so it goes in the land of the pure: a self-righteous, entitled elite fatten themselves, while pompously proclaiming their patriotism. Scoundrels and conmen of the criminal and political variety continue to fatten their bank accounts, while the poor starve. As long as this goes on, I feel I have no option but to continue telling it like it is, even if nobody listens.
Published in Dawn, November 18th, 2017
