Respecting complexity

There are no easy answers to hard questions. Yet the ‘naya’ political discourse in Pakistan, for all the exciting prospects it has teased us with over the last three years or so, is essentially offering a slew of easy answers to hard questions. If we examine it carefully, we’ve watched this movie before. Kind of. It’s complicated. Let’s dive in.
‘Tabdeeli’ is the new ‘roti, kapra aur makaan’. Both are sexy as hell. Egalitarian change. Social transformation. Wow. Dizzying.
In many ways, at the time it was formulated, and what it actually meant, the PPP’s mantra was contextualised within a global and local discourse about poverty and how state’s can and/or should deliver these entitlements. Today, ‘tabdeeli’ is powerful – in part because it is privileged by an already fully robust set of powerful changes, whose momentum has very little to do with the PTI, and more to do with technology, globalisation, and society at large.
The impact of the ‘change’ that Zulfi Bhutto brought about in the 1970s has been profound. On society, on the economy, on the region, even, in fact, on foreign countries, like Afghanistan. Bhutto delivered one thing, above all, that has truly transformed Pakistan. He delivered a channel for social and economic mobility to the village man who was previously trapped in an intergenerational prison of poverty.
Today, a federal secretary born in a village to illiterate parents isn’t strange, it is commonplace. Today, the son of a junior commissioned officer in the army can become chief of army staff. Today, there are rich and well-spoken television anchors, judges, parliamentarians and tycoons whose parents were poor, and illiterate. Social mobility before and after Bhutto is like night and day. His time as prime minister was the undisputed dawn for real social mobility in Pakistan.
To achieve this, Bhutto had to break down a lot of walls, and some of them, without question, he should have been more careful with. One simple example is the independence of the civil servant. His contempt for bureaucracy was legendary. Eric Gustafson and Andrew Wilder have both quoted him as having once said, “No institution in the country has so lowered the quality of our national life as to what is called Naukarshahi… (it is) unrivalled in its snobbery and arrogance”.
Bhutto had the sheer political heft and the vicious self-confidence to do what the things he wanted done. The 1973 Civil Servants Act was the weapon, and Bhutto was its wielder. He essentially dismantled the naukarshahi system. Yet, we all know Bhutto failed to extinguish snobbery and arrogance from the top echelons of the civil services. Still he did open things up. The Bureaucrat Brahmins that once ruled the Pakistani state are gone. They’ve been replaced by the sons (and too few daughters) of ordinary Pakistanis. (That some of them adopt the airs of those once-upon-a-time Brahmins is a separate issue).
Concurrently, Bhutto’s hacking down of the old Pakistani bureaucracy destroyed the technical independence and autonomy of civil servants. The resulting culture of transfers and postings is a growth industry that drives corruption both up and down the chains of command in every department of every province. This cancer is as much an informant of today’s moth-eaten, fragmented, incompetent and directionless state, as any.
Having said all this, those nuakarshahi baadshahs were bad news. Their destruction put executive authority in the hands of elected leaders for the first time in Pakistani history. Those leaders who want to loot the national treasury with that authority, do. Indeed they do so with impunity. That’s a bad outcome. But it isn’t mutually exclusive from the parts of this story that are good outcomes.
Some leaders actually want to serve, too. And sometimes they actually deliver. Shahbaz Sharif in Punjab, and to an extent, even Pervez Elahi. Nazar Mohammad Gondal in Mandi Bahauddin. Mustafa Kamal in Karachi. Atif Khan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. None of these politicians could have delivered anything under the pre-Bhutto infrastructure of bureaucracy.
Other aspects of Bhutto’s roti, kapra and makaan are also instructive. He opened up the state as an employer of first resort. Forty years later, the impact is dramatic. Jobs at PIA for village kids from Badin and Lakki Marwat have helped transform households there, even entire villages. But they’ve destroyed accountability and efficiency at the national carrier. The solution only seems simple: universalise merit at PIA.
Sure, but what do we do with constitutionally protected public servants whose only crime was partaking in a patronage system they did not build? Fire them all?
Sure. And then deal with two streams of consciousness. Exhibit A: water cannons and tear gas at the dharnas at which fired employees protest the injustice of being ‘surplus pooled’. Exhibit B: populist invective from a high court that can’t stand ‘poor’ people being booted from their jobs, “just because the IMF wants greater efficiency in Pakistan”. (nb: that isn’t an actual quote, it is the stylised kind). You can bet on both, whether you live in Naya Pakistan, or Purana.
So, was Bhutto the best thing ever to happen to Pakistan? Or was he the worst? He was neither. He was a great, tragic, complex man. He had both a liberating and corrupting influence on the Pakistani state. He is possibly the father of Pakistani democracy. But also, possibly, responsible for the breakup of Pakistan. He is possibly the father of our nuclear weapons programme, but also, possibly the father of pan-Islamist political discourse in the country. He oversaw a worsening of religious intolerance, but he also bequeathed a party to Pakistan, that for all its faults, is a robust defender of pluralism. He made things better with India, but also made them worse. He gave the poor people of Pakistan a voice they never had before. But he also gave voice and agency to crooks of all kinds, and worst, he gave them the keys to the safe. Pakistan is better because of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. And it is also worse.
Reasonable people shouldn’t be uncomfortable sitting on the fence. In fact, it is exactly what they should be doing when it comes to the current malaise afflicting D-Chowk and the PM House. The ‘old’ new thing that PM Sharif is doing is unimaginative, rope-a-dope without the dope, wait-and-see, and keep waiting, restrained ‘parliamentary’ politics. This ‘new’ old thing that Imran Khan is doing is brash, populist, revisionist, a-historic, and anti-political politics.
In one area Khan beats Nawaz Sharif every day, and twice on Sunday. Khan knows how to shape the conversation. On that merit alone, he has demolished the self-confidence of this government. Khan scares the Sharifs – for the right reasons. He makes Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif seem old and tired, privileged and pampered, entitled and lethargic.
But Imran Khan is incredibly toxic too. Imran Khan scares thoughtful Pakistanis of all persuasions for the wrong reasons. He is impetuous and unpredictable. Impetuous, unpredictable men make for great dates, but terrible husbands. Nawaz Sharif clearly does not know how to run a country, but Imran Khan can’t run a party, or even a province. As ever, the Pakistani is stuck between hard, unforgiving places and sharp, radioactive rocks.
The only certainty we have is that Pakistan is too great, too beautiful and too complex a burden for one single man, no matter how large his ego. The lessons from Bhutto and his impact on Pakistan should help us navigate through cults of personality into considered positions. We need to move away from false binaries like PTI vs PML-N, and democracy vs coup. Pakistan is a series of hard questions. There are no easy answers. We need to respect complexity, not ignore it.
The writer is an analyst andcommentator.