The technocratic fantasy

As has been too often our lot, talk about the formation of a technocratic government is doing the rounds. Recently, and most vehemently, an assertion in this regard has come from Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal. He has claimed that a “troika of      failed politicians, retired members of institutions and sections of the media” are stoking the speculation and trying to pave the way for a technocratic arrangement.    No matter what its origin, it needs to be unequivocally stated that the fantasy of an uncorrupted, results-based technocracy is a harmful fantasy. In the real world, the performance of technocratic governments has been uniformly negative. In Pakistan, the likes of Shaukat Aziz and Moeenuddin Qureshi were airlifted into the country to set us straight. They were conspicuous failures.     As the longest-serving technocratic prime minister in the country, Aziz was          tainted by the same allegations of corruption        as all our other rulers – be they democratic or otherwise. His ‘reforms’,     such as following the international donors’ policy of eliminating subsidies and focusing on consumer goods, tended to be short-sighted and to the benefit only of his fellow elites. The most recent example of a technocratic government – the so-called Bangladesh model of 2007 – worked on the premise that the military and the judiciary were needed to step in and ‘cleanse’ the system with the help of qualified professionals.        The aim of the caretaker technocratic government was to sideline Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia – yet Hasina returned to power just       one year later and Zia is still the main opposition leader. As much as they might try to dislodge them, technocratic governments always come against the fact that the politicians they despise are, in fact, popular with the public.

Despite demonstrated failures, technocratic governments may have appeal for some, be it politicians         who have no base of their own or those who feel such governments will serve their narrow interests.     This stems from their profoundly undemocratic belief that those most qualified to rule are people like themselves. It shows a disdain for the ‘uneducated’ voter and contempt for politics. Their insistence that politics is too messy to work and that the supposedly rational     policies of technocrats are needed ends up making matters in the realm of politics murkier.        As democratic rule is frequently interrupted, there is no growth in our political parties and continuity in the system. A democratic government is removed for whatever reason that can be cooked up and technocrats are recruited. After they invariably fail, we try our hand at democracy again and this depressing cycle keeps repeating itself. Our political parties too deserve blame because they themselves have destroyed grassroots politics – in the process depoliticising society. To avoid repeating history, we must learn from it.