Debating national debate

Among the many problems that afflict our present and threaten our future, very few are as grim as the national tendency towards oversimplification. Yes, there is terrorism. Yes, there is anaemic economic development. Yes, there is population explosion, environmental degradation, regional hegemons and dark holes of conflicts like Afghanistan which can suck us in.
Yes, there is this – and there is more, but scratch the surface and you might discover that most of these issues present themselves in their hideous form on account of our poor handling at the time of their origin, both at the conceptual as well as actual policy level. National challenges require deep reflection and informed debate. Distort the contours of the debate, and surely the path to the right destination will end up being distorted.
Not much has changed in recent times. We continue to persist with the old ways of crafting simple narratives. The arguments built around the Yemen conflict and the correct choices we are supposed to exercise are symptomatic of this. In the public realm, the challenge is split into equal halves. If you love Saudi Arabia (implying thereby that you must be a Sunni) then you ought to support Pakistan’s full-throttle, head-first lunge into the conflict offering everything that the brother country wishes for. Conversely, if you are inclined towards Iran (implying thereby that you must be Shia) then ditch the Saudis, turn towards Tehran and insist that the attacks on Houthi militia must end this instant.
Very few are willing to acknowledge that between these two halves lies a complex reality of regional power politics, global interests, and mindboggling local dynamics that necessitate deep and thoughtful analysis, which must become the basis of any rational course of action to follow. Try raising the middle ground in your assessment of the Yemen situation these days and you would be inevitably confronted with hateful reactions and heaps of accusations calling you either a closet-Salafi or a half-declared stooge of Iran’s theocracy. The general public, which is supposed to be better-informed than the previous generations on account of the so-called information revolution, by and large wants a this-or-that narrative, a national version of the Bush with-us-or-against-us Doctrine. The space for insightful calculations has shrunk – incredibly.
Supposedly, the joint session of parliament was meant to expand this debate-space by bringing into the discussion the element of national interest. That was the theory. The practice turned out to be much different. While the resolution looked to have been nicely designed, its letter and spirit remained open to the same bare-bone conclusions that were holding the realm before the session was called. Government representatives now believe that this resolution has given them the carte blanche they have been looking for to support Saudi Arabia in the manner the federal cabinet may deem fit. The opposition, however, believes quite the contrary: that the resolution has ruled out any possibility of help that would make Pakistan a party to the conflict even in an indirect way, and that from now on the only policy option the government has is to play the mediator.
These diametrically opposite interpretations show, among other things, that there is no escaping the help-them-help-them-not binary. The national discourse even after the joint session and a resolution remains divided into simple silos. There is little convergence of perspectives because there has not been any complexity of analysis in the reflections that we have heard from the floor of the house, nor are we more knowledgeable about the strains that the government is facing in chalking up a policy plan. The statement that the defence minister made on the subject was vacuous, devoid of information and quite superficial. That only added to the superficiality of what was to follow by way of speeches.
One can argue that in dealing with emotive issues (and Yemen carries that strain in Pakistan’s context of sectarian tensions and divisions) or while tackling extreme compulsions the public as well as our leaders tend to swing to more instinctive and simple positions. This will be a fair statement, even though the need for deep thought is the greatest when the situation, emotionally or practically, is the hardest.
But our national tendency towards oversimplification is in evidence even when we can afford the luxury of thoughtfulness and of taking a longer view, when no one is breathing down on our necks demanding a particular answer, when no Bush is peddling a hard push towards implementing a specific agenda, and when our stakes are not sky-high. Take politics for example or, more specifically, the debate about governance and democracy. Here, too, scrappy notions are peddled as vision, and half-baked thoughts are put forth as blueprints for changing the destiny of a 200-million strong nation.
What is worse is that this is done with such absolute commitment to a pre-determined position that there is no room for a counter-perspective. Therefore, Nawaz Sharif inaugurating the metro-bus project means Pakistan is ‘progressing rapidly’. You oppose the project, you oppose development. Asif Ali Zardari grooming Bilawal Bhutto and in the process launching Bakhtawar Bhutto means the PPP has ‘new leadership’. You challenge dynastic politics and in no time you will be defined as anti-PPP and a traitor of Sindh. Imran Khan stepping out of Bani Gala and going to Jinnah Ground means ‘Karachi has been liberated’. You challenge this statement, and that means you hate Imran Khan. Altaf Hussain speaking to gatherings in 90 means ‘middle class leadership’ is pitted against feudals in ‘an epic battle’. You challenge this statement, and that means you must be a pushy Punjabi chauvinist.
An extension of the same process of over-simplification is that everyone believes that what he or she believes is the belief system upon which the universe has been founded. A tweet’s 140 characters have now become a substitute for back-breaking research; to have rudimentary capability to blog now means there is no need to have any sense of balance in analysis. And of course, there is no need to read anything because now you can use the option of shoving your opinion in another person’s face through multiple mediums. Why apply logic when illogic can get you places? Why bother about history when no one remembers anything? Why have knowledge when even the most ill-informed and distorted deliberations can popularise you as the country’s leading ‘intellectual’? Why have deep discourse when shallow positions can get you through another day in a long crisis?
Many factors could have mitigated this tyranny of deliberate simple-mindedness in complex national affairs. The more important among them is quality research and the work of think tanks and academia. All over the world, great policies are informed by great research that takes the debaters through the full spectrum of the issue at hand, opening up new horizons in the process and pointing to directions that remain obscure in general observations. Here, the less said about the nature and content of research and the work of research institutes the better. At any rate even if this field had been rich in thought and oozing fresh ideas there is little reason to believe that their work would have found audience in the echelons of power where short-sightedness is held up as genius and kowtowing to the leader/officer in command (or his wife, daughter, sons or relatives) is considered the equivalent of national service.
So for this and other reasons our national debate continues to circle around inane positions, reductive arguments and notions that are too weak to measure up to the tough challenges of our times. We call it debate but it remains, at heart, a mad brew of oversimplifications, contradictions, and poorly-informed opinions.
The writer is former executive editor of The News and a senior journalist with Geo TV.
Email: syedtalathussain@gmail.com
Twitter: @TalatHussain12