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Thursday March 28, 2024

Activism, agency and budget

By Dr Naazir Mahmood
June 15, 2020

The writer holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK and works in Islamabad.

We have seen in Pakistan over the past seven decades of our independent existence that development – human development to be exact – has had fairly low priority in our budget-making. We have neglected the basic needs of the people such as education and health, and piled up bombs rather than books.

Our public health system has been in a disarray for long, and the education system imparts anything but good education. But why don’t governments – both civilian and military – pay much heed to such fundamental concerns of common people?

There may be a couple of answers to this question. To prioritize human development, you need some policy decisions; and such decisions require either a strong political will among decision-makers, or activism by the civil society, communities, educators, intellectuals, and many other segments of society. Such activism can force the government to change tack and adopt a new model focused on human development.

Activism can hardly be triggered unless there is some agency that prompts people to be activated. But before discussing the concept of ‘agency’, a look at activism is in order. Activism can take various forms, ranging from campaigning to protesting aimed at bringing about some change. Through such activism we can seek alterations in, let’s say, educational or environmental spheres or other areas of political, public or social concerns. Deliberate inaction or passivity displayed by the people in society encourages decision-makers to keep doing what they have been doing for long.

To counter any such possibility of activism in society, the decision-makers, or rather the power wielders, use their own nearly unlimited resources – which are actually public resources – to lobby and propagate in favour of their own version of budgetary and economic priorities. To forestall activism for human development and fundamental rights, governments crush demonstrations in streets, which may happen anywhere from America, China and India, to Iran and Pakistan. To keep people away from activism, sometimes calculated riots are planned and triggered so that people abandon activism and play safe.

Another tactic is to level charges of rebellion and terrorism even if peaceful people gather to voice their concern or protest. In such cases, activism is associated with left-wing standpoints, which are then maligned and different derogatory monikers are used against activists. Activism that focuses on community causes is labelled an ‘NGO agenda’ that is projected as anti-state. Be it Arman Loni, Arundhati Roy, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Noam Chomsky or Shirin Ebadi, no matter how peaceful they have been, government or state officials in their respective countries do not tolerate their activism.

Human rights campaigners are a favourite target because they demand basic human needs and rights for the people. But when you demand education facilities, and health or medical provision for common people rather than for a selected few, your demands are contested and your ideas made controversial. A controversy is imposed on you and the subject matter of your demands is twisted. Then right-wing activism is unleashed that peddles nationalism and questions your patriotism. Sometimes even religion and sectarianism is also utilized to counter activism for basic needs and fundamental rights.

From Hindutva brigades now, to fascist and Nazi propagandists in the past, counter-activism is always ready to defeat and defuse the activism for democracy, education, or other fundamental issues that challenge the dominant narrative used to divert allocations from human development to other considerations. Here, it is important to challenge traditionalist causes with demonstrations that must be peaceful, because activism to counter such demonstrations tries to convert a peaceful gathering into a blood sport – as happened in Islamabad during the Aurat March three months ago, or with Arman Loni last year.

The question is: where will this activism come from that can demand more allocations in budgets for basic needs such as education and health? Well, some people are natural activists and quickly rally to a cause they feel strongly about. Such people are prepared to put their time and energy to its service. But most of the time they pay a considerable cost for their activism, and this cost may be as high as their own lives. If their opponents don’t kill, they may barge into their homes, beat up adults and children alike; and dacoits may break in.

When these things happen, many activists lose their potential and become occupied with their private lives; commitments of individual nature take precedence and they start supporting causes by other means such as writing. But in many cases even that is not acceptable and intellectuals find themselves vulnerable. A counter-intellectual trend is fostered, resulting in social oppression that is even more dangerous than governmental or state oppression. A truly democratic government defends its activists, journalists and intellectuals even if they criticize the government or state for their highhandedness or misplaced priorities.

For activism in society to be alive and kicking a certain agency is required, and that agency comes from feeling indignation at injustices. We can describe ‘agency’ as the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own choices and opinions. To resist this agency there is a related concept of ‘structure’, which means a recurrent pattern in the top echelons of society to influence and limit the choices, opinions, and opportunities. Applied to budget-making in Pakistan, this is the ‘structure’ or recurrent pattern of arrangements that year after year repeats the same calculus.

Those who get the most from the budget tend to reduce the autonomy of individuals to question the structure. In such societies, the power brokers don’t allow individuals to act as free agents, and the social structure dictates the manner in which any activism can take place. For activism, people need to feel a sense of outraged justice and deem it serious. That’s where agency comes from and gives a shared sense of collective effort to fight for a cause. The structure tries by various means to degenerate activism into mob violence so that a typically harsh response may be justified.

The fizzling out of the so-called Arab Spring is an ideal example of this activism and agency, and how the structure responded by its harsh response to maintain order (read structure). Be it America, Burma, Egypt, India, Pakistan or Thailand, the structure tries its best to crush activism and agency. There are examples of peaceful demonstrations that have brought down regimes or at least precipitated change. In former Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Poland, peaceful demonstrations changed regimes but for that the top decision-makers had realized that the structure could not contain the agency displayed by the people.

In America, a peaceful civil rights movement forced the structure to give in, but of course at times it turns into mob violence as happened recently. In the final analysis, an activism that maintains pressure for change is a must. In most cases, activism that is peaceful turns violent mainly in two ways: one, the structure itself wants it to turn violent so that it can be crushed; and two, by a persistent deafness displayed by the decision-makers. In Pakistan, there appears to be a deafening silence in the power corridors that refuse to take into account the basic needs of the people.

One can foresee an unpleasant outcome of the persistent neglect of people’s basic needs. To avoid this, a political process involving public debates aided by the media – electronic, print, and social – is the need of the hour. In short, we need democracy that is socially liberal, pro-people, and welfare-oriented rather than security-focused.

Email: mnazir1964@yahoo.co.uk