08.09.2013 A middle class kingdom
Considered as backbone of market economy and democracy in a globalised world, the ‘new’ middle class in Pakistan seeks good governance, meritocracy and end to corruption
By Dr Pervez Tahir
A debate is raging about the nature, size and the role of the middle class in Pakistan. Like the Chinese view themselves as the middle kingdom or the centre of the earth, the only definite thing about the middle class is that it lies between the poor and the rich. The measurement of its size is as suspect as the count of the poor. Both are based on the same survey, Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement Survey (PSLM).
Analysis based on the 2010-11 survey shows that only 12.9 per cent of the population is poor. At least this is what page 158 of the Annual Plan 2013-14 indicated, before it was removed from the website of the Planning Commission. The proportion of the rich has to be smaller than the poor. The rich and the poor thus leave too large a space between them to make sense, especially in terms of the Weberian continuum of wealth, power and prestige.
The self-view of the members of the middle class is one of having been crushed by inflation, low economic growth, poor formation of human capital and the elite capture of the state. “I have to live for others and not for myself: that’s middle-class morality,” said Bernard Shaw. Not quite. Consumerism, or Veblen’s conspicuous consumption, is the reigning morality.
In countries with high levels of poverty and large populations, the multinationals and the local assemblers of consumer durables eye a segment in the middle that can afford to buy their products. Growth in India is said to be spurred and sustained by this class of consumers.
According to the estimate being debated, Pakistan has a middle class larger than that of India as a proportion of population, and rising. The services-led, consumption-based growth of the Musharraf period is said to have been driven by the same middle class. That the Musharraf bubble burst too soon and the Indian bubble is bursting before our eyes is not much of a concern.
In popular political discourse, the failure of a strong middle class to emerge has always been described as a destabilising factor. More interesting than the economistic views of a growing middle class are the social and political interpretations. One theory is that a growing middle class proves that the current wave of obscurantism, religiosity, anti-modernism and Islamic militancy is a passing phase. The “progressive” middle class is expanding regardless. Just as Pakistanis have never voted the religious parties into power, the middle class consumerism will drive the militants out of the market place of ideas and influence. The proponents seem to disregard the fact that jihadis do not seek any vote. It took one all powerful dictator to sow the seeds of the crop being harvested now. At any rate, the jihadis view democracy as a Western implant. Power to them flows out of the barrel of a gun, not votes.
A connection is made with the diaspora also. Educated, innovative, upwardly mobile overseas Pakistanis imbued with democratic ideals and modernist perspective are said to be an influence on the rising expectations of the middle class back home.
Imran Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf is viewed as representing the aspirations of the emerging middle class. His maverick thoughts on ghairatmandi and Taliban are seen as an anti-imperialist (read anti-American) stance, which reflect the anti-Western streak that the diaspora develops once its members find that the road to the top is closed to them in their host countries, sometimes in formal and at others in informal ways. In their reactive nationalism, which in the case of Pakistani Muslims assumes an Islamic dimension, they perceive that the people in the homeland also think like them or should think like them if they don’t. Many actually joined Jihad and are surprised why the majority of Pakistanis are not doing the same.
Commonly known as the party of big business, the current debate attributes the PML-N’s electoral success in the last elections to the middle class disillusionment with the misgovernance of the PPP, a party of the feudals masquerading as the party of the poor. The MQM, which has always defined itself as a secular party of the lower middle class, and the Jamaat-e-Islami drawing its followers from the religiously inclined lower middle class are less prominent in the debate than the uppish middle class followers of Imran Khan. Some economists think the middle class is the backbone of market economy and democracy in a globalised world. Others link it with faster growth, especially in countries with ethnic homogeneity. The parties leading the middle class in Pakistan have autarkic preferences, anti-market and anti-democracy tendencies. Ethnic heterogeneity and sectarian polarisation are not good for growth.
Too much is thus being read into the role of middle class in political and social change. Irked by Obama’s frequent references to middle class, former Republican Senator Rick Santorum castigated the term as “Marxism talk” of the liberals. Marx used the term middle class, even a lower middle class, but did not see it as a “class” with revolutionary potential. Class to him was a category in the relations of production — the proletariat and the bourgeoisie in conflict.
Middle class was placed in the relations of distribution, or what then was described as unproductive labour. It could play a revolutionary role only by de-classing itself. The political aspirations of the middle class in Pakistan have been to see technocratic setups in place, be it a military-bureaucratic regime or a prolonged caretaker setup.
What the “new” middle class seeks is good governance, meritocracy and end to corruption. The lawyers movement, an activist judiciary, high density of social and electronic media, free press and a youthful population have all contributed to these yearnings. In Aristotle’s “perfect political community”, the middle class was “in control” and larger than other classes. However, the Pakistani middle class is neither in control nor large enough to assume the role described by the economic historian Landes in 18th and 19th century Britain.
A middle class kingdom is an unrealistic dream. The middle class tendency of seeking upward mobility rather than aligning with those down below through political mobilisation acts as a counterrevolutionary force.