Intellectual Slogans and Reality

Shafqat Mahmood
The News: Friday, August 26, 2011

The bleeding wound of Karachi is a reminder of the dire straits the country is in. Is it just the nostalgia of an older generation or were we actually quite well managed in the past, perhaps even up to the 80s?

There is little doubt that we were. This was no thanks to our rulers who committed mistake after mistake, culminating in the division of the country in 1971. But, on the ground, the momentum of the colonial state structure continued to carry us forward.

Many among the civil society, whatever little of it there was then, or in politics, hated the so called ‘naukar shahi’ or the rule of the civil servants. I remember as a young kid demonstrating on the Mall in Lahore against Ayub Khan and shouting ‘naukar shahi murdabad’.

We attributed all our failures to the steel frame that the British had left behind and demanded...God knows what. No one had any clear idea what we wanted to replace the colonial civil service structure with. But that did not deter us. Naukar shahi had to be done away with.

We were totally oblivious to our good fortune.

Trains generally ran on time, and railway was the preferred mode of travel. Law and order was deteriorating but the district administrators were by and large in control, the only exception being the political movement against Ayub Khan. Crime was increasing but it was nothing out of the ordinary. There were fewer schools and hospitals because of little investment in education and health but whatever there was functioned reasonably well.

Yes, the civil servants who ran the state were elitists and thought a lot of themselves. Perhaps, coming in top ranks through a competitive examination process gave them a sense of superiority. Perhaps, receiving training in elite academies and the vast powers given to them at a young age reinforced this sense of self-importance. But, looked at another way, they were the best and the brightest in the land and were helping to manage the state.

Anyway, we decided in the 70s to fix them and this started the slow decline. Bhutto struck the first blow but Musharraf put the icing on the cake by destroying the administrative structure of the district. All very noble; down with naukar shahi, up with the rule of the people. Great language, fancy rhetoric, but to what end?

We are, or at least some of us are, beginning to realise the folly of slavish submission to intellectual slogans. Local government by the people for the people not only sounds great but who can argue against it without being called a fascist. The judiciary and the executive must be separate, so laid down the great Montesquieu centuries ago and how can that be questioned?

The theory of separation of powers is not only necessary but essential to the functioning of a modern state. We are seeing the benefits of an independent judiciary, which is holding the executive to account. But, do we have to go down the line and create this separation even at the district, tehsil or village level?

Or, is it that we need to go beyond the slogans and seriously look at the reality on the ground? The executive magistracy had its flaws because the decisions could be summary in nature or influenced by larger considerations of maintaining law and order. Rights may have been trampled now and then but it worked.

Criminals would not be let off because strict standards of judicial evidence were not available – as is happening now. Section 144, pre-emptive arrests or preventive detention did not always adhere to strict standards of the universal declaration of human rights but it allowed the bad eggs to be kept in check.

The problem is, and I am assuming good intentions on all sides, that our intellectual assimilations have outstripped the reality on the ground. We are trying to build a perfect modern state with the legacy of European intellectual development as our guide, paying little attention to our social conditions.

Or, the problem lies in the historical epoch in which we are, to use a Marxist framework. Our social development is not uniform. In fact, apart from a small elite that is intellectually and emotionally twenty-first century, most of our citizens could well be living in the dark ages. To them, the only power that matters is naked; the only law, that is coercive.

To place a twenty-first century framework on the governance of a society that is struggling to understand modern realities may be morally and intellectually laudable, but is it effective? In light of what is happening in Karachi, indeed in much of Pakistan, it appears that it is not. We are looking good on paper but terrible in practice.

It is time that we begin to face realities. The administrative structure that Musharraf in his lack of wisdom bequeathed to us, is not working. This has to change. Maybe not necessarily go back to exactly what it was before but the state structure at the local level has to be given teeth. Its ability to hold deviants to account – not just through violence but through a multiplicity of coercive measures – has to be increased.

The use of pure force can be useful temporarily. Perhaps, if the army is called to restore order in Karachi it could do so in a short time. But the breathing space thus bought has to be sustainable. This the army cannot do, nor the Rangers, nor even the police. Uniformed forces should rarely be used to quell disorder and must remain a last resort. It is only the permanent structure of the state that can do it.

In the context of Karachi, politics has a huge place in creating the necessary conditions for order but it is not enough. Even if a broad agreement is arrived at between contending parties, and that does not seem easy at the moment, it has to be supplemented by an effective state apparatus.

While we are spending a lot of energy discussing the political or criminal realities in Karachi, some thought needs to be given to the administrative arrangement. And not just in Karachi, because while it is the iceberg that looms forcefully in our consciousness, a much bigger malaise lies beneath the surface and it afflicts the entire country.

A short answer would be the revival of magisterial powers to administrators at the local level. Not just for price checking or enforcing other local or special laws but real, coercive powers – including preventive detention.

We are embroiled in an internal war and the state structure is losing out. It may sound retrogressive to seek greater, even draconian, powers but we have little choice. Bit by bit we are breaking up from the inside and anarchy is more visible than order. We have no choice but to do everything to save ourselves.

It is better to be intellectually incorrect than lose out in the battle for survival.


Email: shafqatmd@gmail.com