The real odds against Pakistan

The News, April 3, 2005
The real odds against Pakistan
Iqbal Mustafa

A joke goes like this. When an insect falls into a mug of beer an Englishman throws his mug away and walks out; an American takes the insect out and drinks the beer; a Chinese eats the insect and throws the beer away; an Indian sells the beer to the American and insect to the Chinese and gets a new mug of beer; a Pakistani accuses the Indian of throwing the insect into his beer, relates the issue to Kashmir, asks the Chinese for military aid and takes a loan from the American to buy a new mug of beer.

Of course, this never happened in Pakistan because alcohol is prohibited here and only non-Muslims drink. But, like most good jokes, it captures a truth which cannot be spoken without a wrapping of innocuous humour. In ‘the Mayor of Casterbridge’ Thomas Hardy fictionalises a timeless concept, that one’s character is one’s fate. This holds true for nations and countries too. I am beginning to fear that, like Michael Henchard, Pakistan may be infected with germs of decay that keep neutralising its innate strengths.

It may be intellectually unfashionable and politically incorrect to take a psycho-philosophical approach in understanding Pakistan’s unending dilemmas and perpetual crisis — especially since the ‘ideology of Pakistan’ provides a pseudo-immunity from self-doubts — but I am going to risk my neck and talk about fundamental factors that keep contributing to the peculiar conundrums the country faces.

The plethora of diverse issues we seem to create out of nowhere make Murphy sound like an optimist. As problems intensify, so do the inane platitudes of the officials. Problems on the Afghan border, in Balochistan, between provinces about resource sharing, between opposition and the government on constitutional interpretation, polarisation between civilians and the military, widening gap between rich and poor, cities and villages and so forth. As old problems become chronic, new ones emerge with unsettling regularity — crash of stock markets being the latest. Collapse of dangerously bloated urban land prices and agricultural commodity markets (wheat first?) are waiting in line.

While at the list, I might as well mention the neutralisation of Pakistan’s military might vis-a-vis India by the USA writing a script in which Pakistan is being forced to accept a junior position at a cost it cannot afford. With increasing authority, US is making offers that Pakistan cannot refuse. The slope down the pit of neo-colonisation is too slippery for Pakistan to negotiate.

All these crises have their own specific genesis and operational dynamics but they all share a common fundamental cure, which is a need for ‘men of substance’. All these failures can be traced back to lack of vision and professional expertise. There is a myth in our society, even fostered by intellectually sophisticated circles, that the leadership alone holds the key to salvation, which can be brought about rapidly once the right person is in the driving seat. The national obsession with scrutinising individuals is naïve because in today’s highly structured world, it is the ‘rank and file’ that matters far more than adept leaders.

Leaders, if they have to make a difference, must begin with building the intellectual, professional and moral fibre of the ‘rank and file’, the down-the-ladder team workers. No leader in Pakistan has even begun to think in these organisational terms; they have all been busy trying to make quick gains with stagnant human resources. The civilian rulers were always racing against time before democratic windows shut down on them while the military rulers suffer delusions that the military establishment has all the human resources required to become a super-super power of the world. Cocksureness has been a fatal flaw of our military personnel. It serves well for military combat but it is lethal for national planning with a need to balance many contradicting compulsions.

The family and school environment in which children grow up in our society is not conducive to producing open-minded and rational individuals. Parents impose an unquestionable submission to authority and the schools teach a distorted version of history and ideological grandeur of the state for which no evidence exists — especially in this age of advanced media. In the process, children suffer confusion between hype and reality and resolve the existential contradiction by adopting hypocrisy as second nature — things to say and things to do are not to be mixed up. Parents, peers and social archetypes further reinforce this dichotomy of character as children grow up to experience the real world.

In the professional arena, success is contingent upon ability to manipulate the ‘system’, not upon hard work, efficiency and delivery. When the Chief Minister of a province proclaims merit as basis of employment and offers 100 jobs in Police to every MPA on the same day, people are not outraged by the duplicity; they mutely appreciate his political shrewdness. Pakistan is suffering a huge crisis of ‘realism’ at the top and ‘professional efficiency’ at lower cadres. It is not a matter of bland statistics of formal education or lack of doctorates in higher cadres.

We have a society where organisations cannot function effectively unless they operate within a narrow ambit of family economic interests. Private sector organisations spend more time policing staff and circumventing official dues; public sector organisations are primarily in the skimming and skiving business. Pakistan, as an economic entity, is uncompetitive. Inefficiency is not distributed equitably and hence the sense of gross injustices in society. Therefore, collectively we have developed awesome skills of survival under adverse conditions. Unfortunately, the rest of the world does not operate with such chicanery of intent; so we find ourselves progressively marginalised while we come up with new tricks to leverage our strategic advantages.

The real odds against Pakistan are not external, circumstantial, or diplomatic; the odds lie within us. We have to re-evaluate, re-prioritise and re-condition our psychic makeup that champions all the virtues of Islamic faith but practices survival tactics of a street urchin. Perhaps then, wags will not draw the uncomplimentary caricature of the ‘fly in the beer joke’ for us.

The writer is a consultant for agro-economy and organisational management to public and private sectors.

Email: mustafa@hujra.com
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