Musing on the ramshackle nature of the state of Pakistan with a friend recently, we surmised that there must be similar devices in place that prevent Pakistan from going under or toppling over, because despite innumerable predictions of collapse, there is little sign of the country doing so.
It may well be that the national flotation collar is comprised of millions of atoms of carefully managed apathy, coupled with a learned passivity. All the huffing and puffing and windy flummery on Twitter and Facebook, and the endless talk shows on the media, creates an illusion of ferment. The sense that great events are in train (… they are, but hear me out) and that the offices of the state are beavering away, if not exactly for the sake of our common good, then not to our common detriment either.
The reality is that our political creatures great and small, irritating or just having mild nuisance value, are frantically paddling to maintain the status quo and equally frantically working on preserving the illusion that what they are really about is change. Real change. Lots of it. Great buckets of the stuff all over the place. Not so.
The real challenge is to manage that vast pool of apathy in such a way as to hold its interests with promises of jam tomorrow but never jam today — and then bank on the collectively apathetic to buy into the deception. Clearly, they do, otherwise every office of the state would have been a smoking ruin years ago.
Those poor deluded creatures who voted for change in the previous elections were doing nothing of the sort, but were unable to see through the blizzard of empty rhetoric, unable to mount a campaign of deductive reasoning that would have led them to the conclusion that they were being fooled yet gain. Those that did see the foolery were dismissed, ridiculed even, and the people went to the polling booths with little invisible floaty bags, water wings, tied firmly in place.
The Great Apathy has now had a generation to embed itself and we are into a rolling cycle of apathy that will sustain the country on the brink for years to come. On the surface, there is going to be much that looks different — fibre optic internet connections are just 50 metres from my front door, we have a paved (nearly) road and a working sewer line — but a millimeter below the surface, there is stasis, inertia, an investment in mediocrity that is all pervasive, and a profound desire by millions of apathy atoms for things to stay exactly as they are.
A formidably impressive trick is being pulled off before our very eyes; a feat of prestidigitation unparalleled in the annals of Orwellian states. The state is floating on the premise that it can maintain and sustain apathy in such a way as to allow a semblance of functionality in economic and even social development terms, without things ever tipping over into revolt.
If ever a people had good cause to rise up against their successive governments and consign them in short order to the dustbin, it is the people of Pakistan. But they have not, and nor will they in the future. The state is now bobbing, barely afloat but not drowning nor toppling sideways, and it can stay that way for the foreseeable future because whatever spark of dissent there might have been was snuffed out long ago and replaced by the apathy gene. Millions upon millions work at sustaining that status quo, that improbable balance that means that the state will never sink, but neither will it ever swim competitively either. The plaintive cries in the background are us, the scribblers and mutterers, all busy writing the first draft of history, over and over again.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 10th, 2014.
Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.
COMMENTS (5)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ
@Ajay: ".... then the only other solution is dictatorship..."
Pervez Musharraf's proposal of these inflatable circlets decades earlier had its own merits, if we agree with the thesis of the author. For the last few years the democratic set up has availed one more possibility of musical chairs, where you get-rich-quick while people have greater difficulty affording even grass for their daily meal.
Self deceptive schemes like Bullet trains, Metro Busses or 50 story high buildings for Peshawar are not going to put meal on the dastarkhwaan of the ever increasing number the poor, whose count we have lost.
Sheikh Chilli anyone?
Great analysis. This analysis applies to India as well. The apathetic masses, some for reasons for sheer poverty, send buffoons to power, year after year and most want status quo since there is no drive or direction or leader to provide that. SInce in a democracy, the people are the rulers and when people abdicate that responsibility, there is nobody taking decisions, there is nobody in charge, then the only other solution is dictatorship because at least that one person in the role of a dictator will take decision - good or bad. At least decisions will get taken. That is why I welcome Modi even though he is no longer Modi 1.0 but a Modi 2.0
@John B: ".....Even when Hazara refused to bury their dead, PAK was not mobilized. Apathy has become a norm. "
I am not sure whether IK and Mulla Qadri are helping in any way by issuing ultimatums everyday crying out hoarsely that they were about to bring the state down paralysing the everyday functioning of public life to a stand still or by hauling someone the court. It is meaningless act, specially as it is barely "functioning". These are not expressions of any genuine grievance but simply another means of blackmailing the civil society.
The naive, of which there are 180 millions, have nothing better to do, are always ready to go with the flow. Every, strike, ban, dharna in their imagination has big light at the end of the tunnel, brighter than a million suns shinging together. They get their halla gulla spree and some arsony as a side attraction. Nothing costructive is achieved.
Those pulling the strings are informed by their lackys that the campaign was successful, urging them to move on the next one. It is a vicious circle.
In reality we are stomping on the same spot if not not slipped down a few rungs even further back.
We have become far more callous to react to even the grossest form of protest even as those by the Hazaras.
A good article, but it could have been written for the world. The Pakistan Government is continually planning for war as is Israel, the US, UK, EU, Australia, etc, etc, etc. Fibre optics. Who has has it? Good education. Who has it? Good hospitals. Who has them, and if they do who can afford them? Good bathroom facilities. Who has them? Decent kitchens. Who has them? Of course, all the above countries have marvelous, ridiculously expensive military equipment costing billions, but the average housewife, particularly in the sub-continent, has to put up with sub-standard household equipment. In retrospect, the bottom fifty per cent are just getting by when in effect they could be doing very well if only the various governments could ever get themselves to develop empathy and face true reality instead of the current make believe world they have created for us. I would like to think a flotation device would work, but methinks we require people in Government everywhere with brains which have a slight chance of working. After perusing the crop who have been running the world for the last hundred years or so, and what appears to be the latest 20 year genetically modified generation I am not overly optimistic.
Interestingly similar conclusion was stated by another learned man from India way back.
"PAK is a jelly state- M.J.Akbar"
Even when Hazara refused to bury their dead, PAK was not mobilized. Apathy has become a norm.