Democracies in poor third world nations, including India and Pakistan, are neither truly democratic nor transparent.
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA, US: This is with reference to Ayesha Siddiqa’s article of September 26. Democracies in poor third world nations, including India and Pakistan, are neither truly democratic nor transparent. The number of years of uninterrupted democratic rule in India has not improved governance or reduced corruption. Like Pakistani politicians, most Indian politicians have also used their election wins to significantly enrich themselves, according to their own pre-election declarations of assets.
With Pakistan’s feudal-dominated political class, the men and women from the same feudal families have returned to parliament in every election held since 1947 under both military and/or civilian rule. Rather than dismantle the feudal system, the military governments have used these feudal politicians to maintain a facade of democracy to avoid being labeled as a ‘dictatorship’ and isolated by the international community. However, the military rulers in Pakistan have managed the economy much better and created significant job opportunities for the rural poor to leave the feudal slavery and go to cities to improve their lives. Hence, Pakistan is now much more urbanised and more middle class than its ‘democratic’ neighbour India. This augurs well for the future of real, accountable democracy and eventual better governance in Pakistan when the feudals will be sufficiently weakened to allow democracy to thrive in an urban middle class nation.
Riaz Haq
Published in The Express Tribune, September 28th, 2010.
