The potato revolution

If revolution ever comes to Pakistan, it would likely fail the very goals and ideals it’s based on.

Revolution is in the air. We’ve been witness to many. Within living memory, there was the Iranian one; it toppled a ruthless autocratic regime and replaced it with another ruthless autocratic regime. Then we saw the yellow one; a long-reigning despot was ousted and his wife’s prodigious shoe collection became salacious public knowledge. Not long after there came the velvet one; a playwright known for satire and absurdism was propelled to power. In more recent times, we had the orange one; a mysteriously poisoned and resultantly disfigured dissident snatched power in its wake, appointing his co-revolutionary, a lady with movie-star looks and a medieval hairdo, as his deputy. The Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia last month — triggered by a grieved, self-immolating fruit vendor and thousands of e-savvy social networkers — crashed on to Egypt with full force and eventually forced the ruling despot out. It doesn’t have an enduring epithet or emblem yet, but the current revolution saw Days of Rage and of Departure, mirrored, to varying degrees, in Sudan, Jordan, Algeria and Yemen. Revolutions are happening so fast these days we’re running out of appropriate monikers. Maybe, like for hurricanes and other meteorological convulsions, there should be an international naming system for political upheavals as well. Imagine: We could have the Ivan Uprising, the Katrina Revolution — and no, the latter would have nothing to do with a saucy dance number from across our border.

Rabble-rousers, rumour-mongers, alarmists and wishful thinkers across the nation have jumped on the revolutionary bandwagon: They’re busy drawing parallels between Pakistan and Egypt, gloating on the infectiousness of the ongoing Middle East unrest and wondering aloud whether such a thing could spill over to Pakistan. This entire discussion — if we’re a bit circumspect and not driven by ratings-based sensationalism — is beside the point. The question is not whether the time is ripe for a revolution, nor whether such a thing could occur. The real question is: What happens after the revolution? What’s next? In a place like Pakistan — given our circumstances and predicament — a revolution would only bring more of the same. It would be status quo, dressed up and cosmeticised. Whatever politico-military disposition such an upheaval throws up, it is unlikely to lower food prices or raise buying power, nor will it bring an early end to the various loads we’re shedding, and nor will extremism, bigotry, violence, lawlessness and corruption — all rampant and systemic now — abate because of it. There are no quick fixes, no panaceas, no magic wands. The deus ex machina the more wishful among us are hoping for would never come. The same, unfortunately, is true for Egypt. Given the enduring stranglehold of the quasi-military oligarchy on Egyptian political life, the democracy most are dreaming about is likely to be an elusive, ersatz one, much like ours. The concern here is not Pakistan going Egypt’s way, it’s Egypt eventually going Pakistan’s.

Inspiring images from Egypt aside, the solution to Pakistan’s myriad problems is not a copycat uprising; what we need is a democratic and reformist approach, in the hope that, eventually, through trial and a lot of error, we’d manage to evolve into a progressive, less dysfunctional state. And even that is an optimistic picture.

If revolution ever comes to Pakistan — let’s call it the potato revolution — it may well be prompted by some veggie vendor’s act of desperation or perhaps by skyrocketing grocery prices or even because it may finally goad perennially apathetic, TV-guzzling, couch-loving ‘analysts’ into action — it would likely fail the very goals and ideals it’s based on. In the grand sweep of history, it would be mere small fry.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 22^nd, 2011.