A better Pakistan

It was one of those just-before-getting-up moments, lying there with the days list getting unscrambled, disentangled from the what-shall-I-have-for-breakfast debate and suddenly there it was, shining out of the murk. How did we get here? No this is not about the nature of the universe though ultimately it may be no less contentious, but about us, all of us, the 200 million plus people who live in Pakistan? And if this is Naya Pakistan and I am pretty sure it is not at least not yet — how did we get here?

Having the benefit of 20/20 hindsight that stretches back almost a quarter century is a wonderful, if selective, thing to have. It tends to be made up of notable peaks and memorable troughs with large stretches of grey not-very-much in between. There is comfort and discomfort. Unease and even fear. And of late… not very much happening. Not much at all. Nothing much by way of blood-soaked headlines, though there are still appalling atrocities committed by those that would see the downfall of the state if they could but they have not prevailed. The state is probably more secure now than at any time I have lived in Pakistan. The terrorists are still there and they score from time to time and there is still no countervailing narrative that is nationally developed and owned — but terrorism is to all intents and purposes a busted flush. At least for now.

The state has not failed. In truth it never came close. Even when the Taliban were supposedly at the gates of Islamabad — remember that? — there was no truly existential threat. The bad boys were 60kms down the road and would never last beyond hours if it came to a one-on-one scrap with the army, who would have eaten them for breakfast.

Then there are the dictators and the politicians. A rum lot for the most part. Lying, cheating, thieving, deceptive to a fault and mostly bereft of what might be regarded as an essential suite of moral values. They may or may not have looted and plundered the national piggy-bank, elevated their brain-dead relatives to positions of power and influence, bullied us and generally pushed us all around when it suited them. They have messed about with the Constitution, reduced parliament at various times to little more than a cardboard cutout and here’s the odd bit… they never made such a mess of things that the whole house of cards came a-tumbling down and here is the hold your breath moment. Things. Got. Better.

Yup… things got better. A lot of things would have got a lot better a lot sooner had we not been so comprehensively harmed by this bunch of snolleygosters, but the fact is that not all governments made a complete dogs breakfast of it and yes, some of them did stuff that actually worked out quite well. Even Musharaff. Yes him. Him. The current financial cliffhanger is quite definitely at the door of the previous government but even as we teeter yet again on the brink of who knows what there is no sense that it is all going to worms tomorrow. Systems are not collapsing more adjusting. And there is this thing called Naya Pakistan. Except that there isn’t. But there might be.

It took me a while to join the dots but here is what might have happened. Things don’t get better of their own accord stuff has to happen. You know… stuff. Things. Over time islets of stuff and things tend to grow in number and they are attracted to one another. The molecular physics of societal change. Those islets gain mass and traction in a symbiotic process that probably did not involve much by way of managed synergy, though there may have been a few in governance who spotted what was happening. And what was happening was that stuff and things were getting together in the minds of the electorate, not that they were collectively conscious of this, and that when it came to putting the cross on the ballot paper there it was, the enabling environment that made it possible for Naya Pakistan was the creation of the better Pakistan that had grown down the years of fumbling and bumbling and cock-ups — into a born-again change agent.

So where is all this better you are banging on about Mr Cork? Look around you Lazees and Germs. It’s all over the place. Even in places where better is thinner on the ground like rural areas and massively under-resourced or developed cities. That 20/20 hindsight shows me that the shape of poverty has changed. The very nature of poverty in my own home village has been changed by the recent availability of potable water to every household. Nobody is directly richer for having a tap, but the number of babies that are dying in their early months has dropped dramatically as fewer contract lethal gastro-intestinal infections from polluted water.

Go north and see how mobile telephony has changed the lives of farmers in remote valleys who can now liaise directly with down-country wholesalers, and they are no longer beholden to the mafia for crop extraction and yes… they can get accurate weather forecasts. On my own doorstep the city has shifted in a decade from being a dusty backwater to being a vibrant even booming place, with low unemployment, low crime rates and there are would you believe plans to build a multiscreen cinema. Good heavens… whatever next!

I’m not saying it’s fixed because it isn’t and it will not be within my lifetime. What I am saying is that planned or not the evolution of better Pakistan was midwife to the newly-born Naya Pakistan so beloved of the current crop of scallywags who are at the helm. The trick is going to be turning Naya into something tangible, joining the dots of better Pakistan in such a way as to get better better that in turn accretes to Naya. Well blow me down. Tootle-pip!

Published in The Express Tribune, October 4^th, 2018.

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