Development by valuing individual

Comparative analysis of development and underdevelopment of regions, countries, areas and even localities would reveal that wherever an individual’s needs, emotions and aspirations are valued that place gets holistically developed as a natural corollary. Respect, welfare and care of an individual are cornerstones of policies of the developed and truly civilised world. We in Pakistan have failed to establish a moderate, tolerant, pluralistic and thus a liberal and democratic society fundamentally because we could not give the individual its due respect and rights. One of the main postulates of the liberal political and social theory is individualism as opposed to any form of collectivism. According to liberal political philosophers, individualism is of immense social value. But in Pakistan the power-political elite have always considered the individual interest of least significance and tried to override it by emphasising on the elusive and largely intangible concept of ‘national interest’, ‘religion’ and ‘society’.

This situation is typical of a totalitarian, authoritarian and an illiberal society. In contemporary Pakistan this condition has triggered two noteworthy macro-sociological trends. Firstly, seeing their interest trampled under the obscure notion of ‘national interest’, which mainly has been the interest of the ruling elite and clergy, more and more individuals and groups of individuals got totally disenchanted of the political and state system. Secondly, innumerable individuals and clusters of individuals, after failing to find institutionalised means to realise their interest and get social justice, developed extremist tendencies.

The practice by Pakistani civilian and military bureaucracy and their allied pseudo political groups and leaders of disregarding individual interests created such political-governance structures which could not provide basic services to the individuals leading to a situation once described by John Stuart Mill, “but where everything is done through the bureaucracy, nothing to which the bureaucracy is really adverse can be done at all”. Although the sitting government of PTI, led by PM Imran Khan, who himself at least has not been part of the ruling elite, is trying to introduce reforms and has given respect to individuals by making institutions serve them, it is faced with huge challenges. Khan himself has stated that the bureaucracy, which has been hand-in-glove with the traditional political-power elite was impeding the process of reforms. Analysis of the PTI victory would reveal that this is largely due to the individual young male and female support as they were disenchanted with the elite dominated power political structure. If Khan’s government is not able to initiate and circumvent the traditional power structures and make the state institutions to serve the individual needs and responds to fulfil their aspirations, the system would get reverse and the individual would be worse off.

The existing tribal social structure and collectivist culture prevalent in Pakistani as well as its values and norms are in conflict with the values of individualism. Here individualism may sound something anti-social or something based on self-centredness but this is not the case. Individualism means recognising the value, needs and aspirations of people and taking practical steps to fulfilling them with all respect to other individuals and their respective needs and desires. The tribal structure and collectivist culture in Pakistan is imperceptibly explained as Biradri-Panchayat system in Punjab; Wadera system in Sindh; Sardari system in Balochistan and outright tribalism in the erstwhile Fata. In Pakistan the individual has been subjected at different levels to values, norms, likes and dislikes of family, clan, community and the state. These social and legal constraints have had a strong destabilising impact on individuals everywhere as they denied individuals a social space to develop their personalities, come up with their aims and devise ingenious ways to make use of their faculties and natural talents so as to pursue their interest through a process of self-expression and self-realisation.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, November 12^th, 2018.

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