Boot on the table

Politics needs to join hands with military, allow boots to run after threats on ground rather than be placed on table

Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) was a leading Arab historian best known for his book Muqadimmah (Introduction). He discusses in his book politics, institutions, economy and society but most importantly theorises about two existing conflicts in the society — the first between the desert (in our case rural life) and the urban society, and the second between the rulers and the ruled. In the first conflict, Ibn Khaldun suggests that the odds are stacked in favour of the desert because of asabiyyah which means ‘social solidarity and group feeling’. To him asabiyyah is a product of the ‘cage of norms’ that helps preserve ‘political equality’ in nomadic societies.

The moment a transition from the rural to the urban life takes place, this cage of norms that binds and regulates the rural life unwinds and retreats and leaves the migrants to the urban areas free from the bounds of group and societal solidarity. However, having moved and stepped up closer to the state, being free and on his own, what the migrant unfortunately discovers is not the state but a feeling of more and more hopelessness and statelessness, in a place where ‘everyone is crowded in the centre’ unlike in his rural community and clan where one is answerable not only to the family but to the entire community. Ibn Khaldun’s theory showcases an important idea and that is the linkage of the first conflict (rural and the urban) with the second conflict (ruler and the ruled). Any theory is most useful if it offers a new way of thinking.

However, even 600 years after the death of Ibn Khaldun the social contract that should have bridged the gap between the ruler and the ruled in Pakistan in a more meaningful way still stays lopsided in favour of the ruler.

Dragged forward oligarchially rather than democratically, this lopsided balance of power has progressively drained our society from the very values, norms and ethics that the ‘the cage of norms’ in rural areas still control and regulate. The important functions of a state are to provide services to the people and to build the infrastructure.

However, our cosmopolitan city and the biggest city Karachi which accommodates over 24 million people is a classic example of how it suffers from the depravity of both — services as well as infrastructure. Who are our state builders? Why have we failed to build the capacity of the state (its institutions, its bureaucracy)? Did we get this wrong by mistake or by purpose? Why the state fails to punish those ‘state builders’ who did everything else but build the state? Should we not question the very vision and ability of our state builders? As the space between the institutionalised and non-institutionalised politics widens, what was granted to us by the Father of the Nation through institutionalised means (elections and assemblies), we are fast losing through the conduct of more and more non-institutionalised politics. Can this or any ‘political clutter’ that we see as a government govern? In a state where a convict can proceed abroad for treatment; where justice is delayed and denied; where the people are made so confused that they can no longer make any distinction between the guilty and the innocent; where the state preys on the society, and the poor gets poorer and the rich gets richer; and where executing electoral reforms is like planning to go on the moon; where devising a public beneficial educational system is more rhetoric than policy; where political allies blackmail rather than unite and consolidate the government; and where those who should be members of a team directing and ordering ‘when and where to send boots on ground’ place them instead on tables, can we have a semblance of any political balance let alone the balance of power between the ruler and the ruled? James Madison (1751-1863), a statesman, lawyer, diplomat and the founding father who served as the fourth president of United States, famously remarked, “You must first enable the government to control the governed and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

Who could that enabler be in Pakistan? Is politics that places the ‘boot on the table’ also ready to accept any role that the boot-wearing institution may perform to help the government control the governed? The role of the boots to kick out the threats and the insecurity these threats create in a hybrid warfare environment imposed on us has become more important and pronounced.

Politics needs to join hands with the military over and not under the table and also allow the boots to run after the threats on ground rather than be placed on table. Is running from or to our troubles the role of politics? This running is well described by Lewis Carroll as ‘Red Queen effect’ in his book Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. Alice in this wonderland gets to run with the Queen; and if Alice is the public, and Queen is the politics, it is interesting to hear the conversation between the two.

Alice observed that despite both of them running hard, the trees and the other things around them never seem to change the places; and finally when the Queen called a halt, the running Alice asked her, “Why, I do believe we have been under this tree the whole time! Everything’s just as it was!” “Of course it is,” said the Queen. “What would you have it?” Alice replied, “You would generally get somewhere else if you ran very fast for a very long time as we have been doing.”

The Queen replied, “Here it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place.” Generally, in Pakistan the people can keep on running to find that they hardly change their place and remain at the same place. It’s not because the people don’t run hard, they want to, it’s the Queen (rulers) that has done and will continue to do everything to uphold, preserve and maintain its position and that is only possible if those being ruled are kept underprivileged, under educated, wanting and deprived. No matter how hard people run they can do little to alter the balance of power that exists between them and the ruling elite.

Few days back, Federal Minister Faisal Vawda placed a boot during a TV talk-show. Maybe that is the actual reason why that boot was placed on the table. A reflection of how tiresome, on ground, wearing and running with the boot in this political system has become. That was one tired boot on the table showcasing, if nothing else, than running with a stagnant political system.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 19^th, 2020.

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