A challenge of our own making

Can you imagine how Pakistan’s handling of pandemic would be different with functional local govt?

Can you imagine how Pakistan’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic would be different with functional local governments? While they may not have had too much influence on the overall strategy — or lack thereof — they could have made the implementation of whatever steps the Centre and provinces announced far more effective than reports suggest they are. There are accounts aplenty of residents and markets in Covid-19 hotspots flouting the so-called ‘smart lockdown’. With a proper bottom-up governance model, the authorities would have found it far easier to convince residents to stay safe for their own sake. Since local governments continue to be eyewash, it is only natural that residents view government instructions with more than healthy scepticism.

The issue goes far beyond the confines of the pandemic as well. There is no bridge right now between the leaders who sit in assemblies, and the people they supposedly represent. All that connects the two is a vote which, our history with elections tells us, may or may not exist in aether. Even if one were to believe that our electoral process has no irregularity whatsoever and is the best of its kind in the world, without functional local governments the entire exercise is no better than a popularity contest. What is even the point of democracy, thinkers would ask.

It is a tragedy that successive elected governments, for all their talk of democracy and its ideals, are themselves allergic to the idea of real and effective local governments. Perhaps when they speak of parliament being supreme, they end up believing that it should exist like Mount Olympus, disconnected from us mere mortals. The pandemic will one day leave us after it is done inflicting its toll. One would hope frantically that those that claim to lead us would spend at least some time to draw the lessons in the aftermath. That is all one can do with the hand we have been dealt.