Going further and further behind

Science is still talking and learning about our ancestors but generally there is a consensus that the first humans existed about six million years ago. When one considers that we were only one billion people in 1750 and grew to become 3 billion people in 1950 and doubled in 50 years to showcase a population of 6 billion — the increase is enormous and scary. Last ten years the population has increased by another 1.5 billion people, and at 7.5 billion population the world today is packed liked it was never before.

If anything Thomas Friedman, the New York Times and Foreign Affairs columnist, back in 2008 wrote on the subject in his book Hot, Flat and Crowded and debating how global warming (hot), globalisation (flat) and population growth (crowded) was affecting the world. He proposed solutions and recommended how economic and political structures in the countries can change to embrace the essential clean energy and green technology industries. What I want to write today is not about that change but about the quality of leadership needed today in the world to shield it against the rising threats. The world has grown up and if democracy is continued to be understood and handled by ‘toddlers’ how will we cope with the ever rising challenges?

Is democracy in Pakistan still an adolescent? Has it not learnt enough lessons and grown up. Last time that I wrote about ‘politics not being a child’s play’ it was with the point of view of my concern about children of our political families leading the politics of their parties under the shadow of political experience that is ready to ‘guide and supervise them’ but never lead. Today the question I raise is why can’t politics wake up, be more responsible and instead of wasting precious time allow the government and the state to function? Why keep dragging it backwards? Who are these people who under the garb of democracy have pulled us further and further behind?

It is a very interesting concept to imagine and look at one’s state in ‘twenty years intervals’. What would we look like in the next twenty years? Than the next twenty which is in the second half of the 21^st century. Predictably, the state will remain but most of us will not. What is permanent is the state and its interests, we are all mortals destined to leave. Our big mistake is to view the passing clouds as permanent, and it is in this context that I wonder why our politics doesn’t think ahead and allows this country to move ahead and develop and grow. Weren’t there things that at a given time looked so prevailing, dominant and so permanent (Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, imperial Japan, USSR etc to name a few) but didn’t they change with an absolute and stunning rapidity right in front of our eyes? So in politics, like in life nothing is predetermined. What you plan, what you hope and what you do and what ultimately transpires is never the same.

My concern is about our leadership, not only the one that sits in the cabinet but those that climb the containers in old age or sit or stand on the roof top of land cruisers in the young age. Are they thinking of the next twenty years and the next and the next, about our future generations? Do they ever think about the intended and unintended consequences of their actions and how those actions keep dragging us back?

It is said that grand strategy starts where policy ends. When after WWII, the US took the policy decision of stopping Soviet and communist expansionism, all its economic , military and diplomatic efforts were geared up to implement its grand strategy of containing communism and that it successfully did throughout the period of cold war. In Pakistani politics the grand strategy of all political parties seems to seek only one political end — conflict. Can one seriously look up to such a leadership to solve our problems? To think in terms of 20 years cycles, most can’t even see beyond their noses. Ideally politics should be about those processes that should contribute to national power because in this very hot, crowded and flat world, countries have very small margins of error (the room that any country has for making mistakes).

Why doesn’t the Bhuttos, the Sharifs, the Imrans and the Maulanas of our world realise that the countries of the developed world have huge margins of error and countries like us have almost none? Yet all they do is not allow each other to govern and deliver. The opposition’s goal today is not to stabilise but destabilise politics, not realising that when they will be in power the same will be done to them by the opposition of that time. Where does the buck stop? Who will stop this good-for-nothing see-saw of politics in this country?

We wasted so much time and effort and instead of making this country a beautiful place to live we are still strategising and figuring out ways how to manage it. Could it be as unmanageable as it is today if our previous ‘twenty years intervals’ were properly managed? Even today our political system is defined by how the government in power is pitted against the opposition on streets. That for the country means continued political disorder and chaos.

George Friedman in his New York Times bestseller book, The Next 100 Years — A Forecast for 21^st Century writes, “Pakistan is the second largest Muslim state. It is also a nuclear power. But it is so internally divided that it is difficult to see how it could evolve into a major power or, geographically, how it could spread its power, bracketed by Afghanistan to the west, China and Russia to the north, and India to the east. Between instability and geography, Pakistan is not going to emerge as a leading Muslim state.”

That is George Friedman’s assumption made in 2010. In the ten years, politically we have done nothing to prove him wrong.

Lastly, I read somewhere that the difference between an average and a great person is how they spend their leisure time. This country is already entertainment-starved and from 7PM to 11PM all that the private TV channels do is promote political contests in which the only winner in the end is the host himself. I do think that like India we need to push forward more English channels and stop these news channels from showering upon us day after day predetermined and unimaginative political debates that are wastage of the leisure time of majority of people.

I don’t know when the Hamid Mirs, the Asma Sherazis and the Kashif Abbasis of our media world would decide to retire. I don’t know whether we will become a great power, a medium or average power in the years to come but with the same TV anchors explaining the changes, the last 20 years of our cycle and the next 20 would hear and look the same.

Both politics and media need to give way to another set of mind, another set of eyes and ears to take over. To see, hear and do the things with different perspective. Maybe that will bring a change.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 6^th, 2020.

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