Being responsible in fixing the system

What makes one happy in life is not money, power or wealth, it is not even recognition or societal status. What makes one truly happy is the nature of a man — the nature of a man not judged by standards of good or evil but the nature of a man of being reasonable or unreasonable. A reasonable man will seldom be unhappy. This stands true not only for individuals but states as well. I have been trying to overcome my great disappointment in how the state dealt with the TLP protesters; but, reasonable as all of us must be, we must accept the many challenges confronted by the state on numerous fronts. We must give required leverage to the state and believe that it is the best placed entity to deliberate and decide on the method or approach to deal with a crisis — be it Machiavellian, narcist or humanist. We might disagree with how the state may handle a problem but we may never have the complete picture and the entire information to understand the complexity and enormity of a problem faced by the state.

There are many definitions of strategy but the best that I like is that “it’s a bridge between desire and possibility”. Napoleon actually defined strategy as the “art and science of utilising time and space in military and diplomatic manner”. Essentially, four things stand out at the end of the recent standoff between the government and the TLP: Firstly, all the actors involved in the entire enterprise have not been reasonable; secondly, the nation has been left unhappy and frustrated; thirdly, we lost huge credibility in front of the outside world as a country that under the present condition can hardly be considered as a destination for foreign investment; and lastly, now that the state has bought the Napoleonic time and space, will it utilise that to ensure that reason and rationality is able to defeat unreasonableness and irrationality?

Tahir Square in Egypt is also called a “Martyr Square”. This major public town square in Egypt much like D-Chowk in Islamabad is a location of political demonstrations. One such demonstration in 2011 led to the resignation and removal of President Hosni Mubarak. The movement which led to the removal of a man in power for 29 years was different because it was based on a clear demand — a life or death demand as people refused to move until that demand was met. What happened later when the military took over is a different debate, but what I want to highlight is that the stakes for a government and a state become entirely different when people are ready to risk their lives for a cause.

I started this piece by explaining how being reasonable can help us to be happy as a group, a society or a nation. The classic European narrative of enlightenment was that reason, science and technology will lead to a fairer and more just world. The answer to the problem of diluting and mitigating extremism from our culture is generational and long-term. Some justified “despotism” by the state is also necessary to dilute the display of uncivilised behaviour in the immediate context but the long-term relief from the menace of extremism is only possible by ending the unjust system in the country. The same people who are beneficiaries of the old system and profited from it can never be expected to build a new system that can liberate the poor in our society. All these protests and demonstrations reflect the mass frustration that looks up hopelessly to the state’s pending promise of reform and liberation.

Prime Minister recently addressed the nation and announced a Rs120 billion subsidy programme, but he also said in his speech, “I request the two big families to bring half of the money they looted and took outside. Even if they bring half the money back, I promise the nation that I will slash the prices of all food items by half.” The Prime Minister shared with the nation his utopian idea and this type of utopian political thinking is bad because it never helps one to correctly judge the distance between reality and dreams.

Rutger C Bregman is a Dutch historian, economist and author. He is the author of many books including Utopia for Realist: How We can Build the Ideal World. While our Prime Minister is coming up with his utopian ideas to alleviate poverty in this country, Bregman is proposing to do the same at the world stage. To alleviate poverty in the underdeveloped world, he proposes the tearing down of the iron gates that are the national borders in the West and allowing those in the underdeveloped world to freely travel to the West. He believes that the global freedom of movement will expand the world economy by between 7% and 147%, bringing huge benefits to the underdeveloped world. He argues that, “if all the developed countries would let in just 3% more immigrants, the world’s poor would have $305 billion more to spend.” But these are all utopian ideas, and neither is the Western world going to tear down its iron gates nor is the money stacked outside by our politicians ever coming back to this country. So, what this country needs are not hopes but plans.

Scarcity in our country is not a problem, inequality is. Karl Marx considered capitalism as an evil but even he believed that the technological progress brought about by capitalism was essential to provide the abundance necessary for human liberation. Take the example of China, the nation “clothed itself in the red of communism” and may follow the dictates of Chairman Mao, but it is now firmly a capitalist country. China depends on the West for its prosperity and the people there understand that they can gain nothing by trying to foment a revolution. All the revolutionaries in this country must also be made to realise that we are the part of the “left behind” world and the solution to our problems is not in overturning the system but in being reasonable and trying to fix it.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 7^th, 2021.

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