Injustice and Pakistan

Although life is inherently anarchic and unpredictable, it is a phenomenological experience worth cherishing. While it might not be a good idea for some, the inbuilt anarchy adds diverse colours and a bittersweet taste to human life. If life had an inbuilt and common roadmap, it would have been a dull, repetitive and plagiarised experience. However, absolute anarchy would make life lifeless by defying harmonic and ordered existence. Therefore, a fulfilling and ordered experience demands putting life on a predictable path by reducing, if not undoing altogether, anarchy. And courtesy of their untapped intellectual potential, humankind deals with life’s anarchy by directing their life through predictable patterns. These patterns called laws are the product of human reflections, mediation, experiences, conditioning and deductions spanning millennia.

Notwithstanding the positive societal outcomes, the laws are subjected to frequent violations. To deal with these violations, enforcement mechanisms and positive and negative sanctions accompany the legislation. The philosophy behind punishing deviant behaviour is mainly twofold: to retribute or redress the aggrieved and to deter more delinquent acts. However, deterrence works only when the law gets indiscriminately applied to all and sundry. Therefore, the rule of law demands its implementation in earnest and it is the administration of the justice system of a country that has a central role in this end.

Societies that evolved independent, inclusive and efficient justice mechanisms enjoy the rule of law and subsequent unparalleled dividends on socio-political and economic fronts. However, those with inefficient, controlled and compromised administration of the justice system defeat the very notion of justice and invite the lawless notion of the rule of might. Unfortunately, Pakistan is one of them, and for many reasons.

Justice in Pakistan is almost a myth and an exaggerated notion. This is because the administration of the justice system is constructed in colonial remnants, controlled and elite-owned and operated. Most of the components of the justice system have colluded with the hybrid elite for vested interest. Justice, therefore, becomes what the powerful stakeholders want it to be. Lawlessness is becoming the new norm, and wrong is the new right. Justice has assumed the shape of a luxurious commodity available only to the powerful and affluent.

Resultantly, the country is back on the track of inherent anarchy that the earliest societies had to live in. Disorder defines the country today. Even the hope for a better life is thinning with each passing day. As justice is only available to the powerful and parts of the status quo, the masses are left with nothing but to brave systematic aggression.

Desperation, depression, uncertainty and a growing sense of insecurity define the lives of most people. The gravity of this public misery is increasing over the day with no end in sight. The economy is in the life support of oxygen from IMF and friendly countries. Investors have almost lost confidence in the system. Heist on the scarce employment opportunities through connections and auctions worth millions are a usual business. Poverty is putting nearly half of the people on the brink of starvation. Inflation has made people’s lives miserable. Starvation, alienation and growing frustration have been turning people to experience the tribulations of hell on Earth.

Moreover, the resurgence of terrorism and the growing lawlessness have added to people’s insecurity. The polarised and pampered media has lost sight of public suffering. The compromised clergy has bet on political stakes more than on the public well-being that they often claim. The bureaucracy loves to play in the hands of their patrons rather than serve the masses.

Against the backdrop of growing hopelessness, those who can afford to do so are migrating abroad, leaving behind those who have nothing but to endure injustice and tragic life. Resultantly, the aggrieved and oppressed suffer in silence and pray for divine justice and retribution, as they have lost faith in the drowsy, distorted and selective justice system of the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 12^th, 2023.

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