Murphy’s Law and Pakistan

Murphy’s law is an epigram or adage which states that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. In an extended form, it posits that things will go wrong at the worst possible moments. It has been called a mock law. But to this scribe, the only thing it mocks is the ground reality of Pakistan, where it seems to acquire the certainty of laws of physics. Take gravity, for example. That which drops will hit the ground. That which can go wrong will go wrong. I honestly do not see a difference.

It may sound cynical to you, but it really isn’t. If you draw a regression line showing the state’s capacity to govern between 1947 and today, you will see a steady but steep slope downwards. No state, let alone a post-colonial one, can put up with so many black swan jolts and a constantly multiplying population. Let me qualify this last bit a little. Suppose you are the only earning hand in a household of four and have difficulty meeting all family needs. One day, you return home to realise that twelve more permanent guests have arrived, and you are now responsible for their upkeep, too. And while you heroically rise to the occasion by taking up more jobs, the number of guests keeps increasing steadily. The beautiful large house you inherited from your parents, your only reason to feel a part of the affluent society, is now unkempt, crowded and falling apart. This is that kind of thing.

However, it is not just about the state’s inability to handle population growth, find more resources, or maintain modern infrastructure. Something critical seems to be missing among us. Let us call it imagination. Yes, that elusive quality that enables you to bring together disparate elements and combine them into one holistic solution.

Let’s start with the constitution. A constitution is a nation’s roadmap to success. That is why the framers of the constitution worldwide take so many pains to get it right. If your paradigm is unreliable, what are you supposed to accomplish on earth? Pakistan has a constitution, too. Owing to our checkered history, it resembles what the world of Harry Potter calls the room of requirement or, in the common parlance, the come-and-go room. Because this constitution was repeatedly changed due to a never-ending tug of war between military rulers and civilian politicians, it resembles a poorly done patchwork quilt.

To see how this document frames the citizens’ relationship with the state, look no further than the section on fundamental rights. You might be surprised to see how frequently the exception “subject to any reasonable restriction imposed by law” appears in these articles. It is as if, right at the time of conferring these rights upon you, the state has decided that you cannot handle these rights, and the sooner they are taken back, the better it is. There are good days and bad days. This is the state of affairs during the good days when your fundamental rights are not suspended due to an emergency or martial law.

One clause gave me quite a chuckle. “No person shall be subjected to torture for the purpose of extracting evidence.” Get this? For the purpose of extracting evidence. While using torture, please make sure your purpose is not to extract evidence. Bless you!

In the past two years alone, you have seen enough operationalisation of these flaws when someone does something new, and the constitution is silent. What are the consequences for a ruling party if it suspends an ongoing vote of no-confidence and dissolves the assembly? Silence. Or when a politician wanted by law shows up at the court surrounded by a huge mob and either fails to or refuses to step into the court? Or when a Chief Justice fixes all important political cases before an arbitrarily constituted bench? More silence. Or when a parliament codifies many laws when half of its members have resigned, and these seats are allowed to remain vacant? Or that a caretaker government overstays its welcome and constitutionally mandated term and even makes laws? Deafening silence.

This absence of imagination becomes more pronounced when it comes to existential issues like the fight against terrorism. There is a non-negotiable blanket ban on suicides in Islam. But it took us 18 years to come up with a consensus edict to declare suicide bombing haram. Likewise, we still haven’t been able to devise the judicial infrastructure to prosecute known terrorists and have to resort to disruptions like military courts. We cannot seem to stop complaining about a thankless world that refuses to acknowledge our sacrifices in the war on terror, and yet we take no pains to tell the stories of our bravest men and women to our people, let alone the world. Not convinced? Have you seen any television dramas about the lives and sacrifices of any of these heroes? Were there no heroes in the longest war of this country’s history?

Why is it that when it comes to narrative building against terrorism, the country’s over fifty news channels either fail to or refuse to play ball? Yet, authorities keep issuing new licences to news channels instead of pushing for creating more wholesome and balanced content like youth and children’s channels. How are these news channels financially viable when nothing else is?

Finally, regarding the economy. The country’s private sector seems to have given up all agency and volition in case of exploring new vistas. The state has been harping on about the documentation of the economy for decades. Much too much data exists in various government registers ranging from municipal zoning, local healthcare and police authorities to the provincial and federal government bodies. But somehow, retrieving all this data from multiple silos and compiling it has proven more arduous than rocket science. Does any of this make sense?

Where working-class people commit suicide out of the fear of the consequences of failing to pay bills on time, the rich walk away with mighty exemptions on the import of luxury items. Where the rich only give to the rich, the state refuses to see its poor, and they all gang up on the working class, perhaps complaining about lack of imagination seems an understatement. This, then, appears to be a case of the deficit of the collective will to live. Why shouldn’t Murphy’s law dictate the ground realities, then?