National aspirations vs protests and demos

I often wonder what if all the dictators of the world such as Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini could see in future. Fast forward five to ten years of their lives and rule and see how the suffering, pain, destruction and death they supervised came to nothing. The autocratic and totalitarian regimes that all the dictators led in the past and still lead are a slap in the face of humanity. Most of the Third World countries today are neither democracies nor autocracies but are on the pathway or in the process of becoming either of the two. Pakistan is no different and it is up to its people to decide which pathway they want to take - become a totalitarian state or a modern, welfare democratic state. I ask this question at a very critical time - a time when the most popular political party of the country has decided to resort to nationwide protests as the last resort to showcase its public support and reclaim access to political power and rule in the country to create what it promises a modern, welfare democratic state.

I have always believed that to know is to understand and to understand anything, right questions must always be asked. Autocracies, dictatorships and totalitarian regimes have always been the kind of regimes that never like to be questioned. They think that questions lead to troubles. But we live in an information age and as of 2024 the median age in Pakistan is 20.4 years which is 6 years lesser than the global median age of 30.6 years. If 50% of Pakistani population is less than 20 years, how can we ever progress if we don't allow our young generation to have uninterrupted access to global information and ask all the right questions and seek all the right answers in the pursuit of truth?

In today's world information and technological revolutions are throwing up great social, political and economic challenges and it is up to us to consider how we take up these challenges - as an opportunity or as a threat. If we take up these challenges as an opportunity, we will surely be on the right side of the history and on a path that will lead from the gap to the core - the core obviously being the developed world. But if we will consider these challenges as a threat and build firewalls and defence mechanisms to fight information revolution then we will gradually retrograde as a society and ultimately become irrelevant and dysfunctional and live and die in the gap. We must prepare our young generation to treat information technology as a great opportunity and for that we must prepare them to know why living under a totalitarian regime is not only a thing of the past but also an absolute recipe of pain and disaster.

Our national aspiration must guide us to find right answers to some of the very urgent pending questions. Do we need self-correcting mechanisms to establish, flourish and help our democracy to become sustainable? Is societal activism a bad thing? How can we handle information revolution and the change that it brings with it? How can the exploitation by elite end to create a just and fair society? Lastly, do we want to live under a totalitarian or a democratic regime?

All totalitarian regimes consider themselves as infallible, and as during the Stalinist era such regimes want to not only control but micromanage people's lives. Such regimes seek all the power they can get, abhor separation of power as a concept and instead create regime's own self-surviving apparatus. Stalin created such an apparatus called a 'triple self-sustaining apparatuses' built on his hold and control of the government machinery, secret police and his red army. In totalitarian regimes, self-correcting mechanisms in society become a casualty; and although decisions are made with speed and are easily reinforced, such decisions may not be in the collective interest of the people. Preserving the created order is the mission statement of such regimes that sets ambitious goals that may not be necessarily achievable. Such regimes end up stifling truth to maintain order and, like Stalin's, creates a system in which all information must pass through a central hub and in the process create an ossification effect. In medical science it means that blood flows only through one valve and if that valve shuts down it results in a heart attack. Unlike democracy that promises the inclusivity of common people totalitarian regimes promote and create the exclusivity of elite and a culture of elite exploitation in society. People are the real consumers of the effects of the types of regimes under which they are ruled and under which they live and spend their lives. Stalinist type regimes coerce and oppress people to take away from them what they want - most importantly liberty and freedom whereas democracy is designed to create a fair and just society and give people what they desire. Democracies all over the world consider that access to unfiltered information is the right of the people and the youth and society is damaged more when free pursuit of truth is not allowed as a government policy.

Totalitarian regimes would go to any extent to ensure preservation of order. People's right to assembly and speech are deprived because it is considered that political demands come from the people that are free and societal activism leads to social disorder. History tells us that societal activism has always led to social disorders but from those social disorders have always emerged a free country created by the free people basing on the majority's ideas, opinions and interests.

Education never makes us free but being free makes us educated. We cannot afford to descend the iron curtains, the ideological curtain and the silicon curtain on our people and divide them more and more. Unless we lift all these curtains and allow society to be free, we will never progress and continue to offer our young generations least opportunities to make their lives better. Our youth is our pride and our responsibility. We cannot afford to mistreat them. They deserve an autocracy that is heading towards democracy not an autocracy that is pushing itself in the direction of becoming a totalitarian state.