Islamabad’s Anna Hazare

Pakistan’s Akhtar failed because his protest targeted the traditional elite and the corruption of the middle-class.

Has anyone heard of Pakistan’s very own Anna Hazare? His name is Jahangir Akhtar — a middle-class trader who went on a hunger strike to protest against corruption and plight of the poor in the country. Unfortunately, Akhtar barely managed to gather seven-10 people around him, at any given time, during the eight days of his hunger strike in September. Eventually, Akhtar was convinced to end his protest after a symbolic visit of a parliamentary group on September 21.

Perhaps his team was not good at marketing, as there was no media coverage of this event. In this age of information, it’s the media coverage that makes an event big or small. In the case of India, all the media groups, to pressure the Congress government (which they like far less than any other government), backed Anna Hazare. Also, numerous media stalwarts, who had an axe to grind with the government for being exposed in recent financial scams, got a chance to get even. Jahangir Akhtar was never so fortunate to get such media coverage, despite the fact that he had camped in front of the Islamabad Press Club. None of our big anchors considered the event worth their while. There are very few foreign journalists who had even heard about Akhtar’s protest. Interestingly, even those media groups that have an axe to grind with the government rallied around Akhtar. Nor did one see or hear of the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf or the Pakistan Ex-Servicemen Association — both entities that are extremely fired up to fight corruption — rallying around the man.

Actually, both India’s Anna Hazare and Pakistan’s Jahangir Akhtar tell the story of the middle-class bias from a different perspective. While Hazare’s successful show indicated how India’s middle-class will rally around a cause that simply attacked the traditional elite, Pakistan’s Akhtar failed because he did not limit his protest to the traditional elite but had wanted to include the corruption and extortion of the middle-class in his protest agenda. He had not just asked for an anti-corruption legislation but reduction in defence spending and turning Pakistan into a welfare state. It was easier for people amongst the Indian middle-class to rally around Hazare, whom some on the Indian media and academia suspect of having views that are right of centre, since he did not aim to challenge the national security paradigm. In fact, Hazare’s supporters have never gathered in the same fashion around other protesters like the Maipuri woman Irum Sharmila, who has been protesting for the past 10 years for the repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act used against ordinary people in India’s northeast and Kashmir.

Pakistan’s middle-class is no different. In fact, one of the prominent media groups, known for its bravado and capacity to remain controversial, insisted that Akhtar drop the reference to the defence budget and welfare state. In a country where the military and its intelligence apparatus is known for controlling and gagging, who would want to risk being part of a protest that demands reduction in the power of the deep state? Had it been an issue merely of political corruption, perhaps parties like the JI and the PTI would have gathered around to give a fillip to the protest. This is the same mentality that will not allow the civil society, including the media, to stand up to protest the heinous killings of the Hazara Shia and other minority groups and of innocent people in general, in Balochistan or elsewhere in the country.

Pakistan is experiencing the deliberate evolution of a new narrative that presupposes the country’s development due to the proliferation of the middle-class which is viewed as an engine of progress. Many books, which are highly recommended by ISPR, follow this line and talk about the civil-military bureaucracy as the engine of progress and enlightenment in the country. So, why bother to talk about their imperfections and corruption? Why make an effort to highlight the fact that a large part of this middle-class, especially the one which is part of the state, is one of the major impediments to Pakistan, becoming a welfare state where resources will be more evenly distributed across sectors and socio-economic classes. Sadly, the noble Jahangir Akhtar, who had the vision to link politician’s corruption with institutional corruption of the middle-class (who will eventually graduate to become the new elite), will remain alone. Economic deprivation is considered a lesser agenda than drone attacks and hence not worth protesting.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 25^th, 2011.