Rule through crisis?

Humankind tends to be sensitive to security and has an innate tendency to protest and resist any attempts aimed at disrupting their perceived sense of identity, peace and serenity by the powerful. The resistance, however, doesn't always emanate from the collective strength of a population but from a collective sense of identity shaped - over generations - by historical, cultural, social, economic and political forces, ultimately leading toward inclusive prosperity. The identity with prosperity, nevertheless, doesn't come unless it is voluntarily, selflessly and consistently pursued by the governance machinery and institutions that derive their legitimacy from, and are accountable to, the public.

For rulers harbouring dynastic, despotic or authoritarian ambitions, a nationalistic identity and unified sense of purpose pose risks in three distinct ways: it raises the threshold of popular resistance; threatens the ruling machinery's exclusive privileges and interests; and subjects that machinery to potential public accountability. Therefore, such rulers deliberately cultivate fluid, fragmented and amorphous identities among the populace - engineered to keep the population divided, disoriented and pliable. They manufacture chaos and crisis for masking their inefficacies and scapegoating their deliberate failures.

Pakistan, though a democracy in outlook, has essentially evolved an amorphous and fluid identity and national causes without a defined direction and is essentially entangled in and oscillates around the charged buzzword, the 'nazuk morr' or the critical juncture. The term captures more than a moment of transition - it has become a permanent alibi, recycled across decades to justify inaction, defer reform and deflect accountability. The junctures that the country has been through throughout history reflect the pursuit of vested interests by successive governments, notwithstanding their manifestoes, plans and policies.

Pakistan's political landscape has long been shaped by deliberate fragmentation - ethnic, sectarian and regional fault lines exploited by the powerful to maintain control. By keeping Baloch, Pashtun, Sindhi and Punjabi identities in perpetual tension, ruling elites prevent unified opposition. Religious extremism has similarly been weaponised, pitting sects against one another while deflecting accountability. The 1971 crisis, in which the denial of Bengali political representation triggered the breakup of the country, is perhaps the starkest historical proof of how manufactured division carries irreversible consequences.

The PPP's liberal ideals, the PML-N's democratic aspirations, the JUI's theocratic tendencies and the dictatorial rules have all, without exception, led to the critical junctures in tune with hard state. The juncture and the crisis, however, also serve the dynastic political tzars' interests in maintaining their power share, in that the manufactured chaos helps justify all that they deliberately withheld - precisely what they had repeatedly and loudly promised. It would not, therefore, be wrong to suggest that all political parties, their powerful patrons, their promises and their manifestos diverge along two intersections: one passes through palaces of power, perks and privileges; the other leads, inevitably, to the critical juncture. For the people.

This is a decades-long evolution of a design that sensitises conflicting yet otherwise reconcilable divides among the public, pits them against each other, and keeps them essentially distracted from holding those in power truly accountable. Just as humans naturally seek security and a stable sense of identity, the powerful in Pakistan have mastered the art of denying both through perpetual, engineered crisis. Therefore, an integrated identity largely remains a distant dream. So does inclusive prosperity.

Today, as in past, economic chaos - inflation, debt and unemployment - further fragments public attention. Dictatorial interventions, judicial crises and media manipulation help sustain instability, ensuring no civilian government grows strong enough to challenge entrenched power. Divisions and disorder that are in vogue today are not failures of governance; they are often the strategy to rule and sustain the stakes through them.