Sisyphus in the land of saviours

Ever since humankind has been on Earth, people across time and space have tried to overcome trials and make life worthwhile. In their respective times and contexts, societies attained a relative stability. As a result, the trials that the earliest humans underwent have largely gone, only to be replaced by new sets of challenges today. Notwithstanding the universality of hardship, societies tend to navigate it and attain shared prosperity. They abhor hardship and tend to selflessly lend a voice and a helping hand should any individual or group have their rights usurped or marginalised. For them, crises are opportunities in disguise, should they be learnt from. And gradually, these societies, however plagued by crisis, overcome them.

Why have we, as a society, failed to navigate, let alone address, the crises in our 79 years of existence? Why does the country's struggle throughout its history resemble Sisyphus's struggle, with the boulder repeatedly tumbling back into the abyss? Much like elsewhere, crises and issues are deemed opportunities in our part of the world as well, though for a different purpose. Elsewhere, miseries might be abhorred, pitied and empathised with; here they are manufactured, celebrated and cashed in on. This makes the issues facing individuals and society not only a source of ascent to power but also of locking the people's fate in crisis. That is, a society that tends to seek and cash in on issues, both at the individual and collective level, is set to multiply and deepen them. This is because issues serve multiple purposes.

First, they offer the ruling elite a justification to scapegoat their predecessors and an exemption from addressing them. Second, the endurance of issues is a pretext for the policy failures of the government. Third, they offer a chance to exploit them and allocate funds for redressal only to squander them. Fourth, issues afford a ploy to enact self-serving policies under the pretext of necessity. Fifth, they help secure and sustain the stakes of the ruling elite and shield them from potential accountability. Sixth, masking the existing issues paves the way for new ones to be created and exploited. Seventh, the perpetuity of the crises facing the country ensures the people keep struggling for survival, neutralising any threat to elite capture. Last but not least, crises spawn a class of opportunists disguised as saviours, who, owing to their proximity to people, serve the interests of the elite by keeping people in check at the grassroots level.

The saviours make yet another of two groups - the rulers and the ruled - in the country. These include the bureaucracy, pliant media-persons, clergy, pirs, feudal and tribal warlords, civil society, feminists, supposed human rights activists, liberals and the intelligentsia, labour and civil rights movements, nationalists' groups and unions at different levels. Notwithstanding their promises, most are embedded in the system. They bargain away the rights of the people they pretend to represent and thereby strengthen the stakes of the elite capture. This, over time, worsens the plight of the oppressed and simultaneously adds to the stakes of the mediating redeemers and their patrons.

Also, Fake saviours trap people in a state of helplessness. They act as a firewall between the oppressors and the oppressed and ensure that the aggrieved neither seek redressal against their oppressors on their own nor come out of dependence on them. This way, the saviours keep them struggling at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. The ones who truly care for the people either lose any meaningful position from which to serve the oppressed or get branded with heresy or unpatriotic awards.

The damage runs deeper than the original oppression. The aggressor takes away rights, but the fake saviour takes away the hope of having them defended. Where there is grievance, there is now a market for its representation. The victim's pain is the raw material, and the saviour is the broker who processes it, packages it and sells it upward.

The one thing the victim never receives is the finished product: justice.