Two parallel failures

William B Milam is a senior policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Centre in Washington DC. He retired from the US Foreign Service in 2001 after postings as ambassador to both Pakistan and Bangladesh. He knows enough to make comparisons, and what he says in his book Bangladesh and Pakistan: Flirting with Failure in South Asia, Hurst & Company (2009) is quite striking and distracts us from our easy gloss that India broke up Pakistan, after which Bangladesh suffered “differently” from Pakistan. Milam saw them both suffering in the same pattern separately instead of jointly as one country. They began their independent, separate existences as democracies, led by the charismatic leadership of Zulfikar All Bhutto and Sheikh Mujib. What they bestowed on the two nations was inadequate because it came attached to a “populist” and “statist” ideology that facilitated widespread nationalisation and planning of economy. Their legacy still troubles the economies of both countries.

The militaries of both have the proclivity to intervene in politics. In Pakistan, the military took over in 1977 declaring that it had to restore stability and protect security. In Bangladesh the military intervened in 1975 to restore stability to a political/economic situation. It intervened again and ruled throughout the 1980s. Electoral politics was restored in 1990 and for seventeen years despite miserably poor civilian governance, the army refrained from intervening. However when chaos returned in January 2007, the army again took power and remained in control behind the scenes till the end of 2008 (p27).

As did Bhutto in Pakistan, Mujib established a paramilitary guard of 10,000, loyal only to him. It was called the National Security Force, and received priority in supplies and equipment as well as general privileges. Like its counterpart in Pakistan, this force “became a bone in the throat of the regular army, especially the repatriate elements, and was an important factor in Mujib’s downfall” (p36).

In December 1974, he declared a state of emergency. He nationalised a major Bengali-language newspaper and threatened others. On August 15, 1975, a group of mid-level army officers, mostly majors, assassinated Mujib, and killed several members of his family, including his wife and young son. Popular esteem for Mujib had fallen so low by then that few lamented this brutal act, but its legacy continues to haunt Bangladeshi politics (p38). The same kind of thing has happened with regard to the hanging of Bhutto in Pakistan. Ayesha Jalal in her book Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia: A Comparative and Historical Perspective has actually compared Mujib and Bhutto with Indira Gandhi, all three dying unnatural deaths. ‘Populism’ in South Asia ramped up expectations on a narrow resource-base and ended in violence. All three claimed two-thirds majorities in their parliaments after 1970-71, abused the power that accrued from this electoral strength, and were then snatched from their thrones in an undemocratic manner. Out of the three, India alone has managed to surface safely from the pit of recurring ‘vendetta’ politics where leaders can get killed.

Below-poverty-line subsistence is highest in Bangladesh, followed by India and Pakistan. Pakistan suffers more dangerously because its poor, as Muslims, resent not being rich (masawaat). India suffers less dangerously because its poor, as part of the Hindu class hierarchy, resent being poor (karma). In contrast to Bangladesh and India, Pakistan faces ‘failure’ because of its deniable enterprise of ‘non-state actor’ jihad, repelling domestic and external investment. Its constitutionally-sanctioned ideological utopia has displaced culture, curtailing the capacity for tolerance in ‘homo pakistanicus’. Bangladesh is threatened with demise through climate change. ‘Nuclear’ Pakistan is facing a possible absence of the ‘nation’ within a withering ‘state’.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 11^th, 2010.