Heroes not wanted

Hunt for heroes is not helpful since leadership in the subcontinent has practically always been completely autocratic.

Let us begin with a simple fact of life: politicians always suck.

Ok, so I exaggerate. There have been moments in particular countries when the population there has come to think of somebody as the second coming of Churchill. But, in general, so far as I have ever been able to tell, the vast majority of people tend to be convinced that their particular bunch of hopefuls is the biggest bunch of eejits and crooks ever produced.

I mention this because, notwithstanding the sudden ascension of Imran Khan into the ranks of prime ministerial candidates, my general reaction to the current slate of nominees is much the same as being poked in the eye with a sharp object.

I concede that matters could be much worse. I could, for example, be a Republican voter in the United States where the leading choice is currently one Herman Cain, a man with no political experience, a penchant for sexually harassing his employees and a knowledge of policy so limited that The New York Times recently described him as appearing to be “someone who, quite frankly, has never opened a newspaper”. Not only that, but like the Khadim-e-Aala and the Earl of Edgeware Road, he too is fond of enlivening political speeches with solo musical performances. Great minds may or may not think alike but great political minds clearly do.

On the other hand, the fact is that Pakistan does not need a Churchill: all we really need is somebody slightly better than what we have now. Yes, a Churchill would help. But even Churchill wasn’t a legend for most of his life. Had he died in 1935, which would have been almost 30 years after his political debut, he would have been remembered as one of the more talented but also more inconsistent politicians produced by England, with the disaster at Gallipoli most likely being his epitaph.

Let me try and elaborate this point. I think too many of us are obsessed with the great man theory of politics. We, the electorate, keep on believing that the one thing keeping Pakistan from turning magically into Switzerland is the ascension to power of the ‘right man’, some deep thinker jo keh senior tajziyakaar ki tarah, ‘tamaam umoor pay gehry nazar rakhtay hon’. Ideally, of course, he should not even be interested in power, but should be the equivalent of Cincinnatus who, when summoned to the defence of Rome by its Senate, was found plowing his fields, harnessed to a horse.

Array logon, sun lo! Aisa koi hero hamari zindagi mein nahin aa raha!

More to the point, the search for the hero is not helpful.

The hot topic over Eid lunch some days ago was one NGO lady’s anger over what she called the colonial slave mentality, in other words the tendency of the Pakistani to shamelessly prostrate himself before his superior rather than take a potentially problematic stance.

I did not disagree with NGO lady that this was indeed one of Pakistan’s biggest problems. Instead, what I told her was that she was being unfair in calling our tendency to indulge in grovelling servitude a colonial legacy.

The truth is that leadership in the subcontinent has practically always been completely autocratic. Under the Mughals, the emperor was lord and master of all he surveyed, able to make every person bend to his will. All property was deemed to be the property of the emperor, so that when high-ranking advisers lost favour and were removed from their post, they tended to lose their belongings as well as their ranks.

By comparison, the subcontinental bureaucracy established by the British was a veritable haven of meritocracy. More importantly, a bureaucrat who displeased his masters could not be economically destroyed. Instead, a senior civil servant was free to give unpleasant advice to his political masters, confident in the knowledge that the most that could happen to him would be reassignment to a different post.

The protections enjoyed by the bureaucracy in 1947 have been systematically destroyed since then. Today’s bureaucrats are still formidable but they are a pale shadow of their predecessors. And while the faujis have a lot to answer for, the disemboweling of the civil service is not one of their crimes: instead, the blame for that falls on our civilian leaders who have tried their best to reduce civil servants to just servants

I don’t want to sugarcoat history or to imply that the bureaucracy in Pakistan has no sins to atone for. Instead, my point is very simple: good governance requires more than one man. In fact, good governance requires a whole team of good men and women. Most importantly, good governance requires that the relevant leadership be willing to listen to good advice.

The cult of the hero, by contrast, operates on a kun faya kun basis, the assumption that the grand leader needs only to snap his fingers to call forth blessings for the masses. Since the grand leader is the one responsible for the miracles pouring forth, the grand leader obviously knows better than everybody else. And since the grand leader knows better than everybody else, obviously no decision can be made except by the grand leader alone. And since the advisers to the grand leader have no insurance against falling out of favour, they make sure that the grand leader is continuously reassured of his infallibility and his importance.

In an earlier column, I had expressed some cautious optimism about Imran Khan. I don’t wish to walk that back but I do want to clarify that what he needs to do to win my vote and what he needs to do to fix this country are two very different things.

In order to win my vote, Imran Khan only needs to be better than the other alternatives on offer. But in order to fix this country, Imran Khan needs not just to come to power but come up with substantive policies and a core team of advisers whom he is willing to entrust with serious responsibilities.

We’ve had enough heroes in this country. What we need is somebody who knows how to get the job done.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 10^th, 2011.