A recipe for failure

Far from being failed state Pakistan is example of dynastic management processes adapted to modern parliamentary idiom

There is a subcontinental malaise of the body politic, a creeping affliction that has spread via parliamentary process, an STD if you will –– Sexually Transmitted Democracy. Bangladesh has a nasty dose of it, India may be about to go belly up in the STD department, Sri Lanka looks like it might, just might, be in remission and Pakistan has a galloping epidemic of it.

Dynasties have been around for a millennia, and some of them have lasted for a millennia –– ask the Egyptians. Dynastic empires have come and gone and as we move from the past to more recent times, they are shorter-lived. Dynasties no longer have the longevity of Pharonic times; the world is a smaller place and moves a lot faster than it did 3,000 years ago.

As the elections trundle on in India, the flame of the Nehru dynasty no longer burns as bright. Families that are the building blocks of dynasties themselves change over time and there is something of a dynastic tendency for inbreeding –– never good for the genetic health.

The family corporatisation of politics –– indeed of the entire democratic process –– has been under way virtually since the withdrawal of the British from the subcontinent. The dynasts were quickly on point, and a dissection of the genealogy of those who have real political power reveals a complex web of kinship and mutual self-interest that is mostly discreet, and largely impervious to change.

For Pakistan, this has meant that the feudal system has been perpetuated and strongly institutionalised by means of the ballot box. Elective feudalism is the child of the dynasts who inherited the earth at Partition and there is little sign that they are about to be dethroned any time soon.

One has only to look at the parlous state of education and public health in Pakistan to gain an insight into Deep Dynasty.

Despite massive inwards investment by donor nations, Pakistan is proportionately only a little better educated than it was 20 years ago. The exploding population continues to outstrip the ability of the state to provide a basic education for its people –– who remain overwhelmingly poor. They remain in poor health as well, never so sick that they are completely unproductive but never strong enough to collectively challenge the status quo, preferring instead to opt for voting in the very people who maintain their illiteracy and penury.

This does not happen by chance. Decisions about budgets and spending are made at the dynastic level, in the family drawing rooms and trickle down in the form of policy and strategy to local levels, ensuring that the state teeters forever on the brink, does not topple and is kept at a level of bubbling, but managed instability.

Far from being a failed state Pakistan is a fine example of dynastic management processes adapted to modern parliamentary idioms. In theory, this is a durable model. It is self-sustaining and the ever-twitchy rest of the world is not that keen to upset the applecart in Pakistan either.

The likes of America and the EU and the BRIC block are at least content for Pakistan to remain a family business, not especially profitable and more a sort of corner-shop kind of operation rather than a mega-mall. The kind of emporium where trade is conducted in the old fashioned ways and where a perpetual closing-down sale is advertised but never actually happens. The staff may be a bit grumpy from time to time and they run out of things –– food, water and power –– from time to time, but dear old Pakistan soldiers on regardless.

But, as the Nehru family are shortly to find out, dynastic rule is finite. All good things eventually come to an end, the bloodline thins and becomes dilute, family members begin to read from a different page and power begins to fade.

But what of our dynasts? So far, they are secure. Little is going to change politically in Pakistan for years. Our dynasts have managed to create a kind of Peter Pan state, one that is in arrested development. How long they can maintain their balance in a world that does not believe in fairies is a moot point.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 1^st, 2014.

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