Are these rumbles of discontent coming together?

Jawed Naqvi in The Dawn

A PEOPLE’S movement is underway in Israel against its ultra right-wing government. Prime Minister Netanyahu is trying to subvert the judiciary’s neutrality, with a selfish aim to kill the criminal cases hanging over his head and that of his colleagues. In quite a few democracies, the judiciary is or has been under assault from the right wing for similar reasons. India is witnessing it in unsubtle ways. Pakistan too has seen political interference with the judiciary at least since the hanging of Bhutto. Then Nawaz Sharif and Gen Musharraf, vicious to each other, took turns to undermine the courts. Pakistan, however, has seen mass movements too that have thrown out military dictators and restored democracy even if intermittently. Where’s that old fire in the belly for India?

Describing the unprecedented attack on India’s democracy starkly at a Cambridge University talk is one thing. Few Indian politicians are capable of speaking with conviction without a teleprompter as Rahul Gandhi recently did before an enlightened audience, while also making plenty of sense. But just as he was holding forth — at a talk called ‘Learning to listen in the 21st century’ — two unrelated landmark events were unfolding in Turkiye and Israel. Was he listening to them too?

The events might send any struggling democratic opposition to the drawing board. In Turkiye, a last-minute collapse of the alliance of six disparate parties, preparing to challenge President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s re-election in May, holds a lesson for any less-than-solid political alliance about possible ambush on the eve of an assured victory. Equally instructive was the opposition’s ability to bury its differences promptly, something that eludes India. The Turkish groups have made compromises with each other so that their common goal to defeat Erdogan remains paramount. There are good chances they would succeed, but even if they don’t, it won’t be for want of giving their best to restore Turkiye’s secular democracy.

However, it was the coming out of Israel’s air force pilots to join the swarming protests against the Netanyahu government that is truly remarkable, and unprecedented. These pilots are usually adept at bombing vulnerable neighbourhoods, including Palestinian quarters. But their taking a stand in defence of democracy offers a lesson to every country with a strong military. There were rumblings in India once. Jaya Prak­ash Narayan, the mass leader opposed Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian patch and called for the army and the police to disobey her, an unusual quest but an utterly democratic call when democracy itself is being murdered. The RSS had supported the JP movement. The boot today is on the other foot. Does the Indian opposition have the conviction to follow in JP’s footsteps to take on Prime Minister Narendra Modi? Does it at all feel the dire need to make sacrifices and compromises to rescue and heal the wounded nation?

The Israeli government may or may not succeed in neutralising the supreme court, which it has set out to do. But the masses are out on the streets to act when their nation is in peril. And India cannot exist as a nation without democracy. Secular democracy enshrined in its constitution binds it into a whole.

Rahul Gandhi has evolved as a contender for any challenging job that could help save the Indian republic from its approaching destruction. But he should also have a chat with Prof Amartya Sen perhaps who was quoted recently as saying that Mamata Bannerjee would make a good prime minister. Others have their hats in the ring. Gandhi’s talk in the hallowed portals of Cambridge bonded nicely with his 4,000-kilometre walk recently, from the southern tip of India to what is effectively the garrison area of Jammu and Kashmir. No harm if the walk served as a learning curve for the Gandhi scion, but even better if it were a precursor for a mass upsurge as is happening elsewhere, and which has seen successful outcomes in many Latin American and African states.

Rahul Gandhi spoke about the surveillance, which opposition politicians and journalists among others have been illegally put under. His points about deep-seated corruption, that shows up graphically as crony capitalism, are all well taken. Few can match the feat of mass contact across the country that he displayed recently and his declamation at the world’s premier university. The point is that Cambridge University cannot change the oppressive government in India. Only the Indian opposition can. Rahul Gandhi has the credentials to weld mutually suspicious opposition parties into a force to usher in the needed change.

There’s no dearth of issues to unite the people and the parties. To cite one, call out the BJP-backed ruling alliances in north-eastern states where its supporters assert their right to eat beef. And place it along the two Muslim boys incinerated in a jeep near Delhi by alleged cow vigilantes. The criminality and the hypocrisy of it.

The fascist assault on India’s judiciary is an issue waiting to be taken up for nationwide mobilisation. The assault comes at a time when the new chief justice is one with a mind of his own. Judges have stopped accepting official briefs in sealed envelopes as had become the practice, dodging public scrutiny, say, in the controversial warplanes deal with France. The court has set up a probe into the Adani affair, something unthinkable until recently.

The timing of the vicious criticism of the judiciary is noteworthy. The law minister described the judges as unelected individuals, perhaps implying they were answerable to the elected parliament like any other bureaucrat. This is mischievous. The supreme court set new transparent principles in the appointment of election commissioners. It’s a rap on the knuckles of an unholy system. Could anyone call it a fair election in a secular democracy when people are nefariously polarised and the election commission looks the other way? The questions are best answered by opposition parties, preferably in unison.

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Other democracies should beware taking pleasure in the UK’s travails

Voters in most developed countries feel that their contract with the state is fraying writes Bronwen Maddox in the FT 

I can barely think of a meeting I’ve had since September that didn’t begin with jokes about Britain’s newfound instability. I started a job a few days before Liz Truss became prime minister, and the “lasted longer than the lettuce” one has been inescapable. “Three prime ministers in a year!” (Ambassadors from European countries still incredulous at Brexit particularly like this one.) Now, there are the strikes — although the meltdown of the NHS’s emergency services is no joke at all. 

But these are rash quips if coming from other democracies. The joke may be on them, too. Older democratic countries share many of the same problems and are struggling to show that they have a system that can solve them. “If you don’t have a political system that can make short-term sacrifices for the long-term good of the country, how can you expect your system of government to survive?” asked one senior Chinese official of a distinguished British former minister. 

It’s a good question. In Britain, the NHS is a symbol of these problems above all others. The stand-off with the government by nurses and ambulance workers is of course about worker pay, but is also about how much the government wants to pay for the health service at all. 

Much of the problem stems from the demands of an ageing population, and that is something that many older democracies share. Even if other countries may no longer envy the NHS, they share some of the same troubles. On many fronts, the contract that voters thought they had with their governments — over them paying for healthcare, education, pensions — is being rewritten, and not in their favour. Perhaps the best-known saying of Jean Claude Juncker, when prime minister of Luxembourg, was: “We know what to do, we just don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.” 

Those sceptical of democracy have prophesied that this is how it consumes itself. It is easier to make promises than to keep them, so the temptation is for politicians to make extravagant commitments to get into office, and then try somehow to stay there. Following this recipe, democracy decays into populism and then autocracy. 

To some degree, yes. Boris Johnson and the unfulfillable Brexit promises were a symptom of the need to assemble an expansive coalition, built on impossibilities. The antidote — the “grown-up conversation with the nation” that politicians sometimes desperately invoke — seems pitifully weak. 

All the same, that is what is needed. The pandemic does offer some encouragement, showing that people are prepared to give up an extraordinary amount if persuaded it is necessary. But there are also more practical things that governments could do to help. 

First, they need to make the case for growth and the steps required to bring it about. Truss was not wrong in her ambition, just in recklessly ignoring the constraints on any country seeking to borrow money. For Britain, that means closer relations with Europe. A US trade deal is not coming any time soon; the only alternative of a large market is China, and Rishi Sunak’s government has chosen not to lean that way. It also means telling people that more legal immigration is needed. It means championing the creativity in science and culture that are themselves the product of the intellectual freedom at the heart of democracies. 

The second thing to do is change voting systems and improve legislatures. In the UK, the House of Lords is indefensible, as former prime minister Gordon Brown has pointed out. He is right that regions need more representation, too. And first past the post is increasingly hard to defend in a country of many different kinds of people and views. 

Third, is to stand up for the values that underpin liberal democracy but not try to couple them with all the other deals on the world stage. Insisting on a human rights agenda in every diplomatic relationship can jeopardise the pursuit of environmental and security accords that are desperately needed on their own account. It can lead to accusations of double standards — as shown by the controversy over Qatar’s hosting of the World Cup despite its treatment of LGBTQ people. 

It is right, though, to pursue those liberal principles, while acknowledging that not all countries share them. They are, along with economic prospects, one of the reasons people risk their lives in small boats trying to come to the UK — one of the best arguments that liberal democracy has a future.

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Imran Khan has Pakistani army ducking & defending. Why it’s a historic moment for the subcontinent

Shekhar Gupta in The Print

Since its founding, Pakistan’s army has built a consistent record of launching wars on India and losing. It is a record of unblemished consistency. There is, however, another battlefield where it has an equally consistent record of winning. Which is where it is staring at defeat. We will elaborate on this in just a bit.

On fighting and losing wars with India, there will obviously be some nitpicking. The tough fact is, after so many wars, this army has lost almost half of Pakistan (Bangladesh), destroyed its polity, institutions, economy and entrepreneurship, and driven out its talent. Finally, it has even less of Kashmir (think Siachen) than it started out with.

So where is it that its record of winning has been equally consistent and it is now on the retreat?

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Check out this entire press conference by Lt Gen. Nadeem Ahmed Anjum, the serving chief of the almighty Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which vanquished the Soviet and American powers, the KGB and the CIA, in Afghanistan. Chaperoned by Lt Gen. Babar Iftikhar, the chief of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), he has spoken for nearly an hour and a half. All of this was invested in defending himself, the ISI, his chief and the army.

Now, never mind that Elon Musk has stolen that metaphor for posterity, please allow us also to use it: Let that sink in. This is the ISI that all of Pakistan both loved and feared, loved and loathed, that friend and foe held in awe. It only had to wink, nod and sometimes nudge, and most of the Pakistani media would fall in line. If you didn’t, you might end up in jail, exile, a corpse in a gutter or in a strange land. In some cases, all of these. Think Arshad Sharif, the former ARY anchor. He was fired and exiled, as was his boss. Sharif turned up dead in Kenya, apparently shot by the police in a matter of mistaken identity. If you believe that, you must be high on something totally illegal.

Now, we had the ISI chief, institutionally among the most powerful men in the world at any time, at a press conference with a hand-picked friendly audience (most of the respected publications were excluded). Usually, his word and his chief’s were an order for Pakistan’s media, politicians, and often also the judiciary. The chief of ISPR was his constant messenger.

Now, both of them, speaking on behalf of their institution, were claiming victimhood. When the Pakistani army goes to the media complaining about a political leader who they evidently fear, you know that its politics has taken a historic turn.
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Pakistan’s army is brilliant at scrapping with its political class and winning. Now it fears defeat at the hands of its politicians too. To that extent, Imran Khan might be on the verge of a victory that would mean even more in political terms than his team’s cricket World Cup win in 1992. If the Pakistani army can finally be defeated by a popular, if populist, civilian force, it’s a history-defining moment for the subcontinent.

It’s history-defining because an institution that was never denied its supreme power except for a few years after the 1971 defeat is now seeking public sympathy with its back to the wall under a mere civilian’s onslaught. Its word used to be a command for any government of the day. It could hire, fire, jail, exile, or murder prime ministers serving, former and prospective. To understand that, you do not have to go far.

In 2007, it looked as if Benazir Bhutto was on the ascendant, after her return from her second long exile (the first return was in 1986, which I had covered in this India Today cover story from Pakistan). She was assassinated despite so many warnings that her life was in danger. Nobody has been punished yet. It’s buried in Pakistan’s history of conspiracies and eternal mysteries like so many others. Her party’s government was kneecapped and her husband subsequently reduced to an inconsequential, titular president.

Nawaz Sharif came back with a comfortable majority. He too grew “delusional”, from his army’s point of view, in beginning to believe that he was a real prime minister. By 2018, this army, under a chief he had appointed, had conspired and contrived to get rid of him, jail and exile him. It ensured that his party didn’t get a majority in the election that followed. In the process, they also built, strengthened and employed Pakistan’s most regressive Sunni Islamist group, Tehreek-e-Labbaik.
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Imran Khan was then the army’s candidate, and does it matter if he fell short of a majority? The army and the ISI collected enough small parties and independents to give him a comfortable majority. Albeit at their sufferance. A majority was no issue for one seen as the boy of the boys.

Until, this ‘boy’ also began to believe that he was a real prime minister and was causing ‘discomfort’ at the army GHQ.

Worse, his delusions weren’t just domestic. He was now seeing himself as the new leader of the Islamic Ummah, a 21st-century Caliph of sorts in his own right. He was talking in shariat terms, bringing a Quranic curriculum, building a new agenda that was as Islamist as it was anti-West. Both of these alarmed the army.

In the same state of political ‘high’, Imran started to believe he now bossed the army. That’s how the first, and decisive, fights broke out over top-level appointments. The first was over the appointment of the new ISI chief. The army chief had his way with Nadeem Anjum and Imran lost out over his insistence on continuing with Lt Gen. Faiz Hameed. This fight was, however, like a crucial league match before the final — the appointment of the new chief in November.

Think about what is the one thread that’s common to this entire ugly story of intrigue, betrayal, and now it seems, assassination too? General Qamar Javed Bajwa has been the army chief through all of these years. Appointed by Nawaz Sharif who he later fired and exiled, given a three-year extension by Imran Khan who he first created and then got fired, and now challenged by him.

Over the past five decades, two great political families have fought for democracy in Pakistan in their own patchy ways, although mostly by keeping the army GHQ on their sides. Both, the Bhutto family’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Sharifs’ Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) are now tired and spent forces. One because of its shrinking footprint from Punjab, and the other because its only popular leader, Nawaz Sharif, is hesitant to leave the safety of exile in London and join the fight at home. Both are counting on the army to save their throne and skins.

This used to be business as usual. If the army was on your side, the world was yours in Pakistan. The reason these aren’t usual times is that today it is the army that’s staring at the greatest, scariest existential threat to its power and stature. This threat has come from a populist, riding democratic power. So what if it’s that often nutty and deeply flawed Imran Khan. Did we ever argue democracy is perfect?

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Should we have a ‘truth law’?

Today’s politicians mislead with impunity – could we legislate to stop them lying? asks Sam Fowles in The Guardian



 
For months the British government has floated the idea of unilaterally breaking the so-called Northern Ireland protocol, part of the withdrawal treaty it agreed with the European Union. That would undermine the Good Friday agreement, reanimate the prospect of sectarian violence and damage the UK’s international reputation. Such action demands a weighty justification and ministers have one, with the attorney general arguing that “Northern Ireland’s economy is lagging behind the rest of the UK”.

Except it’s not. Statistics show that Northern Ireland is outstripping every part of the UK except London.

In recent years politicians have repeatedly based the case for historic changes on lies. These have ranged from the infamous “Brexit bus”, which promised £350m a week for the NHS, to government framing of recent rail strikes as “selfish” because, as Boris Johnson told one interviewer: “Train drivers are on £59,000 and some are on £70,000.” (The average wage of a striker is below £36,000.) Politicians consistently mislead about issues of national importance. I know this first-hand – I was part of the legal team that proved Johnson’s prorogation of parliament in 2019 was unlawful.

Truth is democracy’s most important moral value. We work out our direction, as a society, through public discourse. Power and wealth confer an advantage in this: the more people you can reach (by virtue of enjoying easy access to the media, or even controlling sections of it), the more likely you are to bring others round to your point of view. The rich and powerful may be able to reach more people but, if their arguments are required to conform to reality, we can at least hold them to account. Truth is a great leveller.

The problem is that our public discourse has become increasingly divorced from reality. The pollster Ipsos Mori conducts regular surveys on what the British public believes about the facts behind frequently discussed issues. In one memorable study it discovered that, in the words of one headline, “the British public is wrong about nearly everything”. Among the concerns was benefit fraud: people surveyed estimated that around £24 of every £100 of benefits was fraudulently claimed, whereas the actual figure was 70p. When asked about immigration, people estimated that 31% of the population were born outside the UK, when in truth it was 13%.

Members of parliament have played a prominent role in getting us to this point. They make and vote on laws, help set the political agenda and influence the national conversation. Of course, politicians have always had a tendentious relationship with the truth. From the Zinoviev letter to the Profumo affair, history is littered with scandals that result from lies being exposed. Profumo resigned because he misled parliament once. Today’s ministers regularly do the same with impunity.

Commentators often paint Johnson as uniquely mendacious, but he is merely the latest prime minister to embrace lying for political gain. David Cameron won two elections by misleading the country about the causes of the financial crash and the economic impacts of austerity. Theresa May built her early career in government on dubious anti-immigration rhetoric, notably the lie that one immigrant had been allowed to stay in the country because he had a pet cat.

Democracy cannot function properly in this environment and an existential problem demands a radical solution. So, MPs (and peers in the House of Lords) should be formally required to tell the truth: in the debating chamber, on TV, in print and on social media. To publish a statement that wilfully or negligently misrepresents information should be classed as misconduct in public office (a criminal offence). In other words: we need a truth law.

Ensuring the offence captures both “wilful” and “negligent” misrepresentation will obviate spurious defences such as Johnson’s claim that he thought the Downing Street parties were “work events”. With researchers and civil servants at their disposal, parliamentarians have no excuse for misrepresenting the facts. Even so, I suggest that they should not be prosecuted if they correct the record and apologise in parliament within seven days.

Radical as it may seem, we already have all the tools to make this work within established law. “Publish” has a clear legal meaning (essentially “to make public”). Tests of wilfulness or negligence are frequently applied across civil and criminal law. Determining whether someone has “misrepresented information” (ie, not told the truth) is often the core business of the courts. The penalty for misconduct can go all the way up to life imprisonment. While some may find that rather satisfying, I suggest limiting it, in this class of cases, to a fine. The courts should also have the power to refer an offender to the Standards Committee for further parliamentary sanction. 

I imagine that there will be two main objections to this idea. First, it may have a chilling effect on parliamentarians’ free expression. But parliamentarians are not ordinary citizens. They hold a special position of trust and power, which they assume voluntarily, and for which they are rewarded handsomely. It’s right that that they should be subject to stricter rules. Many professions limit the freedom of expression of their members in the public interest. As a barrister I am subject to “truth telling” rules which, if breached, could end my career (and potentially lead to a prosecution for contempt of court). Politicians’ words have more influence than barristers’, so it’s fair to subject them to more exacting standards.

Second, any truth law would breach “parliamentary privilege”. This guarantees that MPs will not be prosecuted for anything they say in parliament. That rule was developed to stop monarchs persecuting their political opponents. It was never intended to be a licence to lie. We now have an independent prosecution authority and independent courts: it’s time we addressed today’s challenges to democracy, not ones that were last relevant centuries ago.

My proposal won’t eradicate lying in public life. But it’s an important first step. Imagine, for a moment, that we could genuinely trust our elected representatives. That shouldn’t be a utopian ideal – and in the law, we have the means to make it a reality.

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Follow The Hollow: Politics Of Consumption Among The Middle-Classes In India And Pakistan

 Nadeem F Paracha in The Friday Times

Consumerism, or the preoccupation of society with the acquisition of consumer goods, largely emerged from the 19th century onwards. It began to really take off from the early 20th century, when the idea of mass production of consumer goods fully materialised. Consumer goods are often those that are not exactly a necessity. They are acquired for ‘superficial’ purposes. It is, therefore, not a coincidence that the birth of modern-day advertising and/or marketing ploys, too, began to evolve more rapidly during this period. Their aim was to describe consumer goods as a necessity without which one could not become an identifiable member of society.

In 2018, I went through decades of ‘consumer demographic’ data of some of the world’s leading marketing and advertising firms (between the 1950s and early 2000s). These included advertising firms in Pakistan and India as well. The data shows that most makers of consumer goods and services have continued to ‘target’ the middle-classes, or the ‘aspirational classes.’ These have remained prominent buyers of consumer goods. They are also the most prominent classes in the social and economic spaces of major cities.

However, this is not the case when it comes to politics. The middle-classes may be a part of the electorate, but in most regions, their presence is minimal in the actual corridors of power. The middle-classes have often expressed frustration after feeling that their path towards holding the levers of political power is being blocked by members of the political elite who were born into their status instead of climbing their way up as the middle-classes want to.

1789: An emerging middle-class in France rebels against the King and Church

Modern mainstream politics is the result of certain revolutionary 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century upheavals in Europe which saw the emergence and expansion of the middle-classes. They gradually pushed out the old political elites (the monarchs, the Church, landed gentries, etc.), and replaced these with themselves at the top. The politics that evolved during this process was a product of modernity as defined by the so-called ‘Age of Enlightenment.’

Inch by inch, religion was demystified and relegated to the private sphere; newly formed polities began to be defined as nations that were linked to integrated economies; and the ‘pre-modern’ past was denounced as a realm ravaged by wars, plagues, brutal rulers, widespread poverty, religious persecution and exploitation, superstition, and short lifespans.

The political system which the expanding middle-classes adopted and evolved was democracy. Initially, they trod the ‘Aristotelian’ path which posited that a large, prosperous middle class may mediate between rich and poor, creating the structural foundation upon which democratic political processes may operate (J. Glassman, The Middle Class and Democracy in Socio-Historical Perspective, 1995).

Middle-class prosperity and growth were dependent on modern economic activity which functioned outside the old agrarian structures, and took place in the expanding urban spaces. These spaces attracted labour from rural areas who transformed in to becoming the working-class (the proletariat). During the upward-mobility of the middle-classes, they engineered a democracy that was to constitutionally protect their properties and newfound power and wealth. But as the size of the working-classes grew, it became necessary to create room for them in the political system, if social and political upheavals were to be avoided.

Traditionally, working-class interests in democracies leaned left or towards socialist or welfare policies. As a reaction, the middle-classes moved to the right (F. Wunderlich in The Antioch Review, Spring 1945). The middle-classes therefore, became more invested in curbing, or at least lessening, the electoral influence of the working-classes by voting for conservative parties which treated social-democratic ideas as Trojan horses through which communism would invade and usurp all political and economic power of the ‘hard-working middle-classes.’ However, from within the post-19th-century political elites (in industrialised countries) also emerged parties that evolved into becoming the parties of the working-classes. The growing number of blue-collared voters in the cities necessitated this.

This created a fissure within the middle-classes. A large section of them was now willing to undermine democracy, or a system that it had crafted itself. This section began to view it as a threat to its economic interests. Here is where we see the growth of authoritarian and fascist ideas permeating middle-class political discourses in Europe, and the emergence of demagogues such as Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, etc. The aforementioned section’s radical move to the (anti-democracy) right can be understood as an emotional decision born from the fear of being swallowed by the classes below (the ‘masses’).

1900: The founding of the Labour Party in Britain

When the American president F.D. Roosevelt stated that “the only thing we need to fear was fear itself,” he was trying to address just that. He understood that fear was capable of pushing reasonable folk into authoritarian/totalitarian/populist camps.

After the defeat of German and Italian fascisms, social-democratic policies thrived in the democratic West.

They succeeded in largely pacifying middle-class fears. The middle-classes now stood on the left and the right, yet within the mainstream democratic system which continued to safeguard and police their economic interests, and, at the same time, facilitate the interests of the working-classes as well.

But from the mid-1970s, as the nature of capitalism began to change, and the industrialised countries entered the ‘post-industrial stage,’ things flipped. Between the two World Wars, sections of Western middle-classes had largely moved to the right and far-right, whereas the working-classes had moved to the left. But when the service sector began to produce more wealth than the industrial sector, positions switched.

The service sector has always been dominated by the middle-classes. A gradual decrease in industrial activity and/or with this activity shifting to developing countries (due to cheap labour, etc.), the working-classes were left stranded and feeling bitter. They began to break away from mainstream democratic paradigms and embrace a populism which preyed on the fears of this class as it struggled to cope with the drastic economic shift that was eroding blue-collar economic interests.

So, whereas, during the first half of the 20th century, a large number from the middle-class milieu, fearing that they were about to be overwhelmed by the working-classes, had exited the mainstream democratic paradigm, and had embraced authoritarian ideas and regimes, in the second half of the 21st century, it was the working-classes who did the same by supporting the rise of right-wing nationalism and populism.

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The South Asian flip: politics of consumption

In developing countries such as India and Pakistan, right-wing nationalism and populism are still very much the domain of the middle-classes. This is understandable because the process of industrialisation was slow and late in these regions, and so was the expansion of the middle-classes. The economies of both the countries during their first few decades were overwhelmingly agrarian. Industrialisation did not begin in earnest till over a decade after their formation.

This meant a large rural population and a steadily growing urban proletariat. Therefore, democracy in this case, though controlled by an elite, was (for electoral purposes) driven to address the interests of the peasants, small farmers and the working-classes. It was social-democratic in nature. This did not sit well with the middle-classes. They were squeezed between a ruling elite and the classes below. They constantly feared being relegated or overwhelmed by the ‘masses’ because the ruling elite in control of political parties were talking to the masses more than they did to the middle-classes. The elite were, of course, courting sections that had larger number of votes.

Till the early 2000s, middle-class economic and political interests in Pakistan were mostly stimulated by military dictators (S. Akbar Zaidi, Issues in Pakistan’s Economy: A Political Economy Perspective, 2nd Edition, 2005). This is why the middle-classes in Pakistan are more receptive to non-democratic forces and currents, even though they were only provided a semblance of political power by the dictatorships. But the size of this class is growing and so is its economic influence. It feels blocked by the electoral political elites from complimenting its economic influence with political power. 

Whereas in Pakistan the middle-classes have felt more secure during dictatorships, in India, they have managed to break into the realm of India’s political elites by riding on the wave of a right-wing political party. In 2018, large sections of Pakistan’s urban middle-classes believed that they too had done the same by voting to power Imran Khan’s populist bandwagon, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI). But their nascent experience of democracy imploded when Khan’s regime was ousted by a no-confidence vote. This class is now back to viewing democracy as a corrupt system – engineered to serve an elite that is geared to address the issues of the classes with the most votes.

But the fact is, as the middle-classes in Europe had done between the two World Wars, the middle-classes in India and Pakistan too, consciously or unconsciously, are destroying the very idea and system that was originally crafted to serve their interests the most. This brings us to consumerism.

Between the two World Wars when large sections of the urban middle-classes in various European countries began to fear that the classes below (the ‘masses’) would use democracy to undermine middle-class interests, the middle-classes became antagonistic towards democracy — an ideology and system of government that they had themselves created. They then went on to facilitate the rise of anti-democracy forces that barged in and overthrew the political elites who were engaging with the masses through electoral politics.

In consumer societies, the language of politics becomes a caricature of advertising language. For example, a young man or woman is more likely to come across the word ‘Revolution’ in an advertisement than in politics. Advertisements and political rhetoric both exchange words which may end up meaning nothing

The middle-classes in South Asia have been in a dilemma of being squeezed between two forces (the electoral elite and the working-classes/peasants). So, these middle-classes have failed to fully carve out a place and identity for themselves as a political entity within a political system that is largely informed by the engagement between the aforementioned forces. According to the historian Markus Daechsel, this saw the South Asian middle-classes indulge in what Daechsel calls “politics of self-expression” (Daechsel, The Politics of Self-Expression: The Urdu Middleclass Milieu in Mid-Twentieth Century India and Pakistan, 2009).

This form of politics is a rebellion against the dynamics of mainstream politics, which the middle-class milieu dismisses as being ‘corrupt.’ This corruption is not only denounced in material terms, but is also censured for contaminating or enslaving a community’s or individual’s inner self that needs to be liberated. Instruments such as the constitution, and institutions such the parliament, are seen as restraints that were stopping people from seeking liberation. Liberation from what? This is never convincingly explained.

The aim of the politics of self-expression is not exactly a way to find a place in mainstream societal politics. Instead, it is a flight into an alternative ideological universe where all societal constraints that plague the middle-class self would cease to exist (Daechsel, ibid). In fact, Daechsel explains the politics of self-expression as a product of the consumer society. According to Colin Campbell, a new ethics of romanticism driven by emotional introspection, a hunger for stimulation and arousal and a penchant for daydreaming, helped to give birth to a consumer society that alone could sustain the onward march of capitalism (C. Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism, 1987).

Established political instruments and democratic norms are being attacked by the middle-classes through the creation of spectacles that are being beamed by the new media universe

To Daechsel, this drove people to develop an obsession with identities. The middle-classes remain to be at the core of consumerism. A consumer society has been defined as one in which there is no societal reality other than the relationship between consumers and branded commodity. People are entirely what they consume; no immediate relationships of political power, economic exchange or cultural capital matter anymore (J. Baudrillard, The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures, 1970).

According Daechsel, the middle-class milieu (in South Asia) was, by virtue of its material culture, persuaded to use consumption as an outlet for its frustrated socio-political ambitions. The fact that consumer identities have something ‘hollow’ about them, that they substitute a fetishistic relationship with consumer goods for ‘real’ societal relations, was precisely what made them so attractive. A constituency that could not otherwise exist as a class, due to the constraints imposed by a mainstream political economy that they became suspicious of, found in consumption a space where it could establish some form of a unified cultural consciousness.

Daechsel then adds that the trouble with consumer identities is that consumer goods are believed to reflect a person’s innermost being, but at the same time rely on the garish and the mundane to produce identities. Consumption is not about great deeds in world history, but about the choice of toothpaste and cigarettes. Yet, consumer goods through the manner in which they are marketed, provide the stuff to form identities. Marlboro smokers were rugged individualists, Coca Cola drinkers value the happiness of being part of a wholesome family, iPhone users are savvy folk who are ‘creative’ and ‘fun-loving,’ etc. 

The politics of self-expression is an attempt to make consumer identities secure and ‘serious’ by dressing up consumption activity as politics. The language of politics thus becomes a caricature of advertising language; it retains all the hyperbole. For example, the word ‘liberation’ in such nature of politics is as ‘serious’ as it is when used in ads of male or female undergarments! But in politics of expression, it replaces advertising’s playfulness and self-irony with the certainty of assumed prophetic airs (Daechsel, ibid).

In consumer societies the language of politics becomes a caricature of advertising language. For example, a young man or woman is more likely to come across the word Revolution in an advertisement than in politics. Advertisements and political rhetoric both exchange words which may end up meaning nothing.

The consumer middle-class could well turn out as the destroyer of the world that gave birth to it

The middle-classes in India and Pakistan have gone to war with conventional politics, which they still fear is pitched against them. But even in India, where these classes have succeeded to somewhat break into and disturb the once impenetrable fortress of the country’s ‘rational’ political elites, they have no convincing alternatives. Or the alternatives are creating unprecedented social and political turmoil because they are emerging from the politics of self-expression.

According to Daechsel, the methodology in this context is a direct reflection of the logic of a consumer society. Both in Pakistan and India, ‘rational’ political instruments and democratic norms are being attacked by the middle-classes through the creation of spectacles that are being beamed by the new media universe. They are like marketing stunts.

Events such as openly undermining the constitution, beating up and humiliating foes, burning passports and flags, etc., have turned the perpetrators into political brands that are immediately and often quite literally ‘consumed’. Daechsel views all this as a suicide mission (of the South Asian middle-classes). It is an ultimate extension of the self-expressionist longing for intoxication, a self-indulgent form of ‘political’ activity that is supposedly based on a supreme ideology, but in reality gives the person involved a taste of the ultimate power trip. Just like an expensive brand of car or watch would.

Established political instruments and democratic norms are being attacked by the middle-classes through the creation of spectacles that are being beamed by the new media universe.

Daechsel writes, “If there is a final conclusion to be drawn from this exposition of the politics of self-expressionism in India and Pakistan, it has to be the following: the development of a middle-class through an expansion of the social role of consumption offers no guarantee for a better political culture. Persistent contradictions between a consumer society and other forms of societal organisations will stimulate forms of self-expressionist radicalism that may be very hard to control. Far from being the historical carrier of the voice of reason and modernity, the consumer middle-class could well turn out as the destroyer of the world that gave birth to it.”

This is quite apparent in the ways many middle-class men and women in South Asia have willingly drowned the notion that their acts in this context could be undermining their own political and, especially, economic interests. They seem to have readily gone blind to this fact in their bid to devour politics like they would a consumer brand, but one which is marketed as a product to give them instant bursts of liberation, empowerment and greatness.

Capitalism and its Self-Delusions

 

The New Neutrality of Pakistan's Army

Basil Nabi Malik in The Dawn

I HAVE been closely following the extremely insightful commentary and discourse on the no-confidence motion and the legalities that surround it. I have read riveting articles on Article 63A of the Constitution of Pakistan, which offer ‘bendy’ and creative interpretations that could put a gymnast to shame. I have also witnessed a titillating discussion on the voting timeline for the no-confidence motion, a discussion that has seen so many permutations and combinations that any mathematician could die proud.

I have read about how Prime Minister Imran Khan’s days are numbered, how his political career has ended, how autocracy has been defeated and how the joint opposition has delivered a master stroke. One side is telling me that democracy is in danger, whilst the other is celebrating democracy’s triumph. One side condemns the opposition as being part of an international conspiracy, and the other targets the government, accusing it of working on a Jewish agenda.

Be that as it may, in this polarised debate on the no-confidence motion, Imran Khan’s political future and the opposition’s democratic credentials, it is safe to say that we are losing the plot so to speak, or in other terms, losing sight of the real questions that deserve attention. What questions, you may ask. Well, for starters, what has suddenly changed that has resulted in the current state of ‘no-confidence’? Is this parliament’s final act of expressing no confidence in Imran Khan’s leadership, or does this lack of confidence in him stem from somewhere else? Even otherwise, are these events cause for celebration?

Let us not forget that Imran Khan had been making blunders from the very beginning, the opposition has been trying to oust him virtually from his first day in office, and the credibility of the defectors was never really beyond reproach — in other words, their loyalties were always questionable. And yet, he was going nowhere. So why is he going now?

Many say it is because of the establishment’s ‘neutrality’. Neutrality implies a lack of alliance with any particular side or a lack of preference for any one over another. It is always good for institutions to be considered neutral and to act as such as well. But a painstaking and consistent attempt to ensure one’s neutrality, along with efforts to emphasise it at every stage, also indicates something else.

It alludes to the fact that the new-found position of neutrality is exactly that: new-found. It appears in negation to the erstwhile policy of non-neutrality or, at the very least, the tolerance of partiality. Obviously, if I proclaim to be neutral today, it would be reasonable for someone to think, rightly or wrongly, that I am shifting away from a partisan position to an indifferent one. After all, if I were neutral from the beginning, why would I have to announce it every now and then?

Secondly, neutrality today does not mean there will be neutrality tomorrow. It may simply mean that in the totality of circumstances, in the prevailing situation of the country, it is better to stay aloof and do one’s job as opposed to getting caught up in the quagmire of political intrigue. But that ‘could’ change. For that matter, at some point in time, it may be felt that that ‘needs’ to change. In essence, this may simply be a temporary phase and not a ‘forever’ decision.

And there is reason to suspect that things are not actually turning a corner, but rather, coming full circle. Nothing has really changed since the last intervention. Our economy is still in the dumps, our currency is still losing value, no large-scale reforms have taken place, our politicians are still considered corrupt and incompetent, justice is still a pipe dream, our masses are still deprived of basic education and sustenance, and the power structures are still skewed in favour of the unelected and against the elected.

The game of musical chairs continues, our prime ministers continue to not complete their terms, our judiciary appears divided, our debts continue to soar, our internal divisions continue to increase, and our disdain and lack of respect for the role of our past in changing our future is palpable to the point of being disheartening. The puppets cheer for the new champions of democracy today and shall support their replacements tomorrow. In fact, they’d even cheer for the puppets who will eventually replace them. Sadly, it’s more of the same. We just fail to see it, again and again and again.

We seem to relish deluding ourselves and continue to live in the theatre of the absurd, where we do the same things over and over again and expect different results. Albert Einstein called this insanity, but we in Pakistan call it a ‘revolution’, or in some circles, the ‘presidential system’. You may chuckle or grimace on reading this, depending on your worldview, but sadly, there is truth to it.

Be that as it may, we should all hope for a better tomorrow when we actually awaken from our slumber and own up to our absurdities. A slumber so deep that we can’t even see how we are killing this country and its people with our own petty version of the game of thrones, and absurdities so absurd that even national interest now appears to be a national joke.

Let’s hope that when such a time comes, when we finally wake up and pledge to improve, when the clouds part miraculously and the sun shines down without a care in the world, we are willing and ready to seek the treatment we need to get better, get sane, and not, for heaven’s sake, to get even.

Singapore PM's remarks on Democracy