Politics and the middle class

If there were an international prize for constant moaning it would go to Pakistan’s middle classes. And if there was another one for moaning allied to masterly inactivity the winners would remain the same. Anxiety and its purveying have become a serious industry in Pakistan.
True, every Pakistani should be worried about where this country is headed. Big problems are big problems: the balance of payments, the fiscal deficit, power cuts, the fallacies of the military class – such as its never-ending quest for security, the preoccupation with Afghanistan, the bane of India-centrism, less a threat to India than to our own mental stability.
But we can’t get even the small ones right. Adequately disposing off municipal waste is a challenge we have yet to surmount. Lip-service to the masses doesn’t translate into actually doing something which would make a difference to their lives: like investing in public transport or moving towards a uniform education system. The destruction of our railways, one of the great gifts of the Raj, an act of vandalism ranking with our greatest follies moves us not.
Forget everything else: the plastic shopping bag, more destructive of our environment than anything else, is a threat seemingly beyond our capacity to meet.
And not to forget this latest gem from Islamabad: the three-billion rupee project, just unveiled by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, to build more lodges for parliamentarians, including 500 servant quarters. In this day and age servant quarters? What world is the prime minister inhabiting? If the National Assembly remains unmoved, My Lord the Chief Justice should look into this latest edition of national idiocy.
Of the two bedrooms in my parliamentary lodge, one is for my use and the other for the use of my apology of a staff. What’s the problem in this?
So agreed, there is much to moan about. But the point missing from the sum of national angst: since when did whining alone solve anything, especially when divorced from the remotest conception of political activity?
Politics, not magic or the search for miracles, is the key to the managing of human society, the priorities of politics determining the march of human progress and, indeed, the march of civilisation. Europe’s kings came first, its inventors and explorers later. Politics dictates economic choices. I may be applying the brush too thickly – and neophyte Marxists may object that the forces of production are everything – but the point remains that the politics of a society shapes to a large extent its mood and environment.
Returning to the middle class...its leading echelons which comprise the chattering classes and from whose ranks we get our most anguished writers of letters to English newspapers, are contemptuous of politics and virulent about politicians, framing them in terms applicable to outright robbers and certified con artists.
But who will take the politician’s place? The armies of the Pakistani middle class are composed for the most part of armchair warriors, venting their huge indignation about the national condition from the safe tumult of their drawing rooms. They will inveigh against the political class as the source of the country’s ills but, perish the thought, will never brave the odds by entering the political arena themselves and becoming part of the political process, and therefore actually doing something to improve matters, instead of sticking to their chosen role of being ambassadors of wind and bluster.
If someone from the educated and professionally well-off middle class is from the countryside his ambition is to turn his back on his origins and move to the nearest city. If he is from an inner city – whether Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Lahore or Karachi – he wants to leave Raja Bazar behind and move to Defence.
Here arises the problem. Our national politics is centred in villages and inner cities. That’s where the votes are and from where the bulk of our legislators are elected. A political party without strong roots in these two sources of electoral power is doomed to irrelevance.
But the Pakistani middle-class professional, who has made it and has a well-paid job, or is comfortably retired with property on the side and money in the bank, has no time for village or inner city. He is usually the member of some club or other. He prefers the good life and panders to his political conscience, if he has one, by cursing the politician, moaning about the national condition and, in his heart of hearts, yearning for a rider on horseback to come and save the nation. Small wonder, all our four military saviours enjoyed strong support from the professional middle class.
Mourners of the national condition go a step further. Not only are they innocent of anything that can be characterised as political activity, most of the time they do not even bother to vote. Which of course doesn’t stop them from fulminating against the real or imagined excesses of the political class.
Which does not mean that the middle-class samurai is devoid of all ambition. Once a party is in power – PPP, PML-N or anything else – it is a fairly common sight to see better-placed middle-class professionals currying favour with the leadership of these same parties. The hurly-burly of politics may not be for them but gaining access to the high table of political power is very much in keeping with their style. Bankers and other professionals, seeking place or advancement, and the commission mafia which is always attendant upon the heels of power are of this category.
So how is the tone of politics to improve? How is the national condition to be redeemed? If Pakistan’s best educated people shun the heat and dust of politics, the space will be filled by those with less sensitive skins. Absentee politics could flourish in the 50s and even during the Ayub Khan era. Not anymore. A politician not keeping touch with his base, who doesn’t spend time in his or her constituency, faces a tough time when elections come round.
The power of feudalism while still very much there in pockets and corners of Pakistan can be exaggerated. It is no longer enough for the aspiring politico to be a feudal. He/she must also have the backing of the right political party. Pakistani voters don’t take candidates without party tickets too seriously.
Money is important, even vital, for any form of electioneering. But its influence too can be exaggerated. There are some moneybags in the present parliament, but heaps of legislators, in all major parties, who while by no means paupers, are not moneybags on the Azam Swati scales. Money helps but it is no substitute for presence and accessibility.
The trouble with well-placed middle-class professionals is that because they can’t afford to keep away for too long from their games of golf, or the good life, or their well-paid jobs, they don’t have a constituency to which they can relate their dreams of political glory. If they nurse political ambitions they are totally dependent upon party leaderships to show them a path to the Senate or gift them a safe constituency, usually in Lahore and Karachi. There are some very smart people with not only a keen eye for politics but an understanding of it for whom this remains a critical handicap.
There is therefore a great opening for the educated middle class...if only its members, instead of making a cult of empty vitriol-ism, forsake their sofas and journey into the heart of the real Pakistan and there set up their tents, if only for a designated part of the week.
Postscript: However, the services of a good and reliable provider of spiritual solace is a must to make this journey a success and sustain its rigours for any length of time. For evenings, when the shadows lengthen and the heart is assailed by all sorts of vague longings, some definable and others hard to put a finger on, can be pretty lonely and desolate in the real Pakistan.

Email: winlust@yahoo.com