Telling Pakistan’s story

As a one-time participant in the technology policy conversation in Pakistan, and an avid user of social media, I need little convincing of the potentially revolutionary power that new applications of technology offer to smart and dedicated users.
I am always struck, however, by how commonly people conflate technology itself with the need to be smart and dedicated. There is not, has never been and will never be a technology that can make up for the fatal flaws of any user. If you don’t have a compelling message based on substance, no amount of web-savvyness can save you. If you have limited dedication to what you are doing, no fancy new gadget will make up for your own lack of commitment. The bottom-line is that if you’re not smart and dedicated, technology is not for you. It will certainly not bridge the deficit of smartness of dedication for you. It may even deepen and expose your flaws.
The logic here is not particularly complex. Smart phones don’t make you smart. Smart phones simply offer new opportunities to already smart users, who dedicate time and energy into learning how to use them. Though this seems to be a rather simple idea, it is staggeringly common to hear and see how illogical people, organisations and institutions can be when thinking about technology. It seems that the less smart and less dedicated have more of a predilection to overestimate and overstate the worth of new technology. This is a shame, and unfortunately it is not new. As Pakistan gets battered for being a poorly governed nation with little proactive demonstration by either government or civil society that reflects any kind of understanding of how urgently reforms are required, the problem of confusing instruments as alternatives to substance is once again rearing its ugly head.
In 2000, Pakistan prepared its first National IT Policy and Action Plan. While many of the successes of the telecom and IT sectors in subsequent years can be traced to the consultative and inclusive manner in which that policy was formulated, it did have one enduring weakness. The document often seemed to place new technology itself as being the heart of the matter. The resulting boom in the use of technologies—mobile phones, the Internet and broadband—reflect that original bias. Pakistan is a great example of highly successful technology adoption. Pakistan is also, simultaneously, a great example of highly unsuccessful application and content generation (best manifested by the fact that Urdu continues to have desperately poor uptake as a standardised input language). This is what happens in a culture where public policy is often run by engineers and other linearly-programmed professionals (as most of the pre-2002 Musharraf government was).
The concept of information technology, or IT, became so overwhelmingly part of the national consciousness that people forgot that IT was an instrument, or a means. It was never the end itself. Like the abacus, a supercomputer was a tool or an instrument to do things that were already being done (or were conceptually doable), in a manner faster, cheaper and more efficient. IT has been great, for all the world. But it has been greatest for those that actually had something useful to do with it. It adds value, of course, but it adds really substantial value to transactions and systems where wonderful things are already happening.
Pakistanis can hardly be pleased with the vicious battering that Pakistan is taking in the US press these days. The New York Times has been particularly brutal, with reporters regularly digging up old stories, garnished with new data to sustain the seemingly ad infinitum “campaign to pressurise Pakistan.” (Never mind what a sad commentary it is on the state of Pakistani democracy that stories in The New York Times represent pressure points for Pakistan while the stories on every street and in every village in Pakistan seem to have no impact on those most sensitive to how Pakistan is covered by The New York Times.)
The larger and more significant question is actually a lot simpler. If Pakistan is worried about how it is being reflected in other parts of the world, then the question is what can be done about this. Too often, decision-makers in both the military and the civilian domain seem to think that a little bit of IT can do the trick. A Twitter account here. A smart-phone there. “If only Pakistan could use technology as well as its adversaries.” “If only Pakistan could counter the narrative from Langley.” “If only Pakistan could tell its side of the story.”
These statements are not entirely baseless. It is true, for example, that Pakistan’s state structures do not have access to, nor expertise in, technology. The Pakistani state does have some fair gripes with how skewed some of the reporting of the country has been, especially since May 2. But let’s not be delusional. These statements are also the sound of alarm bells. If we cannot hear the alarm bells ringing as Pakistanis across the political spectrum formally and informally say this kind of things, we’re missing the most important part of what is happening.
You cannot tell a bad story well. You cannot make numbers that don’t add up seem right with a supercomputer. You cannot make someone who isn’t very smart, sound smart just because he’s using a Blackberry, or Android. You cannot Tweet wisdom in 140 characters if none exists in the places where wisdom is required.
Since 9/11, Pakistan’s military (and ever so peripherally, its civilian leaders) have had a decade to sort out the state’s multifarious relationships with terrorists and gangsters that instrumentalise religion for monetary and political gain. Since 26/11, Pakistan’s state institutions have had more than two years to sort out the details of how to pursue the primary accused parties—starring the Lashkar-e-Taiba. The issue here is not normative. It is operative. An operative level of state capacity, no matter what theories and ideologies you hold dear, requires actions that defuse tension and blunt the knives that are out for Pakistan. The country’s long-term tolerance for dangerous people, as clients of the Pakistani state, needs to demonstrably be replaced with actions that indicate a plan to end this tolerance. Not an actual end, but at a bare, essential minimum, a plan to end it.
Pakistan’s national security rests on its economic viability, the education of its almost 100 million young people, and its protection of its environment. This national security is threatened by the continued failure of Pakistan to tell its story. To that extent, being concerned about the “narrative” is good.
But the failure to tell Pakistan’s story is not a failure of storytelling. It is not an absence of technology, or Twitter accounts that are failing Pakistan. It is the story itself. Pakistan doesn’t have a very compelling one. The facts on the ground are failing Pakistan. Until the story doesn’t change, it cannot be told well.
The writer advises governments, donors and NGOs on public policy.