Is devolution too dull?

One of the most forceful influences of globalisation has been the free-flow of information. This in turn has carved out a new and compelling role for a whole host of new age information-providers – these include junket journalists, PhD students, fellows at various think tanks, anthropology teachers at foreign universities, novelists who have green cards but also vacation houses in Pakistan, even the tableeghis and pietists who run seminars and counsel overseas Pakistanis while on tour. All these have become sources that often speak and write representatively for and about Pakistan at international levels.
Simultaneously, the hunger for more and speedy information which must be updated on the internet face page every hour, has injected a new confidence in foreign correspondents who have embedded themselves in Pakistan over the last decade. Their coverage of what could possibly be sexed up as the last ‘ideological war’ as opposed to the routine, intrastate ethnic or material based civil wars being fought around the world, has anointed correspondents a special status in the media world.
Often, routine situational analyses have morphed into blogs and then graduated into career-enhancing publications on and about Pakistan. These tend to be based on their embedded experiences along with some quotes from the native chattering class and dependent on sources provided by local journalists. The occasional anthropological factoid is thrown in for effect and this qualifies as the new authoritative work on the country and its society. Nearly all of the above ‘sources’ focus almost exclusively on Islam and its nexus with politics and the state, specifically the military.
Local authors have caught onto the opportunities afforded by the globalised media that allows anyone with a laptop to become an authority on the political. However, the native journalist and social commentator doesn’t have it so easy. Precisely because their dependence is on local readership, they cannot really pull too many exaggerated or misleading stories without getting exposed or risking their legitimacy – even if it is a limited commodity these days – and sadly, in some cases, even their lives. But the local voice is drowned these days with the competition from the sources cited above.
In many cases, the need to counter misrepresentation or narrow interpretations of Pakistani society has led to a whole wave of reactionary or corrective literature that seeks to rescue the ‘real Pakistan’, the moderate Muslim, the average tea-sipping man in the streets, the small joys of being poor or, reclamation literature exposing our victim-status due to our colonial history and listing the dangers we face from current designs of imperial powers. It has led to supra-nationalism, hyped patriotism, chauvinistic redefinitions of the constitution and historical rewritings of the emergence of Pakistan, while manufacturing paranoid fabrications of who qualifies as its true saviours.
In the opportunism afforded by the global political spotlight on Pakistan, what has completely gone unnoticed is the mundane and ordinary. The peoples’ movements in this country, just in the last few years, have been completely overshadowed by the twists and turns of military and foreign policies and the press it gets. Routine every day struggles of the peasants of Okara, the fisherfolk in Sindh, the lawyers movement, the lady health workers, the devolution of the federal powers and major restructuring of the country’s governance seem not to warrant any anthropological interest, nor mass prayers, no donor interest, nor plots for stories, not even calendar days by NGOs, such as ‘women’s day’ or ‘literacy day’ or ‘environment day’. As much as a new generation of youthful policy ‘experts’ mock grand narratives, they also refuse to turn attention to lesser narratives which have tremendous direct and strategic implications for being Pakistani.
The 18th Amendment is an example of a people’s demand, just as the movements listed above; it is both secular (by which I mean, neutral as far as religious identity is concerned, even though the committee succumbed and added some irrelevant connection for effect) and democratic (by which I mean it has gone through an imperfect but inclusive and parliamentary process). Interventions by civil society and a legal case thrashed out in court have all been features of this process. Even the argument that the course was not debated enough is testament that the path to devolution is intrinsic to democracy.
To err on the side of caution has become an ailment almost. Every time we inch towards democratic norms and structural changes to the very federation, the recalcitrant insist it’s a larger conspiracy and unworthy. This fear of change earlier coloured the response of some commentators towards the lawyer’s movement which predated the Arab Spring we see surging today. Yet the call from many a liberal was to be cautious and mark boundaries around the influence of the movement.
Similarly today the process of devolution is being underplayed due to pragmatic and bureaucratic concerns and real as these may be, accountancy is just half the story of devolution. The other part is about power and its distribution and towards that, this moment needs a fairer response, analysis, and plan on how to make it work for us in the provinces.
Post Bin Laden, some hysterical calls for Pakistan to be expelled from the comity of nations (is there a separate orbit in space reserved for bad nations?) simply reinforce the idea that it is our power elite who decide our fate and that the only relevance we have is with reference to our foreign policy.
It’s time for us to reclaim our own domestic governance issues and dialogue with our local representatives on how to make livelihoods work. The military and the religious actors have failed us – that is clear. Perhaps it is time for international and local experts to turn their attention away from these and look also towards the relevance of mundane, ordinary local political expression and their direct relevance to the Pakistani people.

The writer is a researcher based in Karachi. Email: afiyazia@yahoo.com