A nation in thrall to non-issues

Islamabad diary
Two passions dominate our national life: the urge to escape from the real world; and the irresistible tendency to get excited over imaginary issues. For the pursuit of these twin passions one thing was essential not long ago: the loudspeaker. No maulvi, no national reformer, no messiah could do without it. Now it is the 24-hour television news cycle supplanting the loudspeaker.
Idiots on whom no one would have wasted much time before are masters of the TV screen, scattering their pearls of wisdom. The nation is ready fodder for these missionaries because it has nothing better to do.
Gone are the days, or rather the nights, when only dancers, mujra-walis or other ladies of the night used to be in the highest demand. Now it is the television guest who is sought after, such has been the spread of this brand of enlightenment. Earnest-sounding young ladies keep calling you, “Sir, aaj shaam falaney channel pey aa jain.” At first I used to go because some of the voices were nice. Now, having seen through the game, it seems such a bore. Imagine sitting in a TV studio when you could be reading a book or pouring something into your glass.
And because the 24-hour news cycle is a hungry beast, having constantly to be fed, there is a premium on breathless reporting and analysis, as if something earthshaking is happening all the time. And the nation is glued to the screen because, as I said, it has nothing better to do.
The beauty of it is that this news cycle caters wonderfully to the nation’s love of non-issues. Real problems can go hang themselves. We like nothing better than a tamasha and we keep getting one all the time.
Nowadays every problem has been pushed to one side as the nation is served a buffet with three main dishes on the board: patriotism, media freedom and threat to democracy. Imran Khan is happy because he is not being asked questions about his party government’s performance in the Frontier. Nawaz Sharif is happy

because governance issues take a back seat as he emerges once again as the chief knight-defender of democracy. The army is happy because, for a change, it has a good section of the public on its side. The media is in a state of intoxication because media freedom is under threat and it must take to the barricades in its defence.
Anything will do as long as we can run away from our real problems. Will anyone ask Mian Nawaz Sharif, did it have to take him a year to address the problem of extended loadshedding? If there was loadshedding in his Raiwind Palace and the PM’s House we can be reasonably certain he would have woken up to the problem sooner.
Polio eradication we can’t handle and are making an international joke of ourselves on this issue. Forget about other concessions from the Taliban. The Turam Khans negotiating with the Taliban could have asked the Taliban, with folded hands if it had to come to that, to at least spare our polio workers. They were dealing with bigger issues. How could something so small cross their preoccupied minds? Now, if media reports are to be believed, we are about to ask the Imam of the Holy Kaaba to come to our assistance and save our polio campaign for us. If there were a comedy prize this would get it.
At the height of loadshedding ten-fifteen days ago, the water and power secretary was sent post-haste to Turkey to get some tips from there how to cope with the crisis. Granted that our work ethic is a bit weak; granted that we are not Germans or Japanese when it comes to doing things. But is this the way to conduct the nation’s business?
Mian Sahib came with the promise of doing something about the power crisis. And a year into his government, apart from shovelling money, and huge amounts of it, into the pockets of tycoons close to the seat of power, all that has been done on this front is about zero. But the braying and the trumpeting go on as if loadshedding is not a real thing, just a figment of our tormented imaginations.
First the Musharraf trial and now the Geo-ISI saga come as welcome relief to the government. For it enables the government to play its favourite role of mounting the saddle of abstract issues – like democracy, rule of law, freedom, etc. The entire summer will be spent on this front and Mian Sahib will pride himself on again coming out on top in defence of democracy.
All this is fine but why must Pakistani democracy take delight in creating problems for itself? We don’t have to be told that there is a permanent lobby in this country never happy with democracy, elements that thrive when the borya-bistar (bedding) of democracy is rolled up. But shouldn’t this be an argument for democracy to be careful and cautious, to bide its time and show patience, and build up its strength through performance and delivery, rather than for democracy to behave all the time like a Kashmiri pehlwan, clad in loin-cloth and body shining with oil, hands on thighs, which is the style of our wrestling, and declaring to all and sundry, “karakey kad diyan ge”? (I’m afraid this is untranslatable in English.)
We should do our pehlwani when in a in a position to display our skills. What is the mathematical complication in this? So it is relevant to ask, how did all this start? Who made an issue of the Musharraf trial? Why were ministers not stopped from spouting nonsense which was irrelevant and uncalled for? And why did the government remain mum when the ISI came under attack?
And to prove that in this country at least no one has a monopoly on idiocy and foolishness, the ISI has gone to the other extreme and is busy manufacturing pressure on the Jang Group. The pro-ISI rallies are now becoming a tamasha and the ISI is doing itself no favour by banking on such support.
Our respected Hafiz Saeed was already unstoppable. After his heroic efforts in the ISI’s defence he becomes more untouchable. Hafiz Saeed’s great cause is the liberation of Kashmir. Haven’t we had enough of this liberation? Where has it brought us? At a time when the ISI, and indeed the army, should be rethinking their priorities, looking at the world afresh, we here see the old trench-lines reaffirmed. Will it be some other age when we learn any lessons from our failures or our past?
Other countries with strong authoritarian traditions have had their transitions to democracy…safely crossing crocodile-infested waters under the guidance of reasonably wise leaders. Spain had a Francoist past. The Salazar dictatorship in Portugal lasted forever. Greece had its colonels, Latin America its ambitious generals, Indonesia a military-dominated dispensation which went on and on. In all these countries democracy is now an established thing. It seems more of a fragile affair here because our political class refuses to grow up. And the military with its puffed-up conceits is hardly any better.
So my guess is that all this drummed-up agitation – Imran Khan, etc – will come to nothing. But some more time will slip by as we do what comes best to us: marking time on the same spot.
Tailpiece: Meanwhile even as nothing else is working and the Grand Imam of the Holy Kaaba is rushing to our assistance to help save our stalled polio programme, enough to make us the laughing-stock among nations, the government is racing full steam ahead with the Pindi-Islamabad metro-bus project. I’m all for it. Islamabad was always a purposeless city, of no use to man or mountain. Anything that screws it up has, for what my blessing is worth, my whole-hearted support…and nothing is going to disfigure it as much as this loony business. So Allah be praised…even as we wait with bated breath for the rail line to Murree and beyond.
Email: winlust@yahoo.com