From Jinnah to Jamali
Optimum,

A two thousand word article cannot be a full scale study which is a feature of books, so there will always be some ends which will be left loose, as you like to put it. That’s why I think the editors of Chowk have put this forum in place.

For detailed answers to your questions, you will have to read three books, The Soul Spokesman by Aisha Jalal; Partition of India: Legend & Reality by MD Seervai.

In one sentence however, I would like to say that we are the exposed internal side of the exterior that we know as India. India has a beautiful facade but the internal problems are not entirely different from Pakistan. Don’t be too impressed with the prospects of double-digit growth figures and the predictions being made about it to reach the volume of the US economy in 25 years. India, as their society stands today, cannot achieve what is being predicted about it. Sooner or later they will also need to answer some tough questions. Can they hope to maintain the current levels of growth by restricting the fruits of economic development to the ``acceptable castes and religions`` only? Is India only Delhi, Bombay and Bangalore? Optimum levels of growth also warrants an exhaustion of total available resources and these resources are not limited to these great metropolises only; they are in Lalu Parsad’s Bihar also?

Leaving you on another loose end ...

Farrukh M Khan

From Jinnah to Jamali
Rozaiba,

I have certainly thought about what I have written ... Thank you very much for giving me the benefit of the doubt! :-)

Now as for re-establishing the organic link between the rulers and the ruled in Pakistan, what is the point of asking me this question while you have rejected the premise on which I have built the argument? The link will be established the moment the rulers will start relying on the locals for the generation of their wealth. Just as the ``Moghals and the conqueres before them`` did. However inhuman or crule they might appear to us today, they did not sell their souls in the Cold War mecenary market to validate their rule over the masses. But my contention is not to glorify the Moghals or blame the British. The point is to know the path that has led us to where we are today, so that we can get our bearings right.

From Jinnah to Jamali
Hassansiddiqi,

Thank you very much for appreciating the first half of my article. Let me however assure you that I am not at all hopeless. The only thing which is preventing me from leaving this country is the hope that some day my people are going to wake up from their historical slumber and I want to right there with them as an ordinary worker trying to help the cause in whatever way possible.

However, let me confess also that I don’t have any ready-made solutions to a problem that has been compounding for last several hundred years. As I wrote in my response to rozaiba, point is to know the path that has led us to where we are today, so that we can get our bearings right and then look for solutions. Otherwise we will only keep barking up the wrong tree and continue to miss the real issues and keep scratching the surface with reports written by Harvard or Yale educated poverty experts.

Had I any claim to possess solutions, the conclusion to my article would not have been a appeal to the sensitive among us to come together and pay a collective debt that we owe to our future generations.

Farrukh M Khan

From Jinnah to Jamali
Ahmadbilal,

If we share our problems with other developing countries, does this mean that it is something to write home about? And what pray do you mean by developing countries? India? Malaysia? China? Because as far as my knowledge goes these are some of the countries that are called `developing. Anything lower than this is under developed or least developed. Are we anything like India, Malaysia or China? To listen to an emphatic NO as the answer to this question, all you need to do is to take a trip home and travel to a village away from the Metropolitan Lahore and Karachi.

When will we wake up to face the music? We lost one half of the Islamic Republic in 1971, will we come to the real world when the rest of it wont be anymore? Will the daisy cutters wake us up? Or will it be foreign soldiers pissing on our naked bodies?

Farrukh M Khan

Failure of Institutions in Pakistan? Jay,

My friend ... if I were to pray for daisy cutters I will be praying for the death of my own loved ones the majority of whom are just as innocent of the wrongs you mention as those who were subjected to apartheid in South Africa or the Harijans of India ... would you have prayed for daisy cutters there too?

Futility of effort has never acted as a reason for me to stop doing for what my heart gives the call ... kindly refrain from telling me on what to waste my time or not ... i do it with a sense of duty that will never make me jump ship even while she sinks.

Dont be so sure that none of the respondents to my article are Pakistanis. Arent you heartened by the fact that the writer of this article is a Pakistani?

Farrukh M Khan

Failure of Institutions in Pakistan? Fara, bts, jay, M.B.Z. Isphahani, Ras:

Thank you all for your responses to my article.

Now then ... Fara refers to the problem of egg/chicken, which I think is rather outdated in this day and age. You see these were the problems of concepts inspired by things happening in serial processes and a corresponding understanding-apparatus of human beings. Now is the world of parallel processing and multi-tasking. And things also happen in Nature in a parallel manner and at several levels too. So I do not think that there is an either/or situation regarding institutions and people. People reflect the institutions and vice versa.

It is not even a question of people exploiting the institutions ... my point is that the institutions are not made by God; they are not immutable givens but changing realities. They work the way they do because of the culture promoted by the ruling elites or the effective leaders of society -- those who are the owners in the process of production. We need to change the current culture and its promoters and people will change along with it. I mean why do Pakistani professionals excel in Western countries and fail miserably here? Because the people who hire their services do not need them in the manner the Western entrepreneurs do. Pakistani entrepreneur knows that he stands to make more money through an SRO issued by the government in his favour than the efficiency of his workers. So why would he/she promote or build institutions that can produce efficient managers or workers? This was just to give you one example; the situation is the same across the board.

Moreover, Western institutions don’t work the way they are supposed to because of stringent application of punitive measures, as some people like to think; they do so because of the cultural dos and don`ts. No law enforcement agency can ensure the rule of law in a society, they are only meant to deal with aberrations that are exceptions to the cultural norm.

I think there certainly is a need if not demand for a cultural reconstruction in Pakistan if we are avoid the aeroplanes flying in from the East or West or which ever direction, which Jay likes to think is the only solution to our problems. No nation should be allowed to survive as we have up to now. We have acted as a regional goon of the West in return for the economic lease of life that they have provided to us in the form of loans and aid packages. Otherwise we could never have survived for over fifty years. The dismal decade of the 90s bears testimony to this dark reality, when Western aid conduit dried up after the US slapped sanctions on us under the Pressler Amendment, the already disintegrating façade of the Pakistani state began to crumble.

Pakistan is not a failed state; it simply never was one. Pakistan is the name of a bankrupt culture that has been rotting since the fall of the Moghal Empire. Ever since its breech birth in 1947, it has always acted as an agent acting on behalf of masters who sat far away pulling the strings of their puppets in power. Had our leaders an inkling of responsibility towards the land and people they governed, we would have been much better than we are. According to one World Bank report, Pakistan would have been much better off today, “if it had invested all the official development assistance from 1960 to 1998 at a real rate of 6%, it would have a stock of assets equal to $239 billion in 1998, many times the current external debt”.

In the end I would like to respond to Bts’ demand for an in-depth analysis of what I outlined in my article. I agree with him and would like to share with him that I am working on it. If the editors of this website will permit, I will shortly be submitting an article on the failure of leadership in Pakistan and then deal with the issue of our cultural decay in a third one. However, I would like to point out that since the issue that needs to be addressed here is that of giving a comprehensive account of the last three hundred years or so, it cannot be left up to one or two individuals. If there are people out there who do believe that the fundamental questions that I raised in my article are sound and correct enough for a deeper analysis, then we should pool in our resources and work together as responsible members of this society who would not like to behave as silent witnesses of its destruction. Let this be the debt that we owe to our future generations and the price that we have to pay for having a better understanding and sensitive souls.

Farrukh M Khan
22/04/2004

Failure of Institutions in Pakistan? No Humair, the structure and people change together. A handmill gives you a society with a feudal lord and steam mill a social set up with industrial capitalist at the helm. The base of the society defines not only the societal superstructures but also the people and their inter-relationships within that social set up. Just as the feudal society had its serfs and peasants the industrial society had its labourers and middle class. Both are totally different animals in their motives, outlook, aspirations and consciousness of the self. To change the base therfore is to change the people too.

I hope this answered your question.

Farrukh M Khan

Pakistan: Inside The Nuclear Closet Some people I know once told me that they were once driving on the winding hilly roads in Nathiagalli or one of the other nothern hill stations. Dr Qadeer Khan`s daughter Dina was driving. During that drive she over ran and killed a young boy. When they were brought to the police station all she told them was that she was Dr AQ Khan`s daughter and they let them all go without any further questioning. So immune from the law was he!!