A favourite trope of the urban Pakistani middle class is to say that all of Pakistan’s problems could be solved, were it not for politics. We find this troubling for one very simple reason: politics is the process by which we decide who gets which parts of the government’s – and by extension, society’s shared – resources. How can a resource allocation problem (which is what most of Pakistan’s problems can be described as) be solved without a process to allocate those resources?
What people mean when they say that politics is the problem is that other people advocating for their interests through institutions is bad for the country, but when people like us make decisions for everyone using those same institutions, it is acceptable, and even good. In other words, my interests are in the country’s best interest, but other people’s interests are bad for the country.
This is the natural consequence of military dictatorships of the past banning political organisations on college campuses, which eliminated a forum for people to discuss political matters and learn how to have political conversations with people they disagreed with. This is not simply something that made drawing room conversations in Pakistan less interesting: it had the effect of making it difficult for Pakistanis to see politics as the legitimate process by which we come together to decide how to share resources. And as a result, any resource allocation question is almost invariably decided by who has power, rather than any consultative process that might arrive at a more equitable solution.
That process is on full display on the matter of how to govern Karachi. Any democratic process would arrive at a solution that would be workable for both the city and provincial governments, but because we as a society have never learned how to have these conversations, we have never really learned how to engage in constructive politics, where parties compete for votes with the best ideas and the best governing performance.
This is a shame because it often means that problems fester for a lot longer than they should: the only way any agreement is ever reached on a problem is if it becomes completely unavoidable. And, as in the case of Karachi, not even then.
