‘As you sow, so shall you reap’ is a popular proverb with a good moral lesson. One cannot sow the seeds of cactus and expect roses to grow on the plant. The current desperate economic, political and internal security state of affairs; overall poor governance and hypocritical conduct by the majority of people in Pakistan can best be understood keeping this axiom in mind.

The shortsighted leadership got the newly found State of Pakistan addicted to foreign aids and subsequently foreign and domestic loans instead of putting reliance on own national resources, failure to undertake timely reforms and diversify Pakistan’s economy. To add salt to the wounds, the rulers and the bureaucracy throughout indulged in unbearable extravagant life styles on public funds; besides unrelenting corruption since 1970s. The economic crutches have helped only a few plunderers but kept the nation crippled, enslaved on all policy matters; and confronting day to day survival challenges. The entry of dubious rich elite in politics with the unholy marriage of mutual interests with the bureaucracy and incapacitated judiciary has kept the politics in Pakistan infested with immeasurable sleaze, incompetence and consequent cruel manipulation of the masses as a strategy by the ruling mafia. Despite having been subjected to almost all types of governance models and political systems, the sullied political DNA has neither served the public adequately nor improved the overall political environment in the country. While feudalism has long been the greed-driven default of society, we are now in uncharted territory, facing a devouring confluence of interests on a national scale with no palpable counter. Nevertheless, politics still remains the best business for the so-called politicians with tainted past and present; the constitution and the law of the land remain open to self-serving mistreatment so often and in the most brazen manner.

Although, Pakistan has been blessed with nuclear deterrence to keep the greater external threat of an open military invasion by the foes; yet, deviously subjected to the threats of Fifth Generation warfare, exploiting all fault-lines on multiple fronts. As of now, the polarized political front and crippled economic condition with disenchanted public pose far greater threats than any external intimidation. The reasons for such a debauchery are too well known; yet, the individual and collective conscience remains in slumber as none in the helms of affairs seems ready to part ways with the profane comfort zone. Public life has become perplexing. By and large, most people were previously expected to hear the truth, or some semblance of it, in daily life. We would generally expect this from each other, but also from public media and authorities such as government or international agencies, presumably set up for our benefit. And it was widely understood that a society could not function in a coherent and stable way without it; as so much in our lives requires us to place trust in others. This has indeed cracked in the past four or five decades. We were already in trouble, but now public discourse is fragmented. Perhaps it broke when governments elected to represent the people openly employed behavioral psychology to lie to their constituencies on a scale we had not previously seen. Globally, we are pounded by organizations such as the UN, World Bank, IMF, G20, and World Health Organization to give up our basic rights and hand their new masters our wealth on claims of threats that can unambiguously be shown to be false. Paid-off former leaders, grasping legitimacy through the legacy of greater minds, reinforce mass falsehoods for the benefit of their friends. Once anomalies that a free media might highlight, delusions have become norms in which the same media is openly complicit. The mass media (including social media) can openly deny what they said or printed just months or even days earlier about a political candidate, a political party or the efficacy of a mandated vaccine. A whole political party can change its narrative almost overnight about the fundamental characteristics of its leader. People paid as “fact-checkers” twist reality to invent new facts and hide the truth, unruffled by the limpidity of their pretense. The modern software programmes and big companies indulge in curating information, filtering out truths that run divergent to the pronouncements of opposed international organizations, agencies and governments. The power has banished honesty.

According to a scholar named Mr. David Bell, “The frightening part is not the lies, which are a normal aspect of humanity, but the broad disinterest in truth. Lies can stand for a time in the presence of a people and institutions that value truth, but they will eventually fail as they are exposed. When truth loses its value, when it is no longer even a vague guide for politics or journalism, then recovery may not occur. We are in an incredibly dangerous time, because lies are not just tolerated but are now the default approach, at the national and international level, and the fourth estate that was to shed light on them has embraced the darkness. The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”

We are now reaping the harvest of falsehood, the seeds of which had been sowed six decades ago. The idyllic subject of despotic rule are the people for whom the distinction between true and false no longer exists. But this impassiveness of the ‘People’ is not necessarily inevitable, or applicable to society as a whole. We are all capable of implementing tyranny; but this does not eliminate our ability to insist on equality, freedom, integrity and good governance.

Saleem Qamar Butt
The writer is a retired senior army officer with experience in international relations, military diplomacy and analysis of geo-political and strategic security issues.