Aslam Azhar was puffing cigarette and reading "Mutant Message from Forever" by Marlo Morgan when we entered into his room. The warm welcome was followed by knowing his thoughts about weak citizen-state relationship in Pakistan. He started sharing his thoughts that the total confidence in government and its services are diminishing because
the social services are not delivering well. They are not delivering because government is
dysfunctional.
Bad functioning of government here is evident from the fact that
when its own officers need jobs they look up to private sector themselves as they
don't have any substantial role of decision making in these services.. Also a government officer is not open to citizen's accountability. Our political structure is very weak. The factors
behind these weaknesses include non-commitment of civil servants and very undisciplined civil services system. It's not only commitment and bad efficiency but also the poor policies that lead to weak governance.
There is a great danger of anarchy in near future in Pakistan he said. It
has already been started in bigger cities like Karachi, Lahore, etc. Failure of the social contract leads to strong consumer society but weaker civil society.
Countries like Czechoslovakia, Sweden and Norway are successful examples of having strong citizen-state relationship because their workers are well trained, well educated and are having good education standards. Contrary to that in a country like USA there is a lot of chaos.
Countries like Czechoslovakia, Sweden and Norway are successful examples of having strong citizen-state relationship because their workers are well trained, well educated and are having good education standards. Contrary to that in a country like USA there is a lot of chaos.
Upon asking from Aslam Azhar that how can we make our governance better? After a short pause he said; only when people come to feel that the situation is now intolerable and will move to
change the government. There is a great need to
revise the Constitution in its true sense in Pakistan. and to reassure the people that " Mullaism
" (religious clergy) can never bring any change in this society.
Talking about if there is any force that could bring positive political change in Pakistan he said that there are some groups in bigger cities like Lahore, Peshawar and Multan but groups don't bring
change because they don't command electorate and don't have larger mobilized
community. So i don't see anyone on that level. India has such successful
groups but we don't have any in Pakistan because as long as religion is part of state affairs we must not expect any positive change. Indonesia and Malaysia are very liberal countries and inspite of Muslim
majority population they are are going good unlike Pakistan because of them being secular in their state affairs. I understand that
Pakistan is going from bad towards worse situation until society will just simply
collapse, which will lead to anarchy and ultimately a change that we want. In that anarchy "Mullaism " will be washed off forever.
He further added before going for sleep that inside our military system, there is a school of thought that is against intervention
of military in politics. I foresee that the next phase we will go through as a nation will be the phase of chaos ...long before the military rules once again in Pakistan !
November 2015
