The Hobbesian evaluation of the Pakistani setup, later innovated by Acemoglu and Robinson into The Narrow Corridor implies Pakistan’s existence, in itself, is a paradox. With a weak central government and a strong establishment, a disenfranchised public and Atchison-educated elite make Pakistan a unique county with rare characteristics.
Pakistan is, perhaps, the only piece of landmass with extractive institutions across the board, with corrupt hierarchical surveillance mechanisms pervasively present, and an unidentified elite’s authoritarian reign enacted as ever. Developmental milestones and public central initiatives, rarely though, if ever, are announced, and often fall prey to unabated corruption and nepotism-borne chain of swarming acquaintances. That is, merit negation and bid promotion flourishes. Resultantly, in the diamond jubilee passed, all socio-economic and political mayhem persisted.
With courtesy of unconstitutionally power, morally corrupt and intellectually bankrupt, the country has turned into the Gehenna. The situation suggested by Hobbes— of life being “solitary”, “poore”, “nasty”, “brutish”, and “short”— will exist anyway with or without his application of ideas
Pakistan’s rare characteristics include the burgeoning unconstitutional might of an invincible, yet invisible, service and the uncontrolled ‘other’ segments of the country: bandits, pirs and landlords. Their amalgamation with national politics, resultantly, creates a perfect storm. The public, the policies and the progress, as a result, get gridlocked.
States as leviathans, Thomas Hobbs explained, are crucial for peace, and progress. In the absence of a central body, life becomes “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short”. Acemoglu and Robinson’s innovation added an extra veneer to this idea providing three forms of a state: absent, despotic and shackled.
Pakistan’s evaluation according to this idea provides an insight: by far, Pakistan doesn’t look like a shackled state. The other two are pervasively present though. Pakistan’s large chunk of land is occupied by the ‘despotic tendencies’ with the state holding significant power against the public. Absent leviathan— the rule of bandits in the riverine regions of three provinces— does not stand far behind, and, resultantly, claims a hefty area of influence.
Unlike other cases where either of three forms exist, Pakistan’s standing is rare: an epicentre of accommodating two contradictory leviathans— despotic and absent. The livelihood is miserable in either existing leviathan, imagine a life between the cogs of both!
Sir Thomas More’s Utopia exists in Pakistan’s DHA and Bahria Town’s Overseas enclaves, while the rest lives in George Orwell’s 1984, with Big Brother surveilling over sans any blink— Punjab Defamation Law, intelligence agencies’ authority to listen and record calls are some of the examples.
With the Constitution on the cusp of compromise, judiciary influenced by agencies, public dissent an unpardonable sin and political musical chairs always on, the sight verifies the existence of a despotic leviathan. Time and again abduction, loot and kidnapping for ransom in riverine regions testifies the latter — the existence of absent leviathan.
Powerful hands are surely behind the actions and treatments sharply contradicting the other: European standard lifestyle for Atchison College alumni and Somalian code of conduct for the rest explains why the percentage of the people living below poverty line swells. It is sure as shooting, the reins of the country has always been in the wrong hands, and the incompetent’s incumbencies still haunt the affairs across the board. In effect, the country, its people and all socioeconomic affairs have never been right as rain.
Pakistan has been ruled as a personal fiefdom by the powerful, and in case of proliferated public outrage, emergency exits exist in arm’s length distance with foreign currency reserves welcoming their way. The ‘Dubai Leaks’ scandal provides an opportunity to peek into their illicit, alleged yet safe, wealth window.
Bountiful benefits for the economically privileged apart from other sarkari moolah flowing their way in the guise of fuels, risk allowances, electricity units and lavish-budget foreign trips. Systematically deprived of living minimal, hand-to-mouth life has been the fate by birth, if the subject is the public. Apart from the corporate tier along with unmentionable powerful segments of the social fabric, Pakistan’s affairs are akin to a house located in a remote village in the riverine region bordered by the remains of Acacia Nilotica— or Babool— violable from all sides with all affairs at stale given no wherewithal for rejuvenation. Dominated by patriarchal structure, the rest of the family remains open to discrimination and can safely be called ‘children of a lesser god’.
Pakistan, with its vulnerable borders, feeds the powerful— as the patriarchal structure is structured— with the rest remaining with hellish circumstances, facing injustice, discrimination and depredation. The head of the house rests in the realm with bountiful benefits, the ‘other’ members are merely bread and butter earners— eating is strictly prohibited but minimal.
The sole difference between the people part of Eden and Gehenna— separated by the moolah count— is natural disaster or divine wrath with the former, by any means, standing resilient by applying every materialistic means possible for protection since they are already immuned by unconstitutional actions or illegal practices. However, those in Gehenna are already living in hell as the term itself implies given no justice, social safety net or constitutional rights.
With courtesy of unconstitutionally power, morally corrupt and intellectually bankrupt, the country has turned into the Gehenna. The situation suggested by Hobbes— of life being “solitary”, “poore”, “nasty”, “brutish”, and “short”— will exist anyway with or without his application of ideas.
