Failure Of Democracy

1. Reasons for failure of democracy in Pakistan
2. Sovereignty of people
3. Absence of democratic political process
4. Lack of democracy at gross-roots level
5. Ethnicity and caste system
6. Role of feudalism
7. Pakistan vs. India

An intensive debate is raging in the country about revival of democracy. What is missing in this debate is an in depth analysis to identify real reasons because of which democracy did not work in Pakistan but in India it did.

The first and foremost condition for growth of democracy is acceptance by all the sovereignty of the people. Obviously, democracy is about such a concept of sovereignty and its realization. The sovereign people elect representatives from amongst themselves to rule the country with power the ‘sovereign’ delegates to them for a limited period. It is conditional that those representatives would rule to the fullest satisfaction of the ‘sovereign’ people. Clearly, the people reserve the undisputed right to remove those who don’t come up to their expectations, in the next general elections no more, no less. No one else has a right to dismiss elected ‘delegates’.

Obviously, the ‘sovereign’ could delegate power towards a well defined end. In this case it is good governance, solution of the problems the people face and above all improvement of quality of their rights discreetly, positively and effectively only when they themselves have political awareness, social awakening and consciousness. Hence, the higher the literacy rate, the more powerful the electorate is.

What makes democracy effective is the democratic political process whereby every political party strictly abides by inner partly democracy and party elections. The first requirement is democracy at grass-roots level -neighborhood and village where partly cadres work among the people, learn about the problems the people face and share the problems with the people being from among them. Many of these are full time workers, those young persons who opt to become full time politicians. With experience these workers rise to become national leaders.

The other aspect is the people’s participation and their empowerment to directly handle things in their day-to-day affairs. One of the biggest means is democracy working at lowest administrative level with cities and rural areas both being administered by elected representatives, not by bureaucracy, the equivalents of deputy commissioner and superintendent of police. A city is administered by an elected mayor with the help of an elected corporation and a rural area by elected county chairman with elected county council - not a DC or and SP. In Britain, a county is like a district in South Asia. In some democratic countries even an equivalent of a ‘thunder’ or SHO is elected by the people. In America he is called a Sheriff. In bigger cities, even big neighborhoods or the boroughs have some sort of elected administrators.

Democracy did not take roots in Pakistan due to a number of reasons, the foremost being that no effort was ever made to politically educate the people. For one thing the very foundation of democracy -political education of the people - remains weak due to mass illiteracy and extremely low standard of education. Secondly, hardly any one of the national political leaders is, or ever was from among the people. They were, and still are, elites- top barristers, title holders, bureaucrats, waders and now also crony capitalists.

Another reason for democracy not taking roots in Pakistan is the absence of democratic political process. Basically, it is the result of non-existence of democracy within the political parties that have been in power. Except for a couple of parties, no other political party in Pakistan is known to have ever held transparent inner party elections. Nor any party is known to have enrolled their supporters as fee-paying party members. And to top it all, leadership is a family affair, inherited by next generation, and all from upper class.

This is unfortunate but more unfortunate is failure of party leadership to acquire political education themselves, let alone educating masses politically. The problems Pakistani society faces are many but some of them, the most daunting ones are mass illiteracy, divisions on provincial, linguistic and ethnic basis and further sub-divisions into castes, birdies and tribes, religious sectarianism and violence, suffocating grip of feudal culture with disdain for those doing manual work, respect for parasites, worried business class, nouveau riche capitalists lacking enterprise, and above all feudal ownership of vast areas of land and the feudal treating peasants as slaves. There are many more such problems our society faces. But none has been known to political leadership and therefore, never highlighted in political literature. And this is all inherited. The Muslims of India suffered from all this social sickness but to the leaders then, Hindus and the British were the only problems. So these problems remained unaddressed. All India National Congress was more or less like Muslim League but inner party democracy was slightly more practiced in it than in the League. Nonetheless, India does have a developing and evolving democracy. Why? Because after independence constitution was quickly formulated and national elections regularly held. That triggered a political process of sorts which went on taking roots because national elections which follow democratic political process and hold regular party elections.

The result is that majority of members in national and state legislatures are working politicians, who come from middle and working classes and even from lower castes. A substantial number of central and state ministers are from lower castes or working class. Many states have had low caste chief ministers while others being from middle class. The incumbent president is from Scheduled caste.

Had the constitution been quickly made and enforced in Pakistan and elections held regularly after independence the political process would have taken roots here as in India. That process was subverted first by Ghulam Mohammad by dissolving sovereign constituent assembly, then by Ayub Khan seizing power by ousting legal government, followed by Yahya and Zia, and the practice still continues.