The limitations of government

When I first went to Pakistan (this was a couple of decades ago), I was surprised that they seemed to have better infrastructure than we did. Lahore airport was small but it looked and was modern. It did not have the messiness and sloppy construction of the airports I had been familiar with all my life, at Santa Cruz and in Delhi. 

This changed a decade or so later, by when India’s big cities had received swanky airports that could have been anywhere in the world. At that point, taking off from Terminal 3 in Delhi and landing in Lahore it was apparent that India had left Pakistan behind, at least on the matter of airports. But the fact is that till 2010 or so they were, or at least they seemed to be, ahead.

Indians will be surprised when they visit Pakistan because the place has been so thoroughly demonised in our imagination that reality will shock. It is actually very much like India in a boringly familiar sort of way and even the economy is not dissimilar in terms of income. India’s median urban income is higher than Pakistan’s but our median rural income is lower. And, of course, most Indians are not in urban spaces and so, even if Pakistanis are not ahead of us, it appears that the two nations are quite similarly placed.

Their streets were similar to ours in the sense of chaos and how the state was engaged with by the citizens was also similar (the same dread of the police and of engaging the bureaucracy). 

Though it may seem that the two nations have taken separate paths in terms of their destiny, they may really not be that dissimilar.

My point in saying this is the following: we are going through a phase of our history when great change seems in the offing. If the unending stream of news in these times has a unified theme, it is turbulence. 

In many places where there seemed to have been a consensus there now appears to be a great shift, alarming many of us. So is there something that we are headed towards that is dark and menacing? Perhaps there is but its effect will not be felt by you and me to any great extent. That is my point: that the government, even when highly resolved, can only influence our lives and our societies to a certain extent.

I would say this is broadly true and unlikely to change. We can say that it is very different for Kashmir but surprisingly even there, for the individuals actually affected, things are pretty much the same. The problem of everyday life in Kashmir is no access to the internet for large parts of the year, awful preventive detention laws, an oppressive military presence on the streets and no power or authority in the local leaders and no real representation. What has changed on that front? Nothing. This is how things have been there for 30 years. 

Indians will be surprised when they visit Pakistan because the place has been so thoroughly demonised in our imagination that reality will shock. It is actually very much like India in a boringly familiar sort of way and even the economy is not dissi

 

We can call the instrument of our oppression Article 370 or we can call it something else — the lived reality does not change.

I am not making these observations only in the negative sense. The state actually has limits to what it can achieve, particularly in South Asia. It may astonish readers to know that Karachi has government-licensed alcohol shops. You can buy alcohol legally in parts of Pakistan and that is something you cannot do in many parts of India. 

It is not that the Islamic Republic of Pakistan did not want to ban alcohol: it did and has tried for five decades. The fact is that it does not have the capacity to mould society and its habits. 

For the most part, the idea that government of a particular type or led by a particular individual can produce magic is misplaced.

I have lived a large part of my life in Gujarat. I went to school in Surat, college in Baroda and I worked for a Gujarati newspaper in Ahmedabad. There was a Congress government when I began working and then a few years later a BJP one. 

Later still there was the impression that this government was something so new as to be a departure from the past (the “Gujarat model”). That was how it was seen from the outside. But to the person who had lived through it all, no such model was viable and any change that was visible was part of the change visible elsewhere in India. The same shiny (ugly, really) malls, the same lawless traffic and the same reluctance to pay taxes.

Indeed if there was one thing truly different it was that which the rest of India had and Gujarat did not: white collar jobs (it is the reason why there is no IT hub in Ahmedabad). All the genius of that administration could not deliver this basic good to Gujarat’s middle class. Something to consider when we look into the distance with consternation.

While we must all be concerned at the direction we have been taking in recent times as a nation and we must do whatever it is that we can to push back against overreach, the fact is that in the modern world, the role of government and decisive leaders is limited. It is technology and not the government that ultimately will produce the big changes in our lives.

It is something to keep in mind when it seems that there is darkness all around.