A new hope in the midst of many crises
In the lives of nation states, just as with our personal lives, there are moments which shape the future. It’s fair to say, on this 25TH July, Pakistan met this moment.
It’s almost clichéd to view every election as the most significant one in a country’s history. But it’s not clichéd to say this about this July 25.
Because for those who grew up in this country, who have lived through its highs and lows and with them witnessed the birth and demise of their own hopes, who have shed blood and tears during its most painful moments because they know deep inside what this country has to offer or has offered in its better moments, who have prayed and continue to pray for its success because they realize that despite all its challenges and problems, behind the load-shedding and bumpy roads, there is pure beauty to be found, beauty in the hearts of its people – viewed consistently as some of the most hospitable people by visiting tourists – and beauty also in the shared story of all those invested in this country, for all such people, these elections were like a fork on a long dreary road, breaking the path thus traveled into separate tracks, one of hopeful uncertainty and the other of depressing certainty. Pakistanis seem to have chosen the former.
Emerging as the victor in all this is Pakistan’s most celebrated sportsman, who gave up a life of post-retirement luxury some twenty-two years ago, to join the most dangerous sport in Pakistan: politics.
Back then it looked like a pipe dream for Khan, just like so many other things he has achieved, which all started as pipe dreams. Who, after all, would have known that in the twilight of his cricketing career, Khan would lift the world-cup trophy, leading a lackluster cricketing side to its first and only world cup victory? Who would have predicted that in a country starved for the most basic of services, a cricketer could come forward, and setup a free-treatment cancer hospital – again, first and only of its kind in Pakistan? Who could have expected that a man with all of life’s luxuries splayed at his feet, would abandon all of it, and much more, only to spend his days building schools, raising charities, and spreading awareness.
Our population density is a force multiplier – problems scale quickly when people are packed in small geographies; disease control becomes harder to combat, behavioral patterns become harder to reverse, learning development becomes harder to apply, resource distribution becomes harder to accomplish – it’s simple math, a numbers problem
Cynics would say this was all for power. Well if lust for power turns us into self-sacrificing philanthropists, then we’re better for it. But the truth is probably richer and grander than this. And perhaps the truth is this: that men like Khan, who achieve the unachievable, not once, not even twice, but several times in a single lifetime, are born once a century.
And although Khan is unique, so is the society he’s emerged from; unique in its forgetfulness of its heroes. It is true we’ve produced a spectacular litany of heroes, but it is equally true that we’ve dismissed them just as spectacularly – maligning young girls who risked death to defy patriarchy (Malala), repudiating our best minds on denominational grounds (Abdus Salam), trashing our artists by vitiating their intention to spread awareness (Sharmeen Obaid), and worst of all, murdering our social activists (Sabeen Mehmood) for standing up for the weakest among us. And when it comes to hated heroes, Khan is no exception.
In fact, in some ways, here too Khan has achieved the unachievable, hated equally by liberals and conservatives alike. Conservatives could never quite come around to his anglicized ways – Keble, cut suits, women. Liberals bashed him for being allegedly soft on Taliban, reducing him to ‘Taliban Khan’. And somewhere between conservative hate and liberal angst, was Khan’s political career, taking a beating these past two decades, waiting to take off, but not quite. When in 2008, Khan’s PTI managed only single-digit seats in the National Assembly, many were convinced Pakistani hearts only had space for Khan the cricketer. Lesser men would have given up long time ago. But true to form, the skipper marched on, not faltering even once, despite resistance, opposition, and allegations thrown at him every step of the way. And at long last, ten years later, he has finally arrived, with a mandate as heavy as the sacrifices he made to get here.
But for Khan, the real work has only now begun. He hasn’t even taken office yet, and battle awaits him on a thousand fronts. Education screams for reform – 22 million kids out of school. The healthcare system is in such ruins even our ministers and ex-PM are at pains to demonstrate the slightest trust in it, scrambling off to London and Dubai at the slightest flutter of their hearts. The economy is under crushing debt owing to the fiscal short-termism of an incompetent leadership. And then there is foreign policy, where shots are called in the dark, by men – and yes, they are all men – in uniform.
Fortunately for Khan, these are not new problems. But unfortunately for Khan, Pakistan is out of time. Our population density is a force multiplier – problems scale quickly when people are packed in small geographies; disease control becomes harder to combat, behavioral patterns become harder to reverse, learning development becomes harder to apply, resource distribution becomes harder to accomplish – it’s simple math, a numbers problem. Short of exceptionally smart strategies conceived by exceptionally smart people and enacted by exceptionally smart subject-matter-experts (SMEs) across a whole range of domains – each in desperate need for attention and reform – in an exceptionally short amount of time, Pakistan could easily slip into an abyss from where recovery may no longer be possible. And we’ve seen, more recently with Syria, what happens when things suddenly go south for countries.
Khan’s challenge, therefore, is not mere damage control, it is mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. And if the past is any guide here, he’s the one person who make this happen. His critics, the ones who remind us at every turn that cricket is not governance, should review PTI’s performance in KP. Unlike PML-N with its flyovers and orange-lines, all cosmetic delights in a country with deep structural rot, PTI has been addressing structural pain points since it’s been in governance.
So, while the challenges ahead are big and many, let’s hope years from now when we look back upon this July 25, it marks the moment when we made a decisive, and hopefully final departure from the old ways. When we finally did right by the Pakistani nation and level-set the field by bringing education to little kids who’ve only seen privation, and healthcare to the scores of sick who need not stay a day sicker if given proper care, and respect to minorities and women who’ve suffered too long and too much, and law and order to our towns and cities, and fairness to those who’ve been dealt the wrong end of the stick generation after generation, and above all, hope to an immensely talented, brave, and resilient people who’ve silently sacrificed enough for this country and deserve much better; who deserve a ‘Naya’ Pakistan.