I did not expect to come away from my recent visit to Pakistan feeling positive. After all, I was coming from Bangladesh in a very somber mood because the politics there are very depressing. And my visit to Pakistan coincided with the revelations of the “Panama Papers” which, though ambiguous as to any legal culpability, would clearly weaken the civilian government vis-à-vis the army. My arrival followed closely on the spectacle of a “sit in” in support of an executed murderer of a major politician, which the government allowed to disrupt normal activity for several days. I looked forward to seeing a great many friends who I much admire, but had no great expectations that Pakistan itself would evoke feelings other than the usual “muddling along.”
But somewhere along the way in those two weeks, I began to feel a different vibe, a sense of self-confidence, a feeling of energy that I have not seen in many previous visits. My friends, for the most part, exuded this sense of self confidence and energy, and one could feel it in the streets. One of those friends described it as “finally, Pakistan is a work in progress; before it was a work, but there was no progress; now there is progress.”
Patriotic truck art at the Lok Mela
Working class women are winning their battles
I suspect that one factor in this new sense of confidence is that Pakistanis are discovering they have agency. In big and small ways (mainly the latter), the middle and upper middle classes are taking their fate in their own hands.
An agent is someone who makes choices for other people. Individuals have their own agency when they have the capability to make choices for themselves, and the will to act on their choices. Groups of people have agency too. This collective agency occurs when people act together, in a social movement, for a collective or social goal. This goal is almost always to improve their lives in some way. Labor unions, other social movements – even sometimes political parties – can exercise collective agency for a social good. To believe in human agency, individual or collective, is to believe that humans can, and do, make decisions and enact them to improve their own lot and their societies.
There is, of course, much philosophical argument about whether human agency can be independent or is dependent on some greater force. This has been argued for centuries, and clearly these arguments are still raging. But whether human agency is determined in some mechanistic way, or is free and undetermined is not the point here. In fact, it is clear that humans do exercise agency individually and collectively, and we see it around us every day. I wrote about one manifestation a few months ago—the great migration crisis is clearly the result of a collective decision on the part of several million displaced Middle Eastern suffering people to exercise their agency and move to where there is safety and hope.
And I see small signs of collective agency in Pakistan, things I have not seen in many previous visits or when I lived there. In part, I may not have been looking in the right places. I suspect the spirit has always been there. I read of historical examples, of groups trying to exercise agency, but the movement either ran out of steam or was crushed by military governments.
The most exciting example of collective agency was in a village near Lahore. There a group of people are bringing modernization to the village — a hospital for women, for their obstetrical and gynecological care; a school for boys and girls, and a community center among other projects. I was present at the official opening of the community center, and saw the enthusiasm and the pride in their accomplishments.
I have also been reading again chapters of a book yet to be published about larger examples of Pakistani women exercising their collective agency to better their working conditions. For the most part, these movements are fairly recent, taking place in the last 10-15 years. They include the long struggle by the women health workers for better pay and permanent positions, the movement by landless peasants against the owners of their land and the army, and the movement against sexual abuse and harassment on the job, which resulted in legislation. These are gripping in their stories of women coming together against great odds and great opposition and through collective action and solidarity (and pragmatic negotiation) attaining their objective of better working conditions. Often these struggles took a decade or more. What makes these stories different is that most of them are about working class and lower middle class women rising up to seize the challenges and winning their battles. The cost of those victories was high in terms of family stress as well as social opprobrium.
An assertive Bourgeoisie is historically a driver of change
One other experience during the visit provided additional evidence that the mood might be changing. I was invited to the Folk Culture Festival (called Lok Virsa Mela) which reminded me of the California State Fair where I spent many happy childhood days. The provinces come together to display their wares — food, crafts, arts, song, dance, etc. There were thousands of people of all classes and ethnicities, all having a joyous time, singing, dancing, eating, etc. It took me back not only to my happy childhood days at the State Fair, but to my early years in Pakistan and the Lahore Kite Festival. Until the Lok Virsa Mela, the Kite Festival was the only time I had seen large numbers of Pakistanis of all classes and kinds having fun. I remember clearly a conversation I had on a rooftop at a party during the Kite Festival with another party goer, who said to me, “This is the only time of the year I have any fun.” And the next year the Kite Festival was stopped, ostensibly because it was getting too dangerous, but really because the mullahs said in was a Hindu festival.
Now before my friends start worrying about my mental equilibrium, and start to call the guys with butterfly nets, I realize that one rose doesn’t make a summer and that a Lok Virsa Mela and a few successful women’s movements doesn’t make a healthy country. The political, economic, and security problems remain very large and daunting. The governance remains dysfunctional.
The central problem I wrote about 5 or 6 years ago in the Future of Pakistan book, Indo-centricity, remains stuck in the same place it was then. Until that problem is resolved, and Pakistan-India relationship is normalized, new moods will not be enough to change Pakistan’s trajectory. But if I am right, and middle class and upper middle class Pakistanis are beginning to feel they have agency, that they have control of their own lives, and thus if they have the confidence to assert themselves politically, then there is a chance to break down over time these barriers that halt progress. An assertive Bourgeoisie is historically a driver of change.
