Regardless of the issue at hand, waste management/traffic management; elite sensitive policies are unlikely to increase our pace of modernization. Waste segregation may be successful within insular elite localities or communities but will not work nationally. People cannot be expected to stop using plastic bags or crossing expressways because that is the modern way.
Civil Society and NGOs actually disenfranchises the non-government individuals who may be expected to check governmental mismanagement. Such institutions claim to represent public interest without having the support of the community nor the acceptance of people. The people who don’t recognize the socio-economic mandate of the state can’t be represented anyone who does not understand their life-choices, communal realities and concerns.
As usual, I refer to a neighborhood problem that I observed. For many years, cantonment board officials tried to place a metal grill in the center of a covered drain near my house. Grills are placed at such places to extract sold waste when it clogs the drain. Unfortunately, there were some people in the locality who would remove the grill and sell it for their needs. The result was a perpetually open manhole in which cars would get stuck or pedestrians hurt themselves. Finally it was decided to cover the drain permanently, now it frequently gets clogged. People of the locality take the initiative to open it but they need to revive the hole in the middle.
Local initiatives are often individual efforts which are neither supported nor opposed by the community. The person taking the initiative is concerned only with the solution of the problem at hand, not with solving the consequent problems that arise as a result of the initiative. The community then has to wait until the authorities solve the problem or it is left to some other person’s initiative. Often people mark the location of pitfalls by placing bricks, a branch or a wasted tire; this provides a warning to road users but also helps in clogging the drain again.
I have identified some local initiatives in managing waste and traffic in Pakistan. In the context of traffic, I mentioned the case of municipal failure to remove push carts from the road in a market near my house. I took several years to figure out that the problem lay not with the cart owners but with the buyers who patronized them. Any cart which is not ‘by the roadside’ will fail to compete with the others because the buyers refuse to get off their vehicles to shop. Motorcyclists and car owners alike park next to the cart and expect to be served. What is remarkable is that apart from a few modernized motorists like myself, others are not impatient.
What I am leading up to is that these are matters of conventions and traditions to which locals of a community and members of a society respond. Some of us are unaware that the actions we criticize in others are the ones we justify in ourselves. Some of my friends who are sticklers for proper usage find these anomalies tedious. I feel that they arise due to the fact that people act according to local traditions but assess propriety according to modern conventions.
The conventions of the modern world were formed in the crucible of European history and the double taxation of the state and church. The traditions that constitute our communal ethics and social morality were formed by the grindstone of state structures that have been collectively lumped under the heading of “Oriental Despotism”. This generalized state system consisted of several historical ventures starting with the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Babylon. Next came the Iranian, Greek and Romans on one side and China and India on the other; crowned, in the end, by the Islamic civilization that touched China in the east and Rome in the west.
Fragmentation of power and the act of divided sovereignty rendered the need for renegotiations of tax and rights of citizens unnecessary in what is termed as Oriental Despotism. The example of the strength of a thick piece of wood in comparison to the numerous twigs which are banded together, was important to delineate the value of strength in unity but it is also the secret of all progress that needs collective and corporate effort as in the case of the family which was asked to consume one goat each and responded by a demand that the roasted goats should be brought one by one; thus making it possible to divide it between the large family and so consume the tender fresh meat when it came and revive the hunger while they waited for the next goat.
If England wanted to interfere in the affairs of Bohemia and Austria in the seventeenth century and its failure led to the making and posting of cartoons in “European Capitals” of the king of England with empty pockets and brandishing an empty scabbard, where else in world history did international affairs take such a form of expression of public response and interest in the affairs of monarchy? When the Mughals, the Safvis and Ottomans were building great empires, there were also battles lost and won. Many imperial ventures were funded but none needed new taxes. The state “managed” its finances from the standard tax structure. The winnings from one front might be used to launch an offensive on the other; but not the wellbeing of the subjects.
Somewhere deep in the recesses of Egyptian and Babylonian history must lie the formation of traditions among the pastoral peoples who learnt to be civilized. Here a “just” demand of taxes and an “appropriate” level of governance was formed as the norm for states. Somewhere in this era also must lie the formula of converting military service by a vassal into military service of a subordinated warlord without making it a feudal arrangement of imposts for every war and new taxes for every venture of governance! While these traditions were passed on through the Achaemenian and Sassanid states to Central Asian Turkic peoples, they do not seem to have reached the Germanic-Nordic races whose feudalism meant constant revision in imposts by an overlord. This led to a mechanism of negotiations between them, leading to modern democracy.
The invasive state and the small demography of Germanic nations are twins born of the church and state relationship in Frankish and English feudalism as distinct from that of Germany and Austria. Since the British and their allies, dominated by the Anglo-Saxons, have won two world wars, their narrative is universally accepted; and their experience has been declared the “natural course of human development”. Only those fail to follow it who are of a lower level of intellect.
Weak and small in large numbers can compete with the strong in these ways. The formation of systems for this needs recurrent restructurings which, in turn, demands re-fragmentation. Each re-fragmentation destroys the structure, only to strengthen the fabric like the Samurai’s sword. This can be done on a national scale or on an international one, or both. As a nation, we must involve our common citizen with the state, especially in the sectors of commerce and industry. A parallel system may be developed for the agro-pastoral communities. Reviving the defunct “Horse and Cattle Show” would be a good idea to start with in Animal Husbandry. Encouraging model farmers was also a policy that seems to have gone by the board.
In Commerce, Industry and urban communities the following incentives may prove useful.
Top tax payer may be given the honorary post of advisor to President on Tax matters.
Top ten tax payers may annually be constituted as a consultative council for FBR
Those who cross a certain high limit of tax be assigned a privileged enclosure on national day functions and dignity of invitations to state functions and dinners for foreign dignitaries.
SIMILAR PRIVILEGES MAY BE EXTENDED BY PROVINCES, DISTRICTS, TEHSILS, WARD/UNION-COUNCILS, EVEN AT THE MARKET AND MUHALLA LEVEL.
Privileges could also be given to community conscious persons in a biradri, tribe, or village. Those supporting rule of law, municipal security and other state governance ventures should have more access to administrators and say in governance/management at their level. Similarly, contributions to cultural aspects of community, society and state/nation should be appreciated.
