Pakistan: Lathi-charge of the blind...police absolutely correct

By Ayaz Amir


Around 200, no more, visually-impaired persons – this the euphemism we use for the blind – wanting to march to the chief minister’s office on 7 Club Road to present a set of demands…what was the big threat in this?

In any other place these 200 blind protesters would have been escorted to the spacious lawns of 7 Club Road, taken inside and served tea and samosas. TV crews would have been asked to come inside. Some ‘responsible’ officials – like the PML-N’s permanent TV presence, Rana Sanaullah – could have been asked to listen to their demands, which amounted to little more than a reminder to the government that the two percent quota set aside for ‘special persons’ in government and semi-government departments should be filled, and that the quota should be raised from two to three percent.

Amidst mutual clapping the meeting, televised live, could have been brought to a close. If there had been an official with some imagination, the national anthem would have been played and suitable arrangements made to transport the 200 blind protesters to their homes.

But this would have been the polite, the sensible and the civilised thing to do. Please enlighten me, how could this have been done by an officialdom now trained in nothing so much as the arts of sycophancy, self-preservation and bowing and clicking heels before political superiors? (When the army takes over, the political becomes the military superior.)

Weren’t the chief secretary and the inspector general of police in their offices and weren’t they watching this spectacle on television? After all, this was Lahore, and central, laat-sahib Lahore, not Bhai Pheru, Sheikhupura or Narang Mandi from where cries of distress reach Lahore slower than the speed of evolution. The DIG Operations (Police) has suspended two or three minor officials – the set routine when the blame can has to be passed and a cover-up becomes the first necessity. If he had any moral courage, some lingering sense of shame, wouldn’t he suspend himself?

If this were Japan or South Korea senior police officers would come on television, bow before the cameras and beg forgiveness. This being Pakistan, everything in a day or so will be forgotten. And there will be not a speck of contrition on the faces of the chief secretary and the inspector general. And the chief minister will chair a high-level meeting, face full of sorrow, wagging his famous finger and ordering another inquiry.

But to keep things in perspective, when 14 people can be shot dead in cold blood during an operation ostensibly carried out to remove a few security barriers (incidentally, allowed by the Lahore High Court) in front of the house of an opposition leader who has incurred the government’s wrath, and if in the same operation near-about 70-80 suffer gunshot wounds, and no case is registered for full two months, and even now the provincial government shifts from one foot to another and the chief minister has still to summon up the moral courage to come forward and take the blame, and the report of the one-man judicial tribunal – a tribunal set up by none other than the chief minister – is not made public, why would anyone get too worked up about the roughing up of a procession of the blind?

Governments here have promoted two things: a culture of impunity and a culture of brutality. And the message sent out to the police is…that your first duty is not to the state or the public but to the ruling setup. As long as you remain steadfast to this principle there is little to fear.

Half of Lahore’s police – even if I exaggerate it is not by too much – is on that duty peculiar to the Subcontinent, VIP duty: two regiments-plus stationed for the defence of Jati Umra, the family residence; protection for members of the family, for the CM’s Model Town residence, etc; above a thousand policemen lined up for the CM’s route protection when he moves. A police force used thus – a police force which, all said and done, is the Punjab Police with its historic tradition of terrorising the weak and submitting before the powerful – what remains of its sensitivity?

Why would such a force be moved to anything like compassion when faced with the sight of blind protesters wanting to make their voices heard? The blind should consider themselves lucky they were only baton-charged and otherwise roughed up without having their ankles – gitay – broken? If a dozen skulls were not opened up, the police deserve praise for their restraint.

There is a full unofficial media industry set up to sing the government’s praises, gifted columnists and pressmen working full-time towards this end, churning out stuff that would make professional mirasis blush. Given the state of the administration, shouldn’t these myth-makers be asked whether the government’s first priority should be the reform of the administration or showpiece projects like unwanted and tasteless metros?

The chief minister after all is not a novice. He has been chief minister continuously for the last seven years, and in the 1990s for two and a half years. In all, this family has been in power in Punjab, 60 percent of Pakistan, for good about 30 years. And this is the state of law and order, the state of the police, the state of hospitals, that of government-funded schools.

The areas that constitute Pakistan the British ruled for 98 years, no more, and utterly transformed them. There was much ill and much oppression that formed part of the wages and legacy of colonialism. But apart from anything else, the foundations of a modern administrative setup were laid and the first steps towards modernisation undertaken. In one-third the duration of British rule, what achievements are there to put in the account books of the present ruling family?

Because of the Mall and the flowers, and new shopping outlets on Gulberg’s Main Boulevard and in Defence, Lahore looks bewitching to any visitor. But scrape away the surface and a grimier reality comes into view – a reality in which over a dozen people can die at the hands of the police, and on directions from on high, but anything resembling justice is not to be had. Against the backdrop of such a setting is there much for the blind to complain of?

On Lahore’s Mall stand the two premier administrative training centres – the Staff College and the National Institute of Public Administration (now under new-fangled names). Sometimes asked to lecture at these places, my considered opinion is that for all the good they do it would be much better, a greater service to the public, to shut them down. The aim of training is to improve performance, broaden the horizons of the mind. When nothing of the sort happens and government officials remain impervious to example or moral exhortation, why go to all the expense and trouble of ‘higher instruction’?

In Pakistan there are two forms of corruption and two forms of incompetence: temporary and permanent. The temporary form is associated with the political class. Politicians are corrupt – a Raja Rental is a Raja Rental – when in power. But the salariat – DMG, revenue, police, Wapda, building departments, procurement, etc – is always in power. If the ISI is the deep state, the salariat is the permanent state. Without shaking up the salariat the concept of change in Pakistan is meaningless.