Back when I was at one of pakistan’s premier business schools, I fancied myself to be quite the whiz kid. As in a smart, intelligent, capable, outstanding student. But by the end of my first semester, I was on the verge of dropping out
WTF, I asked myself.
Then, one of my esteemed seniors intimated how he was soon to graduate with a 3.6 GPA. The game was that he and his friends would take out their professors and their families for meals prior to the exams. They would buy their bratty kids ice creams. They even had reams of cloth from their family’s textile mills delivered to the professor’s house. And et voila!
I was depressed – not because I was morally offended, but rather because it was a system I couldn’t compete in.
So I transferred to pakistan’s premier university. It’s USAID endowed buildings surely would be a hallmark of integrity. And were they ever.
Unless of course you knew how the plagiarism detection software worked. If you were friends with, or as an attractive woman, able to flirt with the teaching assistant. If you signed up for the communist party/Jihadist outfit the professor was fronting in the university. Or, as the most popular option, you were willing to metaphorically fellate the absent minded professors who could be convinced to adjust the grading curve in your favor.
And what struck me was that at both places, these means were not at all without hard work. In fact, it involved more effort than simply studying. But since these methods allowed one to cram six months of efforts into one week of bribing, cajoling, threatening, fellating, it seemed to be far more popular with the students at both institutions.
And at one point it dawned upon me, that this was the Pakistani way. In fact, Pakistanis are world class at figuring out a system’s flaws, and then bleeding it for all its worth. Literally. And it seems to breed a perverse joie de verve (or whatever that term is) within us all.
Points to ponder upon – US funded Jihad, reverse swing, Army financed heroin trade, the group match against Bangladesh in ’99, 58-2 (b), insinuating that rape is a good way to get a Canadian visa, jumping traffic lights, bhatta system, kunda system...
BCCI, running Bedford trucks across the country even though the company that made them shut down 30 years ago, withdrawing money before ramzan to ensure that no zakat is paid etc etc
To further expound upon my point, lets take reverse swing as an example. Scratching the ball etc was not cheating per se, so doing it made sense. The fact that the game was grossly in favor of the batsmen necessitated its rise. And the suspicion that the practice would be cheating as long as the white man didn’t know how to do it was eventually confirmed by 2005.
of course, not all of these arguments are morally correct or ethically sound, but they achieved the purpose.
Its called realpolitik.
In realpolitik, morals and means don’t matter. They’re not supposed to. The end result matters. How you got there is not part of the equation. So sometimes it leads to a just end, and sometimes it leads to a fucked up end. Sometimes it uses just means, and sometimes it uses fucked up means.
But it gets the job done.
And that’s what Pakistan is all about. You can of course admire the sheer audacity of our realpolitik. And like expertly breaking red lights for example, such actions usually get a good laugh as well as being a short term source of happiness.
But what does it do for the long run? No one knows.
But what is known is that the success of realpolitik probably implies that Pakistanis, whether they realize it or not, follow Machiavelli rather than Mohammad.
And so to the point of my blog.
On Saturday, Pakistan’s craziest president yet formally took over the reigns of power. Craziest is not a pejorative term here, he really is certifiably crazy.
All of Pakistan is up in arms. Well, other than those who voted for his party. By all of Pakistan I mean that part which can be heard, either on tv, or in the papers, or in the fledgling blog world, and which usually doesn’t have the time to bother itself with the inconvenience of ‘voting’.
Amongst the most popular rants, we have Mr.10% becoming President 100%. We also have fears that he will sell our nuclear weapons. We are also very afraid that Pakistan will be split up into US serving mini-states, the infamous “Pakistan Khapay” not withstanding. No one doubts that this is a US conspiracy, which itself is funded by a Jewish conspiracy. It is clear to most that Pakistan is being targeted because it is a muslim state. No one doubts that AAZ is a tool of the Americans.
So far so good.
But here’s a little googly.
Didn’t someone involved intimately with the foundation of Islam once say that our leaders are the personification of our own ‘amaal.’ In other words, we get the leaders we deserve? I’m sure someone said that.
And take a look at the Badmaash of Bambino’s story. In less than a year, he has traveled all the way from from A-class jail induced dementia to the top takht in the land.
Very quickly, he used the assassination of his wife to grab the reigns of a party he never was prominent in, used the grief over that assassination to steer his party to power...
...used the slight mandate of those elections to get his own man elected as PM, used the promise of redemption to hoodwink his populist partners into confronting and eventually removing the country’s boss...
...and then broke all his promises to get rid of the coalition, and issued new promises to ensure that he came sailing into the post which is supposed to be ceremonial and yet holds all the power.
You have to admire him.
He took the system and bled that bitch dry. Come on – you have to admire him. And this was just 2008. He has also stuffed swiss magistrates, eluded English judges, duped Dubai sheiks and got each one of his best friends in positions of power. I mean –Advisor to the PM on Interior. Who comes up with this shit? Its brilliant.
Asif Ali Zardari did what every Pakistani does – he looked at how the game was being played, sought out its soft spots, and then cut it to pieces. Its why he’s here. He does what all of us do. It maybe at a different scale, but it’s the same scene.
You have to admit - we all have a little Zardari within us.
So are we going to wait for him to change?