Development & the people

Today I bought a book by Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate -Economist. He was an inspiration to me to study development economics and poverty. The name of the book is Development As Freedom. The book evoked so many memories of my experiences in the field and of the time when I work with the people-- the time I feel happiest as well as sad. I feel happy when i come into contact with normal people, all sorts of people, when I observe them and listen to them, and the most when I am able to help them. But I feel sad when I look at the squalid existence of the majority of the people of Pakistan, their eyes without hope , given to fatalism, unaware and not confident of their rights because they have never been allowed to aspire so much by the ruling classes, of course I am a member of it, which makes the burden of guilt even greater. Our people lack trust in the system, the bureaucracy, the ruling classes, whoever they might be, they see the State as the enemy still after half a century of supposed independence. Our rural poor have all the qualities so vividly described of colonized people by Albert Camus's The Wretched of The Earth. That book was an eye opener for me when i read it while a trainee officer in the Elitist DMG campus. He was describing Algerians but the description was of the average Pakistani.They are sharp, they are always ready to get around authority to get their due , however little they get it. they lie ,cheat and derive pleasure from wrondoing.why is that? I am reminded of my visit to Australia in 2005 when I observed that their zoo animals and birds would approach people with trust in their eyes, hoping for love and food, in stark contrast to pakistani wildlife in zoos, which runs in the opposite direction or attacks when it sees humans. Expectations are always conditioned by experience. So it is with our people. Development is direly required all over the country and is the means of a better life experience for people, affecting their outlook and expectations from life. But we the ruling classes have made development another tool for blackmail, subjugation and politics. It is bartered for allegience, obeisance and control, and many times used for vendetta against rivals. By linking development to politics, we punish a person for not voting for a certain gentleman and voting for another. He sees his side of the colony or city languish and fall into disrepair, without basic amentities and maintenance, while the rivals side prospers, develops and blooms. Then development is done piecemeal, as sugar drops to a child from time to time, a street here, a road there, not resolving issues in a holistic way. To be sure, if you give something to somebody completely,why would they be at your door all the time? Therefore, development has become a means of control, not for serving the people. The traditional politician would expect that giving a job to a man would ensure gratitude in that family for the next two generations. I shudder to use the word change for obvious reasons, but the government, who ever heads it, needs to rethink how we treat our people, and how we perceive them. Development as freedom in Pakistan is a faraway dream. Choosing development projects independently is unheard of especially in rural areas and smaller cities, where problems glare at one in the face but are not solved due to biases and local vested interests .In such scenarios the people turn to the bureacracy to maintain balance, and respect us for it if we do. But our ability to maintain balance is fast eroding.Nevertheless, an independent way of prioritizing development is necessary. Political mileage can be a part of it but it should be fair and unbiased, not the only consideration. It would be a fine balancing act given competing interests after scarce resources,but we should give it a try. We should give our people a better standard of living not as a favour, but as their constitutional and human right.