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Pakistan situation a paradox: scholar

Kottayam: T.V. Paul, James McGill Professor of International Relations, McGill University, Montreal, has said that despite the enormous focus on external threats, Pakistan has not been able to develop a cohesive nation-state or national unity that one would expect of a state with such security preoccupation.

Delivering his special lecture at the seminar on ‘Paradox of Pakistan: war-making and state building in contemporary world’ organised by the Centre for Cross-National Communication in South Asia under the auspices of the School of International Relations and Politics (SIRP) at the Mahatma Gandhi University here on Friday, Prof Paul said Pakistan’s failure to develop a strong economy and cohesive polity could be attributed to three interlinked causes.

The primary cause could be traced to the pre-existing cleavages in the Pakistan society that have been aggravated by the military’s excessive focus on external threats. However, such threats have not been felt the same way internally (as in the case of East Pakistan) or the response strategy generated intense internal polarisation.

Second, the military’s desire to maintain a semi-feudal system that benefits its class interests resulted in it instituting low levels of socio-economic change.

The third root cause could be traced to the fact that the military as beneficiaries of “rentier state” attribute of the Pakistan economy, (that is, living off rents by external actors for security cooperation) has had no interest in transforming society, Prof Paul maintained.

According to him, the Pakistani elite offered no effective leadership to change the social dynamics as foreign alliances and aid were viewed by them as sufficient to maintain its geopolitical role and competition with its neighbour.

The elite’s attitudes towards development thus mattered, but domestic structural conditions, especially the highly cleavaged composition of the Pakistan society and the absence of an active civil society, contributed to the accentuation of the problem, Prof Paul said.

Dr. K.M. Seethi, director SIRP, chaired the session. A.M. Thomas, Mathew Kurian, Sudheep, Thomas Mohan, Shabeer and others also spoke.

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