--- On Fri, 12/6/09, ss <[email protected]> wrote:
> From: ss <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [silk] How do we survive our leaders?
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Friday, 12 June, 2009, 8:28 AM
> On Thursday 11 Jun 2009 5:30:28 pm
> Indrajit Gupta wrote:
> > I've just come out of a very bad discussion on
> PakTeaHouse where the sheer
> > rascality of the leadership of both India and Pakistan
> was on full display.
> >
> > How can any nation - and I include Bangladesh in this
> - survive such
> > villainous leadership?
> >
> > Are we specially vile? Are other leaders the same?
>
> IG "good leadership" like genius appears only infrequently
> and at random. If
> systems of government depended solely on "good leadership"
> then we will have
> to wait forever for "Ram rajya"
>
> Goverments work (efficiently or less efficiently) on the
> systems that are set
> up to maintain governance in spite of poor
> leadership. In India the
> constitution, the bureaucracy, judiciary and other arms of
> government hev
> been designed for exactly thsi purpose.
>
> India and Pakistan are similar only to an extent, and it is
> a Pakistan RAPE
> characteistic (RAPE= Rich Anglophone Pakistani Elite)
> to hide Pakistan's
> numerous problems unde the hijab of "Oh India and Pakistan
> are the same"
>
> No sir. That is a specious comparison. India and Pakistan
> are "the same" only
> insofar as Pakistanis are cowdung worshippers. Pakistan has
> had 3 different
> constitutions since 1947. Even the latest was raped by
> Musharraf. The
> military in Pakistan stopped being subservient to civilian
> authority ever
> since Liaqat Ali Khan invited the Army to govern.
>
> Bad as it may seem, India has a system of governance in
> place to absorb the
> impact of bad leadership, just like the US has a system in
> place to absorb
> the impact of Dubya.
>
> Pakistan on the other hand has mutated with almost every
> bad leader. Ayub Khan
> was known as a good leader. He was, IIRC the man who said
> "One Pkaistani
> soldier is equal to 6 Indian soldiers" and "If you hit a
> Hindu har at the
> right time and place, he will run". He got himself into a
> debilitating war in
> 1965 and hi rule ended there. Yahya Khan along with Bhutto
> lost East Pakistan
> and neither were held accountable. (india was blamed, as
> ususal). Zia ul Haq
> started the process of Islamization that is now bearing
> fruit in Pakistan's
> NWFP and FATA.
>
> But yet, you go on "PakTeaHouse" and then come on here and
> ask "Oh! Tarnation!
> Aren't we (IndiaPakistanBangladesh) all the same?" No IG we
> are not.
>
> We (India) are bad, but we are not Pakistanbad. And
> Pakistanis know fully
> well how they are not bad like India.
>
> shiv
Very sorry, Shiv, while this was the answer I was partly hoping to hear, for
independent corroboration, I should not have fanned your hopes.
The discussion was on PakTeaHouse; it was between two from Pakistan, four from
India. I have seldom been more satisfied with the general quality and level of
the exchanges, although in some parts, I may have done the electronic
equivalent of raising my voice.
What emerged was the 'smallness' of both the Indian leaders and the Pakistani.
Perhaps the only person whose reputation came out intact was Rajaji, in his
capacity as the second Indian Governor General. He, at any rate, in spite of
the lamentable lack of appreciation that his sterling common sense received
from people in the Indian political leadership who should have known better,
displayed both that common sense as well as a statesmanlike vision for the
future. I was struck as the discussion went along about the relative isolation
of this man from the general mayhem that seems to have prevailed.
My complaint was not an equalisation of the two countries, I repeat. It was
about the leadership, and not about equality between the two polities, nor
about the respective institutions, nor yet about the processes both use.
I am glad you pointed out the relatively greater role that Indian institutions
and processes (subsumed, I presume, in your mention of systems) played. This
was a major part of my argument, for instance, although it is difficult to
explain - and I did get into trouble for on the one hand seeking to explain and
yet on the other hand try to make excuses for the others not understanding what
I was trying to say, because one needs to have observed democracy working to
understand its levelling and self-correcting effect.
The discussion there was on several planes. Leadership came in for flak - huge
criticism, in fact - but there was mention of institutions and processes,
although in a context where their full impact on the general quality of
representative government in each nation was not given full play.
One of the Pakistani contributors is hostile towards their armed forces for the
specific reasons and to the full extent of what you have written. You will be
upset and angered to learn that your words and terms of endearment are mild and
innocous in comparison. If I were not a careful man, given to measuring the
weight of every word that is submitted for consideration by you and others, I
would say he is a Pakistani Shiv in this specific regard. In other respects, he
is quite like the rest of us.
The points made by you were made in abundant detail by both the gentlemen from
the other side.
I wish you would be a little more careful in reading what I - and perhaps
others, I have not been monitoring anybody - write, because when you do, the
response is so much more encouraging and readable. In this case, it is
unfortunate that you jumped to the conclusion that it was an equalisation of
India and Pakistan, rather than an equal disappointment with the leadership of
both.
Unfortunate because without that misapprehension, we might have had a typical
engaging analysis based on a view of human behaviour at its zaniest, but
perfectly in conformance with what is to be expected if examining the matter in
a different context, like your parallel intervention on the question of private
versus public hygiene.
Would you be very angry if I asked you to re-think and tell us - me - your
analysis of the failure of the top leadership? For the sake of good order,
perhaps we need to restrict it to our own leadership.
You started by saying that leadership that we get is by no means perfect, and
that we may not hope for more, but why is that so? When even the man in the
street displays a degree of integrity and good sense, why do our chosen leaders
behave like such scoundrels?
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