HISTORY is never linear or monolithic. It may progress in leaps and bounds, or falter and regress. It may appear calm and seamless, but be restive and roiling beneath the surface. No wonder, a small trigger can lead to a cataclysm.
Historians have long debated whether historical dialectics shape human destiny, or human agency lights up the darkest epochs of history. There’s no definite answer as yet. But there is a broad consensus among them on two requisites of a historical ‘development’ — ripe ‘objective’ conditions, and an intelligent leadership that can transform a conducive environment into, at the very least, meaningful change.
Interestingly, the modern era manifests both trends. We see countries and societies long affected by broken governance, endemic corruption, political instability, economic meltdown, civil strife, and regional and global conflagrations. Significant parts of the Middle East, North Africa, and South and West Asia are a dismal reflection of failed or failing states ruled by autocrats or absolutist dynasties — largely without popular mandate and without accountability.
Yet there are countries once dismissed as ‘basket-cases’ that have turned themselves around — such as Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Turkiye, South Korea, and China. Over the years, they have taken tremendous strides in terms of political stability, socioeconomic progress, scientific and technological advancement, and human-resource development. They have carved out a large share for themselves in international supply chains and productivity.
Much of the credit for their phenomenal achievements goes to their visionary, upright, and courageous political and institutional leadership. True, some of them did not begin as ideal democracies. Yet they built robust, efficient institutions, along with enabling infrastructure, to ensure continuity, stability, peace, and development, and to facilitate a gradual transition to democracy.
In contrast, our state has been stuck in a time warp for decades. Every generation has suffered gross ‘elite capture’ characterised by authoritarianism, disenfranchisement, misgovernance, instability, inequality, impoverishment, and never-ending conflicts. In dialectical terms, although the objective conditions for radical sociopolitical change have long been ripe, the desired agency of change — the political and institutional leadership — has remained elusive.
No wonder the state continues to exist and function in colonial and neocolonial moulds. Authoritarian governance, a compromised and complex legal order, an extractive and iniquitous social structure, the dominance of the security and administrative apparatuses, and a pro-elite neoliberal policy framework remain among its key features.
Our state has been stuck in a time warp for decades.
But has this state worked? Never. The founding ideal of a democratic republic itself has been upended. Instead, a security and administrative juggernaut has been forged on the pretext of guarding national security and ‘ideology’. In fact, the state has been virtually detached from its constitutional and democratic controls. It seeks to draw its power, legitimacy, and even sustenance not from the people’s mandate, but from its coercive powers and capacity to control. Hence, it does not need to worry about citizens’ rights or welfare.
However, this mindset has drawn an ever-widening wedge between the state — controlled and exploited by a small club of security, bureaucratic, political, landed, industrial, and financial elites — and the people, more than half of whom are classified as ‘poor’ or ‘very poor’. Yet, instead of correcting this perilous course, already scarce resources are being further drained for security obligations — arguably, not so much at home as abroad.
This raises a disturbing question: for how long can this behemoth, guided by colonial notions of governance and built around failed politico-legal machinery, sustain itself on the proverbial feet of clay — an ever-brittle economy compounded by worsening security and governance failure? This question has arisen in every post-colonial state where elites have captured power, stolen resources, disenfranchised people, and eventually pushed society into chaos and conflict. But in many instances, upright, visionary, and courageous leadership provided the answers — convincingly — by steering the country out of the woods.
Do we have such leadership that can also provide convincing answers — by transforming public angst and alienation towards dysfunctional state structures into a force for building state and political institutions that are democratic, equitable, accountable, and, especially, peace-loving?
Ironically, much of the mainstream political leadership — the PPP, PML-N, PTI, and others — has long forsaken its distinct agenda, and even its identity. Rhetoric aside, they have offered little in the way of ‘answers’ to the many problems afflicting the state and governance. Instead, over the decades, they have tended to outrun one another in their efforts to be more ‘compatible’ with the demands of an extractive state toeing the colonial model.
The PPP-PML-N duo’s joining hands with non-political elements to weaken the judiciary, election commission, and media, and the PTI’s eagerness to mend fences with the powers that be instead of the release of its leader are some recent instances of crass political opportunism and historical compromises on the part of our ‘popular’ leaders.
So, the causes of our recurrent sociopolitical tragedies and the decline of democracy should not be traced to history’s apathy in the face of ominous lengthening shadows. It is the frayed moral fabric of much of our leadership — political and institutional — that gives preference to personal, political, and institutional interests over democracy and the good of the people — the real masters. Under these hopeless circumstances, a new class of self-led movers of history — a sort of Gen-Z — is needed to change our collective destiny.
The writer is a lawyer.
Published in Dawn, November 12th, 2026
