I’ve asked power in Pakistan one question for ten years on my podcast. This is the answer

Last year’s military confrontation with India delighted us with something Pakistan rarely experiences: a unified national response. One voice and one direction from a collective will that held under pressure. We have the same reaction, at a smaller scale, during a cricket match against India. And then we watch as it dissolves.

A pressing question lies behind this pattern. It is one I have asked for ten years on my podcast and in private conversations. I have asked people from the corridors of power, the circles of military brass, the layers of our Establishment, and the captains of industry. I have asked four Prime Ministers, Generals, CEOs. I have asked them all the same thing, on the record and off it: how do we fix Pakistan?

Their answer is almost always the same. We know the problems. We often know the solutions. So why, after a decade of these conversations, does nothing change?

We only unite when there is an enemy

Pakistan’s capacity for collective action is not a myth.

It exists and activates reliably in the presence of an external threat. The question of whether this country can sustain collective purpose without an enemy has never been seriously answered.

Malaysia, Singapore, and China executed multi-decade transformations by treating development as an existential project rather than an electoral one. In each case, the long-term strategy was insulated from short-term political cycles. Leadership made a bet on the future and built institutions designed to outlast individual governments. Pakistan has not made that bet. Not credibly. Not yet.

Nobody talks about the issues

During the 2024 general elections, I interviewed PPP’s Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, the then-caretaker premier Anwaarul Haq Kakar, Jamaat-e-Islami’s Sirajul Haq, and a long list of other senior politicians. I asked each of them the same question: if you come to power, how specifically are you going to change the situation?

Every answer was a variation of nothing. A manifesto document was used as a prop during the campaign and was never mentioned again. Slogans in place of substance. Not once did any of them say: here is the problem, here is my actual plan, and here is how you will know in........

© Dawn Prism