THESE days we are repeatedly told that the Pakistani state has been soft on anarchy for far too long. This is the considered and stated position of many state officials as well as of many supporters of those in power. Common people may hold any number of positions that one finds distasteful but the same sentiments being voiced by those in power invite both scrutiny and concern.

For the last three years, there has been much chatter about turning Pakistan into a ‘hard state’. No one has given an adequate definition of what this entails, but based on disparate statements and impulses, we can gather this has something to do with protecting the rights of the state and the decision-makers who staff it. These rights are being obtained via a frequently violent trade-off with the rights of the people of Pakistan.

The projected consequence of such a trade-off is that protest of all shades becomes a privilege. Demands can only be voiced with due approval through vetted content and NOCs. Speech is to be regulated via defamation, criminalisation laws, and an apparently pliant judiciary till it takes on an acceptable hue, or preferably till it becomes an echo of the state’s.

These impulses are neither unique to the Pakistani state nor are they exceptional to this current moment. Trysts with authoritarianism dot the country’s past and arguably lie at the roots of its state structure. British viceregal authority bequeathed an overdeveloped administrative apparatus, which has since then done exceedingly well to reproduce itself and the privileges of those who staff it. When given a........

© Dawn