ON the roads we see drivers from the police department or cars with green number plates driving recklessly and aggressively as if they have the right of way just because they are in the government or police. Those driving bigger cars, especially SUVs, do this to drivers of smaller cars; the drivers of smaller cars do this to motorcyclists and pedestrians. It is a chain of harassment and bullying that goes from the ‘strongest’ to the ‘weakest’. This seems to be the only law on the roads.

But this is not restricted to the roads alone. It is true in almost all walks of life in Pakistan. The gas company threatens people with prison and other dire consequences if bills are not paid on time or not paid at all or if gas is pilfered. Electricity distribution companies use the same tactics. FBR does the same and more; through emails it warns citizens about the consequences of not filing tax returns in time and/or not filing correctly or filing nil returns, etc. The other day, radio broadcast a message from the Punjab government telling farmers that since the smog season was round the corner, if they burned crops their agricultural equipment could be confiscated and they could be jailed.

Ministers and some law-enforcement agencies keep telling us about the possible consequences of speaking about some ‘institutions’ of national importance or against the ‘ideology’ of Pakistan on social and other media. We have also seen, over the last year and more, how even the name of particular leaders or flags of a political party can lead to harassment and/or arrests. Volumes can be written on how the Maintenance of Public Order and Section 144 have been used and abused. And then there are topics, like religion, where mob rule has meant people self-censor and are careful about what they say and to whom almost all the time. Even in this area, the laws have been ‘armed’ to provide for very severe punishments for perpetrators.

It is not just powerful individuals threatening and bullying other individuals or state institutions trying to bully citizens into submission, people sitting in powerful institutions are doing the same to people in other institutions as well as for personal, sectional or institutional benefit. What a tight spot we are in!

Societies do not thrive on the basis of laws, rules, regulations and the pursuit of self-interest.

Of course, there are laws, rules and ordinances that back what these institutions are threatening people with. And prosecutions, by most of these institutions, have increased over time or are being used to deal with ‘troublemakers’. But it is the general trend in society as a whole that I am more concerned about.

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantage.” This is one of the most famous quotes from Adam Smith. This is the invisible hand and it became the basis/ inspiration for the first welfare theorem. But we also know that the above holds only if there are no externalities and public goods, no market power for firms and no information asymmetries. All of these are present in economies all the time.

Even more importantly, Adam Smith’s other main work was on the theory of moral sentiments. For Smith, empathy for each other is a very important basis of our ability to create a decent society. This is a lesson from Smith that most people who quote his ode to self-love (self-interest) fail to even mention.

Societies do not thrive on the basis of laws, rules, regulations and the pursuit of self-interest. They need trust and cooperation between citizens, institutions and the state. We cannot police each one of us and at all times: who will police who, and who will police those who are policing or those who police the police? What sort of society would that be? We cannot sleep with our eyes open all the time. Would that be a society worth living in? Could such a society even remain viable?

We have to consider the problem very carefully. It makes individual sense, at the level of an institution and in an instance or a few instances, to use threats and fear as a way of eliciting compliance.

The electricity distribution companies might see the value of such advertising and behaviour at times when the sector is in a ‘crisis’ and the same for FBR, etc. But if most or all state institutions start taking the same approach and route, what happens to the social contract among citizens and between citizens and the state. What happens to trust levels in society?

It seems the situation would eventually lead to the ‘state of nature’ described by Hobbes: “Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry … no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Of course, Pakistan is not ‘there’ and the ‘there’ in modern times might be different from what Hobbes described, but it will have the features of the fear, poverty, nastiness and brutishness that are mentioned.

Is it still possible to change course and see a good way out of the morass we are currently enmeshed in? Will thought leaders in and outside of important institutions stand up and be counted? Most of us, it seems, can only wait and see.

The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives, and an associate professor of economics at Lums.

Published in Dawn, September 27th, 2024