SET against the gory backdrop of Pakistan’s daily violence, my namesake Irfan got off lightly when cops and private guards beat him up outside Lahore’s Sweet Tooth Bakery.

The day this incident was reported, I read about nine people, including an assistant director of the Education Department, being shot dead in Karachi.

In Quetta, four Hazaras were gunned down in broad daylight. In the tribal areas, several cops were killed, and a police superintendent beheaded by the Pakistani Taliban. Naturally, nobody was arrested. All in all, a pretty average day for gravediggers.

So young Irfan should consider himself lucky he got off with a mere beating. His crime? Simply informing a rich, well-connected lady that the bakery was shut, and he couldn’t sell her the item she wanted.

A little later, she allegedly sent her husband’s bodyguard, together with seven cops from the Elite Police Force (surely this ought to be renamed the Elite’s Police Force), to thrash the poor employee.

Unfortunately for the goons and their masters, the incident was recorded on a CCTV camera and televised some days after the incident.

Now, Shahbaz Sharif, chief minister of Punjab and the father of Rabia Imran, the woman caught on camera admonishing Irfan before he was beaten, is proclaiming his deep respect for the rule of law.

His son-in-law, Imran Yusuf, has been arrested, and those responsible for the beating have been arrested and released on bail.

Despite these steps, I am willing to take a bet that the matter will go no further. The reality in Pakistan is that the rich and the well-connected are seldom punished for their crimes.

Our jails are reserved for the poor. Even if a member of the ruling classes has the misfortune of getting arrested, he’s out on bail in a jiffy, and then the case drags on for years in our slow-motion courts. The poor, of course, can’t post bail and therefore rot in jail, often for decades, before their cases are decided.

The sense of entitlement our elites revel in is evident in the stride of somebody born to privilege. If you observe one of the tribe closely, you will notice the slight swagger, the puffed-out chest, the gaze that ignores the lowly.

There’s always a slightly impatient air about him, and he expects everybody to make way as he strides past. When I see one of these creatures, I am tempted to exclaim: “Hey! Whoa!”

This arrogance cuts across professions and provincial boundaries: politicians, bureaucrats, army officers, industrialists and senior corporate types all share elements of my stereotype.

The role model for all of them, of course, is the feudal lord: Pakistan’s landed gentry wields virtually unchecked power over their tenants, and this inherited authority has given them an inflated sense of their worth and wisdom. The rest of us know to our cost that this estimate is grossly misplaced as a more venal and degenerate crew has rarely been assembled within a single state.

Instead of being pushed into a well-deserved obscurity over our 65 years of independence, the feudal class has not only thrived, but has infected the upper layer of Pakistani society. And those who haven’t made it aspire to become just like the wadera. Bureaucrats, generals and businessmen alike are convinced that only they have the answers, and underlings should only listen, and not speak unless spoken to.

If you think I’m overstating the case, just look at the number of Prados and Land Cruisers jostling for space on our urban roads. Most of them will never be driven cross-country, and yet being behind the steering wheel of one of these expensive off-road vehicles accords the driver a sense of superiority that a mere Corolla does not. It is a statement about the power and wealth of the owner.

Our Masters of the (Pakistani) Universe start their training young. In the homes of the rich and the powerful, I have often noticed spoiled youngsters bellowing for servants to get them a cold drink from the fridge. I must confess to a strong urge to administer a swift kick on the backside and tell them to get it themselves.

Here, in the interest of full disclosure, I must divulge that there was a period during my civil service career when I was guilty of similar behaviour. Once, an old friend who was driving with me to my office teased me about the fact that I was met in the porch by my chaprasi who carried my briefcase in.

Frankly, I had never even thought about how odd this was, but that was the last time anybody ever carried my briefcase. Since then, I have made a conscious effort not to fall into ruling class mode, and am grateful to my friend for having brought me down to earth all those years ago.

This mindset partly explains why development in Pakistan is so skewed in favour of the elites. Just look at the rapid improvements in Lahore and compare them with the rundown infrastructure in the rest of Punjab’s cities. Model Town, where the Sharifs grew up and still live in, has indeed become a model town. But go to the poorer parts of Lahore, and you’ll encounter an entirely different city.

The attitude of the ruling classes is evident in small but important things: why, for example, are there so few public toilets in our cities? And the ones that do exist are absolutely filthy. Simply because our rich don’t use them, and if they need one when they are on the road, they just swerve into a ritzy hotel to use the facilities. The poor relieve themselves by the roadside. Women, of course, suffer agonies and often get infected bladders.

The same contempt for the poor can be seen in the appalling public schools and hospitals that serve the less fortunate. Our elites and their kids never use them, and so have no incentive to improve them. The railways have been steadily degraded through underinvestment as the rich hardly ever take the train.

One thing is clear: feudal attitudes don’t depend on owning large tracts of land. What we are seeing today is the ruralisation of our cities, and with it has come the phenomenon of the urban wadera.

The writer is the author of Fatal Faultlines: Pakistan, Islam and the West.

irfan.husain@gmail.com