EDITORIAL (September 21 2006): The recently released Mahbubul Haq Human Development Report, 2006, presents a pretty bad picture of the governance scene in Pakistan, putting the country in the unenviable company of Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldives within the comparative context of South Asian nations.

Using four indicators - government effectiveness, voice and accountability, political stability, and the rule of law - devised by the World Bank to measure good governance, it finds the system wanting in all these areas. That is hardly surprising given that the litmus test of the effectiveness of any political process, according to the report, is whether it is accessible to non-elite, especially the poor people.

As it is, poverty and joblessness are two major afflictions facing this society. It goes on to note that political power remains concentrated among the political elite. For the non-elite, it is difficult to beat inherited political advantage, and elections are often a means of recycling the same old elite. In fact, that is true of most countries of the region, including India and Sri Lanka.

Yet in the report's reckoning, these two countries fare far better on good governance indicators than Pakistan and also compare favourably with mature democracies. Indeed, that last qualification is the key reason for their success.

The ordinary people may not be able to contest elections that are a costly affair, but fair and free of establishment's interference polls at regular intervals do empower the people in those countries to hold their rulers accountable for any acts of omission and commission. A good example is that of the defeat of the BJP in the last Indian elections. Deriving confidence from the high economic growth figures, the party had jumped into the electoral fray shouting the slogan of 'India is Shining', which the election results later showed was shining only for the rich and the ruling elite while a sizeable section of the population lived in abject poverty with little access to fruits of economic growth.

These poor people had the power to hold their rulers accountable with their votes for what they perceived as inequitable and unfair, and did so convincingly to the shock and surprise of BJP leadership and many a political pundit.

The Human Development Report, though, correctly avers that democracy is much more than elections. It rests on the core set of well functioning institutions that work under clearly defined checks and balances. And, of course, these institutions need to function uninterrupted in order to develop and serve the people. Unfortunately, that has not been the case in this country's six decades of existence. As a result, political stability and rule of law remain as elusive as ever.

The system rests on politics of patronage. As the Report aptly puts it, governments are merely shifting coalitions of powerful families, deriving political influence either from land, money or civil and military connections. The pattern is all too familiar, and continues to perpetuate itself in all its inglorious manifestations. The present government can claim credit for greater women's participation in the political process through 33 percent reserved seats at all three tiers of governance - federal, provincial and district. It also deserves praise for the absence of corruption at the highest levels though the problem remains pervasive below this level all the way down.

Much desirable as these achievements are, they are but small pieces in the bigger and dismal kaleidoscope of performance. Opposition parties are not wrong when they accuse the government of resorting to selective accountability, targeting its political opponents and overlooking financial misdemeanours of its allies.

The people, meanwhile, are becoming more and more alienated from the political system that brings no qualitative change for them whether it relates to an equitable distribution of wealth, better service delivery, ability to hold the rulers accountable for their policies or to seek justice from the judicial system. This alienation is evident in the Report's finding that voter participation in the electoral process has been falling over the years, and is the lowest for the entire region. It is a sad reflection on the state of governance in this country.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2006