Pakistan needs a new vision — an intra-elite war isn’t the answer

Crisis is now passé in Pakistan. Admittedly, the current standoff between the authoritarian populist Imran Khan and the military has something new about it, but even in its most dramatic scenario it is likely to end with little more than a regime change and some further weakening – but not destruction – of the outrageous political role of the army.

This may make sense in the long run, but only if the social forces entering the ceded political space do something different—and difficult—with it. This remains highly unlikely.

There have been bigger crises in this country of 220 million people. Long wars have been fought inside and outside the borders, prime ministers have been hanged and assassinated, and in 1971 half of the country seceded to form Bangladesh.

But one thing has never changed through all of this. The vision of development of Pakistan’s elites and the International Development Institute has shown remarkable stability from the 1960s to the present. This stability – and the corresponding lack of alternatives – represents a much bigger crisis than the war between the elites currently underway.

For those familiar with the history and politics of the Global South, the vision is familiar. The green meadows at the end of the rainbow are replicas of the industrialized north. Pakistan’s Vision 2025 aims to make Pakistan the ‘next Asian Tiger’.

In terms of content, this means increasing both the quantity and value of production and consumption through a top-down, modernizing approach that does not shy away from a challenge. A large infrastructure is therefore being built to extract, process and transport resources. Agriculture is being transformed into a sector with high productivity, low employment and a growing market. Manufacturing for export continues to be prioritized due to growth potential and foreign exchange earnings.

All this depends on an increasingly intensive use of energy, made possible by the burning of fossil fuels and, increasingly since the 1980s, by private capital that is not accountable to anyone. The social and environmental impact of this trajectory is devastating.

While the average lifespan has increased and many people now enjoy amenities they couldn’t dream of 100 years ago – think electric lighting, access to motorized transportation, sugar, and so on – the failures are far greater. The floods of 2010 and 2022 in Pakistan are perhaps the most dramatic examples of this.

Pakistan’s climate change ministry and its COP27 country delegation blamed the floods on global warming, something Pakistan has barely contributed to so far. Pakistan is a victim of Western greed, they say, paying the price without having eaten the cake.

This is clearly true – over the past three centuries, the consumption of Earth’s resources has risen rapidly and with it the environmental degradation of northern countries. But the evidence clearly shows that the effects of climate change have also been significantly amplified by the physical, social and political outcomes of 75 years of development.

For example, researchers have long established that Pakistan’s extensive engineering works ignore ancient patterns, natural flows and local knowledge of watersheds, deltas, mountain streams and rivers. In particular, two major hydrological projects have come under scrutiny for their contribution to the recent flooding: Sindh’s Left Bank Outfall Drain built in the 1990s and funded by the World Bank; and the Asian Development Bank (ADB)-funded Chashma Right Bank Canal in South Punjab, which began construction in 1978.

In both cases, local communities made formal claims to investigate and redress violations of environmental and social standards. In both cases, these violations include significantly increasing flood risks in the project area. And in both cases, the inspection panels found many of the plaintiffs’ claims to be valid, including those related to increased flood risk. Chashma residents pointed out in 2002 that the channel blocked the course of the western hill streams and diverted rainwater to the riverbanks where they lived.

Running seasonal water, which used to irrigate the fields, now posed a threat to life and livelihoods. And indeed, as the extreme rainfall of 2010 and 2022 descended on the hills, it broke through the levees and devastated a huge area that has still not recovered. The amount of rain was so great that flooding would have occurred even without the canal, but expert and local assessment is that in both South Punjab and Sindh last year’s flooding was significantly exacerbated by the hydrological infrastructure.

In 2004, the ADB inspection panel ruled in favor of the Chashma inspection plaintiffs and recommended a number of measures to correct existing errors. But it hasn’t pushed the Pakistani government to implement them, and it certainly hasn’t put conditions on future aid as it should if it was serious about making changes.

Two decades later, none of the recommendations have been followed and people have been left to drown, lose everything they had and suffer the effects of hubris and complacency. The irony in Pakistani officials now becoming a champion the new United Nations loss and damage fund for aid to climate-affected developing countries is impossible to ignore.

Making a passionate appeal to the principle of justice in international forums, the same Pakistani state is playing the Global North within its own borders, designing the future of country and people without thinking of loss and damage in these cases.

Critical geographer Daanish Mustafa diagnoses the broader problem this way: “Pakistani water managers (like their counterparts in much of the Global South) are suffering from an acute case of megaprojectivitis: a deadly disease brought on by modernity and a blind commitment to colonial thinking and to use. ”. ‘Megaprojectivitis’ in Pakistan began with the construction of the world’s most extensive canal irrigation system in the late 19th century, and continued with the post-colonial construction of major dams, weirs, canals and drains from the mid-1960s, and continues through today.

This is despite the fact that the state has no money and has therefore resorted to crowdfunding new dams. It manifests itself in the preoccupation with building huge roads, residential areas and sprawling, shiny, empty airports like the new one in Islamabad. All are bribe-friendly, large, highly visible monuments that are supposed to serve the dual function of leaping Pakistan into an urbanized modernity and catalyzing economic growth.

Pakistan undoubtedly needs a plan. It must feed, house and nurture 220 million people without externalizing the costs incurred – on creatures or things.

The real crisis in Pakistan is that nobody thinks about how to achieve this. Not the leaders, not progressive intellectuals, not even the anti-capitalist left that has a well-developed critique but is unable to do anything but defend itself feebly against further violence and privation. So there are no alternatives to capitalist industrialization, mega projects and consuming the planet for profit and pleasure.

It is very likely that there are better ways of organizing and governing large-scale societies, we just don’t know what they are yet. Latin America is ahead of others in devising (and experimenting with) alternatives.

While concerns about scalability, replication, and the dangers of romanticizing indigenousness are valid, that experience highlights the need to create a fundamental shift in how we think — with the planet, not against it. With the knowledge and experience of local communities, not against them.

Development as growth has led to such severe environmental and social degradation that a decent life is becoming more difficult every year. Whether Imran Khan or Shahbaz Sharif form the next government in Pakistan is immaterial. It is about breaking with the idea that there is no alternative.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial view of Al Jazeera.