HEROES develop systems, but quacks do not. Fortnightly, at the time of the full and new moon, the Buddha used to gather his Sangha to conduct a study circle based on codes of conduct to reenergize a mutual bond between the Threefold Refuge including the Buddha, the doctrine, and the Sangha (the monastic order). He always observed “equality like an ocean” in his own words. He knew the secret: using equality, liberty and fraternity, it was far better to transform a whole system into a romance instead of just himself. In modern terms, Buddha knew that a successful administration is not perfectly empirical to be predicted like a scientific method as assumed in the literature. There is a parallel mechanism that ensures not only performance but a sustainable performance. The mechanism unwraps a truth as beautiful and a lie as ugly. I call it the aestheticization of morality. It is a complex mechanism receiving enforcement emanating from varying human behaviours during every step of a policy cycle.
Many of the decolonized states today in Africa, South Asia, and the Far East are trying to bounce back from the perpetuated state of conflict between polity and state, institution and hero-worship, interest and devotion.
The nightmare, some of these countries including Pakistan face, is the lack of institutionalization of public governance based on strategically creative, culturally coherent and systemically progressive variables. The decades of superficial democracy in Pakistan has demoralized administrative structures; depleted space for creative governance; and induced an authoritarian understanding of public service. The dictators and dynastic politics ossified the colonial craft of extractive governance–a web of exclusion, patronage and mistrust. Hero worship has travelled through generations after generations–turning political parties into self-righteous fan clubs instead of institutions. Instead of evolving governance as an organic outcome of social transformation driven through cultural and aesthetic evolution, a large section of government departments in Pakistan including the judiciary is overwhelmingly passive due to insecure decision-making.
During my professional interaction with the National Defense University, the Civil Service Academy and field officers, I found that it is a challenge to support individual officers with an ecosystem required for secure decision making. Insecure decision-making is criminally inefficient—turns into a furnace that consumes the passions and skills of highly intuitive career officers–who can do miracles otherwise.
There are many such individuals, some of whom I know personally, who have left indelible stamps of positivity on the life around them because of their passion and clarity of purpose. Secure decision-making is passion-driven, based on sharing, creativity, research and participation. Dr. Amjad Saqib (former Civil Servant), for example, is running the world’s largest Islamic microfinance system providing shelter, scholarships and interest-free business loans to the thousands of the underprivileged; General (R) Zubair M. Hayyat (former Chief of Joint Staff) – while driven by an astute sense of higher purpose for human existence – has been engaged in a continuous academic encounters and strengthened professional and moral standards of hundreds of the young officers; Admiral (R) Asif Sandhela (former Naval Chief) – stabilized economy of hundreds of households by establishing skill-development centres. His Foundation provided funds to upgrade hundreds of schools in terms of capacity and equipment; Syed Javed Nisar (former Civil Servant) – provided free medicines to the hundreds of hospitals in the neglected areas; Barrister Zafarullah Khan (former Civil Servant) –did an extensive research work and produced a series of creative books and media lectures expounding on the deep concepts of spirituality and simplified them for a modern young mind; and a recent spark of passion–Syeda Shehrbano—An aesthetic face of the Police Service of Pakistan – while using an out-of-the-box conception of public service—she proved how a creative foresight can elevate the performance matrix of an officer. Her compassionate public interface and articulate communication have boosted public trust. She established dog centres for retired police dogs, bonded with the transgender community to alleviate their marginalization and recently averted a mob lynching of an innocent woman accused of blasphemy. Yet, the challenge remains to replicate their vibrant impact across the entire system.
Dr. Jennifer Harper, the ex-Director of Policy, Strategy and International Affairs with core responsibility for the National Research and Innovation Strategy with the European Union, considers creativity as an integral component of public governance. The designers and implementers of policy use intuition to generate capacities to deal with alternative and fast-changing contexts in the post-truth era. Creative foresight in policymaking can occur at multiple levels, from design to implementation that introduces a third dimension in a situation of conflict and constructs a new frame for re-evaluating a governance problem. Groups normally acquire psychological ownership of their opinions. Creative foresight delicately manoeuvres participants using their emotional faculty in addition to inference to find an intersecting space between conflicts. It lubricates the social machine and ensures smooth function by improving the quality of human interaction.
An aesthetic comprehension of public governance is not a luxury for highly polarized countries like Pakistan. Rather, it is an important tool to attain social stability. Introduced into the philosophical lexicon during the Eighteenth Century, the term ‘aesthetic’ has come to be used to designate, among other things, a kind of object, a kind of judgment, a kind of attitude, a kind of experience and a kind of value, that interplays with human’s sense of beauty. I recall the debate on the role of aesthetics in public affairs recorded by Will Durant in his commentary: The History of Western Philosophy. Plato insisted that artists deviate from reality and should not be given responsible positions in public governance. The notion was contested by his student, Aristotle. Aristotle maintained that it is interesting to see life how it is, but it is even more interesting to see life how it can be. He was of the view that creative dispensation of human instincts is a source of catharsis, or a purgation, that helps human emotions to get rid of negativity and thrive towards shared prosperity and inwards discipline. The notion of radical reforms in public governance stands void unless the system becomes capable of inducing a specialized, creative sense of ownership within it. Using both ways, top-down and bottom-up, for incentivizing knowledge, creativity, sharing and a passionate discharge of duty, should be the key outputs of a training system. Only such comprehension of public governance can trickle down effectively and enrich, beautify and decorate a complex society like Pakistan.
—The Author is a columnist and member of UNFCCC and ICAN. He taught Public Policy in the National Defence University of Pakistan.
