Pakistan Beyond The ‘Crisis State’ review: a cautionary hopeful account of 2010’s Pakistan

 


Edited by: Maleeha Lodhi
Genre: Essay/Current Affairs/Politics
Page Count: 391

 

In a recent webinar on ‘How to get Published’, the Pakistani author Awais Khan shed light on the nation’s extinct reading-culture and a lack of moral principle. “To sell ten thousand copies of my book amongst a population of 22 million people is considered a ‘best-seller' here; moreover, I saw great number of illegal domestic prints of my book being sold in the bazaars of Karachi. People say ‘When I can buy this copy for 200, why should I pay 800 for it?’ ” said Awais, “it is not about the money, it is about the principal.” 

I am one of the guilty readers who, if preferable (by many measures that I use for buying books on my tight, student budget) will go for the cheaper domestic copy of the book than for the original. But one of the things that makes my reading experience underwhelming, as I’ve noticed recently, is the cheap, careless, and unappealing second copy of the book I am reading. Whether it is Joyce’s novel ‘A portrait of an artist in a young age’, Dalrymple’s ‘White Mughals’, or this collection of essays by Lodhi - a domestic print of the book always ruins the reading experience in some proportion. 

While the widely printed domestic copies of books disturbs the readers by having distorted page margins, pages missing altogether, or feeble book-spine which makes the life of the book incredibly short, the e-books which gets printed on A5 papers, on the other hand, are heavier and with sharper edges. All in all, it’s very rare that a second copy of book could do justice to the reading experience of the original book. 

But whether one calls it a ‘lack of principal’ (because the financially capable readers don’t want to spend too much money on books; making them mean and insensitive readers, which readers aren’t) or an actual compromise that the reader has to make given his tight hands and pockets - a reader in the urban cities of Pakistan has to make this choice every time he looks for new books. 

However, as soon as I started reading the contents of this book, my worries about my purchase decisions enervated against the larger, increasingly complex, and pessimistically nail-biting issues of Pakistan. A ‘crisis state’ Pakistan indeed is, but Lodhi, and the sixteen other authors who’ve contributed a total of 17 essays, hope and write for a better future for Pakistan.

I’m living in the future right now, since it’s been almost 10 years since this book’s publication; and while things haven’t improved as per the foresights that this book with its diverse, thorough, and practical solutions had suggested, with Imran Khan’s promising leadership and with the potential of the young-age population, it’d be safe to say that we can not only hope, but strive for a gradually progressive Pakistan.

Without being able to go into details of each essay, I’ll say that certain themes, like rivalry with India, military intervention, terrorism, the Afghan war, 9/11, and some events get repeated in these essays quite often and become irritative to read about – given their unpleasant history. While this book covers Pakistan’s complex and long-building crisis from many perspectives: historical, economic, social, religious, political, ideological, and has in them expert suggestions from respective authors, my favorites essays were: Mohsin Hamid’s ‘Why Pakistan will survive’ which takes a ‘bro, chill!’ approach believing in Pakistan’s innate survivalism; Shanza and Moeed’s essay on ‘Education as a Strategic Imperative’; Dr Ishrat Husain’s ‘Retooling Institutions’; and Zain Haider’s ‘Ideologically Adrift’ which explains the nation’s conflicting and confusing identity regarding being a Pakistani and a Muslim. 

Of course this book is written as such for further rereads, which I shall when the exams for which I’m preparing nears; however, since this book is almost ten years old, it’s more likely to be considered as a ‘History’ book than a ‘Current Affairs’ one. While this book’s urgent criticisms and risky hopes lie well and truly around the times it was written (2010), Pakistan, and the geopolitical arena within which it exists today, has long moved along. A second edition of book would be timely welcomed.



Ratings: 4/5 **** November 26, 2021_