A CAGED BIRD
They are all scared of this one-man army. They really are mortally scared of a single person, whose courage and audacity has catapulted him into a one man majority. The state, with all its might and resources, is in an overdrive to crush him to smithereens. He is besieged and cornered. All his fainthearted companions are leaving him in droves. But he is defiant and is determined to go down fighting. His steely resolve is making his adversaries edgy, nervous and desperate. These petrified cowards have now resorted to use of fear, as a weapon, in order to terrorise the nation.
There is fear all round. Complete submission is now being forcibly asked for. Love and respect is being demanded, almost at gunpoint . These fearful and insecure people have unleashed a wave of fear across the land.The 13 party alliance, and their supporters/backers have proved to be a bunch of dwarfs. Their intellectual mediocrity is too evident by their bombast. They seem to have no sense of history. They have no idea about how societies evolve.
They have trampled upon all the laws of the land with their feet. They have violated the constitution of the country. Their defy courts with impunity and contempt. They have set aside all the norms of morality and civility.
The nation appears to be under siege. People feel insecure within their homes. Conversation by telephone is being monitored and bugged . Undoubtedly, they have succeeded in instilling fear in the population at large.let’s talk about the fear itself.
How does the fear work? does it work at all? Is using fear a good strategy?
Without a doubt, fear works in the shorter term as it is happening today. But on a long-term basis, use of fear as an instrument to govern, is fraught with disastrous consequences. Pakistan has been converted into an intellectual wasteland because of successive civilian and military governments have used scare tactics to perpetrate their rule . Some of the consequences of a fear Regimen are,
(1) People are hesitant to express honest opinions.
( 2) Order can only be maintained through a system of coercion and punishments.
(3)Reality is lost, as speaking the truth becomes impossibly difficult.
( 4) people continuously live in an insecurity of losing their respect, jobs position et cetera.
( 5) fear prevents loyalty to be instilled towards the organisation and the country. Instead, fear breeds resentment and rebellion.
( 6) fear does not allow the building of trust between individuals and more importantly, towards the leadership.
( 7) The best and the brightest in the societies cannot advance in the climate of fear. Societies become conformist and mediocrity reigns supreme.
( 8) New leadership does not emerge.
( 9) more mistakes are made in the climate of fear.
( 10) fear stifles initiative and creativity.
( 11) fear disrupts rational thinking.
(12) fear has a demoralising effect.
( 13) fear impedes communication between people both vertically and horizontally.
( 14) fear does not allow genuineness. The societies don’t grow organically. Artificiality replaces reality.
Real genuine and brave leaders don’t need fear to be employed as a weapon to browbeat the nations into submission. It is famously said that minds are like parachutes. They work only when they are opened .Pakistan has suffered immensely because of an intellectual curfew over the last seven decades. Ideas have not flourished. Institutions of the state have dwarfed in the huge shadow of a Bunyan tree, that is the establishment . Power has traditionally flown from the bullet instead of the ballot.
Lesson of the history is that the usurpers have never voluntarily parted with their privileges and the powers, that they have acquired, with help of of fear and terror. Will it be different this time? If it is not, a great misfortune will afflict Pakistan, with catastrophic consequences, both for the usurpers, and the country.