Table Of ContentPAKISTAN UNDER BHUTTO, 1971-1977
Also by ShahidJaved Burki
A STUDY OF CHINESE COMMUNES
PAKISTAN UNDER
BHUTTO, 1971-1977
Shahid Javed Burki
M
© Shahid Javed Burn 1980
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1980 978-0-333-25673-2
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First published 1980 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in Delhi
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British Library CataloguiDg in Publication Data
Burn, Shahid Javed
Pakistan under Bhutto, 1971-1977
1. Pakistan - Politics and government - 1971-
I. Tide
954.9'105 DS384
ISBN 978-1-349-04307-1 ISBN 978-1-349-04305-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-04305-7
This book is sold subject
to the standard conditions
of the Net Book Agreement
Contents
Preface ix
1 Introduction 1
PART I
The Backdrop
2 Insiders and Outsiders 11
3 The Search for a New Constituency 36
4 Rise to Power 58
PART II
The Regime in Power, 1971-7
5 Restructuring Institutions 79
6 Redirecting Economic Development: Management by
the PPP Left 108
7 Economic Decision-making Without Constraints:
1974-7 142
PART III
The Fall from Power
8 Preparing for Elections in 1977 171
9 The 1977 Elections 195
Notes 203
Selected Bibliography 224
Name Index 232
Subject Index 236
To Maryam, my mother and Jahanara, my wife
Preface
In 1970 Professor Samuel Huntington of Harvard University
invited me to join a group of scholars who were studying the
process of change in developing countries. This group of political
scientists and economists represented a number of very different
points of view about not only the nature and dynamics of the
development process but also about the motivation behind it.!
Within this group, my task was to study Pakistan. The only
reason for studying Pakistan was that the Cambridge group was
intrigued by an article that I was about to publish in Public Policy.2
In this article, I had analysed West Pakistan's massive public
works programme not in terms of its economic results but in terms
of the motivation of the decision-makers that had launched it. The
main conclusion that I had drawn from this article was a simple
one: even in those societies in which interaction between individu
als and groups of individuals is not encouraged, the decision
makers have only a limited range for manoeuvre; there are social,
political and cultural boundaries that cannot easily be crossed. At
least in theory, I could distinguish between three different types of
reactions on the part of leadership groups to these societal con
straints. Some leaders can be expected to respect these bound
aries. Not always familiar with the nature and extent of the
constraints imposed on them, it is possible for these leaders to take
actions that would be resented by some powerful elements in the
society. In that case, these leaders would respect the society's
constraints and be quite content to draw back into the area of
permitted discretion. But not all leaders and leadership groups
behave so passively. Some will use charisma, moral suasion or
political intrigue to expand this area of permitted discretion, to
create a little more room in which they could move and man
oeuvre. Others may refuse to be inhibited at all by societal
constraints. This latter group is likely to use force to change the
rules of the game, to demolish the boundaries that society erects
against radical behaviour.
x Pakistan under Bhutto, 1971-7
During my year at Harvard, I applied this analysis to under
standing the dynamics of decision-making in Pakistan. As I
reflected on the important decisions that had shaped Pakistan's
history, I came to realise that group conflict and conflict between
individuals is a novel-and in my opinion, better - perspective to
understanding change in Pakistan. Politics in Pakistan had been
dominated by a succession of powerful personalities. Some of
these men had wielded power because of their exceptional ability
and charisma. Some had gained power because of their ability to
reconcile or manipulate group interests. Many had been excep
tionally conservative in the choices they had made for the society.
Only two - Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Mohammad Ayub Khan
- had made any attempt to expand the area of discretion available
to them. Not one of them had been a revolutionary. All of them
had had a profound impact on making Pakistan's history.
But, as I searched for the motivation behind the decisions and
actions that had made Pakistan's history and as I began to
understand their implications, I also came to realise how easy it
was to exaggerate the role of strong men in Pakistan's history and
how important it was to recognise the part played by social and
economic groups. It was all too easy to identify Mohammad Ali
Jinnah, the Quaid-i-Azam (the Great Leader) of Pakistan, with the
movement that led to the creation of a separate homeland for the
Muslim community of British India. But could the Quaid have
succeeded without the help of the Muslim urban middle-classes
who saw a better economic and social future in a nation whose
destinies they would control rather than in a country in whose
management they would have to be content with the role of a
junior partner? Was the Industrial Policy of 1948 Prime Minister
Liaqat Ali Khan's master stroke to gain economic independence
from India or the product of pressure from a group of merchants
who had migrated from India to Pakistan in search of new
investment opportunities? Governor General Ghulam Moham
mad's dismissal of the Constituent Assembly could be interpreted
as the action of a strong man determined to preserve power in his
hands. Or, it could be seen in terms of an attempt by Pakistan's
indigenous leadership groups to recapture some of the power that
they had lost to the refugee groups from India. And so on.
There has been a tendency among economic and political
historians of Pakistan to view the past as a series of unrelated
events. My own approach to understanding events taught me not
Preface Xl
to treat them as isolated occurrences with little connection to the
past or with little relevance for the future. As I searched for
meaning in the events that had shaped Pakistan's history, I
became convinced that this history was not made up of loosely
connected periods, the Jinnah-Liaqat era, the Ayub era, the
Yahya interregnum and the Bhutto period. It should be viewed,
instead, in terms of the forces, social, economic and political, that
made Jinnah, Liaqat, Ayub, Yahyaand Bhuttopossible.
I was still engaged in this reinterpretation of Pakistan's history
when Zulfikar Ali Bhutto fell from power. In the eyes of many in
the West, the movement that led to Bhutto's fall was unexpected
and undeserved. In the opinion of many in Pakistan, the Prime
Minister deserved not only to be thrown out of power but also the
treatment that he received once he was deposed. In both cases,
Bhutto's fate was interpreted as that of a man with some excep
tional qualities, good and bad. However, by now I knew that the
political turmoil that resulted in the exit from power of Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto in July 1977 was not simply a reaction to some personal
quirks or whims of leadership. It was a reaction from a number of
social and economic groups who had been hurt by Bhutto's
pursuit of Bhuttoism. I decided to attempt an explanation of
Bhuttoism, the circumstances that had produced it and the
consequences that followed from its application to Pakistan's
polity, society and economy. This book is the result of that
attempt.
I was helped in this effort by a number of people, friends and
colleagues. Shahid Yusuf and Paul Streeten - sometimes to help
sustain my argument and sometimes to refute what I was saying
introduced me to a body of literature from various disciplines that
I was unlikely to have encountered without their help. Shuja
Nawaz, Manfred Blobel and Robert LaPorte read a number of
chapters of my draft and helped improve my presentation as well
as my analysis. Josephina Valeriano diligently kept track of the
sources I used and prepared the bibliography. Fely Favis typed
and retyped - patiently deciphering foreign names from hand
written drafts that became increasingly more illegible. Jahanara,
my wife, read through all the drafts and discussed with me their
content, never failing to point out when I slipped from analyses to
assertions. To all these lowe many thanks.
10July 1979 SHAHID JAVED BURKI
