A Brief Primer On Nation Building
A Primer On Nation Building
I have always believed that nations and societies are neither fortunate nor unfortunate - they are collective manifestations of actions of their men and women. Individuals, on the other hand, sometimes can be categorized into lucky and unlucky people. I as an individual can win a lottery and could be termed as a lucky person or I can also be hit by a truck and could be termed as unlucky. A society which is a collective of men and women largely balance out the benign chance of its subjects with the malign and what matters at the end is to what extent are you willing to go to achieve the success and how long can you retain it.
There is no common screenplay which a nation can rehearse and act out and can be assured of success. Even a no-brainer like valuable natural resource cannot guarantee well being. A country can have abundance of natural resources which are deemed valuable in today's market and still be strife with anarchy and instability like Nigeria, Venezuela. On the other side of spectrum a nation can be devoid of any valuable resource and still be strong and prosperous like Japan or England. The so called curse of natural resource doesn't always hold true, countries like Canada, Norway have abundance of resources and are well managed. And to complete our circular point, countries with no valuable natural resources can be in abject poverty like Bangladesh, Mali. So we see that there are no neat lines that explain the present state of a nation, what works for one may not work for another (IMF learned this lesson after many painful failures). The only common thread that runs through all of them is the people.
People are the most valuable resource that a society can have. While you can spend all your life, and some people do, in blaming external factors for the current state of your society, as a human being we have tremendous ability to change that and achieve peace and prosperity. It is of course easier said than done - a lot of things have to go right at the right time for that to happen. Nation or society building is the most difficult thing humans as species have ever undertaken.
Dual Nature of Society
Like the wave and particle nature of light, societies also have the dual nature exhibited at the same time:
Child Nature
From the very inception nations need to be nurtured like a child for them to become successful. As per many economists, a society needs to provide few basics to have some semblance of society:
a. Ability to provide food & shelter
b. Ability to provide clean water & sanitation facilities
c. Ability to provide health care
d. Ability to provide security & justice especially to weaker sections of the society
The foundation and formative years are very important for a nation. Like an abandoned or neglected child, if a country is not set on a right path from the onset then it becomes very difficult to get it back on track. Although not impossible but the task becomes very difficult with the passage of time.
Afghanistan is the probably the perfect example of this - the present day Afghanistan with her current boundaries never quite existed in the history that is until British came along. It was a creation of British strategic plan in late nineteenth century whose sole objective was to protect the jewel in the crown at any cost - India.
Afghanistan was created as a buffer state as part of great game with Russia. The Afghan region was always a land of tribes and which I believe given enough time, the warring tribes would have come to some realization and would have created mini states like Europe. This organic growth was however nibbed and a nation was forced to coexist between arbitrary boundaries with different warring tribes lumped together. On top of that, Afghan border as demarcated by Durand line, divided the dominant tribe of Pashtuns into countries of Afghanistan and British India which eventually gave way to present day Pakistan.
This is a classic case of weak foundation and a weaker formative years which in case of Afghanistan were spent in wars among tribes lumped together or with Soviet Russia . It is like several bully kids forced to live in a foster home where parents are happy to ignore them. No wonder Afghanistan is still broken and a poster child of short sighted policies from the colonial era. Since Pashtuns live on both sides of border, they have relations going back many generations and a hardy culture which promotes tribal loyalty as the utmost virtue. It is therefore no surprise that immense amount of US reward money has not forced them to give up their brethren or guests a fact vividly illustrated by failure to catch Osama Bin Laden or complete breakdown of Pakistan's state machinery in the area. The sentiment is aptly summarized by Nawab Akbar Khan Bugt, a Baloch leader who was killed by Pakistani forces: " I have been a Pakistani for 60 years, Muslim for about 1400 years and a Baloch for many milleniums".
A similar case can be made for countries of South Asia, Middle East and large parts of Africa. Although not a beacon of freedom, these areas were overtaken by colonial powers; were redrawn as per their strategic interests and have been struggling since then. Japan, which was never under a colonial rule, after centuries of feudal society emerged as the most prosperous nation in Asia and have influenced the rise of South Korea, Taiwan and possibly China.
Corporate Nature
A nation can also be thought of as a corporate entity - driven mainly by profit distributed unevenly with higher ups getting the bulk. A company with high cash reserves and a low stock price is a plum target for a takeover by a stronger entity. Loosely translated it can be used to describe the fall of Mughal India which had immense wealth but her armies were not as well trained or well equipped as those of Europe. East India company backed by British crown managed to capture whole subcontinent in less than 200 years after it set it foot on shores of India.
Up until second world war the rule was if you don't grow in economic and military terms either you become a part or protectorate or a colony of a higher power. Much like today's corporates with takeover battles and majority stakes. After second world war the powers had enough of bloodshed, although some physical takeovers do happen but the game is played more at the economic level.
The world history is full of corporate style empires - the Persians, the Greeks, Romans, Islamic caliphate, Mongols, Russians, British and American. Except for the Americans, everybody else was successful in increasing the size and wealth of their empires by gobbling the weaker states. Once the tribe or a country or a region is taken over by another power, its continuity is broken. Like mergers and acquisitions, the acquiring power will impart its own culture, rules and reward the people that it trusts.
Again India is probably a better example of this phenomenon. The Hindu culture which was once dominant in field of art, sciences & medicine ultimately went in a rut and became weak and was soon captured by Muslim invaders from central Asia and Asia Minor. The ensuing empires tried to impose their own culture, religion and practises and punished people who resisted. The Hindu culture was made a sub culture and was looked down upon. Similarly once the British captured the subcontinent, the English became the dominant culture and both Hindu and Muslim cultures were considered inferior. There will always be some people in the native culture who imbibe the dominant culture and would rise - both Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru - architects of modern India were part of such genre. However in the long period of cultural and educational inferiority, both Hindu and Muslim cultures in India lost their way and the independent India was one of the poorest country in the world. A stunning fall of a land which not that long ago was famous for its riches.
What does Ultimately Work ?
We don't know - experts agree that there no fixed formulaes for nation building but there are factors which makes the task easier like proximity to bening superior power, quality of the leader of the state, better management or resources etc. The ultimate goal of all societies should be to eradicate poverty and achievement of four success criterias as specified earlier. There is no glory in poverty and all human beings should have dignity of food, shelter and justice.
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