At 60, Pak in a low mood; India thinking positive

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Two siblings separated at birth and brought up in very different milieu, meet each other as adults and offer a study in contrast. This hackneyed storyline of Bombay cinema could well capture the political history of India and Pakistan as they complete sixty years of existence as independent political entities. The first ever Indo-Pak opinion poll, though confined to big cities on both sides of the border, brings out this stark contrast.

The Indian Express –Dawn News–CNN-IBN poll seems to have caught Pakistan in a rather low and negative mood, at least vis-à-vis its political leadership, in the last week of July and the first week of August. The urban Pakistanis are angry with the state of affairs. They are angry that they do not have access to basic rights and liberties, that they cannot speak their mind without fear, that they do not have the power to change their government. They are unhappy for they believe that things have deteriorated under the General: whether it is corruption or militancy or sectarian conflict, the proportion of those who believe things got worse is twice as much as those who think otherwise.

Events in the last couple of months have made matters worse for Musharraf. An overwhelming majority disapproves of the attempt to remove Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry and is happy with the decision of the Supreme Court to reinstate him.

The Lal Masjid action has also boomeranged, with less than one third of the urban Pakistanis willing to share the General’s reasoning. The rest either disapprove of the action or question the wisdom of even contemplating such an action inside a Masjid. All in all, it is bad news for General Musharraf.

For every one urban Pakistani who wants him to stay, there are two who want to see his back. This reflects in the ratings of the government and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz as well.

Pakistan looks more ready for democratic transition than it has ever since the General took over reigns in 1999. State of Democracy in South Asia, a major study in the five countries of the region carried out in 2005, found that Pakistanis too have a healthy appetite for democracy.

The Indian Express– Dawn News–CNN-IBN poll shows that their support for democracy has actually gone up in the last two years, as has their trust in the courts. Correspondingly, their tolerance of army’s role in politics has sharply declined since 2005. All this is good news for prospects of democracy. The only worrisome sign is that the level of trust in the Election Commission, an institution that may be called upon to play a crucial role in democratic transition, continues to be very low.

The picture from India offers a perfect contrast in terms of both long-term attitudes as well as short term political assessment. Going by the ‘iron law of Indian democracy’ one should expect a ruling party in its fourth year of office to begin losing its popularity. And if it is a Congress government, one should expect this change to be visible first of all in big cities where the BJP has done particularly well in the last two decades. But this survey of the top twenty cities offers no such evidence.

If anything the UPA government and the PM have gained a few points in popularity, if compared with the big city respondents in the previous State of the Nation Survey carried out in January this year. The approval rating (per cent of respondents who are ‘satisfied’ with the work) of the UPA government is 73 per cent and that of the PM as high as 77 per cent. These figures represent a gain of 25 and 20 points respectively, largely because the NDA voters in the big cities are less unkind to the current rulers than they were a few months ago. To be sure, this reading could be exaggerated. The two surveys are not exactly comparable and this one is not strictly a representative sample. Therefore it is difficult to estimate the range of error here. To err on the safer side, one can conclude that there is no evidence of decline of support for the ruling coalition.

The same trend reflects in the popular attitudes to the newly elected president and the trust rating of some of the top politicians. If the people, rather than their representatives, could choose the President directly, the result may not have been very different. As in the real election Pratibha Patil would have gained a little from ‘cross voting’ by NDA supporters. Despite all the controversies during the campaign, the urban Indians are happy to keep an open mind about the new President. The ratings of the top leaders from the Congress and the BJP have not undergone any dramatic changes to suggest a big political shift.

The long term political attitudes towards the system have remained fairly stable in India and the urban respondents in this survey are no exception to this rule. The level of support for democracy is fairly high by global standards. A high degree of trust in some of the key institutions like government, courts, Election Commission and distrust in political parties and police revealed in this survey reiterates the well known pattern of citizens’ attitudes in Indian democracy. This only reinforces the contrast with the findings from Pakistan.

The storyline of the Bombay cinema has to have a happy end, the contrast must finally dissolve itself into a deeper unity. A close reading of the data from Pakistan opens that possibility: it shows a public opinion profile very conducive to a successful transition to democracy. Will the Pakistani political elite make use of this opportunity and usher in a much-awaited change? As in reel life, we live in suspense.

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