The General has done it again, his second coup. For a country used to martial law and presidents wearing uniforms the reaction has been startling to say the least. We have these lawyers, judges, educated middle class and chic women dressed in equally fashionable hijabs hurling stones at police and army. In fact in most of the coverage on international TV you see only the intelligentsia of the country taking to the streets. Poor and generally downtrodden types are conspicuous by their absence or have they resigned themselves to their fate, which will remain the same, whoever is in the government?

A cynic that I am would think that the protests are stage managed and meant to give post General mileage to the protesting high heeled guys. But keeping that aside I really admire the zeal with which the educated middle class, the professionals, who would think ten times about getting their hands dirty, people who would carry on with the business trying to ‘Manage’, finding a middle path,  have come out enmass to protest against the General’s high handedness.

Actually General did this at a wrong time. I think Pakistanis have evolved. They got an education, have travelled, are on the net and learnt about the world more than Mullahs would allow them to, right under the noses of the Military-Mullah combine.

Compare this to Indian intelligentsia, educated middle class, Business class and professionals. Comfortably going about the business and even profiting from the rank corruption that is pervading our daily lives. Not a day passes when I do not see an instance of somebody making a quick buck out of somebody else’s misery. We are no better than a dictatorship or maybe a dictatorship of say something like Old Iraq, Cuba or even China is better than the stifling polity that we call democracy. The whole thing has become an ugly symbiosis of sorts. You scratch mine and I’ll Scratch yours.

A doctor who overcharges and over-prescribes is happy to pay a politician or a babu to get his measly clinic certified as a research centre. A businessman who has never paid any taxes is also too happy pay police to lathi charge his own workers. Not to speak of politicians, who it seems were born without souls. Corrupt lawyers, judges, babus, police, even some in the army….where does it all end. When was the last time we saw educated middle class protest against anything other than price rise?

Why should I blame others when I myself belong to the same group?