Culture, Class, and Development in Pakistan

The Emergence Of An Industrial Bourgeoisie In Punjab

Anita M. Weiss

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429714283
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book is concerned with social change in Pakistan, particularly the relationship between indigenous sociocultural orientations, the development process, and the rise of a new middle-level entrepreneurial class in the Punjab.

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Introduction: Industrial Development and Social Change

This study is concerned with social change in Pakistan, particularly the relationship between indigenous sociocultural orientations, the development process, and the rise of a new middle-level entrepreneurial class in the Punjab. My purpose here is to understand the growth of this class, especially the factors which have influenced individuals’ decisions to depart from their previous lifestyles and enter into modern forms of industry. How cultural factors interact with political and economic circumstances—both domestic and international—in specific instances are a large part of the development challenges continuing to confront Pakistan today.

In the absence of an historical indigenous Muslim entrepreneurial class, several different types of industrial organization emerged in Pakistan following Partition. Industrial entrepreneurs who began factories in the Punjab came from diverse backgrounds and held different orientations towards modern forms of factory organization. How and why these men moved into industry—the motivations, hindrances and encouragements which affected them—are a major focus of this book as we look at the social transformations which take place in the process of industrialization in a capitalist framework.

The emergence of this middle-level class has been a decisive factor in socioeconomic change throughout the country. Interviews with Punjabi industrial leaders and case studies of three industries—pharmaceuticals, steel re-rolling, and sporting goods manufacturing-inform us about the development and impact of this new class in Pakistan.¹ Each of the three industries epitomizes a different pattern of development in the Punjab following Partition: import-substitution, basic manufacturing, and export-oriented manufacturing. Some actors were not obliged by their social logic or by other forces to revolutionize their modes of production, while others were. There is a point where politics, economics, historical experiences, and cultural orientations intersect in influencing social logic and social action: this study questions how these factors combined in influencing the emergence of this indigenous bourgeoisie in the Punjab.

Prior to the growth of this class, there had been insignificant change in the traditional economic sectors of the country. The two dominant economic groups had been the zamindars [large rural landowners] in Punjab and Sind, and the urban industrial elites headquartered largely in Karachi. Zamindars continue to exercise significant influence in rural areas and provincial politics, although those who have not diversified into other areas of production have witnessed a decreasing power base in the past quarter century. The urban industrial elite are a product of a unique historical experience, and in the past were commonly referred to as the “Twenty-two Families”.² Their wealth, intrinsically tied to the international capitalist system, enables them to wield controlling influence in banking, insurance and nation-wide corporations. The industrial expansion they promoted resulted in wealth and prosperity for only a very insular group; there has been little “trickle down” effect on the rest of society for this expansion occurred in virtual cultural and economic isolation from the majority of the Pakistani people.

However, the industrial expansion of the Punjabi class under analysis here has developed hand-in-hand with other sociocultural changes. Therefore, it is this new middle-level entrepreneurial class which is playing the dynamic role of innovator, converting the traditional workplace into a modern one with similarities to workplaces the world over.

Before a discussion of social change is possible, it is necessary to examine the traditional basis of social life in the Punjab as well as the economic parallels which form the more immediate context of the rise of a new middle-level bourgeois class. Colonial policies, while strongly affecting land tenure arrangements, tended to have minimal impact on traditional ways and values. The following chapter, therefore, frames the cultural context of the social history of the Punjabi people. It traces the pre-independence roots of industry including the limited industrial activity which occurred under the auspices of the British in the Punjab. In highlighting those aspects of tradition that expose the essence and temper of the population, we can see how cultural orientations create both obstacles and opportunities in the rise of this new class. It follows with a discussion of the general economic and political trends in Pakistan since 1947 with a focus on how these have affected social transformation. We proceed to the point at which the Zia ul-Haq government officially ended martial law on December 31, 1985. While the details of the political and economic circumstances in Pakistan following the victory of the Pakistan People’s Party in the November 1988 elections are beyond the scope of this book, nonetheless the issues intrinsic to the interaction between “culture and development” continue to be seminal to understanding Pakistan’s development experience and prospects.

Chapters Three, Four and Five contain the heart of this work, based on extensive investigations of over fifty companies in the three industrial contexts under consideration. These case studies focus on the concerns and initiatives which led these new entrepreneurs to enter into their fields. Central also are analyses of the political environments within which each industry functioned, clarification of the Punjabi development experience,. as well as the particular development pattern of each industry. Five general questions are considered:

• (1) Who became involved in industry in the Punjab; why they did so; and how they were able to succeed (or not).
• (2) The effects of culture on economic behavior, and the corollary question of how economic change affects culture.
• (3) The relationship between economic development and political structures in an Islamic state.
• (4) The ensuing changes that have come about in the fabric of Pakistani society, particularly the ways in which values and customs have become transformed due to industrialization.
• (5) The nature of industrial development in Pakistan, including the role played by the government, foreign capital, etc., in laying the foundation for these transformations.

The final chapter places the rise of this new middle-level entrepreneurial class in an international context, drawing relations with experiences in other Third World countries.³

Economic Transformation, Social Action, and Development

Muslim states in particular are undergoing extensive crises over issues concerning development, industrialization and tradition. Discourse has especially been drawn on the relationship between Islam and capitalism, socialism and the republican state.⁴ This study of Pakistan attempts to understand the dynamics of economic transformation in a postcolonial Islamic state within the limits of the indigenous culture. It focuses on changes which industrialization causes in peoples’ lives. We are ultimately left with the question of whether there is an international culture which develops similarly throughout the Third World regardless of tradition and regardless of religion. That is, is there such a thing as “modern industrial” culture?

Industrialization and social permutations accompanying it had been the result of very gradual transitions in Europe. The foundations of contemporary western sociopolitical life developed slowly but concomitantly with industrial expansion. New classes emerged as societies changed in response to economic and demographic transformations (Marx, 1905; Weber, 1958; Moore, 1966; Hobsbawm, 1968). Myrdal (1968) argues that change was not rapid in the West prior to the industrial revolution and that we must recognize the importance of gradualness in the early development of the western countries. Traditional authority came to lose its sanctity, monarchies declined, and the hierarchical social order was disrupted, replaced by a division of labor determined by the ascendant capitalist mode of production. In comparing the development of the West with that of colonized states, Frantz Fanon (1965:41) wrote that changes in Europe proceeded slowly, and that:

Western Europe had several centuries in which to become accustomed to, and prepared for, change. So the ideas of change, adaptability and mobility were gradually accepted as a way of life, until Westerners became accustomed to the kind of “permanent industrial revolution” in which they live today.

Colonialism played a provocative role in this process as external market surpluses were exploited for domestic benefit. Immanuel Wallerstein (1974; 1980) has shown that while the process of the emergence of the modern world system began with the onset of the era of mercantile capitalism, it rapidly expanded under colonialism. In turn, colonized areas experienced significant change and were “underdeveloped,” i.e., experienced structurally limited development.

Strong indigenous social classes emerged in the colonies which primarily served the economic and administrative needs of the colonizers. In doing so, they incorporated certain characteristics of their colonial rulers into their lifestyles, e.g., western dress, European languages and different orientations towards production relations.⁵ Griffin (1972:38) argues that:

Underdeveloped countries… are a product of historical forces especially those released by European expansion and world ascendancy.… Europe did not “discover” the underdeveloped countries; on the contrary, she created them.

Institutions in British India can be seen as examples of this process: the rail system, which connected those cities which the British rulers alone chose; the civil service bureaucracy, which prepared local elites to serve the British, but did not encourage participatory democracy or self-governance; and business, which emphasized the export of raw materials to Britain and other metropolitan areas. In the fertile Punjab, the British impact is often viewed as an increased impoverishment of the rural areas (Darling, 1928) due to the rise of money-lending to pay taxes and the increased power of the British-appointed collectors. Khalid bin Sayeed (1980:7) observes that:

The British must have been aware that the only justification for the kind of socially inequitable system that they had created in the rural areas was the furtherance of their own interests through a system of indirect rule resting on the semifeudal dominance of the landlords and the pirs… the Land Alienation Act of 1900, ostensibly designed to protect the interests of all agriculturalists, turned out to be… a license for land grabbing on the part of the big landowners.

The creation of the canal colonies in western Punjab in effect facilitated the emergence of a rural-based elite class loyal to the British government which built the irrigation system and distributed lands.

In an ideal sense, the process of development involves changes in a society’s basic institutions and social structure in such a way as to reshuffle people into different social classes concomitant with an increase in the level of material consumption of much of the population. Gunnar Myrdal also sees development as implying a material betterment of the human condition and a deepening of the human potential, increasing access to many goods and services including higher literacy rates, better health care systems and freedom from poverty, famine and social injustice.⁶ Development now also assumes the introduction of technology which transforms the existing industrial infrastructure and results in people performing tasks very different from those of the past.

Industrialization and development are not necessarily synonymous. Manufacturing industry is possible without widespread changes and social discontinuities resulting from its introduction, although it is generally characterized as such. Horowitz (1972:24) differentiates between industrialization and development in pointing out that:

Development differs from industrialization in that the latter implies a series of technological, mechanical and engineering innovations in forms of social production. Social development for its part implies transformation in human relations, in the economic and political status in which men relate to each other, irrespective of the level of industrialization. Industrialization does produce stress and strain in human relationships which in tum has a large-scale effect on the overall process of social development. But to identify industrialization with development is to run the grave risk of offering prescriptions for economic growth independent of social requisites…

Development implies a genuine break with tradition—perceptible disruptions of the “static equilibrium.” Social development requires a new set of conceptual tools to explain “reality” whereas social change may leave intact old conceptual tools adapted to modified situations.…

Development therefore implies not only a bettering of economic conditions and a more efficient mode of production, as does industrialization, but also includes changes which arise out of the social discontinuities introduced by the new forms of production. Members of the federal Planning Commission (1988:35) in Pakistan have written that the ultimate aim of economic development is:

to improve the well-being of society as a whole and to ensure that the benefits of economic progress are distributed fairly over the entire community. The alleviation of poverty, the provision of greater opportunities, the containment of excessively high incomes and the achievement of a more equitable distribution of income and wealth all contribute towards the attainment of economic justice.

A different ideological context comes to rule people’s behavior, particularly in their orientations towards the family, gender relations and their local solidarities of necessities. While the basic logic of the capitalist system calls for the reinvestment of profits, the contradictory pressure by relatives, friends and other groups to convert profits into usable distributable income is substantial. In this process of development, the individual comes to assert his or her own interests against the. interests of the community which, as we will see in the following chapter, may at times be at odds with certain values inherent within traditional Punjabi culture.

Though this transition from traditional to industrial society is unique in its specificity, general trends and movements can be analyzed comparatively. Tradition, the complex of historically derived ideas, values and forms which cultural action has taken, connotates prevailing social conditions independent of development. These include beliefs, values, laws, modes of activity, and customs. As tradition is lived out over time and people reconcile their actions, beliefs and values to necessary exigencies, this combines into the complex whole termed culture. Clifford Geertz (1973) explains that culture goes beyond the particulars which comprise it, becoming “the fabric of meaning in terms of which human beings interpret their experiences and guide their actions.” Traditional culture, therefore, can be regarded as historically perceived social reality, prior to the onset of colonialism, industrialization, and development. The Planning Commission (1988:286) views culture as something which evolves, is commonly shared, lived by the people, and represents a total way of life.

Pahl (1984:54) argues that under conditions where development and/or underdevelopment occurs, the existence of confused and contradictory social relations generate “equally confused and contradictory attitudes to life and views of the world.” The “fabric of meaning” essentially becomes increasingly confused and problematic. Tradition per se must be partially destroye...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: Industrial Development and Social Change
• 2 Socioeconomic Profile of the Punjab
• 3 The Pharmaceutical Industry
• 4 The Steel Re-rolling Industry
• 5 The Sialkot Sporting Goods Industry
• 6 Culture, Class Formation, and Social Action
• Appendix I: Methodology
• Appendix II
• Appendix III
• Appendix IV
• Glossary
• Selected References
• Index