Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures, Boxes and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Setting the Scene
- 1 A Social Contract: State–Citizen Relations and Unfolding Disasters
- 2 The State as a Complex Web of Social Relations
- 3 The Ethnographic Social Contract
- 4 Advancing ‘Disaster Citizenship’
- 5 The Failing ‘Islamist Takeover’ in the Aftermath of the Indus Floods
- Conclusion: Disasters and the State–Citizen Relationship
- References
- Index
Introduction: Setting the Scene
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 April 2019
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures, Boxes and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Setting the Scene
- 1 A Social Contract: State–Citizen Relations and Unfolding Disasters
- 2 The State as a Complex Web of Social Relations
- 3 The Ethnographic Social Contract
- 4 Advancing ‘Disaster Citizenship’
- 5 The Failing ‘Islamist Takeover’ in the Aftermath of the Indus Floods
- Conclusion: Disasters and the State–Citizen Relationship
- References
- Index
Summary
In the aftermath of a large-scale flooding disaster that affected Pakistan in 2010 (and again in 2011), The Lancet published a paper on the crisis in the country that wrote about a family affected by the disaster in the following words:
The family had received no medical help – or any other help for that matter – after the floods hit their village nearly two weeks ago. Aid never seemed to arrive, and in its absence, he feared his children's health would continue to deteriorate at an alarming pace. (Solberg 2010, 1039)
And then about the wider crisis, the article stated the following:
On the ground, flood victims are becoming ever more desperate.
Into the aid vacuum steps other, more controversial players. Unable to cope with the crisis, the Pakistani authorities are alarmed to find radical Islamic organisations with ties to militant groups handing out aid and providing medical care in the flood affected areas. (Solberg 2010, 1040)
The message in this article was clear. The state in Pakistan was failing to reach out to affected citizens in the aftermath of the flooding disaster to provide a basic level of human security. This flooding disaster was unusual; in terms of people affected and the sheer scale of area submerged under water, it was undoubtedly the worst that post-1971 Pakistan had ever seen. But the idea that this had ‘damaged’ relations between the state and its citizens because of ‘the government's shambolic aid efforts’ (Shah 2010), ‘fracturing’ the social contract, was neither new nor novel (BBC News 2011; Ellick and Shah 2010; Rashid 2010).
Pakistan was created as an independent state carved out of British India in August 1947. The state and its citizens are still widely seen as being unable to build a lasting relationship with each other in the seventy years since its creation. Their interaction is regularly referred to as fraught, fragmented or simply non-existent. The absence of a meaningful relationship between the state and its citizens has been the subject of much scholarly and political analysis. Ayesha Jalal's work, for example, highlights some of the cleavages in the state–citizen relationship, particularly with regard to the confusion in understanding nationhood, statehood and identity in Pakistan.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- In the Wake of DisasterIslamists, the State and a Social Contract in Pakistan, pp. 1 - 20Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019