TRUST is the new buzzword in global politics. Western democracies in particular are preoccupied with rebuilding trust between the state and citizens in an effort to repair a post-World War II social contract that has eroded with growing income inequality, heightened corruption, and cost-of-living crises. Big ideas floating around Western governments are linked to preservation of the social contract: data privacy, universal basic incomes, state support for the green transition. Pakistanis watching this trend should ask: how do you restore what you never had?

The social contract is a useful construct for thinking about the relationship between the state and its citizens. The term is used for the formal or informal rules governing how the state and citizens behave and interact with each other, and what obligations they have to each other.

Sadly, the social contract in Pakistan seems non-existent. Citizens are taking to the streets to decry political persecution, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings by the state, media censorship, and price hikes.

More notable is the number of issues that has not provoked a public outcry. Here’s just a sampling: a public order law that essentially bans peaceful public protest; the installation........

© Dawn