Disasters create moments where potential change takes place: scholar.

Byline: Shazia Hasan

KARACHI -- Seeking to dispel some long-standing impressions, senior lecturer in Human Geography at the Royal Holloway, University of London, Dr Ayesha Siddiqi's talk, hosted by the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) here on Thursday, was based on her book In the Wake of Disaster: Islamists, the State and a Social Contract in Pakistan, which forces one to look beyond the narratives of Pakistan as the perennial 'failing state' falling victim to an imminent 'Islamist takeover'.

'Disasters create moments where potential change takes place. With 20 million people affected and one-fifth of Pakistan's land under water, the floods of 2010 in Sindh were so significant that it made me ask about what kind of political space opens up in the aftermath of a disaster and what happens to the relationship between a state and its citizens in the aftermath of a disaster? Also what kind of spaces open up for those who might want to challenge the state and step in to provide disaster-related services while forging their own relationships with citizens and trying to fill the vacuum,' the scholar explained.

'Often it is said that in such situations there is a dangerous vacuum being filled by hard-line Islamist interests which can also be bad for the people and Western interests in the country,' Dr Siddiqi said. Therefore, she added, she went about doing seven months of ethnographic fieldwork in Thatta, Badin and Tharparkar districts to investigate ideas such as the social connection between the state and citizens being fractured, missing citizenship, disaster management and the Islamist question.

'But I actually found out that there was a very alive and tangible relationship between the state and its people and that it really manifests every day. My interactions with the communities, bureaucracies, politicians and my asking them who they thought was responsible for providing disaster relief or disaster...