Populism in Pakistan.

Populism refers to a range of political stances that emphasize the idea of 'the people' and often juxtapose this group against 'the elite'. It is frequently associated with anti-establishment and anti-political sentiment. In simple terms, populism is a name for a kind of political movement. Populists usually try to make a difference between common people and 'elites'. In politics, the word populist refers to someone who puts ordinary people's rights above those of the wealthy and powerful. It is a synonym of democrat, which is simply a person who believes in democratic principles of rule by the people, freedom, and equality. The American populist movement worked to enact a variety of democratic political reforms.

Throughout the 1880s, local political action groups called Farmers' Alliances or the Populist movement was a revolt by farmers in the South and Midwest against the Democratic and Republican Parties for ignoring their interests and difficulties. For over a decade, farmers were suffering from crop failures, falling prices, poor marketing, and a lack of credit facilities. The US People's Party, also known as the Populist Party adopted a platform calling for free coinage of silver, abolition of national banks, a sub-treasury scheme or some similar system, a graduated income tax, plenty of paper money, government ownership of all forms of transportation and communication, the election of Senators by direct vote of the people and non-ownership. However, the Populist Party is generally regarded as a failure by historians as it did not address the realities of an industrial economy and could not endure.

After independence, Pakistan People's Party raised by late former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto despite being from a feudal background and elitist political class can be credited with being the first populist leader whose successes and failures have remained a subjective issue. Nevertheless, his goals and objectives were closer to what the American Populists' movement was all about, his domestication of the political concept and movement included a fine mix of Islam, communism, and socialism. Political scientists and other analysts regard the left as including anarchists, communists, socialists, democratic socialists, social democrats, left-libertarians, progressives, and social liberals.

Movements for racial equality and trade unionism have also been associated with the left; some if not all such ambitious goals were there in Bhutto's...