In Pakistan, two dominant classes compete with each other for influence and privilege.

One is the middle class, which provides the catchment area for the civil bureaucracy, technocrats, the militarys officer cadre and the business community. The other can be called, for lack of a better term, the political class that includes political entrepreneurs of various kinds at various levels, led by the landed and tribal elite. These two classes represent the two power centres in the country. The middle class operates as the most stable, influential and status quo oriented segment of society. The institutional e!pression of this class is realised through the state apparatus. The process of post recruitment socialisation in the form of the training of the bureaucracy and army officers aims at merging their individual ambitions with an all pervasive institutional ethos. The middle class has a near monopoly over higher education, professional e!pertise and the cultural universe of the nation. "ery few on top and at the bottom level of society make it to these fields. The three metropolitan centres of #arachi, $ahore and Islamabad, followed by %aisalabad, &ultan, 'awalpindi, Peshawar, (yderabad, )ialkot, *u+ranwala, )ukkur, ,uetta, )argodha and a host of other cities represent a sprinkling of the middle class in varying degrees. &ore than any other section of society, the middle class is ideologically oriented in the two domains of religion and nationalism. It adheres to scriptural Islam as opposed to syncretic Islam. It supports the madressah oriented written tradition as opposed to the shrine based oral tradition of Islam. It is pan Islamic in its vision. It seeks the unity of the &uslim world and upholds a dichotomous worldview based on conflict between Islam and the -est. )econdly, the middle class supersedes all other classes in its nationalist framework of thought, which operates essentially in negative terms. In si! decades, it has pro+ected nationalism in the conte!t of the perceived enemies of the nation. It has been all along anti Indian, anti )oviet .nion in the first four decades and anti /merican in the last two decades. It is also anti communist and anti secular. The composition of the middle class has changed in two generations. Previously, it came from the impoverished aristocracy, politicians, the intelligentsia, lawyers, +udges and public careerists of various kinds. In recent decades, the professional middle classes 0 doctors, engineers, architects, accountants, corporate managers and information technologists among others 0 have been the descendants of military officers and bureaucrats in increasingly larger numbers. Their political outlook reflects their social background. The middle class, most typically if not universally, hates democracy. Partition shaped the social, cultural, political and economic views of the emergent middle class along security oriented lines and a state centred rather than society oriented policy framework. This class lacks a social reformist vision and a public conscience. It distrusts the capacity and thus the right of what it considers the uneducated, irresponsible, superstitious and 1primitive masses to e!ercise their vote and elect governments.

/n absolute ma+ority of the middle class is rightist in its collective thrust for policy and ideology. This includes3 the moneyed right, i.e. the commercial elite committed to the preservation of the current privileged structures4 the moral right, as the upholder of a conservative code of ethics4 and the religious right, with its increasingly radical Islamic worldview. The rightist middle class, or parts of it, often served as a constituency of army rule in Pakistan. /t the other end, the political class comprises electoral heavyweights vying for power. Politicians are strong in the locality but weak in terms of institutions such as political parties or parliament. They are more pragmatic than visionary. -hile the middle class vows to serve the 1national interest conceived in an idealised form, the political class pledges to serve 1the public interest understood in terms of the distribution of resources on the ground. Instead of mosque and madressah, the political class adheres to pir and shrine. The vast rural hinterland of Pakistan is studded with a number of devotional sites belonging to )ufi orders. The political class reflects the social structure based on caste and tribe. Partisanship rather than consensus is the hallmark of its political imagination. .ltimately, it depends on the civil bureaucracy for the articulation of its interest. The political class considers nationalism as the outermost e!pression of collective life, not as a mission mantled agenda. It adheres to various sub national identities based on ethno linguistic ties, and seeks to build alliances across communities and regions. If ideology is at the heart of the middle class ethos, identity is the rallying point of the political class in pursuit of electoral victory or a popular movement. The middle class has enhanced awareness about the issue of corruption. It finds it e!tremely difficult to understand why people vote for 1corrupt politicians. It fails to appreciate that the state structure, run by an administrative elite rooted in the middle class, bars peoples access to the system of governance. People seek to break open the gates of the remote, impersonal ruling mechanism with the help of politicians, corrupt or otherwise. The middle class public officials have been generally more powerful than those from the political class, ranging from *hulam &ohammad and Iskandar &ir5a to /yub, 6ahya, 7ia, *hulam Ishaq and &usharraf. /mong politicians, only 7./. 8hutto was a strong ruler, preceded by $iaquat /li by a generation. (owever, it is the less visible and more powerful bureaucrats, generals, +udges and ulema from the middle class who wield real power in the administrative, legal, economic, security, cultural and ideological spheres of public activity. Their stock in trade is3 democracy is hi+acked by 1feudals4 politicians are corrupt and inefficient4 society is not yet fit for democracy. Of course, there are liberal, progressive and public spirited intellectuals, lawyers, civil society activists, trade unionists, poets, writers, playwrights and media persons, all from the middle class, who uphold the cause of democracy. They speak, write, demonstrate, sing, strike, organise, and perform, all for democracy. .nfortunately, they are only a fraction of the middle class.