Many people have sought to approach the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan with gloves and a hazmat suit. This is understandable. Any discussion about belief, religion and spirituality in Pakistan is a hazard.

This process of establishing a monopoly over religion is not new, nor unique to Pakistan. Although there is much to be said about a country built to secure the liberty of Muslims that now finds itself so scared of the same liberty that it must change the text of laws behind closed doors, and must offer safe passage to the judges and ministers that are deemed to be in violation of the vigilante-enforced religious order.

The magic of Khadim Hussain Rizvi and the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan is not extraordinary devotion to Islam or to Seeratun Nabi; as a land of Sufi saints and Hussaini yaqeen, every Pakistani may offer Rizvi a real run for his money. The real magic is that this individual and his group have managed to generate sustained national headlines on an issue on which there is quite literally 100 percent national consensus.

Business-class liberals are a big tent group of Pakistanis including many Noonies, Insafians, GHQists, and post superannuation careerists. They tend to be most confounded by the Rizvi phenomenon. Their conversations are awash with consternation, frustration, anger, and wonderment: “how can he use such language?”, “where is the government?”, and my favourite, “why are those people so angry?”

The Household Integrated Economic Survey (HIES) conducted by the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics is the closest thing to a credible source of information about income and consumption levels. The most recent version of the HIES we have is for 2015-2016. The survey breaks down Pakistan into quintiles, or blocks of 20 percent, to help ease our understanding of society. There are five quintiles, or blocks of 20 percent each. This is a quite useful device, because it helps us understand the granularity and texture of society better

than a national average.

The national average per capita monthly expenditure in Pakistan according to the most recent HIES is Rs5,166. When reasonable people see this number, they attribute it to the vast numbers of poor people in the country. A breakdown by quintile helps us understand this poverty a little better.

The highest quintile’s average per capita monthly expenditure is Rs10,937, or almost double the national average. The lowest quintile’s average per capita monthly expenditure is Rs2,295 or about half of the national average.

How many Pakistanis in each quintile? The most recent census pins us at roughly 210 million, meaning that each quintile is about 42 million individuals. This means that on average, each of the bottom 42 million Pakistanis consumes roughly Rs2,300 per month, or about Rs77 per day. The top 42 million Pakistanis on the other hand, each consume about Rs365 per day. The difference between the top and the bottom seems large, but it isn’t really as dramatic as the distance between Pakistan’s business class elite and the rest of the country.

According to the PTA, as of September 2017, there are over seven million LTE/4G connections spread across three providers. These connections are likely to be on high-end smartphones. Let’s call this group the iPhone/S8 Plus group or for greater ease, Pakistan’s business class elite. All seven million of these obviously belong to the top quintile of the country, the one that consumes, on average, about Rs365 per day. The question is: just how much more than the average do these folks likely consume?

A regular coffee at any of the imported coffee shops that have sprouted up all around Pakistan’s urban centres costs roughly Rs300. A McDonalds Happy Meal costs around Rs280. At the very top telos of our consumption molehill however, McDonalds is looked down upon. A more acceptable meal at that altitude will have ingredients that are imported, and cost, per person upwards of Rs1,500 or about five days worth of consumption for the average top quintile Pakistani.

Why dig so deep into consumption? For starters, it helps to contextualise oneself within the wider society that we live in. Top end smartphone users can believe whatever they like about how wealthy or fortunate they are or are not – but they occupy no lower than that top sixth of the top twenty percent of the country, or the top three percent of the country. Now, let’s go back to those questions about Khadim Hussain Rizvi.

How can he use such foul language? Rizvi is not using foul language because he cannot control himself, just like Donald Trump has not exposed his misogyny by accident, just like Narendra Modi did not refer to victims of the Gujarat riots as helpless dogs because of any confusion about the status of dogs in South Asia. The foul language being employed by Rizvi is the natural evolution of the Imran Khan effect. Intelligent observers noted not the strong rebukes Khan received for taunting parliamentarians in 2014 for having wet their shalwars. They noted the energy and vitality of Khan’s ‘tigers’ as they leapt in unison toward parliament and later the PTV headquarters. Foul and abusive language may disgust many people, but it has an energising and vitalising effect on as many or more. Bottom line? Sensitive uncles and aunties can take their outrage back to the business class lounge. Foul and abusive language is a potent driver of something many of us clearly do not understand.

As the Rizvi phenomena grows, many have wondered at the utter failure of the government to do something about it. Where is the government? The government is somewhere between cowering in fear, experiencing vertigo from confusion, and rushing to further legitimise and normalise acts of large-scale paralysis of public spaces, like interchanges and highways. This reactiveness is understandable because both state and society have no other game. There has been no sober examination of why Mumtaz Qadri was able to garner such deep and widespread support. There is no serious conversation about the growing cultural war in the mass media. There is no one to address of the helplessness of a society that reveres traditions being blitzed by the technological enablement of challenges to traditions.

None of the big questions that merit treatment by the state, through academia and specialised state bodies, are being asked. We have been reduced to trying to understand deep and complex phenomenon through tweets, Facebook updates and ministerial confessionals on television that make us feel good just because they represent a smidgen of humility and an acknowledgement of multi-decade crises. Where is the government? It is vaporising itself under a morass of incompetence and callousness. We are on our own.

Which segues nicely into the answer to my favourite innocent question: “Why are those people so angry?”. Most Pakistanis in the top 3 percent will never be on their own. They will have a chaacha or maama to call, a classmate from Aitchison, or Beaconhouse, or IBA to rely upon. They will have English. And when things are really bad, they can always rely on a Happy Meal to feel better. But many among the 97 percent below are born, and die, effectively on their own. Even accounting for the ability to opt out of the contaminated water supply, unsafe and low quality schools, quacks for doctors, they cannot opt out of court dates that keep getting rolled over, policemen that keep trying to roll them over, and opportunity that never rolls around. Protagonists like Rizvi are tapping into the cultural and economic anxiety of the bottom 97 percent.

This country has long been overdue for a serious set of conversations about the social and economic compact. It has lacked the institutional seriousness to conduct these conversations. Khadim Hussain Rizvi is a reminder of these facts. No more. No less.

The writer is an analyst and commentator.

