his Independence Day, NADRA was slated to launch its first dematerialised ID card, designed to operate through a mobile application, eventually replacing the physical CNICs the agency currently issues. At the time of writing this, the dematerialised card has not been launched but it will undoubtedly be seen as part of Pakistan’s march towards a technology-dominated future envisioned under the recently passed Digital Nation Pakistan Act. The sentiment is echoed in Pakistan’s recently finalised National Artificial Intelligence Policy, passed two weeks ago.
The lofty technological aspirations stand in sharp relief with what many people in the country are experiencing. At the start of this month, citing security concerns, the government announced that all mobile internet services would be suspended in Balochistan till August 31. Blanket internet shutdowns, often imposed without much explanation, are common in the province. This shutdown, juxtaposed with the grandiose statements made in the context of the digital nation, positioning technology as a boon and the state as a benefactor of technological development, is enough to promote scepticism. The visions of a digital nation seem to come with a fine print that excludes large chunks of the population.
The story of the internet in Pakistan runs alongside the story of Pakistan, marked by inequality and severe restrictions. Civic spaces are shrinking in parallel, online and offline. These are undercut by draconian laws, an expansive surveillance apparatus and violence. Entire social media platforms have been blocked for months and years. Latest monitoring tech is routinely acquired to ratchet up surveillance in the country. Once a burgeoning space for thought and innovation, now anyone posting an opinion online is looking over their shoulder. For all the grandstanding of a “digital nation,” Pakistan has consistently ranked as not free on internet freedoms indices and is backsliding.
The promise of technology for openness, independence and inclusion for women has been overshadowed by the cost patriarchy imposes for existing online. This year alone, many murders in the name of so-called honour have occurred. Violence is wielded as a disciplinary tool to punish women and gender minorities for their online visibility. This is reflected in the state’s cynical use of outdated notions of morality and decency to police online spaces and ban entire platforms, culminating in an experience of women and gender-diverse people in online spaces and beyond that mirrors their experience elsewhere, marked by moral policing, violence and patriarchal anxiety.
The cracks in the digital nation are the same as in the nation. Grandiose speeches, narratives and technological feats do little to mask the exclusion and violence. Imposing digital nationhood onto a nation still struggling with getting the basics of nationhood right merely puts a band aid on a festering wound. Unless we address the structural and systemic issues in the country, we cannot march towards a technological future—technology will only reflect these problems; in some cases, it might amplify those.
Pakistan is not alone in the challenges it faces with technology. We stand at the cusp of major transformations induced by artificial intelligence and its widespread application with few guardrails. We are all ill-prepared for these changes. In a country already teetering under economic pressures, violence, social fissures and existential questions of nationhood, such ill preparedness could mean technology exacerbating these problems.
However, one must not surrender to despair. The moment requires radically different structures and approaches. We must resist falling into the trappings of narratives sold to us about technologies by big-tech companies, whose vision of a tech utopia has had dystopian consequences, accelerating our march towards climate, economic and societal crises. Pakistan’s new AI policy regurgitates techno-speak borrowed from Silicon Valley, utterly failing to chart out an independent vision of AI that speaks to local values and challenges. The policy sees AI as “a unique opportunity to harness digital disruption by educating an eager young population that can potentially propel the nation onto a growth trajectory to sustain our future national competitiveness and improve the lives of citizens.” It frames technology as a silver bullet, the magic stick that will gloss over decades of structural neglect, and looks at its young population only as a potential workforce without addressing the political, social and economic alienation it currently faces.
Just as technology alone is not responsible for the litany of problems we face, the current framework of positioning technology as the panacea will not work. As we think about the future of the internet on Independence Day, we must reposition these tools and spaces with true independence, free of the strictures placed by governments through the narrow prism of economic gain and binaries imposed by tech companies blinded by profit margins. Technology, grounded in ideas beyond these narrow viewpoints, can serve the spirit of independence.
The writer is a researcher and campaigner on human and digital rights issues.