This is adequate answer to the criticism: Read carefully and read whole. The prescription is implicit in the analysis even if unnecessarily long recommendations are eschewed. One would enunciate what is wrong with Pakistan polity and briefly describe correctives.

The writer finds two basic maladies that are linked: there is the feudalism and feudal mind set; and the feudals are in love with the military in Pakistan. The two have happily lived together. The short prescription is: abolish feudalism and spread education. The basic solution.

As for polity being dominated and occupied by the military for so long and that it threatens to perpetuate itself in power indefinitely, there is only one prescription. If the people allow the military to go on monopolizing and preempting their rights, the people and only the people are responsible. A people get the government they deserve.

How can the common people -- mostly poor and unemployed, many illiterates, heavily burdened with daily cares of where their next meal will come from -- bring about a social revolution and overthrow the military? The short answer is: there is no other solution; it may be difficult but it is the only way. If the people cannot do what is necessary they will have to go on suffering the consequences. That is all there is to it.

World has however seen many cases where the people have performed this miracle. A closer look at them will reveal that there are three preconditions for success: one has knowledge of how the system works and what sustains it. The second is its other face: a certain amount of enlightenment that can undermine the system's bases and make the superstructure weaker than it seems. Third, a necessary political struggle is needed, which if mishandled, can become violent. But if the leadership is wise it can remain non-violent. Option for violence is used by the arrogant and foolish rulers; wise politicians abhor violence. True, if the rulers insist on violent responses, a violent opposition will not fail to emerge. Such violence prone rulers dig their own graves by visiting unnecessary violence on the unarmed populace. Look around, many instances will confirm the proposition.

There is a catch in it, though. How do mostly illiterate common people can, with their daily worries, become so enlightened as to identify the foundations of the system. And further, how will they know what is required to weaken and destroy those bases so. This is indeed a tall order for common people. The missing element is the intelligentsia, however small or pedestrian. Some people have the opportunity to get educated to understand the system, know its strength and weaknesses and focus on the weaknesses in order to weaken and undermine them. In Europe the process took several centuries of Enlightenment, Reformation, and Renaissance.

But this struggle can now be telescoped. It does not require too many decades even. The means of communications are much better now. The number of people who understand is not small in absolute numbers. If they look around and are up to their job, the means too are at hand. It is they who create sufficient enlightenment among the people -- everyone is not required to be a political thinker or social philosopher -- so that they can overthrow the hated system. The need is a political message based on knowledge and analysis that would enlighten people about their own rights and what to desire and demand and also how to struggle for them until the objectives are achieved.

Therefore what we crucially need is an intelligentsia, small as it may be, and not very good as intelligentsias go. But this is the only one we have and it has to do its job or nothing will ever get done. In this particular case we know the system rather superficially. We do see the social and economic ascendancy of the feudals and the feudal-minded industrialists and financiers. Even more obvious is the military's supremacy over the entire polity. What sustains it is the ignorance of the common man -- and the persistence of absentee landlordism.

The lynchpin that enables this exploitative system to survive is weakness, ignorance, disorganization and inadequate leadership of the people, on the one hand, and the tricks of the rulers are to recruit allies from a tiny section of the intelligentsia: the Mullahs, on the other. Their sociological interpretation of religion is a sedative that teaches contentment over the loss of their inalienable rights and for them to go on suffering without protest. Look to the supernatural powers of the peers, fakirs or invocation of Prophet or Allah Himself. Don't struggle for your rights; be patient and pray to the supernatural some more. The services of Mullahs, as a professional group, keep the people politically quiet; that is the Mullahs function from a sociological viewpoint so as to keep the exploitative system going.

One is not concerned with specific or true interpretation of Islam that good or great Alims provide -- usually belonging to one's own sect or school. I pronounce no value judgement on religion; one only looks objectively at what religious leaders achieve for the society. But one can scarcely fail to notice the main Mullah message for the common people is "contentment at what you have and do not try to change the system or ask for more." Be content. This serves the masters -- the feudals and the military -- exceedingly well. Hence the Mullah-Military alliance, the central beneficiary of which are the big landholders and the military. Mullahs' societal message needs to be exposed. This would disappear into thin air in next to no time, once a political program is taken to the people and it awakens them to their own rights, needs, and consequent demands.

That would set a process going which will end in a revolution which can only be mistakenly taken for a civil war. It is, however, a basic change in the laws of social and economic relationships within the society that is desired. It will yield a better land-tenure, system and a thorough reorganization of the economy with a view to achieving the ends that people hold dear.

So all that is needed is to find the missing links. In concrete terms, these are leaders who will create sufficient enlightenment with a view to freeing the people from the thralldom of pro-status quo religious leaders, who with their spiritual hocus pocus -- as distinct from simple Quranic injunctions -- help the masters to keep the people down. Secondly, a political party shall be needed that will purposefully organize the people for the tasks ahead. There is no other way out. None of this is new; none of it is hard to understand. And I dare say it is not really hard to achieve, provided the requisite effort is made.

MB Naqvi is a leading columist in Pakistan.