| December 11, 2001 | Tuesday | Ramazan 25, 1422 |
Hercules to the rescue
Devolution and dist government: COMMENT
Demand for medical college: DATELINE GUJRANWALA
WITH less than a week to go for Eid, the rush in various bazaars and markets here has increased greatly. However, Madina Market, the oldest shopping area, remains the busiest place for the shoppers. Once this market, built along 500-foot-long metalled street, did not have more than 60 shops on either side. But over the period great expansion has taken place, with the ground floors of almost all the houses having been converted into shops.
WITH the implementation of the devolution plan in the provinces, the mind-boggling question surfacing is, will the provinces get control over their resources? But the political history is replete with transgression of basic constitutional rights reserved for the provinces. Since the 1950s we have witnessed the failure of all sorts of notions about the local government. We seem to have no knack how to adjust the system at its right place. Consequently, the entire system is mired with confusions and mismanagement.
THE Punjab health minister’s announcement that the government will set up two more medical colleges in Lahore and one in Rahim Yar Khan has caused heart burning here, especially among commercial and industrial circles.
Moreover, a number small bazaars have sprung up off the main market but, interestingly, they are also known as Madina Market, that is they have no separate names of their own. During this time of the year, that is during the last 10 days of Ramazan, Madina Market gets most crowded, creating enormous problems for both shopkeepers and the residents in the market area.
One such problem is the presence of idlers and eve-teasers who create embarrassing situations for women shoppers. The administration should post a sufficient number of law-enforcers to overcome this social menace because the present deployment is not enough to cope with the situation. Also, plainclothesmen should be deployed to assist the men in uniform. Moreover, women police should be detailed to take swift action against women shoplifters who also get active these days.
It would be proper if the administration is able to design a permanent force for the market and its adjoining areas because at the far end of Madina Market are located a high school, a postgraduate college and a hostel for girls within one boundary. Outside or a little away from that boundary, one can always see dozens of youths idling away their time.
Going back to our subject, another problem caused during the last 10 days of Ramazan is due to the entrance of the vehicles in the market. The vehicles create a fuss by impeding the smooth movement of the shoppers. Since most vehicles bear official number plates, police constables are reluctant to stop them from proceeding to the overcrowded area.
At least during the last week of Ramazan the entrance of all vehicles, with the exception of those belonging to the residents, should be strictly banned and these should be stopped beyond a certain point. Although the Madina Market Traders’ Association and the city magistrate jointly issue passes for the residents’ vehicles, there are complaints that the outsiders also manage to get these passes. This must stop to improve the situation.
Another problem relates to beggars who swarm the market in large numbers. They come here for the neighbouring Punjab province during Ramazan and are a source of nuisance for shopkeepers, shoppers and residents alike.
IT is almost five years ago that I read in a national English daily a news item headlined, “Sh Rasheed, Naheed in battle of charges” with photographs of the contenders for the Rawalpindi seat in the National Assembly in the February elections.
Readers were regaled with accounts of political battles in which he sang of all the good things for Rawalpindi he had done. She countered that he had done damnall whereas she, during the past three years had solved the city’s outstanding problems like — hold your noses, folk — the Leh Nulla!
Both contenders called an armistice due to circumstances beyond their control when the khaki’s stepped in and the word rang out “Lay off, both of you!” Much dirty water has flowed down the Ganda Nala during the past five years and wrought disaster every year, especially in the rainy season.
It appears that nothing much has been done by either side to alleviate the problem of the Leh.
I have managed to track the whole length of the Leh from one of its 150-plus sources in the picturesque Margallas for a distance of about 20 miles. The accompanying photograph, taken a mile or so downstream from the Margallas, shows the Leh as it almost was when the federal capital was founded four decades ago. Sparkling clear water cascaded down the green slopes, reminding me of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s.
I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally,
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.
As you go downstream, the English Poet Laureate’s words keep ringing in your ears: By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorps, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.
Even a mile down the source, Tennyson’s beautiful poem applies after 2 centuries to the Leh: Till last by Philip’s farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
Alas! After Fatima Jinnah Park, our brook is no more. The delightful sparkling little streams join to form filthy grey snake that meanders around Islamabad and Rawalpindi until it joins the Soan River near the Fauji Foundation Hospital.
According to Greek mythology, King Augeas of Elis (in what is now modern Greece) maintained enormous stables containing 3000 oxen. These remained uncleaned for 30 years until the hero Hercules cleaned them in one day by diverting two rivers, the Alpheus and the Peneus, through the stables. The great task is perpetuated in the English expression “cleaning the Augean stables.”
So what’s the present position of cleaning the twin cities’ Augean stables claimed to have been solved five years ago? According to a news item appearing three months ago, the Wasa (Water and Sanitation Agency), Rawalpindi, held a meeting with consultants of the Asian Development Bank who will start work on a permanent solution to the Leh problem, with an amount of $100,000 at its disposal. All procedures in this regard are likely to be completed by the end of this year and efforts will be made to finish the work in 15 months so that the citizens could be saved the ravages of flood.
Since the millions of rupees allocated in the past for the job have “gone down the drain”, (literally!) it is hoped that cleaning the Augean stables this time will be done by a 21st century Hercules. The mythological Hercules of ancient Greece is depicted in drawings and paintings, carrying an enormous club on his shoulders. Our Hercules also carries crossed danda-and-sword as his rank insignia. Let’s hope it helps in bringing the Leh back to look like Tennyson’s famous brook. —N.A. Bhatti
Ayub Khan’s experiment with his Harvardian group miserably failed to evolve a new system. The group could not succeed in bringing about any major changes in the district administrative system. The whole political history of the country seems to be a story of kings who have had done great shuffling with constitutional framework, with no mature thinking. Out of these crises surfaced Gen Pervez Musharraf to shuffle the cards once again. This time shuffling of cards has assumed the shape of labyrinth going to be beyond redress.
Provinces are looking to the federal government to confer rights on them. But the Centre is hell-bent on keeping the provinces at arm’s length at any rate. Analysts suggest that the main cause of dismemberment of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) was in the overcentralization in which the Centre failed to bring the units together on any agenda.
One fails to understand why the devolution plan is for the provinces only. Why the federal unit is kept free from this. In any independent state the units are brought at an equal footing; the lingering concept of bigger unit and smaller is done away with by creating an equal scale for the units. But here the provinces are each at other’s throat for their respective rights that the federal government has failed to give them because of its overcentralization of powers.
It is federalism that conforms the rights on the units and their local government to enhance, maximize, plan their own resources, regulate the administrative authorities as per their respective needs and demands within the given framework of provincial law. But the situation for the past 50 years is just the opposite.
Here, smaller provinces always cry for their rights. There is a need to narrow down the distance between the Centre and the provinces. The provinces must get free hand from the Centre to tackle with all economic and social problems that the federal government has not so far solved or has failed to solve them. This can happen if the provinces are taken into confidence. The highly centralized federal system has worsened the political situation that has created the mess, as a result of which the provinces are at odds over petty issues.
The trouble with the present devolution working at the district level is that the system has bypassed the provinces. In true sense, the management of district governments, being part and parcel of provincial matter, should have been the concern of the provinces; but this clause of provincial autonomy has been neglected. Here both the provincial and district governments seem to stick with the federal government’s apron.
The Constitution of 1973 countenanced the federal system for Pakistan; but still the demand for the provincial autonomy is a great constitutional tussle in our history, the demand of promulgation of true federalism still persists. But the concentration of power in the hand of the Centre made the system unitary in nature. That has had worsened the situation.
When we are bogged down in the mud, the military ruler realizes the need for decentralization. The decentralization bears all the ideals to soothe away the grievances of smaller provinces because within the unitary system the smaller provinces feel being cold-shouldered by the government. It was on this basis that all the provinces had welcomed the Constitution of 1973, as they were to receive some genuine dispensation of provincial autonomy. As time rolled on, the great animosity cropped up against the central authority because of its totalitarian attitude. The provincial resentment has never abated against the central authority.
One thing that needs to be considered is that by making the demarcation of the central and provincial powers, the federal system is certainly not assured. But the entire mechanism pins down also on the law and tradition relating to centralization. Considered from this stand, one of the main impediments to the provincial autonomy and local governments in the system is that of the central control over the civil servants and police officers keeping the key posts in the provinces.
The new district government system, instead of coming up to true expectation, is generally deemed as the flawed and failure plan. Councillors and Nazims are hot under collar with each other. While on the hand the bureaucracy has put the spoke in the devolution plan’s wheel, people generally feel they are caught in the catch-22 situation where authority is faceless and nameless. No one knows where to go for dispensation of problems.
The one optimistic consideration related with the devolution is that the institutions working at the district level can be revitalized with the prudence and sensible planning; that can restore the prestige of institutions that are fast decaying away because of corruption and inefficiency of the people at the helm. It is fact that in the old system the provincial bureaucracy and politicians hijacked the affairs at the district level. The situation earlier had come to such a pass that the funds allocated for the rural and town communities were misappropriated.
However, there are still complications in the plan that may prove main impediments in the proper running of the plan. Accordingly, DCO, police and other department functioning in the district are to remain under the district Nazim, their service attachment bound them to the federal and provincial governments and that may be disruptive for the entire plan. Because the military rulers have marginalized the bureaucracy, as DMG and other civil servants in the present plan at the district level have got the secondary status that may create difficulties for the plan at the lower level.
The efficiency and credibility of the entire plan rests with the proper management and right demarcation of authorities for the officials at the district level to function in tune with their powers; and how the various institutions, with the provincial and federal bureaucracy and national politics, get themselves involved in the new tune of the devolution plan.
One pessimistic approach is that the old system of centralized political authority and bureaucracy may play with the local administration the mouse-and-cat game. It is the general cry that the decentralization or devolution of power is far away from the practice as the local district authorities feel themselves powerless and without clearly spelled out functions. Consequently, the plan seemingly possesses no meaning for the masses for which it is devised so as to remove their problems.
Gujranwala, situated on economic lifeline of the GT Road, is a very populous and prosperous centre of trade and industry, besides being the largest grain market surrounded by fertile lands. People here pay taxes in billions and expect development of their city.
Gujranwala Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Rana Nasir Mahmood argues that Lahore has already three medical colleges and there is one each in Multan, Bahawalpur and Faisalabad, whereas Gujranwala, the former headquarters of a large revenue division of six districts and connected with rail and road, is devoid of any such institution. He said from all standards — population, trade, industry and revenue generation — Gujranwala should be the first choice for a new medical college.
Social and trade circles assert that a medical college associated with a modern hospital should be set up in Gujranwala to meet the longstanding demand of the masses. People resent that Gujranwala lacks health facilities when every sick person cannot afford to go to Lahore for treatment. They lament that promises for the uplift of Gujranwala frequently made in the past were not fulfilled.
Social worker Advocate Haji Javed Paul has pleaded that setting up of a new medical college in Lahore in preference to Gujranwala will amount to injustice and give rise to a sense of deprivation among the people. He said people would liberally subscribe to the cost of the college if it was set up in Gujranwala.
He said the proposed three medical colleges should be set up in Gujranwala, Sargodha and Dera Ghazi Khan. All the seven medical colleges in the Punjab had a collective capacity to teach 1,528 students only and as such new medical colleges were the need of the hour, he said.
The excise and taxation department has introduced a new formula of assessing the rental value of urban property for tax purposes and has fixed different rates of assessment for different categories of property — domestic, commercial, self-occupied, rented, situated on main road and off road.
The department is pursuing a programme with a target date to complete the gigantic task by Dec 31. But all this is being done without informing the property owners. The new scheme has not been publicised. The categories and rates applied have not been made public either. Only frequent visitors of tax office know some details. One is pained to learn that the last date for filing objections expires on Dec 14, while the people are ignorant of it for want of publicity. In this way, taxation officials get a free hand to do what they like and later reject all objections as being time barred. The government has to earn billions of rupees from property tax. Still it saves expenses on publicity of the scheme and the proposed rates. This is not all.
The gigantic work of surveying hundreds of thousands of property units is being conducted by a skeleton staff and officials have to work 20 hours a day. They can bear this burden only if there are chances of earning extra bucks through bargaining. It is said that even survey registers have not been supplied and officials are supposed to get them at their own expense.
The quality of survey so conducted is bound to be low and faulty. The modus operandi applied reminds us of the alien rule when government officials enjoyed vast discretionary powers and exploited the people’s ignorance and minted money. This practice should come to an end. The new tax scheme should be widely publicised, the date of filing objections extended and the survey staff awarded compensatory allowance.