THE just completed 2001 was not a happy year for the Pakistani economy. My guess is that the gross domestic product increased by no more than 2.7 per cent during the calendar year. This was not much more than the increase in population, which probably grew by 2.6 per cent. Juxtaposing together the two numbers means that income per head of the population increased by a paltry 0.1 per cent. One consequence of such a small increase is a sharp rise in the incidence of poverty.

Some simple arithmetic should help illustrate the link between slow growth and poverty. According to a survey carried out in 1996-97, the poorest 10 per cent of the population received only 4.1 per cent of the national income. If the share of the poor in total income has not deteriorated further and if Pakistan’s gross national income in 2001 was $66 billion, then the amount received by the country’s poorest citizens was only $2.7 billion.

Since the poorest 10 per cent of the population numbered 14.2 million, their income per head was only $190, slightly more than 40 per cent of the average population. According to the World Bank, people earning less than a dollar a day are absolutely poor. In Pakistan, the poorest 10 per cent earned only 52 cents in 2001. This means extreme deprivation for a fairly large number of people. What is especially troubling for the situation in Pakistan is that more than two-thirds of the poor are women and children unable to earn much on their own.

Let us continue with this calculation to gauge the impact of the slowdown of the economy in 2001. The size of the gross domestic product increased by only $2.4 billion in 2001 and only $100 million of this increase — only seven cents per head — went into the pockets of the 14 million or so poor in the country. Since incomes are not evenly distributed, a number of poor must have suffered a severe decline in their incomes.

Will this trend continue into 2002? Will the economy continue to stagnate and the incidence of poverty continue to increase? Or, conversely, will 2002 be a better year for Pakistan? The war in Afghanistan will have profound implications for the Pakistani economy. It has already brought in new aid after economic sanctions imposed on the country were removed. But it has also brought a number of new problems — new refugees and unease on the part of those who buy Pakistani products about the country’s ability to serve foreign markets. However, the economic consequences for the country of the Afghanistan war could be positive provided we put the right set of policies in place. The stage for these was set even before the US-led international community mounted its war against terrorism.

The government of General Pervez Musharraf succeeded in doing in 2001 something no other administration had done before — bring to a successful completion a programme of reforms funded by the International Monetary Fund. The question now is whether the general and his economic team will succeed in reviving the economy in 2002, putting in place policies to reduce the incidence of poverty and effectively integrate Pakistan with the world at large.

The game plan being followed before the terrorists struck America on September 11 was a simple one: first stabilize the economy and then restructure it. It was assumed that growth would return with restructuring. But the events of September 11 put the plan on hold; they dramatically changed Pakistan’s economic environment.

Before the attack, Islamabad’s policy-makers were proceeding on the basis of three assumptions. One, Pakistan’s tricky economic situation could not be addressed unless the donor community helped reduce the burden of debt the country carried. Two, to get the donors to help Pakistan, the country had first to win the good housekeeping seal of approval from the IMF. Third, once the burden of debt had become lighter, Pakistan would have the resources needed to jump-start the economy. Whether this was a good strategy to follow is a question that has lost its relevance. Instead, two different questions need to be asked now. In what way has September 11 changed Pakistan’s economic situation? And, what should Islamabad do to address the problems created as a result of the terrorist attacks while taking full advantage of the opportunities that have come with it? The shape of the Pakistani economy in 2002 will depend on how the policy-makers in Islamabad address these questions.

The terrorist attacks bestowed once again the status of a front-line state on Pakistan. As The Wall Street Journal put it in a recent front-page article on Pakistan, “Poised awkwardly in recent years between Islamic extremism and the West, Islamabad has moved sharply towards the West. The new picture is a far cry from the diplomatic pariah whose nuclear arms tests in 1998 brought international sanctions — now lifted.” Back in favour with America, Europe and Japan, Pakistan was rewarded handsomely. Just to illustrate how Pakistan’s fortunes has changed is to look at the developments in just one week.

On December 6, the IMF Board of Directors approved Pakistan’s access to the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility — the PRGF. The only question debated by the board was not whether Pakistan deserved to receive funds from the facility. The board was concerned mostly with the amount of money that should be given to Pakistan. Ultimately, the decision was to provide $1.3 billion of new money to Pakistan, equal to 100 per cent of Pakistan’s quota. Some countries — the United States included — urged for a larger access at 125 per cent of the quota. Had that been accepted Pakistan would have received $1.625 billion. The Pakistani authorities did not press for the larger amount. They were interested more in the signal that would be given by the Fund’s approval of the PRGF. The PRGF is the “softest” instrument available to the members of the Fund. It is soft, since it carries an interest of only 0.5 per cent and is to be repaid over a ten-year period.

Responding to the Fund’s initiative, a group of donors meeting in Paris on December 10 under the aegis of the Paris Club, reduced in a significant way the burden of debt for Pakistan. Some countries wrote off the amounts owed to them; some others, inhibited by legal requirements, extended the terms of payments and the interest charged. Pakistan owed $12 billion to these donors; effectively the burden of this debt was reduced by one-third.

On December 6, the US House of Representatives gave President George W. Bush the “trade promotion authority” which permitted the executive branch the right to negotiate broad trade agreements subject to straight up-or-down vote by Congress. The power is imperative if America is to use trade as a way of promoting global growth and also for cultivating special relations with countries such as Pakistan. The passage of this bill was needed before the US could take up the issue of granting textile exports from Pakistan privileged access to the American markets. Without such an access it was clear that the American buyers would not return to Pakistan. Their sudden departure from the country after September 11 occurred because of the belief that the Pakistani textile producers, situated as they were in the middle of the war zone, would not be able to meet the orders placed with them.

The continued absence of the Americans from Pakistan could do the textile industry great harm. To get the Americans back needs some incentives such as lower duties. But the duties can be reduced only by Congressional action. The passage of the trade bill may make it possible for Pakistan to receive this benefit. The European Union had already given Pakistani textile exporters the preferential margin they needed to retain their market share.

The terrorist attacks of September 11 also produced an unexpected benefit for the Pakistani economy. The campaign launched by the US authorities to block the movement of money through informal channels had the effect of getting the Pakistanis working abroad to use banks to send back remittances. This increased the flow of foreign exchange into the government’s coffers and also strengthened the rupee. With the debt burden lightened, with new money flowing in on concessional terms, with the Pakistani diaspora once again relying on official channels to remit money to their friends and relatives back in Pakistan, and with Pakistan getting privileged access to the two largest markets in the world, the country has the right environment for making progress on the economic front. But this will not happen automatically. The government will need to provide a helping hand.

The government must use the additional resources coming its way to promote long-term development. Pakistan’s past record in this respect does not give great comfort to the donor community. In an editorial Financial Times advised the donors to keep Islamabad on a short leash while they worked to reduce the burden of debt. “But once the debt is written down it would be impossible to hold Pakistan to its promises. It would be far better to keep the debt stock intact and the generosity discretionary. Only after Pakistan has maintained good performance for several more years should the debt stock itself be reduced.”

It is unfortunate that the country has to deal with these kinds of sentiments but it is our lackadaisical approach in the past when donors’ generosity was simply squandered that has given the country such a bad reputation. This needs to be corrected and one way of doing this is to develop monitorable uses of the additional money to which Pakistan now has access. The government needs to move in a number of different areas. Among them the following four are of particular importance.

First, programmes have to be designed to put money in the pockets of the poor. The time-tested way for doing this is to launch labour-intensive public works programmes in rural as well as urban areas. The new local government structure created by the military government has provided an instrument that can be used for managing these programmes. The government will need to ensure that the activities sponsored by these programmes help in particular women and children who constitute the majority of Pakistan’s poorest population.

Second, the government needs to put great emphasis on developing its large human resource. But human resource development needs to be viewed broadly. It should mean more than providing primary education. Here Pakistan needs to firmly remind the donors that human resource has contributed meaningfully to economic growth and development when people were provided with the skills they could market. In the past Pakistan has allowed itself to be influenced by the romantic notion that what matters is basic education.

This was the basic philosophy behind the Social Action Programme — the SAP — supported by the World Bank and to which substantial contributions were made by a number of donors. The programme did little by way of human resource development. A sizable part of the resources committed to it were wasted.

In light of the experience with the SAP, the government must develop a strategy and a programme to impart not only primary education but to improve the levels of skills in the country. This will mean improving the institutional base for higher education, for technical education, for research in sciences and humanities, and for research and development. The government has set up two task forces — one for basic human development and the other for higher education. The reports prepared by these two groups should be studied carefully and their recommendations should become the basis of a national strategy on skill development.

Third, the government needs to improve the environment for promoting private investment — by both domestic entrepreneurs and foreign enterprises. Much of the additional money Pakistan is set to receive will end up in the government’s coffers. Some of it should be used to increase private sector investment. How should this be done?

Some of the promised resources by America and Europe could be used to provide foreign investors with the guarantees that would encourage them to invest in Pakistan. We know from the experience of other developing countries that foreign direct investment contributes to promoting growth. It provides not only additional resources for investment but also access to new technologies, new management practices and new markets. Pakistan has many characteristics that could turn it into a favoured destination for foreign investment. It is a large country. It has a large middle class. It has some attractive natural resources. It has a large diaspora in the Middle East, Europe and North America. All these are positive features. But, at the same time, the country is considered a risky place. This perception of risk needs to be overcome by a cleverly designed programme that provides appropriate guarantees to potential investors.

Fourth, and finally, the government needs to restructure itself. It needs to reduce its workforce, reorient its priorities, give more space to the private sector by privatizing large public sector corporations, privatize also the public sector financial institutions, and enter into a productive relationship for providing services to the under-served towns and cities.

These four areas for public action will yield both short and long-term results. Public works programmes should increase the share of the poor in national income and increase their purchasing power. An investment programme that provides suitable guarantee to the investors should bring new investments to capital starved industries. The restructuring of the government and, consequently, a larger role for the private sector, should ensure sustainable development as would a programme to develop human resources.

With luck and good economic management growth could return to the Pakistani economy. In 2002, we may be able to reverse the recent trend of a declining rate of growth. The economy this year will not expand at a spectacular rate. At best, we may see a rate of growth of 4 to 4.5 per cent. But with the types of policies discussed above, a foundation would have been laid for sustainable growth of six to seven per cent a year.

DID the United States go to war with Afghanistan for Central Asian oil and gas? That’s what many think so. They clearly distrust the White House’s jingoistic bombast about defending freedom and western values.

The answer is no, and yes.

The US attacked Afghanistan’s Taliban government to exact revenge for the Sept. 11 attacks on America. But it quickly occurred to former oilmen George Bush and Dick Cheney that retribution against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden offered a golden opportunity to expand American geopolitical influence into South and Central Asia, scene of the Caspian Basin oil boom.

The ex-Soviet states of Central Asia and the Caucasus - Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kirgizstan, Azerbaijan and Chechnya - contain the world’s most recently discovered major oil and gas deposits.

The world has ample oil today. But according to CIA estimates, when China and India reach South Korea’s level of per capita energy use, within 30 years, their combined oil demand will be 120 million barrels daily. Today, total global consumption is 60-70 million barrels a day. In short, the major powers will be locked in fierce competition for scarce oil, with the Persian Gulf and Central Asia the focus of this rivalry.

Central Asia’s oil and gas producers are landlocked. Their energy wealth must be exported through long pipelines. Competition over potential pipeline routes has become the 21st century’s geopolitical equivalent of the great power race to build strategic railroads, a rivalry that helped spark World War I.

He who controls energy, controls the globe. The U.S. imports only 7% of its energy from the Mideast, but holds on to this vital region in order to control the energy source of its European and Japanese allies.

Russia, the world’s second largest oil exporter, wants Central Asian resources to be transported across its territory. Iran, also an oil producer, wants the energy pipelines to debouche at its ports, the shortest route. But America’s powerful Israel lobby has blocked Washington’s efforts to deal with Iran.

The United States and Pakistan have long sought to build pipelines running due south from Termez, Uzbekistan, to Kabul, Afghanistan, then down to Pakistan’s Arabian Sea ports at Karachi and Gwadar. Oilmen call this route, “the new Silk Road,” after the fabled route used to export China’s riches. But this requires a stable, pro-western Afghanistan.

Iran has intrigued in Afghanistan since 1989 to keep that nation in disorder, thus preventing rival Pakistan from building its long-sought Termez-Karachi pipeline.

When Pakistan ditched its ally, the Taliban, in September, and sided with the U.S., Islamabad and Washington fully expected to implant a pro-American regime in Kabul and open the way for the Pak-American pipeline. But this was not to be.

In a dazzling coup, Russian President Vladimir Putin stole a march on the Bush administration, which was so busy trying to tear apart Afghanistan to find Osama bin Laden it failed to notice the Russians were taking over half the country.

The wily Russians achieved this victory through their proxy Afghan force, the Northern Alliance. Moscow, which has sustained the Alliance since 1990, re-armed it after Sept. 11 with new tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery, helicopters and trucks. The Alliance’s two military leaders, Gen. Rashid Dostam and Gen. Muhammed Fahim, were stalwarts of the old Communist regime with close links to the KGB.

Putin put the chief of the Russian general staff, Viktor Kvashnin, and the deputy director of the KGB, in charge of the Alliance. During the Balkan fighting in 1999, the hard-charging Kvashnin outfoxed the U.S. by seizing Pristina’s airfield, thus assuring a permanent Russian role in Kosovo.

Now, he’s done it again. To the fury of Washington and Islamabad, Kvashnin rushed the Northern Alliance into Kabul, in direct contravention of Bush’s dictates. The Alliance is now Afghanistan’s dominant force.

The Russians have regained influence over Afghanistan, revenged their defeat by the U.S. in the 1980s’ war, and neatly checkmated the Bush administration which, for all its high-tech military power, understood little about Afghanistan.

America’s ouster of the Taliban regime meant Pakistan lost its former influence over Afghanistan and is now cut off from Central Asia’s resources. So long as the Alliance holds power, the U.S. is equally denied access to the much coveted Caspian Basin. Russia has regained control of the best potential pipeline routes. The “new Silk Road” will become a Russian energy superhighway.

By charging like an enraged bull into the South Asian china shop, the U.S. has handed a temporary geopolitical victory to the Russians. Moscow is now free to devise plans to dominate South and Central Asia in concert with its strategic allies, India and Iran. —Copyright Eric Margolis 2001

I HAVE yet to meet a single person who thinks that a war with India is a good idea. Perhaps, I do not meet the right people or the wrong people.

On the contrary, the people I meet and they are a representative of many shades of opinion, from the sublime to the lunatic, are in no doubt that a war between the two countries would be disastrous for both. Indeed, more than disastrous, it would be catastrophic even without nuclear bombs.

I do not know what it is like in India and whether this doomsday view is shared there. The BBC runs a number of programmes that are either sponsored by India or are India specific. One of them is a programme called Question Time which is a panel discussion with audience’s participation. If the views and the sentiments expressed including those of the audience are a fair sample of the mood prevailing in India, then God help the people.

The programme is war-mongering at its most irresponsible worst and the anti-Pakistani sentiments are venomous. The audience gives the impression that it is just waiting for a call to arms and it will pick up its guns and march to the front. Indeed, I have felt, that it would not be a bad idea if members of this audience were to be enlisted and sent on their way to kill Pakistani men, women and children.

And this applies to such stalwarts as Advani, Jaswant Singh and George Frenandes. Those who advocate war should be made to fight it instead of sending others to battle, while they themselves cheer them on from the safety of their own hearths.

The Indians, like the Israelis see themselves as victims. Both are in possession of lands that they have illegally occupied and when the pressure mounts on them from the real owners, they consider this pressure to be terrorism and resort to violence and claim to be acting in self-defence.

Both saw September 11 as a golden opportunity to pose as aggrieved parties and they imagined that if they were to draw parallels with the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, they would strike a responsive chord. Israel is a different case and plays a pivotal role in the Middle East on behalf of the United States, a custodian of its strategic interests.

India does not fit the bill. To equate the struggle of the Kashmiri people for self-determination with terrorism and hope that rest of the world will be convinced is to have a low opinion of the intelligence of it. The Indians have convinced their own people that there is a Pakistan hand in the suicide-attack on its parliament. The perception in Pakistan, on the other hand, is that the Indians themselves stage-managed it. Thus there is a need to get at the truth and the only way is to have an independent inquiry as Pakistan has suggested. This has been summarily rejected by India. Why? This is what the Indian people should be asking of their government.

The Indian people should also be asking themselves if such a suicide attack on the parliament, in the present climate, advances the cause of the Kashmiris or sets it back and produces revulsion? Obviously, suicide-attacker conjures up visions of September 11 and is hardly likely to gain the Kashmiri people’s sympathy. Why would Pakistan, in particular, be associated with an act of madness. Does it not make more sense that such acts would only defame Pakistan?

Herein may lie a clue. Pakistan has been able to mend its fences with the United States. Clearly this does not suit certain countries. Why would Pakistan want to jeopardize this new relationship? Neither the Pakistan government nor the people want war. If a war is being thrust on India, as Vajpayee claims, it is being thrust by his own hawks.

The repeated offers by Pakistan for a dialogue have been rebuffed almost certainly on the advice of these hawks. Any right thinking person knows that war between the two countries is absolute madness. All it will achieve is the undoing of whatever little progress the two countries have made, to say nothing of the death and destruction.

The Indian government has raised the stakes by certain sanctions which includes banning overflying rights. A BBC newscaster asked its New Delhi correspondent whether “India was scrapping for a fight?” It is imperative that Pakistan continue to keep its cool. Increasingly the Indians are looking foolish but the Indian people must themselves realise that it is a kind of dangerous foolishness.

Both Pakistan and India have been free for over half a century. Neither country can claim that it has been able to reduce poverty and improve the health of the vast majority of its people.

Where both countries have shown progress is in the military field, both have the most modern armed forces which includes nuclear bombs. No one can take particular pride in this fact since it has been at the expense of the more basic needs of the people.

The very thought that both countries have nuclear bombs, and there are war clouds hovering over, is too horrible to contemplate. Those who are leading the cheering for a war between the two countries need to educate themselves on what the atom bomb did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ask the people of both countries whether they would like nuclear bombs to be dropped on their cities? And then ask them whether they want war?

We are assuming that nuclear bombs will not be used. Why should this be assumed? War, after all, is madness and anything’s possible when it occurs.

MR M.P. Bhandara in his personal memoir of Mr Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy (Dawn, December 5, 2001) relating to 1961 when he met him, recalls; “My strong impression is that he believed in Pakistan and all his efforts leading towards a non-federal type of state made sense to the sensible.”

All one can say about Mr Bhandara’s contention is that Suhrawardy might have become a confederalist in 1961, under Ayub Khan’s martial law rule which according to Mr Bhandara, distressed him. He was known as a federalist in the context of his earlier role before and after partition. He was one of the architects of 1956 constitution which was federal and parliamentary.

Ten years before, in 1946, Suhrawardy was the Muslim League leader who moved a resolution at the Delhi Convention of Muslim League Legislators modifying the Lahore Resolution of 1940 which, according to Mr Bhandara, envisaged a tripartite partition of India. Let us look at Suhrawardy’s role at these two crucial stages of our history in more detail.

After the Lahore Resolution 1940, the League focused all its energies on the achievement of Pakistan and the Muslims of India rallied round it. As a result, in the 1945-46 elections, the Muslim League captured all the seats of the Central Assembly and 446 seats out of a total of 495 Muslim seats in the provincial assemblies. In Bengal, the League won 113 out of a total of 119 and in Punjab 79 out of a total of 86 Muslim seats — the two major provinces of the proposed Pakistan scheme.

It was after this decisive vote for Pakistan that the Muslim League Legislator’s Convention was held in Delhi in April 1946. The relevant para of the resolution passed at the convention, which modified the Lahore Resolution and clearly identified the areas of the proposed Pakistan state, reads as follows:

“That the zones comprising Bengal and Asaam in the North-East, the Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province, Sindh and Balochistan in the North-West of India, namely Pakistan zones, where the Muslims are in a dominant majority be constituted into a sovereign independent state and that an unequivocal understanding be given to implement the establishment of Pakistan without delay. That the separate constitution-making bodies be set up by the people of Pakistan and Hindustan for the purpose of framing their respective constitutions.”

The resolution was moved by Suhrawardy, the then Muslim League chief minister of Bengal, and passed unanimously by the Muslim legislators from both the zones. The difference between the demand as put forward in the Lahore Resolution of 1940 and Delhi Convention Resolution of 1946 is that while the former talked of independent states in the North-Western and Eastern zones of India, the latter talked of a single independent state comprising both the zones.

The timing of the Delhi Convention Resolution had a relevance and a significance from another point of view also. It came when the Labour Party had returned to power in Britain with its declared commitment to Indian independence and had in fact sent a Cabinet Mission to India led by Sir Pethic-Lawrence, Secretary of State for India, in the last week of March 1946 to find a solution to the constitutional problems of the country. It was at this time that the League modified its demand, asking for transfer of power to two independent states, India and Pakistan, which simplified and made things easier for all concerned.

To sum up, the resolution which eventually formed the basis for the creation of Pakistan as a single state and the areas comprising its two zones was the one adopted at the Muslim League Legislators’ Convention held in Delhi in 1946. This was the Pakistan Resolution properly so called. However, the areas included in the new state went through the necessary territorial adjustments in accordance with a provision of the Lahore Resolution. As a result Pakistan came into being with a divided Bengal and a divided Punjab.

Sharifuddin Pirzada has recorded in his introduction of “Foundations of Pakistan”, that at the Delhi Convention, when the draft resolution indicating that Pakistan was intended to be a single sovereign state, was being discussed in the subject committee, Abul Hashim, Secretary of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League, “raised a question on the word ‘States’ used in the Lahore Resolution, but was overruled by the Quaid-i-Azam”.

Kamruddin Ahmad, a close associate of Suhrawardy and Pakistan’s ambassador to Burma during Suhrawardy’s tenure as prime minister, has given, in his book, “The Social History of East Pakistan “(Dhaka, 1967), a more detailed account of what Abul Hashim had said about the resolution at the Convention.

“He maintained that the draft Resolution looked like an amendment of the Lahore Resolution ..... Could the Convention of the members of the Legislative Assemblies, Central and Provincial, adopt any resolution which later on could be interpreted as an amendment of the Lahore Resolution which was adopted by the General Session of the All India Muslim League in 1940? He argued that the geographical fact should not be denied.

The world, as it is, would not be convinced and it would be repulsive to conceive a State — which would have its two parts intervened by a vast hostile country. The defence of such a state would be impossible. Two such states could never be integrated into a whole.” (p-73)

Kamruddin Ahmad goes on to state that in response to Abul Hashim’s objection, Mr Jinnah “explained that the resolution was not meant to change the Lahore Resolution but to have one Constituent Assembly for the Muslim India for drafting the constitution or constitutions of Pakistan on the basis of the Lahore Resolution.”

According to Kamruddin Ahmad, Mr Jinnah gave the same assurance to Abul Hashim when he met him in Bombay a few months later. Mr Jinnah also told some other Muslim League leaders from Bengal who called on him in a deputation that the Lahore Resolution was not amended, and he could not amend it after the general election in the country which Muslim League contested on the basis of the Lahore Resolution. The Resolution, he said, would be before the Pakistan Constituent Assembly and as a sovereign body it would be the final arbiter of the country’s constitution (pp 74-75)”.

Having discussed Abul Hashim’s criticism of the Delhi Convention Resolution of 1946 and Jinnah’s response to it, let us now see what Suhrawardy had to say on the subject. Sharifuddin Pirzada has also recorded the following statement by him:

“The question before the country now is one of Pakistan and [one] Hindustan. Once this is conceded, it will be for the Pakistan state to define the status of its constitutional units. The units should as far as possible be workable units and should conform to the conditions of linguistic and cultural affinities.”

So Suhrawardy’s explanation for the modification was that the division of the subcontinent into two independent states of Pakistan and Hindustan was the immediate and primary objective at that stage and that the status of the units was an internal matter which could be taken care of by the proposed constitution-making body of Pakistan.

Now the question is: why did not Suhrawardy raise the issue in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan during the framing of the 1956 Constitution? While it is true that most of the leaders of his party, the Awami League, did invoke the Lahore Resolution, talked about a confederal system and did lay claim to maximum provincial autonomy for East Pakistan inside the Constituent Assembly and outside, Suhrawardy himself went along with the then Prime Minister Chaudhry Muhammad Ali, M.A. Gurmani and other Punjabi leaders to turn all of West Pakistan into One Unit, in spite of the opposition from the small provinces of Sindh, NWFP and Balochistan, and also agreed on the principle of parity between East and West Pakistan in spite of East Pakistan’s majority on the basis of population.

One can only speculate about the answer which appears to lie in the old dictum that politics is the art of the possible and of compromise. Suhrawardy must have realized that after Pakistan’s existence as one state for more than eight years, it is no longer feasible to go back to what the Lahore Resolution of 1940 had envisaged. He may have also thought that in these years Pakistan having a Western and Eastern wing had acquired a status among the Muslim countries of the Middle East and of the Far East and also in the international community.

It had become a member of SEATO and CENTO, had entered into a close relationship with US and the West and had become a recipient of their economic and military aid part of which went to East Pakistan also. Suhrawardy, a pro-West politician anyway, was not prepared to risk the benefits which East Pakistan could draw by remaining a part of the federation of Pakistan.

The best way for him therefore was to work out a compromise, to take as much for East Pakistan as possible and proceed with constitution making, to formalize the agreed arrangements.

Suhrawardy must have received a rude shock when in October 1958, Ayub Khan abrogated the constitution and imposed martial law. As Kamruddin has observed, Suhrawardy had always thought that the Pakistan army trained on the British model and tradition would never interfere in politics.

This was the time when Suhrawardy was preparing for the first general election in the country scheduled for February 1959 and hoping to become the first democratically elected prime minister of Pakistan. This was also the beginning of a seething alienation in East Pakistan which, according to Mr Bhandara, Suharwardy was sure would lead to a cataclysmic event. The event in question overtook Pakistan in its break-up in 1971.