| February 22, 2002 | Friday | Zilhaj 9, 1422 |
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A strange proposal
Egyptian inferno
THE report that eleven million people in Sindh are unemployed and fifty per cent of the population lives below the poverty line is disturbing. Presented at a seminar by the Sindh finance minister, the report paints a bleak picture of the province’s economy and points to the staggering rise in unemployment from 25 per cent in the eighties to 33 per cent in the nineties. More shocking, 82 per cent of the people in five districts live on an income of less than one dollar a day. The only redeeming feature is a slight rise in home remittances, part of which may have been diverted into real estate, where prices have registered a slight increase in recent months. To begin with, Sindh’s economic woes are part of the country’s overall economic misfortunes. Decades of political instability, the absence of long-term planning, the US aid cut-off (since October 1990), lack of foreign investment, falling remittances, and a precarious law and order situation have all contributed to a declining growth rate and an increase in poverty. To these national causes for the overall economic downturn must be added problems and misfortunes peculiar to Sindh.
To begin with, agriculture, which previously has been a major factor in Sindh’s economic vibrancy, has now reasons to decay. As the report points out, the province has been getting less than its share of irrigation water. In 1999-2000, Sindh received 17 per cent less than what it should have. In the following year, for the kharif crop it got 25 per cent less than its share, and for rabi 43 per cent less. In the current fiscal year, the figures are 28 and 54 per cent, respectively. The result was not only a fall in production of major agricultural crops; there has also been sea water intrusion, destroying 1.2 million acres of fertile land in the Indus delta. This has forced thriving farming communities to migrate, turning their homes into ghost villages.
As for industrial production, no other province has suffered the way Sindh has since the late eighties because of widespread violence and strife resulting from political, ethnic and sectarian causes. Lawlessness and strife often led to prolonged periods of curfew and “wheel jam” strikes that forced factory closures and crippled economic activity. This was in addition to common crime rooted in social pressures and joblessness. Population-wise, too, Sindh registered a higher growth than the normal growth rate because of continuous migration from the north as an added factor. In the wake of the Afghan war particularly, which caused widespread economic dislocation in the NWFP, the rate of migration increased significantly in the eighties and nineties. Lawlessness also led to capital flight, besides a total absence of investment by foreign and local entrepreneurs. All this contributed greatly to declining industrial production, falling economic growth and greater unemployment and poverty.
There is, of course, no quick-fix solution. Ultimately, only a national revival will have its effects on Sindh, too. But some points need special attention. First and foremost is the need for Sindh to get its fair share of irrigation water. An equitable inter-provincial water accord is overdue. Secondly, the law and order situation — though better — is still far from being satisfactory. A better law and order situation will obviously lead to higher production, greater local and foreign investment and more jobs. As for stopping in-migration, there is no other way out except that economic development should be more evenly spread. Only better economic prospects locally can slow down migrations from the rural areas to urban Sindh.
INDIA’s offer to resume the freight service with Pakistan is a strange response to a situation of wider political and human dimensions. It is also unmistakably self-serving. Not surprisingly, Pakistan has rejected the offer and demanded a more meaningful approach to the question of normalization. Clearly, it would have made better sense to have offered the resumption of the passenger train service between the two countries. The train service was a lifeline for hundreds of thousands of divided families on both sides of the border. As Pakistan’s railway minister put it bluntly, “ It’s more important to restore people traffic than goods traffic”. The service was abruptly halted by India on January 1 following the terrorist attack on the parliament building in New Delhi on December 13. The Indians had blamed two Islamic militant outfits for the attack and alleged that Pakistan was behind them. Ironically, Pakistan has since banned both the groups and launched a nationwide crackdown on similar militant outfits but the Indians have remained unmoved. Perhaps the proposal to resume the freight service between the two countries is motivated by more mercenary considerations.
By and large, India has a favourable trade balance with Pakistan. While there were times when India imported more than it exported to Pakistan, normally the opposite is the case. In that sense, India stands to gain more from the resumption of the freight service than Pakistan. The quantum of such bilateral trade stood at over 4,500 million rupees in 1998-99. It is time the Indian government responded in a more meaningful way to the proposals being made by Pakistan, if only on humanitarian grounds. Depriving people of the opportunity to visit their relatives is causing untold misery to hundreds of thousands of innocent people caught in the crossfire between the two countries.
THE tragic train disaster in Egypt the other day is another reminder of how risky long-haul travel by public transport can be in a developing country. The accident burnt to death nearly 400 people and seriously injured 54 as a result of a fire that gutted seven of 16 carriages of a train transporting poor labourers and their families to their native towns and villages for the Eid holiday. The accident occurred 70km south of Cairo on the 800km-long track in the Nile valley that connects the capital with the southern city of Aswan. Surprisingly, the lower class carriages were not fitted with any emergency alarm levers that could have been pulled to halt the train before so many lives were lost. It is to the credit of the driver that he separated the burning carriages as soon as he discovered that the rear carriages were on fire; otherwise the number of fatalities would have been much higher.
Official reports from the site of the accident suggest that the fire could have started from a burning gas stove, as many Egyptians carry such stoves on long journeys to cook their food. Some survivors, however, have disputed this claim, saying the train was so overcrowded that setting up a stove for cooking was out of the question. Regardless of the controversy, the fact is that so many innocent lives would not have been lost if it were not for the inadequacy or absence of minimum safety standards in modes of public transport in many developing countries. As Egypt grieves for victims of its biggest-ever train disaster, there is a lesson that this tragedy can teach many others in the developing world — including Pakistan — where safety mechanisms in public transport are far below the prescribed minimum international standards.