| April 5, 2002 | Friday | Muharram 21, 1423 |
Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)
Israel and foreign media
Begging in capital
THE provinces’ demand for a debt write-off by the federal government makes a lot of sense on a number of counts. To begin with, most of the loans given by the federal government to the provinces at high interest rates were themselves either grants or concessional loans obtained by the federal government from external sources. Clearly, it would only be appropriate and in the interest of equity if Islamabad shared with the provinces the fiscal room that has been granted to it by the bilateral and multilateral donors through their recent concessional assistance, including the highly generous third round of debt rescheduling, which, according to the federal finance ministry’s own estimates, has reduced the total debt of 38 billion dollars by at least 35 per cent. However, the most convincing argument in favour of the provinces in this respect is the gradual erosion of their ability to earn their own keep owing to the federal government’s frequent inroads even into the exclusively provincial fiscal areas. This federal policy to deprive the provinces of their legitimate and constitutionally guaranteed revenue incomes has not only eroded the concept of provincial autonomy enshrined in the constitution, it has also forced them to become dependent on costly handouts from Islamabad.
Over the years, as in the federal budget, the largest allocation in the provincial budgets is made for meeting their debt obligations. Again, like the practice at the federal level, these debt obligations are being met by borrowing more, causing net outflows to enlarge with the passage of each year. Just imagine the inequity in Sindh’s case. It has already paid Rs. 82 billion against a total debt of Rs. 52 billion, and it is still burdened with a debt of Rs. 42 billion, because, out of a total repayment of Rs. 82 billion, only Rs. 10 billion was the principal amount and the rest interest. In the case of Sindh, the law and order situation also affects its finances adversely, because the provincial government has to pay for the operations of those law enforcement agencies which are federally controlled. The government is in the process of setting up provincial finance commissions on the lines of the existing National Finance Commission to facilitate an equitable distribution of resources between the provinces and their respective local governments. But what would these provinces share with their local governments — their loans to the federal government?
The real issue is turning the provincial economies vibrant and making the provinces stand on their own feet. While this is linked basically to the country’s overall economic fortunes and how it develops, the federal government, nevertheless, can take a number of steps to improve the situation. The first of these steps should be to liberate them from the burden of the federal debts carrying high interest rates. The next step should be to give up a number of taxes now being defined as federal taxes and hand them over to the provinces. Of course, these two steps would reduce the federal revenues to a certain extent. But then, if many of the development and maintenance activities now being looked after by Islamabad but which, according to the constitution, should have been with the provinces, are given to them, the federal government can easily make do with reduced revenues. The provinces’ case is further strengthened by the fact that the health of the federal budget, in terms of revenue collection, has relatively improved.
THE criminality of Israel’s action in occupied territories can be gauged by the way its jackboots are targeting foreign journalists. The idea is to scare away the foreign media from the Palestinian towns, which are now the killing fields of the occupying forces. Reporters Sans Frontieres, a French NGO concerned with journalists’ safety and their right to report, says some 11 journalists have so far been made the target of Israeli gunfire in recent days and that three of the victims have been severely wounded. The total number of casualties has reached 52 since the beginning of the second Palestinian uprising in September 2000. The message Tel Aviv is sending to the world media by this persecution of journalists to the extent of firing at them is loud and clear: either fall in line or report Israeli atrocities at your own peril. Israel, it seems, is the only country in the world that is allowed to get away with such unbridled criminal conduct.
Considering the nature of the atrocities his troops are committing in Ramallah and the other re-occupied Palestinian towns, Ariel Sharon knows that the best way to hide his criminal conduct is to declare the area a “military zone” and order all journalists out of it. This is in clear breach of a time-honoured practice: journalists have always considered it their right to report from frontlines — Afghanistan is a recent example. Eye-witnesses say the dead and injured Palestinian civilians — among them women and children — are lying in the streets of Ramallah because Israeli army refuses to allow ambulances and paramedics to reach them. The bodies of one Palestinian woman and her son, who were killed by a tank shell, are only one such example. Under the circumstances, one wonders whether Tel Aviv is preparing for a re-enactment of another massacre on the pattern of Sabra and Shatila. That the western world sat through this gory spectacle in 1982 in Beirut hardly makes a case for its inaction today. Sharon was a war criminal then, he is one today. It is he, as the real villain in the bloody Middle East drama, who needs not only to be reined in, but also brought to justice for war crimes.
ALTHOUGH official figures are lacking, begging as a means of livelihood has certainly been on the rise in recent years in Islamabad. In some cases, children start begging, or are made to beg, as soon as they are able to walk. Beggars ranging from five-year-olds to teenagers are now a common sight in the streets and markets of Islamabad, knocking at the window of a car at a traffic junction or tugging at the kameez of a shopper. Various anti-begging drives have been launched by the capital’s police and the city’s administration to root out the problem but to no avail. Essentially, these measures are cosmetic, focussing largely on removing the beggars from public sight by hauling them up and throwing them into jails. The result is that they are easily replaced by new entrants into the business, while those in jail go right back to the same trade once they are out. It is astonishing to know that there are “contractors” who bring groups of beggars daily into the city from different areas, and all this is happening right under the nose of the city administration. What is also disturbing is the fact that these young beggars, both boys and girls, are moonlighting as prostitutes, drug dealers and thieves.
Begging is as much a social evil as theft, prostitution and drug dealing. It has its roots in weak economic and social policies and in an iniquitous distribution of wealth. It cannot be got rid of by simply rounding up the beggars and throwing them into jails. Rehabilitation centres for these beggars, if established and run efficiently, may partly help. But, essentially, a war on beggary is linked to the country’s overall socio-economic progress, especially in the field of education, for the beggars invariably are illiterates.