President Pervez Musharraf wants the country to realize its full ‘marvellous economic potentials.‘ He is not the first president to want that, others too have also urged us to do that, beginning with the Quaid-i-Azam in the course of his broadcast on the first anniversary of our independence.

Military rulers have always blamed political leaders for messing up the economy but have not done any better even after sacrificing the principles of democracy.

Meanwhile the population has gone on increasing from thirty million at the time of independence to one hundred and forty five million. Along with it the number of illiterate people has increased enormously and so has the number of unemployed. All that means that the demand on the economy has been increasing steadily and the number of the frustrated people has been rising. While some of them take to begging, others indulge in crimes and a quite a few, after prolonged unemployment, commit suicide.

The Japanese tell us that we are a very rich country in terms of natural resources as compared to their island state. Japan has none of the many natural resources as we have including cotton and wheat. But Japan made full use of its manpower first, then mobilized its women power in the age of transistors and finally used its brain power following the spread of literacy and higher education. Along with that, it picked up its savings rate by thirty-five per cent which meant tremendous capital to invest and develop and increase its exports rapidly. Of course Japan has now its own economic problems. But those are the problems of rapid development rather than of under-development that we confront.

Professor Wantanabe of the Kyoto University told me at a meeting at that famous centre of learning that Japan owed it rapid progress to three things: land reforms, universal education and Confucian work ethic. The same principles applied to most of the East Asian countries which made phenomenal progress and became Asian tigers.

The land reforms were brought in by the American conquerors to eliminate the hold of the land owning class on the political system and the chauvinistic values that they upheld.

Land reforms in Pakistan have been more of a mirage and now we are talking of corporate reforms that are ill-defined.

If the economic potential of Pakistan is to be realized in full and quickly, we need a strategy of full employment.Prior to that we need to educate our people, and give them quality education and impart the kind of technical training which the economy needs in this globalized world when we are opening up our economy open to international competition. Of course educating the people needs a great deal of money, and above all a national mobilization to achieve that objective in full and not limited to social action programmes alone. Are we ready for such a national mobilization which should override all other objective?. We are not. Instead we are lost in diverse pursuits. Realizing the marvelous economic potential of Pakistan also demands a policy of full employment and that should be productive employment and not more people working for the government with its vast red tape and other restrictive practices.

When Professor Erhard, the German economic miracle thinker visited the Asian States he observed “too many hands selling and too few producing.” The same holds true for Pakistan. More people are engaged in selling as retailers, hawkers etc than in producing or exporting. Worst, still too many people are serving others as domestic servants and they do not add to the strength of the economy or its growth.

The new deviation from focusing on production is the increasing number of people employed as security personnel all around in the public as well as private sector. Such security personnel are present around the homes of the affluent as they drive around and in their factories, shops and offices. They do not add to the wealth of the country but have become a necessity in view of the kidnapping, dacoities and other dreaded crimes. Of course as long as there is the threat of rising terrorism and increasing crimes such protectionist measures are necessary but it is for the government and the political leaders as a whole to go in deeper into the causes of such an alarming situation and the pervasive fear that it generates.

Of course a country which imports more than it exports and needs such imports for revenue collection as well, there has to be increasing focus on the value-added in exports so that we can earn more and more through our export by enhancing the quality. This too demands a national obsession with quality beginning with pest and admixture free cotton which is being officially promoted now. Along with that, the loss in foodgrains during harvest and the movement of crops and storage has to be sharply reduced if not eliminated altogether. We have to save more of what we produce agriculturally and get the best value for it. If that happens, the deficit in the external trade to the extent of over one billion dollars can be eliminated and the exports can go into a surplus in a world in which cheap and substandard imports are no longer popular. If you have to promote full employment and a steady rise in output we have to invest far more than seventeen or eighteen per cent of our GNP at market prices. While we have to welcome and seek foreign investment, to accelerate foreign investment we have to invest far more of our resources and that has to come through larger savings. We need a more judicious savings policy instead of the present approach.

While the interest on national savings schemes were reduced by a third last year it has been cut to 2.5 per cent now and it appears that the return on savings would be fixed every six months. It now seems that the return on the savings would join the genre of the POL prices which are fixed periodically. Along with that the electricity rates will go on rising.

What kind of rise in savings is possible in such an environment of uncertainty in a country in which two-thirds of the people are illiterate and financial institutions are not established on a sound basis.

Changing the rate of savings every six months, if it is not to increase, would hurt the savings in a country with one of the lowest savings rate in the world. The situation, as it is, is so bad, while the deposit rates on savings is around four per cent the lending rate is around twelve per cent, enabling the banks to keep for themselves just as much as twice what the depositor gets. This policy has to give way to steadily increasing interest rates for the depositors while the lending rate at the other end comes down reflecting the fall in the discount rate of the State Bank of Pakistan from thirteen to nine per cent. The IMF may be pressing us to reduce the interest rate on national savings schemes so that more deposits go into the banks and the country comes to have a single rate as that around the Pakistan investment bonds. But the fears and hopes of the small savers has to be taken into account while formulating a new savings policy.

What is obvious is that the old savings policy has not paid dividends in a country in which domestic savings, corporate savings, and official savings have been very poor. In fact the official accounts have been heavily in the red for far too long now — around one hundred and seventy billion this year. Hence the proposed new policy of fixing the interest rate on savings every six months may be totally counter-productive and upset the government calculations.

It is also essential for the country as a whole to spend less and save more and protect itself from all kinds of exuberant consumerist drives. When we talk of foreign investment we do not have Pizza Huts, McDonalds, KFCs, etc in mind, And that is what we seem to have got instead of real productive investment which is also helpful for exports. The established foreign investors are also joining the feverish consumerist drive by promoting their ice creams and various soft drinks, while the foreign investment is much too slow in coming in except in a small measure in the petroleum sector.

The government should look into the reasons which have stood in the way of Pakistan realizing its economic potential and therefore suffering the ill effects of a stagnant economy.

THE recent Indian cabinet reshuffle has significantly taken place at a time when India is right in the midst of a military standoff with Pakistan and making a strong bid to establish itself as the dominant power in the South Asian region — and if possible even beyond. The father of India’s foreign policy, Sardar K.M. Pannikar, if one may recall, had very clearly spoken out in the 1940s that the South East Asian region and the Middle East (in American parlance the Near East) as being the eventual reaches for the establishment of India’s overseas political influence.

The increasing capabilities of the current variants of the Indian missile systems — of Agni, Prithvi, etc — are reflective of the extent of desire-range of New Delhi for asserting its ultimate sphere of influence. This, of course, is a thought process that is at the very core of what India’s foreign policy framers want to happen and which they know cannot happen without first putting Pakistan in ‘its proper place.’

They think that the infamous domino theory is not joins to work in their favour as long as there is a Pakistan that is unwilling to accept Indian hegemony. From this arises the Indian urgency to try and bleed Pakistan through a slow burn such as the current military standoff on the Pakistan-India border which is seen to be economically more hurtful for Pakistan than for India.

Cabinet reshuffles are indeed a regular phenomenon in a parliamentary form of government and it is a means of keeping control of, as well as making adjustments of policies, as also for ensuring some longevity to a sitting government. The recent reshuffle was being expected in the Indian capital for quite some time. There was of course the need to ensure a firm grip on the rank and file of the BJP’s parliamentary party and its coalition partners, particularly to pacify the noisier elements therein which are under the influence of powerful persons like Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani.

But one also suspects that there may be an element of forward planning with a view to preparing to hit Pakistan in the south in the event of some political disturbances breaking out in Sindh which is seen by the Indians as Pakistan’s ‘soft underbelly’. That should explain why Advani had to be formally elevated to the exalted position of deputy prime minister which had eluded even his illustrious predecessor Sardar Vallabhai Patel in the Nehru era. The fact is that the Indian intelligence agencies are reporting to their government suggesting that something bigger than the 1984 MRD agitation is imminent in Sindh. They believe that such a development, coupled with an ambivalent attitude of the MQM in the major urban centres of the province, offers an ideal setting for India to be fishing in the troubled waters of Sindh.

This apart, the cabinet reshuffle has taken care of some of Prime Minister Vajpayee’s internal chessboard anxieties. By moving the ex-IAS officer Yashwant Sinha from his troubled innings at the finance ministry, he has not only bailed out a very loyal and faithful lieutenant but also given him an opportunity to prove himself in his new job as foreign minister even though he appears quite short on the skills required for his new job. In the process Vajpayee has moved the widely admired Jaswant Singh from the foreign ministry to the finance ministry which has in the last two years or so been scandal-ridden because Yashwant Sinha was only too willing to comply with all sorts of demands and recommendations emanating from the PMO (prime minister’s office).

In the bargain the man who is actually emerging as the most powerful figure is not L.K. Advani but the principal secretary to the prime minister, Brajesh Mishra, who is a fellow Brahmin like the prime minister and who is a retired career foreign service office. With Vajpayee on a physical downhill course but still ‘dying to solve’ India’s ‘Pakistan-problem’ before finally fading out is only trying to position Advani to be made use of for what is considered to be his Sindh expertise and his pathological hate hatred of Pakistan.

But in immediate mileage terms, Vajpayee has put to temporary rest his own anxiety about Jaswant Singh nursing any prime ministerial ambitions on the basis of his performance as foreign minister for the last four years or more — years that have not only given him vast insights into world affairs but created considerable personal goodwill for him.

With the induction of Yashwant Sinha as India’s foreign minister what really appears likely to happen is that the prime minister henceforth plans to be his own foreign minister. With Brajesh Mishra by his side, he has packed off a capable and erudite foreign minister ostensibly to assert personal control of foreign affairs as well as matters relating to national security and the nuclear option.

Brajesh Mishra is indeed emerging as a key figure in New Delhi’s corridors of power. But he happens to be an unelected man. For that reason it could even prove to be a shrewd move on the part of Prime Minister Vajpayee to make his own coordination of India’s foreign affairs (nine-tenths of which are preoccupied with Pakistan and the use of the nuclear arsenal) a lot simpler and easier to manage by engaging an obedient foreign minister and an all-powerful principal secretary in the process.

On the other hand, with Advani with his RAW doing all the dirty work of stoking troubles for Pakistan, the Indian reshuffle can be of much relevance and significance to us in the event of irresistable US pressure being applied on Pakistan to further dilute its Kashmir policy.

ACCORDING to the US Defence Intelligence Agency, a nuclear war between India and Pakistan could claim as many as 12 million lives, all in a matter of minutes. The staggering figure makes the total number of war casualties in more than 50 years of war and conflict in South Asia look miniscule in comparison.

Yet, the people of India and Pakistan seem unconcerned about the possibility of a nuclear war. Those who think nukes are simply “big bombs” would be wise to learn the lessons of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, where, more than 50 years later, survivors are still feeling the bomb’s effects.

If a nuclear weapon is used against a major urban centre in India or Pakistan, hundreds of thousands would be immediately incinerated or crushed by falling debris. They would be the lucky ones. The true horrors of a nuclear war linger long after the initial blast wave and intense firestorm produced by a nuclear explosion.

Everyone within a radius of two to three kilometers from ground zero would receive severe, if not fatal, burns. Those who survive the initial blast would later succumb to radiation sickness caused by acute exposure to deadly radioactive fallout. Early symptoms of radiation sickness include nausea and hair loss, and progress into fever, bleeding, emaciation, and ultimately death. While the Hiroshima bomb immediately killed an estimated 45,000 people, after four months the death toll had climbed to140,000 — more than half the city’s population before the bombing.

Effective medical assistance would essentially be unavailable to the sick and dying in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear explosion in South Asia. The blast would completely wipe out public health infrastructure in the targeted city. Hospitals, blood supplies, and other essential medical equipment would be destroyed. The majority of doctors and nurses would be killed, and the survivors would not be able to reach ground zero. Hiroshima again provides a sobering illustration: According to International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, only three of Hiroshima’s 45 hospitals were left standing. Fewer than 30 of 150 physicians were able to treat the sick and wounded. Out of 1,780 nurses, 1,654 were killed or injured.

The effects of radiation exposure would also manifest themselves over several decades in the form of increased incidences of cancer — especially leukemia — sterility, and possibly even birth abnormalities. According to the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, established in 1975 to study the health effects of radiation on Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, hundreds of additional cancer deaths occurred between 1950 and 1990 as a direct result of the atomic bombings.

Deadly radioactivity would spread for miles, contaminating food and water supplies that, if ingested, could prove fatal. Without massive international humanitarian assistance, starvation and famine could follow, further inflating the death toll.

The physical destruction and radioactive fallout would also deal a severe blow to the economies of India and Pakistan. Major industries, heavily concentrated in and around urban centres that are the most likely targets for nuclear attack, would be completely wiped out. In the case of Pakistan, the agricultural sector — the mainstay of Pakistan’s economy — would be devastated as entire crops would have to be destroyed due to the fears of radioactive contamination. Export revenues from agricultural goods would plummet.

Nearly all buildings within several kilometers of the blast, including homes, schools, and offices, would be destroyed, creating a massive refugee crisis. When combined with the effects of widespread sickness, starvation, destitution, and paranoia, the end result of a nuclear attack may well be internal collapse.

The people of India and Pakistan have already paid a heavy price for their governments’ development of nuclear weapons. The actual use of even one nuclear bomb against India or Pakistan would result in a human disaster on a scale never before witnessed in history. In the words of former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev, “The survivors would envy the dead.”

The writer is a senior analyst at the Centre for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, a think tank in Washington, DC.

WELLINGTON: Less than three weeks from New Zealand’s general election, only one-in-four of the country’s 2.6 million voters understand how to vote, according to research by the Electoral Commission released on Tuesday.

One-in-three do not know they will have two votes on the ballot — one for a local candidate and one for a party — and nearly half are not aware the party vote decides the make-up of the next parliament and government.

The research shows New Zealanders have not yet come to terms with the proportional representation system they chose to replace the traditional first-past-the-post method in a referendum nine years ago, even though they have used it at two general elections already.

It demonstrated a “shocking level of public ignorance about how our electoral system works”, said Rod Donald, co-leader of the Greens, one of the minority parties that the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system has helped into parliament.

The Greens had seven members in the last parliament and opinion polls show they have every prospect of winning more in the election on July 27.

Like other minor parties, they had little chance of seats under the old first-past-the-post system that the one-time British colony inherited from Westminster, which gave the Labour and conservative National parties a stranglehold on power.

The old Social Credit Party, for instance, won 20 per cent of the vote in 1981, but gained only two seats in parliament, leaving them irrelevant.

Under MMP — similar to the system used in Germany — the percentage of the party vote dictates the number of seats. Social Credit would have had 20 per cent of the total members of parliament instead of just two.

Now, 69 MPs are elected for local constituencies as before, while another 51 are appointed from party lists, in accordance with their party’s shares of the total party vote.

Parties must win at least one constituency seat or a minimum 5 per cent of the party vote to qualify.

Paul Harris, chief executive of the Electoral Commission, announced a publicity campaign to lift voter awareness before the election, but said he did not have enough money for a full-scale media blitz.

Donald blamed the Labour-led government of the last three years for depriving the commission of sufficient funds, saying, “Participation in democracy is the most fundamental right - and responsibility - of New Zealanders.

“Whether they vote for Green, red, blue or orange-with-purple-spots isn’t as important as actually casting that vote.”

He accused the government of effectively depriving voters of their right to make an informed choice in the election.

The commission said a survey showed voters’ knowledge of how the system worked was lower than immediately before the last general election in 1999, indicating people had forgotten how to vote.

While two-thirds knew they had two votes and 55 per cent knew the party vote was the most important, only 27 per cent knew that combination decided the make-up of parliament.

This despite nearly three-quarters of voters stating they were interested in politics generally, and nearly 40 per cent claiming “a great deal” or “some” knowledge of New Zealand politics.

The research showed that women, young people, Maoris and Pacific Islanders knew less about the voting system than others.

Studies show the last few weeks of an election campaign are critical to the outcome.

A survey after the 1999 election showed nearly half of voters made up their minds which party to vote for in the four weeks before the ballot, and 12 per cent did not decide until election day.—DPA

AMERICAN unilateralism has reared its ugly head again. Yet again, a noble and worthy cause is being jeopardized by the narrow vision of the Bush administration. And yet again, the rest of the world could pay a heavy price for American selfishness.

People are all too familiar with the long list of American unilateralist measures implemented since George W. Bush with his non-global vision took over. Treaties and agreements that could have saved the environment, reduced small arms proliferation, capped nuclear arsenals and biological weapons, tackled racism and other discriminatory ideologies, promoted free trade — have all been sacrificed on the altar of American national interests. The latest sacrificial lamb is the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The ICC came into being on July 1 after ratification of the 1998 Rome Treaty, setting up the court, by over 70 countries. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan summed up its mission: “It holds the promise of a world in which the perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes are prosecuted when individual states are unable or unwilling to bring them to justice.”

Sadly, there is no shortage of perpetrators: Rwanda, East Timor, Bosnia, Kosovo have all witnessed mass murder and abuse on a shocking scale. These recent examples clearly demonstrate that, while we may have entered the third millennium, mankind’s capacity for brutality, depravity and bestiality is undiminished.

The legal system that existed prior to the ICC was incapable of bringing those responsible for such acts to justice. National prosecution is almost unheard of, either because of lack of will (for instance, in Indonesia) or because of other more pressing demands on post-conflict and post-genocide administrations (in Afghanistan). The International Court of Justice can only rule on disputes between governments; it cannot prosecute individuals. The tribunals currently trying people for crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda have limited mandates: they can only hear the cases about crimes committed in those territories within a fixed period of time. Once those specific cases have been heard, the tribunals will be wound up.

The International Criminal Court therefore fulfils a pressing need, one that should have been addressed long ago. It is a permanent body. It punish crimes committed on any signatory state, or by any signatory state’s citizens, or any crimes referred to it by the UN Security Council. The ICC holds, as Kofi Annan said, the promise of bringing mass murderers to justice. But additionally, and crucially, it holds the promise of deterrence. Knowing that a court exists before which he could one day be answerable, could deter a government with ethnic cleansing on its agenda from carrying it out.

Or at least, it could, if the US does not cripple it at birth. The 70-plus states that have ratified the Rome Treaty’s ICC statute include France, Germany and Britain. As president of the United States, Bill Clinton signed the treaty but did not get it ratified by Congress. His successor pulled the US out of the treaty altogether: George Bush does not like the ICC.

The purported reason for Washington’s almost pathological hatred of the ICC is that it could be used to carry out politically-motivated prosecutions of American servicemen or women. George Bush is aware of the depth of anti-US feeling in some corners of the globe (even as he refuses to acknowledge the reasons for it). He fears that that hatred could prompt malicious anti-US accusations, which would be taken up by the ICC. Americans have also voiced concern that the ICC could prosecute historic US actions — in Vietnam or more recently in Afghanistan. Referring to the ‘threat’ posed by the ICC, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared: “We must be ready to defend our people, our interests and our way of life.”

All fears and threat perceptions are quite divorced from reality. The US made clear its concerns in the run-up to the ICC and they were addressed before it came into being. A plethora of measures is in place to ensure that the Americans cannot be victimized.

Point one: the ICC will only act if national states fail to do so. If the US became a signatory it would be able to prosecute its citizens itself. Point two: the ICC allows for international agreements to override the Rome Treaty. The US could negotiate bilateral agreements with all countries hosting its forces, thereby making their surrender to the ICC impossible. Point three: the US has veto power in the UN Security Council. It could veto any cases against its citizens referred by the Security Council. Point four: prosecutions have to be vetted by a three- member panel of judges. The chances of politically-motivated charges being acted upon are thus remote. Point four: the ICC has no retroactive mandate. It can only prosecute crimes committed after July 1, 2002. Point five: the burden of proof in the ICC will be so high that only rock-solid evidence will secure conviction. If Americans do nothing wrong, they have nothing to fear.

According to one EU diplomat, ‘The Americans have already got 99.8 per cent of what they want on this.’ America’s European allies in the war against terror — equally vulnerable to malicious accusations — have all ratified the ICC. They are satisfied that their peacekeepers [who far outnumber those of the US] are safe. So why the US intransigence?

That arrogance prompted the US to table draft resolutions before the UN Security Council giving its peacekeepers immunity from arrest, detention and prosecution — not just in ratifying states, but in all UN member states. When those resolutions were rejected, the US vetoed extension of the UN peace-keeping mandate in Bosnia [46 US soldiers are in that mission]. Coincidentally that mandate came up for renewal before the Security Council on the same day as the ICC came into being.

The implications of the US veto are ominous. Unless the dispute is resolved, the UN peace-keeping mission in Bosnia will have to withdraw. The same purported concern for US soldiers could lead to the 3,300 US troops currently in SFOR (stabilization force) being pulled out. Between them these two missions are keeping the peace in Bosnia: without them, there could be a return to conflict. And the same concern could jeopardize other peacekeeping operations, also up for mandate renewal soon. France’s UN ambassador summed up: ‘What is at stake is the very capacity of the United Nations to carry out peacekeeping operations.’

Washington would jeopardize peacekeeping — as well as of course justice and the prevention of conflict and mass murder (promised by the ICC) — rather than allow its citizens to be answerable to a higher international body. If that isn’t selfish unilateralism, what is?