Journey without visible signposts

AT a time the peace process is being revived in Palestine through a roadmap, the Indians have taken the initiative for a peace process in South Asia amid a host of uncertainties as to their real intentions. Until the very day Mr Vajpayee made his historic gesture from Srinagar, India had maintained a tough stance, and the prospects for a move towards peace and reconciliation appeared bleak.

The hardliners in the BJP seemed determined to take a leaf out of Ariel Sharon’s book to keep playing the terrorism card. Mr Vajpayee’s announcement in Srinagar on April 18 that he was ready to resume talks with Pakistan was seen as a “brilliant move tactically” by George Perkovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in Washington. An experienced observer of the South Asian scene, he anticipated that the task of putting the peace process back on track was going to be a complex one.

Pakistan, which has been calling for a dialogue for a long time welcomed the move warmly. However, when Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali invited Mr Vajpayee to visit Pakistan on May 4, he politely declined to do so for the present. Since then, Mr Armitage has visited the region, but there are no clear indications as to when a meeting might to held what would be the issues to be discussed and on what order.

As has usually been the case, India seems resolved to retain the initiative on all contentious issues. So far, the emphasis appears to be on limiting expectations, so that even minor advances look like concessions from New Delhi. References have been made frequently to Mr Vajpayee’s two earlier attempts to promote reconciliation and their lack of success has been implicitly blamed on Pakistan’s attitude. Though his Lahore visit in February 1999 was followed by Kargil, the responsibility for lack of concrete results at Agra in July 2001 was clearly that of the BJP hardliners who rejected the finally agreed draft. Declaration. India and Pakistan were all set to resume the Agra process in New York, when the 9/11 events led India to change its stance, hoping to take advantage of the renewed focus on terrorism.

Proceeding from the premise that the two summit-level meetings at Lahore and Agra failed for lack of adequate preparation at the working level, India is stressing that this time, the process must be carefully crafted, with preparatory meetings at the officers’ level before the talks move to the political level. This suggests that the first discussions might be at the foreign secretary level, possibly preceded by preparatory work done by the newly posted high commissioners. A further assumption can be that the coercive measures that India had imposed after the December 2001 terrorist attack on the India parliament would be rescinded to restore a measure of normality India had taken those measures, including downgrading of diplomatic relations and severance of land and air links forcing Pakistan to respond in kind.

Vajpayee’s own statements have been cryptic. He and other leaders have kept on insisting that Pakistan must match India’s keenness for dialogue with concrete measures, especially stopping “cross-border terrorism” and closing down training camps for terrorists. Mr Vajpayee does not call these demands “pre-conditions”, but as “necessary” measures to facilitate progress. When Mr Armitage was here, he was given the assurance that the Pakistan government was doing everything possible to prevent infiltration and that if there were any training camps, they would be closed down soon. Mr Armitage himself conceded that infiltration had tapered off and conveyed the assurance on camps to India. Sine then, while much has been stated for the consumption of the media, no formal communication has been received from the India government.

A major factor in India’s approach to peace process is that powerful elements in the ruling party have a political stake in maintaining a posture of confrontation with Pakistan. With several state elections coming along and national elections due in 2004, the BJP leadership appears divided on the possible impact of a resumption of dialogue on the results of these elections. The predilections of Mr L.K. Advani, who was calling the shots until recently, are well known, and while he has stated that friendly relations with Pakistan are possible, his faction would want to maintain a tough stance. Given the nexus between the BJP and Ariel Sharon of Israel, one should be ready for a course of negotiations during which India would proceed from a position of strength and expect concessions from Pakistan as the weaker party.

Mr Vajpayee himself has shown an inclination to move with great caution and stated that after the failure of his first two peace initiatives, this one, which was likely to be his last, must be “decisive.” Taking a cue from the “roadmap” the US has proposed for Palestine, the Indian foreign minister declared on May 12 that India already had its own ‘roadmap’ and would proceed in accordance with it. For his part, Mr Jamali has found it necessary to stress that Pakistan remains committed to its principled stance on Kashmir, which will not be abandoned to facilitate progress in dialogue with India. This suggests that the dialogue would begin with both sides sticking to their known positions, notably on Kashmir. Incidentally, India did not recognize that Kashmir was the “core” issue and Mr Armitage also appeared inclined to take the same position.

Given the history of conflict and lack of trust between the two countries, even an agreement on the modalities of negotiations is likely to require prolonged parleys. With the political leadership in both countries playing to their domestic galleries, some role by the US as a facilitator may well be necessary. For the resumption of a dialogue there already exists an agreed agenda that was settled in late 1997 and reiterated in June 1998. It lists peace and security and Kashmir as the two main issues to be discussed at the foreign secretary level, with six lesser issues to be discussed at the working level, including Siachen dispute, Wullar barrage, Sir Creek, terrorism and drugs, economic and commercial relations and cultural exchanges. To these would be added some issues that have assumed prominence during the following five years.

Apart from restoration of communication links, there are some issues that are of interest to all the seven countries in South Asia, including the Saarc summit that Islamabad was expecting to host early this year. Not only the summit but also the SAF games have to be rescheduled, and these decisions could be taken fairly quickly as there are no bilateral angularities involved. Other issues, such as the building of an oil pipeline from Iran to India via Pakistan, have emerged. In this Iran is keenly interested and on which Pakistan had given the assurances required for Indian consent. A gas pipeline from Turkmenistan also interests India. Furthermore, India would be eventually be eyeing the transit facilities through Pakistan to Afghanistan and Central Asia, without which a significant expansion of India’s economic and trade links with these countries may not be possible.

Quick progress or a clearly charted course of negotiations can be ruled out. Some practical measures to restore communications and to eliminate road blocks to Saarc can be expected early. Thereafter, the long haul would begin. One hears about vested interests on both sides that have a stake in maintaining confrontation. Kashmir will be the toughest issue to handle — one on which both sides have well known positions that remain totally at variance with each other. The issue of nuclear risk reduction merits early attention, and some groundwork had been done at the Track Two level. The US, which has a clear role as a facilitator, has to meet expectations from both sides, and also has an economic stake, apart from a strategic one in the post-9/11 world. While not plagued by problems on the scale of Palestine, the Indo-Pakistan dialogue looks like a slow and fitful journey, with plenty of room for doubts and misgivings. The extent of mistrust and alienation is seen in the failure even to agree on playing cricket bilaterally.

The writer is a former ambassador.

Yo-yo economics

EITHER the tax cut that American Congress is on the verge of sending to the president is among the most dishonest, gimmick-laden tax packages in history — in which case its true cost is far more than advertised.

Or the bill’s provisions really will take effect and then quickly fade away — in which case its economic value is far less than promised. Either way, it manages, rather impressively, to be more skewed to the wealthy than President Bush’s original proposal.

Nine of the 10 tax cuts in the package are set to expire before 2013, most after just two — that’s right, two — years. The point is to make the 10-year projections look affordable, and never mind the irrationality. “A whole basket of yo-yos,” as the Senate Finance Committee’s ranking Democrat, Max Baucus of Montana, said Thursday.

Congress has resorted to this sort of trickery before, but never on such an audacious scale. The child tax credit will rise from $600 to $1,000 this year and next, drop to $700, gradually rise again to $1,000 and fall to $500 — all by 2013.—The Washington Post

Forget presidential system

ONE thought the issue of the form of government for Pakistan had been finally settled with the 1973 Constitution which had been endorsed by all the political parties at the time of its adoption. Even now they solidly adhere to it — this is what their fight against the LFO is all about. As a matter of fact, the parliamentary form of government has been considered suitable for Pakistan ever since its inception, and is not and has never been a subject matter of debate in the country.

One, therefore, wonders what prompted Kunwar Idris, a retired federal secretary, to recommend the presidential system (Dawn, April 27) calling it a remedy for all our political ills, even predicting its adoption as “inevitable”, while conceding that the construction of a new political order may be hazardous.

In the first instance one may ask how is the new system going to be enforced? The present National Assembly is not likely to adopt it through the prescribed procedure for constitutional amendments. It can only be enforced by abrogating the 1973 Constitution. We all know and surely so does Kunwar Idris, the agency in this country which is capable of performing this act. Does he want it to go ahead and do his bidding?

Unlike Kunwar Idris, I do not think the fault lies with the parliamentary system of government; it squarely lies with the generals who disrupt it every now and then, and do not let it work for any length of time to take roots. It also lies with the politicians who have not had the training to work it mainly because of the frequent disruptions and distortions. The politicians in general and those who have the so-called heavy mandate in particular are obsessed with power and lack respect and regard for democratic culture without which no democracy, presidential or parliamentary, can function successfully.

In the past also there have been stray voices of retired generals and federal secretaries in favour of the presidential system. Their support for it basically springs from their belief in a strong centre under which all executive powers are exercised by the president whose ministers are non-elected, professional experts, from the traditional power elite — retired generals, and civil servants, judges and lawyers, landlords and industrialists.

In other words, the presidential system as envisaged by its protagonists is meant to ensure the continuation of the same oligarchy which has administered Pakistan in periods of martial law and under presidential rule. This is indeed the familiar and well-trodden path — a good enough reason for Pakistan’s bureaucracy to favour it for its own vested interest. This is borne out by our history of the past few decades.

The pattern has been that in the first phase the martial law regime comes down heavily on the top echelons of the civil services but because it cannot run the civil administration without them, so after a while some kind of arrangement for power-sharing is worked out, under which the civil services start feeling quite comfortable and a patron saint from amongst them emerges to maintain liaison with the generals. Under Ayub Khan’s rule, it was M Shoaib, and under Ziaul Haq it was Ghulam Ishaq Khan.

Actually, Pakistan has had no experience of a truly presidential system. The country has had only seven years of the “presidential” rule of Ayub Khan under the 1962 constitution, with a restricted electoral college. It was one of its own kind and cannot be compared with any other presidential system in the world.

Kunwar Idris recommends the election of the president and governors through a direct poll on the basis of adult franchise. It has also been suggested by some others that the president, in addition to winning a majority of the overall number of votes cast, may also be required to get a minimum prescribed percentage of the votes in his favour in each province. This is meant to ensure that the president-elect enjoys wide support in the country.

It all looks very fine on paper but which ‘prince charming’ will win a majority in a direct national poll on the basis of adult franchise and then also win a majority, which would be more desirable, or even a minimum prescribed percentage of votes in each province?

The election of the president under this formula can only be won by a man on the horseback and that also with direct official interference. One may recall here Ayub Khan’s election in February, 1960, as president by a restricted electoral college about which Altaf Gauhar has observed: “Manzur Qadir might have thought that it was the simplicity of the question which enabled the BDs to give the right answer but everyone else knew that the task of educating the BDs had been entrusted to highly solicitous District Officers who helped them to find the right slot inside the polling booth.”

According to a popular belief, the same kind of exercise was successfully carried out in Ayub Khan’s presidential election in January, 1965, also, because it was considered politically imperative for him to win a majority of the votes in East Pakistan.

The supporters of a strong centre and the presidential system for Pakistan do not seem to take into account the prevailing conditions in the country. They talk about the unity of the country but ignore its diversity. They talk about Islam as the common faith of all Pakistanis but disregard the ethnic, linguistic and cultural differences between various regions. Sindh presents an example of such divisive and conflicting elements within a province. Other provinces also have some peculiar problems. In any constitutional arrangement, these ground realities have to be recognized and faced; they cannot be swept under the carpet of unity, faith and discipline. Nor can they be blown away by waving the banner of Islam.

If they could be, there would have been perhaps no Bangladesh. But we do not seem to learn from history, not even from our own recent history. East Pakistan became Bangladesh mainly because its people were denied effective participation in the political process. We had Ayub Khan’s martial law followed by Yahya Khan’s, and during the intervening period of 1962-1969, presidential rule in which the people had no say; for all practical purposes they were disenfranchised. Governors and ministers were appointed by an all-powerful president.

Islamabad ruled all over, including the far-flung areas of East Pakistan. Even officers serving in those areas were recruited as members of cadres controlled and administered by Islamabad. Eventually we had to pay a heavy price for this over-centralization: dismemberment of the country.

The people of Pakistan, particularly of its smaller provinces, want effective participation in the political process, which the parliamentary system does provide, in spite of its other failings. The parliamentary system is acceptable to them because in some form or the other it has been present in the subcontinent for a fairly long time.

People are familiar with it. They like to vote for a member of the national or provincial assembly from their areas who speaks their language, knows their problems and is one of them. They can approach him directly. He serves as their link with the administration, whether he is a member of the ruling party or of the opposition. He can represent their point of view on issues of concern to them.

It is not without significance that Bangladesh, a country which is not beset with problems of ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversities like Pakistan, after years of presidential rule, decided to change over to the parliamentary system soon after a popular government came to power.

Why don’t we accept the fact that Pakistan has four distinct constituent provinces? Each one of them has an identity of its own which it would like to preserve and protect. Why do we forget that our experiment with One Unit under which we put four provinces into a single administrative basket was a complete disaster? We have to have a system of government under which the provinces run their own affairs and have the means to do so. If the quantum of provincial autonomy agreed to in the 1973 Constitution is not considered sufficient, it may be re-examined and a fresh agreement between the provinces and the centre may be evolved.

Let us come back to the question: how are we going to get a president, the fountain-head of all executive power? I have expressed some doubts about the feasibility of the formula presented for his election. We have never had elected civilian president, nor have had any presidential election on a one-man, one-vote basis. One does not know what the proposed election for the president and governors may lead to. This may be “fear of the unknown”; but it is a genuine fear in the present-day Pakistan, with all its provincial, ethnic, cultural and linguistic pulls and pressures.

In any case, the smaller provinces will never accept a presidential system because it does not ensure the same kind of participation in the political process as they enjoy under the parliamentary system. It is this essential element which our friends favouring a presidential system seem to ignore. Pakistan is a federation and needs a system of government under which the provinces have a feeling of sharing power at all levels. This is the only way to turn a nation-state into a nation.

Under the parliamentary system provinces have to be given adequate representation in cabinet formation at the centre. People like their elected representatives, and not professional experts, to be their ministers. The maladies that the critics of the parliamentary system point out relate to our social conditions and political culture. They can be remedied as and when we have regular and fair elections, a strong and well-organized party system, which is the backbone of democracy. They cannot be eliminated with the changeover from the parliamentary to the presidential system.

Who is human?

ONCE upon a time it was acceptable to eat people who didn’t belong to the tribe. Human beings have come a long way since then, and we may yet go further. We might even make killing some non-humans a crime.

The idea that the great apes, at least, ought to have the protection of the same laws that forbid the murder and torture of human beings has been part of the public debate for a quarter-century, since philosopher Peter Singer wrote his ground-breaking book “Animal Liberation” in 1975. “We now have sufficient information about the capacities of the great apes to make it clear that the moral boundary we draw between us and them is indefensible,” he said when he co-founded the Great Ape Project in 1993, and a growing number of people would agree. But opinions would shift even faster if biologists were to re-classify chimpanzees as humans.

That, essentially, is what Professor Morris Goodman is up to. In a paper published this week in the ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’, Goodman, a geneticist at the Wayne State University school of medicine in Detroit, proposes that chimpanzees and their close relatives bonobos (‘dwarf chimps’) be redefined as members of the genus Homo. They are now treated as a separate genus — Pan troglodytes and Pan paniscus — while human beings are seen as the sole surviving species of the genus Homo. Under Goodman’s classification, we would all be members of the same genus: Homo sapiens, Homo troglodytes, and Homo paniscus.

It has long been known that human beings and chimps have about 98 percent common genes, but Goodman’s team concentrated on the crucial ‘coding’ regions of 97 genes that are shared by humans, chimps, gorillas, orangutans, old-world monkeys and mice. All the great apes came out even closer to human beings than previously thought: for humans and chimps, the match was 99.4 percent. So Goodman argues that all the great apes including humans should be seen as members of the same family, Hominidae — and people and chimps as members of the same genus, Homo.

Goodman’s team got different results because they ignored the non-coding DNA that predominates in the genome of every species, but does not actually influence development. Since ‘junk DNA’ has no consequences in the real world, any random change in it is preserved and mutations accumulate fast. ‘Coding’ DNA controls real biological processes, and since most random mutations have negative consequences for the individual involved they are quickly eliminated by natural selection: he dies, probably leaving no offspring. Coding’ DNA changes slowly — and that is where Goodman found the even closer match between humans and chimps.

Why would this matter to anyone but biologists? Because bringing people and the great apes closer together by calling us all Hominidae, and putting people and chimps in the same tight little family Homo, is also a way of emphasising how much humans and chimps have in common emotionally, socially and intellectually. What Goodman is really after is a change in the legal status of chimps: “The finding would support those who want to extend legal controls to stop the abuse of chimps.” Abuse is a pretty mild word, in the circumstances.

The great apes now face what would, if they were truly seen as human, be called a genocide. Wars, forest clearance for logging and farming, and hunting of ‘bushmeat’ for food are decimating the chimpanzees and gorillas of Central Africa, their main habitat. There are probably only about 250,000 great apes of all species left in the wild, and chimps and gorillas are nearing extinction in the Congo and Gabon: a recent search for a long-studied gorilla band of 140 named individuals found only seven left alive.

So a change in their legal status would certainly help, and bit by bit it is coming. Britain was the first to ban the use of chimps in research, and New Zealand and Sweden have followed (though some 1,700 chimps are still held in captivity for research purposes in the United States). More controversially, the Great Ape Project gave birth a couple of years ago to the Great Ape Legal Project, which campaigns for laws that would recognise the ‘humanhood’ of the great apes based not just on their close genetic relationship with us, but also on their intelligence, strong emotions, self-awareness, and limited language ability.

If you deny the great apes ‘human rights’, the radicals argue, then logically you should also deny them to human beings with severe mental handicaps. Morris Goodman is no campaigning radical, but his motive for reclassifying the great apes as human is not only scientific. He clearly feels that it would help to bridge the psychological gulf that must be crossed before we grant them human legal status — a gulf at least as wide as the ones we crossed when we decided that slavery was wrong, or that even females should be allowed to vote.

Granting ‘human rights’ to the great apes would be part of the same process by which we have steadily widened the scope of our moral imagination from the tight circle of the hunter-gatherer band until it (sometimes) embraces the whole of the human race. “Extending the circle of compassion, first of all to our closest living relatives,” as anthropologist Jane Goodall puts it, is the natural next step, and it will probably come to pass eventually. Though perhaps not in time to do the apes much good. — Copyright

US diplomatic victory

THE Bush administration scored a significant diplomatic victory Thursday in winning U.N. Security Council approval for lifting sanctions on Iraq and handing control over the country to a U.S.-dominated administration.

Only token concessions were made to European governments that had sought a leading role for the United Nations; the administration largely succeeded in its drive to concentrate power over Iraq’s transition in the Pentagon and to curtail the influence of governments other than Britain’s.

That it prevailed says less about international support for its strategy — or the results on the ground so far — than about the desire of other governments, including war opponents France, Russia and Germany, to repair relations with Washington.

The responsibility now rests almost solely with the United States to bring order to Iraq, restart its economy and lay the foundations for a new democratic government. But success will require mobilizing more resources and more support than the administration has yet obtained from Congress, the American public or its allies.

A good place to start would be for President Bush to explain more clearly to the country that reconstructing Iraq will be a complex mission probably requiring many years of commitment and billions of dollars of expenditure by military and civilian agencies. Since declaring Iraq a “mission accomplished” aboard an aircraft carrier this month, the president has turned his attention toward domestic affairs and his reelection campaign.

—The Washington Post

Entertaining at the people’s expense

ON April 30 Sardar Ali Mohammed Khan Mahar, the chief minister of Sindh, went to extraordinary lengths when he hosted a lunch for the prime minister of Pakistan. There’s nothing wrong with hosting a lunch: politicians do it all the time. And Sardar Mahar is known for his generosity and the lavish parties he used to give before he became chief minister.

But is it really necessary to serve 19 dishes, and that too in a country where a high percentage of the population lives below the poverty line, and where the controversy over whether or not to serve food at weddings is still raging in Punjab?

A couple of the more conscientious guests who attended the banquet felt that attaching a menu to the invitation card, which was intended as a triumph of culinary oneupmanship, was in bad taste, and somebody had obviously slipped up in the CM’s secretariat. The menu has, in the meantime, been circulated to people outside the chosen circle, and has caused a bit of embarrassment to officials close to the chief minister.

These officials have a lot of explaining to do. On the one hand, the Sindh government has had to stop work on the development of three parks in Karachi, because it is desperately short of funds, and, on the other hand, it behaves as if there is an unlimited source of finance for entertaining political freeloaders who, in the last seven months, haven’t come up with a single positive action which would justify their being elected to office.

The lunch was apparently, on the whole, a jolly occasion. A solid slice of desi traditionalism, all pleasure and no duty. The conversation was exuberant and obsequious, the jokes elegantly vitriolic, rather like exotic flowers on a bad-tempered woman’s expensive hat. And the atmosphere was relaxed. The prime minister was immensely pleased.

The chefs had made good use of the taxpayer’s money. And the guests were, if one may use a phrase from Victorian English, truly sated. Two days later 27 members of the cabinet, led by the chief minister, headed for Saudi Arabia to perform Umra. This time, however, the taxpayer was spared. The tab, it was said, was picked up by one of the foreign banks with an Arab-sounding name.

The point is, why do political leaders always feel it is necessary to splurge and show off in order to make an impression? Hospitality, provided one is spending one’s own money, as Sardar Mahar has been known to do, is a wonderful thing, and Pakistanis are the most hospitable people in the world. But it is morally wrong to entertain in lavish style offering generous repasts with the taxpayer’s money.

The array of 19 dishes which was served at the chief minister’s house on the thirtieth, stands in stark contrast to the one-dish offering which was made by Altaf Hussain, founder of the MQM, when he hosted a lunch for Nawaz Sharif in Jinnah Ground, Azizabad, in 1991, from his own party funds. There were at least a thousand people present, bivouacked under huge tarpaulins, and the impressive guest list included most of the consuls-general stationed in the city, members of the civil and military bureaucracy, businessmen, bankers, lawyers, journalists, executives from multinational organizations and, of course, politicians from other parties..

Some of the European diplomats had slipped away because of the inordinate delay in serving the meal, which was caused by Altaf Hussain’s four-hour long meeting with the prime minister. But a few, like the Russian and the Indian consuls-general, stayed on. The Indian diplomat remarked to this writer that he was glad he remained behind, because he couldn’t remember when he had last eaten such a delicious mutton dish , and added that he wished people back in India would follow this example of austerity at weddings.

The gourmet feast for public officials is only one of the ways in which the taxpayer’s contributions to the exchequer is squandered. There are other practices, some with totally corrupt motives, which are a little crude, like digging up and paving a road just before the monsoon is due. Or dishing out salaries to people who teach in schools that exist only on paper.

But there are also the more subtle practices, like the appointment of foreign and local consultants who are paid exhorbitant fees, though some of these scams remain hidden from public view. These ‘experts’ have through the years landed up in all sorts of organizations, in both the public and the private sector, exuding an air of supreme competence and invincibility.

In fact, there was a time in the late 1970s when the foreign consultant epidemic hit PIA. First, a graphic designer was imported from London to introduce a fresh corporate logo for the national flag carrier which, for years, had been using a signature which showed the letters PIA in italic capitals with an arrow through its torso. The italics and the arrow were intended by its creator to indicate mobility, speed and progress .Six months and one hundred and fifty thousand pounds later, the arrow was removed, the letters PIA were straightened by employing the fuller, more solid type face used by Air France, and a stylistic logo in Urdu was added.

Then a team was imported from New York to take a look at the corporate structure that existed in the airline. Ten months and a million dollars later, the consultants decided that what the national flag carrier badly needed was a department that would act as a watchdog over the activities of other departments. A kind of super vigilance department to enable its head to ferret out his enemies with the intention of harassing them.

Against a background of hype about austerity and slashes in official expenditure, a report was published by a section of the press a little over six months ago, which centred on the 100 grossly overpaid consultants who were still being employed by various government departments in Pakistan. This certainly reflected the hollowness of claims made on a regular basis by the government’s economic managers who are trying to convey the impression that as far as budgets are concerned, they have hit rock bottom.

What makes the whole business even more unsavoury is that these experts, who were costing an otherwise cash-strapped government exchequer more than eight million rupees, had been inducted into the government cadres during the three years of military rule. Now comes the delightful part. Only three of the serving consultants were hired on the direct orders of the Chief Executive. The rest were recruited by subordinate agencies without the obligatory clearance from the office of the Chief Executive. Strange things have been happening in Islamabad.

All this raises serious concerns and calls for a high-level official investigation to determine just why the government spent millions to hire the services of these specialists. What jobs had they been given is a question that needs to be asked, and what was so special about their assignments that the government couldn’t find candidates from among the members of the highly trained civil service? And what was the procedure adopted for their recruitment?

The most pertinent question for the present government, however, is to ascertain whether these experts have actually fulfilled their assignments. A performance appraisal is essential in order to determine once and for all the usefulness of such specialists, so that a policy can be devised to deal with such recruitment in future.

Interestingly, most of these consultants can be found in the National Reconstruction Bureau — the military government’s frontline agency that churned out a broad array of reforms, most of which are now falling apart, either for lack of implementation, or because intentions have changed. Reports also identified other consultants and the emoluments they received. Many of them are entrenched in the civil service , trying out Parkinson’s Law, and probably wondering when somebody might spot them. In addition to these specialists, a large number of in-service or retired military officers also found their way into civilian jobs. While such lateral recruitment is demoralizing members of the civil service , such appointments do not always generate the desired results. Consultants are recruited presumably to add some sort of intellectual stimulation to government policies. But surely this could be accomplished, probably more successfully, through public debates. To start with, it would be much cheaper. And there is something wholesome in getting the public interested and involved in issues which concern them. It would make the country richer by at least eight million rupees.

Email: a-mooraj@cyber.net.pk