| June 23, 2003 | Monday | Rabi-us-Sani 22,1424 |
Malik Meraj Khalid and I
India Gate and the road to Iraq
Water famine by the sea shore
Have a heart, KESC
OUT of the nine general elections held so far in the country over the last 56 years, four have been held by Pakistan’s army generals. Every time that happened, transfer of power from the army to the elected civilians in its true sense did not take place. In the first one, Gen Ayub managed to transfer power from the commander-in-chief of the army to the ‘elected’ president — that is, from himself to himself. In the second one, Gen Yahya refused to transfer power to parliament which he had brought into being through an election but had finally to hand over the baton to a civilian martial law administrator. In the third one, Gen Zia, too, initially refused to transfer power to the 1985 elected parliament. But when he realized that power was slipping out of his hand, he dissolved the assembly and the government shortly before his death in an air crash. As for the fourth one, Gen Musharraf who held election in October last year is still holding out against a real transfer of power to the elected parliament on the plea that the checks and balances needed to establish ‘true’ democracy in the country are not yet in place.
Gen Musharraf believes that elections alone do not usher in ‘true democracy’, and as long as such a democracy does not come about, he should not transfer power to the elected parliament. ‘True’ democracy as conceived by him requires a president with powers to dismiss elected assemblies in consultation (not binding) with the proposed National Security Council (NSC) comprising the prime minister, the chairman of the Senate, the leader of the opposition, the four provincial chief ministers, the three armed forces chiefs and the chairman, joint chiefs of staff, and himself presiding over its meetings.
It may thus be logical to assume that should the opposition agree to empower the president with 58(2) b and to the formation of the NSC, Gen Musharraf would shed his uniform, get himself elected as president in accordance with the procedure laid down in the Constitution and agree to allow the LFO to be processed through parliament.
By the same token, it would mean immediate transfer of power from the COAS to the elected government, Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali becoming an effective chief executive and the president spending his time playing golf. Is that what Gen Musharraf really wants? From the stories circulating in Islamabad, that is perhaps the last thing the president would seem to be aiming at. Those who claim to know his mind say that he feels he needs at least about two more years to set things right according to his notion of true democracy.
First, he believes that it will take at least about two years for most of the ‘baaqiat’ (relics) of the Ziaists in the army to retire and the young crop of officers, who have moved up in a more ‘liberal’ and ‘open’ post-October 1999 environment, to replace them. Secondly, Musharraf is said to believe that it would take about two years for him to sort out all matters with India, including the core issue of Kashmir. And, thirdly, he is said to have persuaded himself into believing that it would take him another two years to set the country’s economy on a path of real progress.
So, for the next two years, Musharraf is not likely to transfer real power. As a consequence, Pakistan is likely to remain for the next two years the only country in the world with an elected government essentially led by a military man and the elected opposition overwhelmingly dominated by the clergy. That would be quite an intriguing ‘democratic’ set up — one packaged by the combined genius of the military and the religious orthodoxy, both of whom are perceived universally as anathema to democracy.
Interestingly, President Pervez Musharraf is perhaps the only military ruler in the world today who is ardently sought after by most of the leadership of the democratic world, though technically he is in no position to negotiate or take substantive decisions on behalf of his country because he is not the chief executive of Pakistan, not formally, anyway.
While Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali has been left behind to deal with the mundane and day-to-day matters of governance, the chief of army staff (COAS) who occupies the office of the presidency by dint of his uniform is on a 15-day tour of four developed democracies to discuss with the respective governments and firm up policies that are crucial to Pakistan — matters too important to be handled by the sole wisdom of one man.
More interestingly, in the presidential entourage, there is not a single representative of the elected government except Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz who is known as a ‘five-rupee senator’ among his ruling alliance colleagues as he and people like Senator Hafeez Shiekh, Senator Javed Asharaf and others like them were nominees of the president and therefore did not have to spend a single paisa from their own pockets to get elected.
Even the controversial LFO, supposedly having the sanction of the Supreme Court, does not allow Gen Musharraf to run the foreign affairs of his country from the presidency. But the man who used to insist before the October elections that after the polls he would confine his activities to the golf course is now going around the world telling everyone who would listen that he is still the boss in Islamabad. Even the Indian prime minister, who at one time wanted to negotiate with his Pakistani counterpart rather than with the general for peace and normalization between the two countries, seems to have changed his mind. — Onlooker
I and Malik Meraj Khalid were for some years neighbours, I as a small boy and Malik Sahib a young man well into his thirties. The place was Fleming Road. My grandmother had a house in Ahata Nawab Sahib and Malik Meraj Khalid had another. The Ahata was a semi fortified place, containing a cluster of houses in an upside down L-shape. We were seven or eight families but were actually one big clan. I do not remember the year. It could have been 1948, 49 or even 1950. Malik Meraj Khalid was a briefless lawyer. His office used to be more full of friends than clients. I had a younger sister who was a great favourite with my father. Actually, she was more in his lap than out of it. This had turned her head even as a four or five-year old child. She was always creating problems for my poor mother. She always wanted something or the other she could eat.
These early days of Pakistan were of desperate tenury. My parents never had enough to feed a growing family. I remember mother constantly borrowing from a particularly generous neighbour in the Ahata, who would always obliged. This went on and inspite of our economic problems we were, except for that sister of mine, as happy a family as you could ever imagine. Every day, as they say, was Eid and every sunset marked the beginning of a fresh Shab-i-Barat. There were little tiffs between mother and father but they would always end with a laugh. Poverty, you see, brought my parents even closer together than they could ever have been had they inherited millions from my grandparents.
But to return to Malik Meraj Khalid. Since that pampered sister of mine was always wanting things and making my mother’s life generally miserable, she found a solution, a sort of permanent arrangement. Whenever sister raised a new demand, mother would call Malik Meraj Khalid and request him to look after her for an hour or so Malik Sahib himself never had money to spare but he would always find a few annas to buy some ice cream for my sister. This had become an almost daily routine and gradually I began to get jealous of her. One day Malik Sahib brought her home with a cup of ice cream and left, I snatched the cup from her grubby little hands and ran to the far end of the Ahata and enjoyed myself hugely.
Now my sister created such a racket that it brought Malik Meraj Khalid scurrying back to our door to ask mother what was the problem. When mama told him, Malik Sahib came looking for me. He caught me when I was about to finish my cup. The good Malik Sahib, who otherwise always had a smile for me, caught me by my ear and slapped me across the face. “You don’t do this to sisters, you scoundrel, or I will take you to the police station.” I have always lived in dread of the police and my sister eversince. This is my one memory of Malik Meraj Khalid who later became the Speaker of the National Assembly and subsequently a caretaker prime minister. Now they tell me that he was an educationist also. I think differently but it doesn’t matter. The only thing I will remember is that later in life, on the few occasions I met Malik Sahib, he always had a smile for me, a self-effacing smile, an almost apologetic smile for being nice to me, I hope that Malik Sahib will have the time to get ice cream for all the children that are in heaven.
HERE now are my weekly excerpts from the chronology, The Statesman (1875-1975):
In his presidential address at the Tanjore District Conference the other day Mr C P Ramaswamy Aiyar raised a topic of much interest, which many public speakers and writers in this country are generally content to leave severely alone. He expressed the opinion that the proceedings of the conference ought to be conducted in the vernacular of the district, as otherwise its usefulness must be limited. On the other hand, it is admitted that the political movements which have been so strongly in evidence in India during the past 30 years would have been impossible if they had not found in the English language a medium of communication. Mr. Ramaswamy Aiyar went on to tell the conference that he was obliged to speak in English because he could not have expressed himself as he wished in any other language which he knew. The nascent political life of India, in fact, thinks in English, because it has derived all its political ideas from English history and literature. Consequently its natural tendency is to speak and write in English, and if it is ever called to express itself in the vernacular it finds the task so difficult and distasteful as to be almost impossible. This discovery is highly important, for it means that the progress of India is inextricably bound up with the knowledge of the English language and therefore that the study of English rightly comes first in every scientific and comprehensive scheme of educational reform. This truism has long been recognised, and has been accepted with special enthusiasm by Indian reformers, who, so far as they and the entire class to which they belong are concerned, find English increasingly necessary and useful in every relation of life.
Occasionally the secular tendency of English to diffuse itself throughout India experiences a check. During the height of the Swadeshi movement in Bengal a dozen years ago there was a determined effort to make the use of the vernacular, a test of patriotism; shops in the northern quarter of Calcutta blazed out into flamboyant signs in Bengali, and a certain number of protest meetings were conducted in the vernacular, although in most cases fervent speakers clad in country - made garments preferred to denounce the foreigner in his own language. This phase passed but the tendency to reassert the claims of the vernacular recurs at intervals, one of the most notable recent instances being the proposal now under consideration by the University of Bombay to make the vernacular the medium of instruction not merely in high schools but also in colleges. These reactionary measures are obviously doomed to failure. (September, 28, 1916)
With one or two notable exceptions the Indian Birthday Honours List of 1915 is faithful to the precedent set sometime ago, and relates for the most part to officials, who it would almost appear to be necessary to stimulate by some such means to do the work for which they are handsomely paid. The exceptions are of course, not worthy, the most striking of them being perhaps the knighthood bestowed upon Dr. Rabindra Nath Tagore. Whether the knighthood will confer any additional dignity upon such a man or not, there cannot be the slightest doubt that the man will dignify the title. (June, 3, 1915)
HINDU revivalists described the Babri Masjid as a symbol of slavery foisted by the Mughals. That was one of the reasons they cited for its demolition. That is how its rubble became a symbol of their so-called national awakening, a phrase used by Prime Minister Vajpayee, no less. Similarly, many people see the Taj Mahal not as a symbol of love as commonly perceived but as a monument to slave labour, not too different in this respect from the great Pyramids of Egypt.
The popular Urdu poet Sahir Ludhianavi used his poetic licence to scoff at the Taj Mahal, which he likened to a wayward ruler’s method of belittling the poor man’s less ornate gesture to his ladylove. Sahir, in a beautifully argued poem, even urged his beloved never to meet him in the precincts of the fabled monument.
Going by these arguments Delhi’s India Gate, as no other monument in British India, should attract our patriotic bulldozers. It is after all the ultimate symbol of our slavery, even if Mrs Indira Gandhi had sought to convert it into a symbol of valour, a monument to the fallen soldiers after the 1971 war.
India Gate is a majestic structure, 42 metres high, set at the end of today’s Rajpath, perhaps the most beautiful area of New Delhi, with plush green lawns in the backdrop. This is where the Republic Day military parade is held annually on January 26. It is a popular picnic spot in winter and equally popular as a relaxation area during summer evenings.
Designed and built by Edward Lutyens, it was originally called the All India War Memorial in memory of the 90,000 Indian soldiers who died in the campaigns of World War I, the north west frontier operations of the period, including the 1919 Afghan fiasco.
On the walls of the structure are inscribed the names of all the Indian soldiers in the British army who perished. An eternal flame, called Amar Jawan Jyoti, that runs on gas was lit in 1971 to honour the more recent memories of the Bangladesh campaign. During the night, it is intensely floodlit and the fountains nearby are lit up with coloured lights. Close by is the canopy which once became controversial and under whose red sandstone roof was the marble statue of King George V which has been shifted from there. The canopy was also designed and built by Lutyens.
King George’s statue was removed by someone in authority decades ago because it reminded them of our colonial past. Now if one were an Indian of a nationalist zealot hue, one should be saying demolish the whole wretched structure, for the entire monument after all celebrates the hapless veritable slaves who fought someone else’s war. Fortunately, there are no takers for such a rush of silly patriotism. And yet we Indians are a maudlin lot when it comes to our faith in the nation, sovereignty, patriotism, etc. We also suffer from selective amnesia in defining the contours of our national fervour.
Would it be an act of patriotism or betrayal of national interests to send troops to Iraq? Foreign Minister Yahswant Sinha says the best national interest would govern a decision. The opposition is suspicious, fearing that the government has already taken a decision to send troops under American pressure. Even that ultimate repository of nationalism, the rightwing Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, which initially stoutly opposed Indian troops for Iraq, has published arguments in its latest news journal about the likely benefits of such a move. The Congress as usual sits on the fence, leaving poor Mani Shankar Aiyer to publicly oppose the dispatch of troops, but only in his personal capacity and not as a Congressman.
Indian troops or Pakistani troops, they would not be going to Iraq with flowers. They would be carrying their killing machines with them. And once you are involved in a war zone, be it on a peacekeeping mission or as a quaintly described stabilizing force, there is no guarantee that things will not go wrong, for the Iraqis and for the foreign soldiers. As indeed did happen in the Black September episode in Jordan in 1970 when Pakistan’s Zia ul Haq got his troops involved in a bloodbath of Palestinians. One India Gate is enough of a bad memory from colonial days for both India and Pakistan. It is prudent to avoid the prospect of another one looming nigh.
DID YOU you see the contrived spectacle of President Bush landing on the deck of a warship in an airman’s gear? Not to be left far behind in aping the macho gesture is Indian Defence Minister George Fernandes.
The man who has refused to don formal suits even at his meetings with foreign heads of state was planning to discard his kurta pyjama in favour of a flying suit to undertake a rare fighter sortie on Sunday. Fernandes would have to take mandatory medical tests before the 30-minute show aboard the IAF’s frontline SU-30MKI from the Pune air base.
IT WAS at the Wellington Club in Mumbai after the Filmfare Awards in 1954 that India’s “ageless” movie actor Dev Anand met his idol Gregory Peck, who died recently.
“That time, I was seeing (film heroine) Suraiya and we were together at the club that day. He must have read about me as my romance with Suraiya was grabbing the headlines. And he knew about Suraiya’s fascination for him. So he came to meet us,” Dev told a journalist colleague.
In a warm tribute to his idol, Dev recalled: “He was a suave and debonair star. Moreover, Suraiya was an ardent Peck fan, so I guess a lot of the effort that I put to look or behave like him was subconsciously done to impress her. The added bonus came in the form of the media writing as much about this change as they wrote about my romance with Suraiya. Being a newcomer, I relished the tag.”
WHAT human heart would not melt at the sight of thirsty women and children in endless queues waiting in front of a water tap that is more dry than the dust in the same unswept street? Those patient people in the queue are human beings. And there is a limit to human patience, as indeed to everything in life. When patience begins to run out, in comes protest. If persistent protests are left persistently unheeded, the chances of exasperation overflowing into violence grow. Such violence if actually erupts, it would be violence invited. That is what has begun to happen in scores of places in this city of more than 14 million people, a majority with already an overload of grievances.
There is no doubt that, even when all the resources are mobilized honestly and efficiently, Karachi would still have less water than the city needs. What do the sensible do when things are in short supply? Economize in consumption; plug waste. Above all, ensure fair and equitable distribution of scarce supplies. Excess or waste at one point would inevitably result in avoidable shortage at others. In such circumstances surplus here would mean deficit there.
One major factor why water shortage in this city is causing more hardship than absolutely unavoidable is that waste is not being plugged. Leaking pipes or defective taps are said to be resulting in an unacceptably high percentage of precious water going waste. Imagine this outrage: something like 20 per cent of available water supply, down the drain and back to the Arabian Sea, while hundreds of thousands literally haven’t a drop to drink.
Yes, we can blame the city administration. But which city administration? The one in the shaky saddle now or the administrations that had been in place for the last 20 years and ruining the city instead of running it with a touch of earnestness? The answer is obvious. So much of the city government infrastructure has been topsy-turvy and dysfunctional for years that putting it back now into some workable shape has been the first priority of the current team of city fathers. Not that the present administration is flawless. But it would be less than fair to accuse it of being insensitive to this very unsettling problem. Not only humans, every living being needs water. Think also of the suffering of plants, trees and our fellow beings, the animals.
Shortages have a tendency to spawn a whole litter of evils. First is hoarding and the immediate second is profiteering. In fact, the two are twins. Those who can hoard and get away with it seldom find it easy to resist the temptation to convert it into profit. That good old devil, Oscar Wilde used to revel in saying “the only thing I cannot resist is temptation.” Obviously some of us are as helpless against temptation as Wilde. Now, jokes apart, we shall have to admit that we are witnessing both the hoarding of water and a black market that is not quite as black as it may appear to be blatant and unabashed.
Karachi has come to have, thanks to water shortage, a water tanker mafia. City newspapers talk loudly about it. Those in this thriving business have huge tankers. The mafia bosses can get all the water they want and their tankers carry it to the doorsteps of those who are in desperate need and have the money to pay a fancy price for it. One telephone call, and you can expect a tanker at your doorstep in a short while. As easy as that. In cooler months, when the problem is not quite as desperate as in the hotter season, nobody would give a thought to the water tanker mafia. The mafia itself lies low.
One cannot overlook an irritating paradox here. Those who buy water at exorbitant price are people who are connected to the city’s water supply system. The problem arises when there is no water coming through the system. But at the same time there are sections of the same system where there is no end to the flow of water. These are the public outlets from where the water tank mafia draws water ad libitum, ad infinitum. Is there no way to institute a discipline that, first and foremost, water supply would be assured to those domestic consumers who are part of the regular supply network, commercial water sellers/suppliers only later?
There would be many invisible irons in the fire of this torrid water crisis in Karachi. But there is no way one can overlook, even if one wished to, the outstanding presence of the rangers in this water supply commerce. The rangers undoubtedly are an extremely helpful arm of this chronically volatile city’s LEAs, that is, the law-enforcing agencies. Evidently, a formidable fleet of transports, converted into water tankers, is at their disposal. Presumably, this fleet is part of the rangers’ equipment to be of service in the performance of their primary functions as an integral part of the law-enforcing entity.
How come, they are now in the business of water supply by tankers that are, for all one can guess, public property for specific public service in the enforcement of law? If the water supply part of the rangers’ current activity is in the nature of a volunteer service gratis, the citizens of Karachi would render copious thanks. But from what is known, this is not voluntary service but commerce, pure and simple. Reports in the newspapers explicitly suggest money is being made and at fancy rate, presumably also yielding fancy profit. Who is the beneficiary of this business that flourishes on the inconvenience of the innocent public? Here we seem to have that combination of hoarding and profiteering.
If this is not really so, the rangers would do themselves some favour by letting the people know that the rangers’ water tanker fleet is a selfless, non-profit public service, which they run in addition to their law-enforcing duties. As far as the people of Karachi are concerned, they have honoured the rangers by handing over to them one the most prestigious college hostels that carries the name of the founder and father of this nation. The Jinnah Courts, a students’ hostel since the 30s of the last century, is now home to the Rangers, the law enforcing arm, now apparently also in water vending business.
There’s a fairly accurate way of knowing that the summer has arrived in Karachi: when every evening your power goes out, and then again at night. It doesn’t matter where you live, even if you happen to live in so-called ‘posh’ Defence or Clifton, you are not immune to this feature of Karachi’s summer.
On Wednesday we had a dust storm and, thankfully, the temperature came down, but only for a couple of hours. It also brought with it the inevitable power breakdowns all over the city. You call the KESC complaint centre and they will tell you something like: “Oh jee sir, yeh tau hona hee tha naa. Saal kee pehli barish kay baad tau aap ko pata hee hogaa kay humara distribution network baith jata hai. Lekin fikr naheen karein, hum iss par kaam kur rahay hain, aap kee bijli juld hee aa jaye gee.” And it comes after four hours.
KESC admits that its distribution network is in such a shambles that even a moderate rainfall will affect it for hours, and its employees tell you that this is something to be expected, in effect saying that why bother call the complaint centre when you know that this is something inevitable. One wonders for how long will KESC’s consumers continue to take such insults. Not only do they have to pay extra to compensate the utility for the hundreds of millions owed to it by government departments or stolen from it through kunda connections, they get such terrible service when their power goes out.
Surely, it is high time that the federal ministry for water and power and the provincial government worked something out to restore some sense of sanity to the organization. KESC and WAPDA were specifically mentioned in the documents as continuing to be major financial blackholes. Billions of rupees have been injected into these utilities by the federal government — funded by us taxpayers — and what do their consumers get in return? No answer from the complaint centres, and if a miracle happens and they manage to get through, they are told to be patient and to expect that the electricity will go when rain falls.
Often, due to the hyperactive nature of our lives, we tend to miss the bizarre little oddities that surround us. A colleague related an incident that has left him visibly shaken, as if he were rudely woken from a deep, somatic slumber.
“I was leaving the office close to 7 pm, walking to the bus stop across the road on I I Chundrigar Road. Now there’s a heap of garbage just outside the office complex where ragpickers and addicts can usually be found. One usually just drives or walks past these people, hardly noticing them. Whether they are sniffing glue or shooting heroin, it hardly raises an eyebrow as we have become used to such sights in and around the city. But out of the corner of my eye I noticed one particular addict who was doing something so absolutely bizarre, so crazy that I became frozen on the spot and must have stood there for a solid five minutes.
“This addict, shirtless in a ragged shalwar, his skin the complexion of raw charcoal, hair unkempt with a vacant, almost a ferocious glare in his eyes, was smashing tubelights on his head! I did a double take. Maybe I was seeing things after a long day at work and maybe the residual heat of the fading summer’s day was getting to my head. But this was for real. There were some discarded tubelights lying in the heap of garbage, and this character would take one, smash it on his head and let out a shriek of sadistic pleasure. After this gruesome spectacle was repeated eight or nine times, he simply walked off, his eyes downcast, staring at the pavement. I followed him for a block, but he soon disappeared in the hustle of the rush hour crowd. After witnessing this surreal, yet frightening scene, I began to wonder how people could become so immune to reality?”
Weird things happen here as this city, just like any other metropolis, has its share of the mentally disturbed, freaks and the kind of characters whom the rest of us ‘normal’ people would view as insane. But it is a thought that in a city where fashion shows and shootouts with alleged terrorists can take place within the same district, there are also people out there who are totally detached from any kind of reality.
Karachi’s roads are full of young boys selling different things at traffic signals. Unlike beggars, they are hardworking, toiling all day long in the heat to earn a decent living, and hence expect to be appreciated and recognized. But the question is do we who see them outside our cars as they stop at the signal, consider these boys worthy of respect?
Unfortunately, many of us seem to think not. On Sharea Faisal last Monday at around 11 in the morning an incident occurred which clearly showed the respect, or lack thereof, many of us give to these kids.
The traffic came to a halt on a red light near the Finance and Trade Centre. A boy, barely a teenage, vending some items, approached the standing cars. He was soon followed by a young man, probably in his thirties, looking educated and wearing a shalwar kameez. This man had gotten off his motorcycle, and had rushed after the boy. And without saying a word slapped him fiercely several times.
People silently watched as the man showered the boy with punches, slaps and expletives. But no one bothered to find out why the man was doing this, to someone so much younger and smaller than him. The little boy stood in the midst of the traffic terrified and shaken, speechless, and tears welled up in his eyes.
“You better not be seen on this road again,” the brute said. Then, he walked back to his motorbike. His gait suggested as if he thought he had impressed everyone around him with his “heroics” of beating up a poor defenceless child. The whole episode hardly took more than a minute, sufficient though to tear to tatters the honour of the young boy. The light turned green and the people waiting in their cars or on their motorcycles moved on, as if nothing had happened.
J .K. Rowling’s much anticipated fifth Harry Potter book went on sale all over the world on Friday midnight. Hundreds, many dressed up as wizards or witches, lined up outside bookstores in cities all over the world, from New York, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, Cophenhagen and London to Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, New Delhi, Bangalore and Taipei, to buy their copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
The city’s major bookstores — only a couple like Liberty Books and OUP come to mind — perhaps didn’t think that there is enough of a market here to do the same here, although it would have been quite an event. Let’s hope that Harry Potter fans — and there are many in this city — will be able to get their hands on the fifth book soon.
In a recent interview with the British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, J. K. Rowling revealed that one key character dies in the fifth instalment (readers will have to buy the book to find out who) and that she will end the series with the seventh book, at the end of which Harry will leave Hogwarts, the school of wizardry and witchcraft.
The city’s traffic DIG seems to have passed a sensible order, directing his officers to immediately stop lifting motorcycles that have been wrongly parked. Instead, they have been asked to fine the owners a nominal sum of Rs 100. This is good because when the traffic police lift a motorbike the owner has no idea whether it’s been picked up by the police or whether it has been stolen.
Imposing a fine should also reduce the hassle of going to the police station and negotiating with the staff to get one’s vehicle released. Let’s hope this directive is implemented properly by the traffic police.
— By Karachian
email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com