Till human voices wake us and we drown

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow out of this stony rubbish?

—T.S. Eliot

THE promotion of rapid economic growth is supposed to serve as a means to an end, yet the issue of unequal power relations is rarely discussed by planners who believe that the growth of the economy will necessarily bring about the utopia painted in dollar terms in recent years.

Modernization goals adopted by planning policies are expressed with great conviction without addressing the fundamental question of the structures of oppression. There seems to be a natural tendency among those in power not to enquire too deeply into the nature and consequences of inequality. There is also a tendency to attribute radical motivations to what, in fact, are conservative policies tending to increase inequalities.

Political power in developing countries is held nearly always by privileged groups — big landowners, industrialists, bankers, merchants, higher military and civilian officers. And when it comes to pubic policy, the people become the object of politics, not the subject. Changes in political regimes have never occurred in response to pressure from the poor having become politically aware of their interests and therefore organized enough for collective action.

Instead, political change has meant the reshuffling of people from within the nexus of the powerful, usually manoeuvred by high military officers grasping and therefore holding on to a measure of the monopoly of power. The reasons for throwing out an earlier government have ordinarily been provided by mismanagement and corruption. The people remain without political influence before as well as after such a coup.

In the colonial system, there was a built-in mechanism that almost automatically led the colonial power to ally itself with privileged groups in the colonized country. Those groups could be relied upon to share its interest in the “law and order” situation which mostly implied economic and social status quo. In support of its reign, the colonial power would thus generally feel an interest in upholding or even strengthening the inegalitarian social and economic structures in a colony. A similar mechanism has been operating after the dismantling of colonialism in that a conservative regime preserves social, economic and political power inherited from colonial rulers.

That business interests in the West would be more than willing to invest in such a country was equally natural. After the process of decolonization, the US assumed a position of leadership of the “free world” and placed state policy as a powerful engine to support that mechanism, especially in the McCarthy era when anti-communism was a determining motive in foreign, and also domestic, policy. In this era, financial and military aid was awarded to reactionary regimes, which could then exploit their advantage by threatening the danger of collapse if not assisted by the United States.

Today, as our country develops further factionalization on the lines of political, religious and power allegiances, we see a re-play of history with our leadership dancing to the tune of the Pied Piper whose flute blows the note of doom for economic and political sovereignty, for social justice, for the equitable sharing of resources and power.

Western economists have assumed a conflict between economic growth and egalitarian reforms. They have, in the past, taken it for granted that a “price has to be paid for reforms”, and that often this price is to be paid by the poor. This attitude, based on moral philosophies of natural law and utilitarianism, has been adopted by our planners who have drawn up a strategy for the reduction of poverty which leaves the essential questions unanswered.

Instead, the premise of planning is borrowed from thinkers such as Gustav Papanek who wrote in Pakistan’s Development: Social Goals and Private Incentives that “a conflict exists...between the aims of growth and equality...the inequalities in income contribute to the growth of the economy, which makes possible a real improvement for the lower-income groups”.

Ironically, egalitarian reforms were initiated in western countries on a large scale since World War I, argued in terms of reaching social justice. So while the colonizer believed that the colonized poor must remain poor for the greater good of all, (“production comes before distribution”) in their own countries, planners realized that welfare reforms, instead of being costly, actually laid a basis for more steady and rapid economic growth. In the post-colonial era western economists thought that poor countries could not afford to think in terms of social justice and pay the price of egalitarian reforms.

From the kind of poverty reduction that is being promoted by the current government, it would appear that we will continue to remain poor not just in terms of incomes, opportunities, the provision of services and the protection of basic rights, but also in terms of intellectual breadth and the integrity of our commitment to real change for the vast majority of people who are poor and impoverished.

A year ago, I shared the perspectives of the poor on the nature of inequality and the consequences of unequal power relations. Travelling throughout the length and breadth of my beloved country, I listened to the stories told to me by people who were literally, living on the edge of society. Limiting myself to just a few of the 54 districts which formed the locus of the research conducted for the Participatory Poverty Assessment of Pakistan, I found myself amongst the poorest communities in both rural and urban areas.

I had begun my journey in the shadows of the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas in the valley of Swat, and I ended it in southern Sindh at the banks of the great River Indus which stretched out before me like the shed skin of a snake, empty of the great power which gave it its undulating fluidity.

In District Badin, the Indus was nothing but a bed of shifting sand. The journey to the village of Sheikh Kherio Bandari took us over stretches of unmetalled road and through wasteland marked by ridges of salt which had, literally, risen from the bowels of the earth. Everywhere there were children and women carrying pots of turbid water collected from stagnant pools or wells dug in desperation. One child drank water of the colour of effluence from a plastic bottle which proudly bore the logo of a multinational corporation which has begun to flood our markets and homes with water fit for human consumption. The irony, of course, was as obvious as the harsh truth that I found unfolding before me.

During discussions with the members of the community, my facilitator was able to elicit profound and meaningful responses from the men who had gathered in a small shelter at the edge of the village. Articulate and dignified, these men spoke about the degradation of the environment which had occurred as a result of “development” plans which had gone horribly wrong. They were referring to the construction of the Left Bank Outfall Drainage Canal, known as the LBOD. This channel was intended to carry off flood water from the Indus into the ocean.

Instead, apparently due to a design fault, the water that was to be dumped into the ocean actually flooded the fields around the villages in the area, and allowed for sea water to flood the fresh water lake from which the men harvested fish and shrimp. The incursion of salt water was killing marine life and the salinity which seeped into the soil was killing the crops. In the absence of a meaningful livelihood, families were compelled to take loans from the local shopkeeper, becoming indebted for indefinite periods of time.

The lack of resources led to a marked downturn in the health profile of the community, expressed eloquently by one who spoke of his cattle dying since there was no fodder, and now that the animals were dead, there was no milk, so his children did not have enough nourishment, falling ill and compelling him to seek further loans. The connections between faulty planning coupled with defective state mechanisms and greater pauperization was clear to the people of Sheikh Kherio Bhandari.

Unfortunately, the obvious is not so clear to our official planners. Just a few months ago it was declared that 25 villages in Badin were threatened to be engulfed by the sea. Suggestions were made to the Khushal Pakistan Programme to release Rs. 14.5 million from its funds for the construction of permanent bunds, but apparently, in May this year, these requests went unheeded. Now, Badin has been declared to be amongst the poorest districts in our country, hit by neglect and the devastation wreaked by nature and the indifference of government.

So, what does this state of affairs say about the necessity of the inclusion of issues of equality and social justice in the planning of development? Social inequality is, in fact, the main cause of economic inequality. There are several relationships between poverty and inequality — the poorer a nation is in aggregate or average terms, the more serious hardships will economic inequality cause to those who are the poorest. Economic and social inequality may itself be not only a cause of the prevailing poverty of our people, but also its consequence.

The fact that greater inequality leads to greater poverty which leads to increasing levels of undernourishment, malnutrition, disease, worsening conditions of housing and sanitation, fewer opportunities for education, lesser access to health care, leading in time to lower productivity, explains itself quite clearly.

The task ahead for the planners and policy-makers in this government is to take off their polarized lenses and have a good, long, hard look at the prevailing reality. No amount of dollar reserves is going to build a permanent bund around the terrible flood which threatens to drown us all.

Long race for US presidency

CAMPAIGNS for the American presidency have grown ever longer. Today, almost a year and a half away from the next election in November 2004, the presidential campaign is fully under way.

President George W. Bush has simple tasks ahead of him. He must maintain his popularity, which reached stratospheric heights when he played the role of successful commander-in-chief, first in Afghanistan following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre, and more recently in Iraq when that nation’s forces succumbed to an American aerial blitzkrieg.

Unhappily for the president, his acceptability has been declining. The most recent polls show public ratings of his job performance slipping 8 to 12 points in the past two to three months. Particularly threatening is the lack of public confidence in his economic leadership. Under President Clinton a hefty majority of the Americans consistently felt good about the economy; today, less than 40 per cent feel good about fiscal matters under President Bush. And poll taken two weeks ago shows four times as many Americans believe that the economy and jobs are the nation’s major problem as do those who think war and Iraq are the central concern.

The growing concern about the economy is reflected in the interesting Zogby poll taken recently, a poll that must be causing consternation in the Bush campaign organization. When asked, “Do you think President Bush deserves to be re-elected, or do you think it is time for someone new?” 46 per cent opted for Bush — and 47 per cent said it was time for someone new. This result is buttressed by a new Gallup poll, which shows “there has been a significant shift in public sentiment about which of the two political parties in Congress can best deal with selected issues. The largest shift has been in the area of the economy, with the Democrats now favoured by 17 percentage points, while the Republicans were favoured by one point last January.”

Because war and terrorism are the Republicans’ strongest issues, one can expect Mr Bush to maintain a very martial posture; cynical observers believe another war, perhaps with Iran, is possible if his poll numbers sink further. At the same time, the morass into which the United States has descended in Iraq — moving from boldly proclaimed victory to increasing casualty reports from a clandestine guerilla war in the space of less than two months — does not bode well for a president whose approval ratings soar when American military forces are unleashed and triumphs are announced.

Mr Bush, of course, wishes to leave nothing to chance. Accordingly, he has been raising campaign funds at a prodigious rate — the most prodigious in American history. Though the election is a year and a half away, he has already amassed a massive bank account, bringing in $34.4 million in the second quarter of 2003 — more than the combined receipts of the major Democratic candidates, all of whom are fighting to win the nomination.

In America, where money buys television time, big money is the single most important strategic advantage in a political campaign. It is likely that President Bush will be capable of far outspending whoever his opponent will be. Campaign contributions are the dirty underbelly of American politics: big donors buy big influence, while campaign expenditures have such a direct correlation to votes cast in general elections that one has little hesitation in saying that money seems to buy votes.

So that is Mr Bush: reasonably though no longer wildly popular, afloat in cash, yet possibly vulnerable on the economy and undermined by continuing American casualties in Iraq. Happily for him, no Democratic candidate has yet emerged as a major challenger.

There are nine announced candidates, of whom five currently seem to have a chance at the nomination.

Barely leading in the polls is Senator Joseph Lieberman, who ran for vice-president in the last election on the Democratic slate with Mr Gore. Mr Lieberman, hawkish in foreign policy and strongly supportive of business interests, has had a difficult spring. His campaign has not caught fire: quite the opposite, for it seems to be heading towards disaster. Though he still leads with about 14 per cent of likely voters, his lead has dropped from 29 to 13 per cent in one poll, with a slightly less precipitous decline in others. He has not found any defining issues, and his moderate positions, along with his inability to criticize a president abhorred by liberal Democrats, have left him with what can only be called a negative momentum.

Second in most polls is Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. A wounded hero of the Vietnam war, tall and regal (appearance counts heavily with American voters), married to a woman possessed of great fortune, he seemed a charismatic choice. But his poll numbers have barely shifted in six months, slightly declining in two polls and rising in one. He too has found no defining issue, and as a putative liberal, seems burdened, in trying to mobilize his core constituency, by his inability to oppose President Bush’s decision to make war on Iraq — especially since on his return home as a highly decorated war veteran, he helped lead the effort to end the conflict in Vietnam. Third in most polls, though narrowly first in one, is Representative Dick Gephardt, the former minority leader of the US House of Representatives. Staunchly pro-labour, he is hoping that the support of organized labour will help him win the nomination, though over the past two decades the membership of labour unions have evinced less and less desire to become involved in election campaigns. The recent debacle, in which the Democrats failed to gain control of the House last November, did little to advance his claim that he can be a charismatic leader. Of all the major candidates, he is the one most determined to reach out to the Democrats’ core constituency (in tatters since President Ronald Reagan successfully won much of it over to the Republicans) of working class Americans.

Fifth in the polls is Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, a handsome face with little political experience. His decline has been catastrophic, from second place in the polls in January to fifth today. He seems to have found little to offer voters, save youth and good looks and a newness to politics: though these are at times a recipe for success, they seem to carry less weight when stacked up against a good-looking and youthful incumbent president.

Edwards has the virtue of being a southerner, which counts for much in the strange demographics of the American voting public. Every successful Democratic candidate for forty years has been a southerner, from Lyndon Johnson through Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton. Still, Al Gore was a southerner, and lost to fellow southerner George W. Bush.

The surprise of the early race has been Howard Dean, former governor of the small north-eastern state of Vermont. A fiscal conservative in his five terms as governor, he has shrewdly positioned himself with liberals in the Democratic party. (A minority in American politics, liberals tend to vote in large numbers in primaries, and often exert decisive influence in choosing nominees.) He did this by coming out against Mr Bush’s decision to go to war against Iraq. For the sizable number of people with doubts about the war — a group that grows ever larger, as one or more American soldiers die each day owing to continuing resistance in Iraq — Mr Dean is the only major candidate available.

Governor Dean is not the only anti-war candidate, but two of the others, the Reverend Al Sharpton and former Senator Carol Mosely-Braun, are beyond long shots. The final candidate, Representative Dennis Kucinich, is to the left of Dean, and that lack of centrism, combined with his ambivalence about running, have made him seem less viable than the former governor.

Using his opposition to the war as a way of distinguishing himself from the others in the race, Mr Dean built a modest but stable platform on which to run. Interestingly, not one of the other candidates has been able to find a defining issue that resonates with the public. Dean advances other positions, as all the candidates do, but to date none of those issues defines a candidate, though there is reason to believe such definition will come when the nominee is chosen, and the opponent is the incumbent.

Governor Dean’s other defining characteristic reveals the entrance of American politics into the post-modern age. He has used the worldwide web to remarkable advantage. Though he comes from a small and politically inconsequential state, access to the web is ubiquitous in the American nation.

Visitors to his web site are enlisted to come together in regional gatherings and have done so in large numbers, giving him the first electronically mobilized grassroots organization in American political history. (Will this kind of organization be sustainable? No one knows, though every other candidate is rushing to emulate Dean’s success.)

In a surprising announcement, Dean’s organization revealed he had received more financial contributions than any other Democratic candidate in the past quarter — an unanticipated success owing almost exclusively to solicitation of contributions over the web. Significantly, Dean has received more small contributions than any of his competitors: the web is clearly changing politics.

Mr Dean has clear negatives, which his opponents are sure to try to exploit. He comes from such an under-populated state that he has an exceptionally small home base of support. His liberal supporters are largely unaware that as governor his fiscal policies were so conservative that his main opponents were liberals, not Republicans.

And then there is Mrs. Hillary Clinton, wife of the previous president. Elected to Senate from New York, the polls show that if Senator Clinton announced her candidacy for president, 40 per cent of the Democrats would support her — far more than Mr Lieberman, in second place with 16 per cent, can garner.

Will she run? Most observers think she will wait for another four years, when President Bush will be ineligible for another term. But should the president’s performance ratings continue to decline, should he appear to be a weakened candidate, it is not impossible that Mrs. Clinton would reconsider her options.

All this, and there is still a year until the Democrats settle on a nominee, though state caucuses and primary elections begin in six months. One must remember that the relation of politics to the larger society is much as the poet Emily Dickinson described thunderstorms: “How much can come/ And much can go,/ And yet abide the world!”

The writer teaches at the University of Vermont, USA.

The demons of Tony Blair

IT is unlikely that the judicial enquiry now set up by British Prime Minister Tony Blair following the apparent suicide of David Kelly, the senior expert on weapons of mass destruction, will get to the bottom of why Dr Kelly chose to die.

The assumption that he was angered on the one side by a BBC report that erroneously overstated what he had said to one of its reporters or, on the other, that he felt he was being made a fall guy by the government doesn’t add up. He clearly had doubts about the government’s case for going to war, but even inside the ministry of defence he was no lone voice — many of the generals advised against going to war.

As for the BBC, at worst the reporter “sexed up” what Kelly told him, a hazard anyone who deals with the press even occasionally is acutely aware of. And although the government and parliament did throw the spotlight on him they can hardly said to have overdone it.

They didn’t threaten to fire him or cut off his pension rights, and although his friends characterize him as a gentle and honest man he worked in a field that was full of mendacity. Presumably — and it is unlikely we will ever know the full truth — he was a man who had many other problems.

But once the air over this death has cleared what will remain is that the Blair duped the nation just as President George Bush duped America. They jointly made a case that the world stood in imminent danger of a being attacked by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and to leave it a day longer — even three or so months as some members of the Security Council begged, as they sought to give the UN weapons inspectors more time to finish their job — could not be countenanced. War had to begin almost at once, and it did.

Now that the war is over and so far no weapons of mass destruction have been uncovered Messrs Blair and Bush have tried to re-pitch the argument. As Blair said, speaking before the U.S.

Congress last week, at the least Saddam Hussein was a murderous tyrant and that was enough reason to depose him. At worst, he was what he and Bush had said about him — a possessor of weapons of mass destruction and a man capable of forming an alliance with Al Qaeda. In either case there need be no regrets or apologies to be made.

It doesn’t stand up with or without the death of Dr Kelly. It has long been clear that Iraq lost most of its capacity for offensive military action in the first Gulf War. It lost its navy and 90% of its air force and was never able to replace them. Its army was way under strength and under armed. The UN inspectors had destroyed more weapons than any of the bombing in the first Gulf War, as President Bill Clinton often reminded us.

The nuclear weapons programme that Iraq had started on was uncovered in the early 1990s by the UN team and dismantled. The chemical and biological weapons programmes, even if re-constituted, could only have been (by the standards of modern warfare and the defensive capabilities of western armies) quite primitive.

Ironically, the only real value of these incipient weapons was that, in Saddam’s eyes, they gave him reason to think they frightened the West (thanks to the paranoia of the neo-conservatives) and thus they worked as a deterrent, giving him a negotiating card of value. There is evidence that suggests that the sentence that has sprung the hoo-ha over the British government’s pre-war assertion that “the Iraqi military are capable of deploying chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes” was a carefully leaked plant from Baghdad.

By attempting to inhabit the moral high ground, arguing that he was helping save the world from an evil doer of grand proportions, Blair, the former advocate, got carried away with hubris and the simplicity of what he regarded as a beautiful case and failed to use his moral sensibility to look at the other side of the argument:

* War is the bluntest of tools. Used again against Iraq it would drive a country, already in perilous state after years of continuous war compounded by severe sanctions, over the edge. Moreover, the chances of turning the face of the Middle East towards democracy would, if anything, be made more difficult.

* War would unearth only small quantities of weapons of mass destruction. (In fact less than the most of the anti-war lobby thought.) The UN inspectors, given time, would have nailed these down as they successfully did after the first Gulf War. (The International Atomic Energy Agency has just told us that 22 pounds of uranium compounds have been looted from the country’s main nuclear complex in the post-war chaos. Uranium that once was under tight wraps in Saddam’s day could indeed now be in terrorist hands.)

* War would be another cause for immense bitterness against the West right through the Islamic world. While it is true that there has been less outpouring of anger on the street than many of us supposed, the detailed poll by the Pew organization shows how anti-American public opinion has become. This is the last thing the West needs when there are people on both sides determined to whip up public opinion into a “clash of civilizations”.

* There was an alternative: make a deal with Saddam that in return for open access by the arms inspectors and a loosening up of the internal repression of the regime, sanctions would be lifted and Washington would no longer demand, as it had for over a decade, his stepping down. That would be left to internal forces.

Mr Blair and his conscience are for his maker to sort out. But for the rest of us one thing is clear: on the big issue of the war we were grossly and unnecessarily misled. —Copyright

Monaco needs Dollars

EVERY time President Bush goes abroad, he hands out billions of dollars. Countries are aware of this and want to be on the gravy train.

Thus it is with Monaco on the Riviera, which is about the size of Central Park. It is ruled by a prince and its main industry is gambling.

A meeting of high government officials was held at the royal palace to figure out ways of persuading President Bush to pay attention to Monaco.

Monsieur Napoleon, Minister of Defence for the Principality, said, “We have to make them believe we’re being threatened.”

Monsieur DuPont, head of the Intelligence Service said, “I’m sure we can do that.”

“How?” asked M. Napoleon.

“We’ll leak a story that we’re building a nuclear bomb. We’ll forge papers that we’re buying uranium from Nigeria.”

“They will believe it as long as it comes from the British Intelligence service,” M. DuPont said.

Monsieur Chevalier, Minister of Foreign Affairs, spoke next. “If they are going to give us aid, will the Americans want something in exchange?”

M. Napoleon said, “Why don’t we offer them the port for the entire U.S. Sixth Fleet?”

“And permit them to hold tank manoeuvres in the streets around the palace,” M. DuPont added.

M. Chevalier asked, “How many American troops would they need to occupy our country?”

“Thirty. We could billet them in the casino.”

Monsieur Ravioli, Minister of Commerce said, “We don’t want to hurt the tourist business.”

M. Napoleon said, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking an egg.”

“What does that mean?” M. DuPont asked.

“I don’t know, but I’ve seen Americans say it on television.”

“Wait a minute,” said M. DuPont. “We can’t see the trees for the forest. The biggest threat to Monaco is France. The French are right on our border. The U.S. has France on its hate list. If we say we are threatened by them, we could get billions of dollars.”

“Does that mean we have to become a democracy?” asked M. Chevalier.

M. Ravioli said, “That’s a joke. The Prince would never stand for it.”

M. DuPont said, “We know that America, as an imperial nation, wants our casino winnings and so do the French and the Russians.”

M. Napoleon said, “To get them to give us more money, we should start the rumour that we have weapons of mass destruction hidden in the wine cellar of the Hotel de Paris.”

M. DuPont concurred. “The U.S. will give any amount of money if they think a country has weapons of mass destruction.”

M. Chevalier said, “Perhaps when the president realizes how desperate we are, he will invite the Prince to Camp David.”

M. Ravioli said, “If he does, it will put Monaco on the map.”—Dawn/Tribune Media Services