PAKISTAN needs large scale investment to increase production, expand its economy and reduce vast unemployment. Such investment has to be promoted within a limited span of time by accelerating domestic investment, foreign investment and public sector outlay on the basic infrastructure projects.

Such investment should include the small and medium scale enterprises which are also labour-intensive and a substantial outlay by overseas investors. The scope for attracting investment from any of these sources should not be minimized or neglected.

Real economic growth can be achieved only through private sector, says the minister for privatization and investment Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh. He also says the cooperation of the private sector is absolutely essential to make a success of Pakistan’s commercial policies in the post-textile quota free world from 2005 which will be marked by the lowering of import tariffs as well.

The private sector has to play a central or decisive role at a time when the government is not investing in the commercial, industrial and financial sectors, and is hastily disinvesting what it has invested earlier after suffering heavy losses because of bureaucratic mismanagement and endemic corruption.

The vacuum can be filled by the private sector and it has to come forward with full vigour to play that central role . If the domestic private sector does not come forth adequately and decisively, the foreign investors will not show much interest to fill the vacuum in a country with 140 million people —-many of them unemployed.

The private sector’s central role in economic growth is a phenomenon common to all developing countries. The tremendous economic success of East Asian countries is a notable example of the private sector‘s success. There is no convincing reason why the private sector cannot try to do the same in Pakistan, particularly when there is desperate need for that, and we have no other option.

But it is imperative for the government to go all out to persuade the private sector to make more and more investment and not confine itself to the textile sector only. Making such appeals to from business platforms or through newspapers will not be enough. The rulers have to meet them in small numbers or greet them one by one and persuade them to invest more and remove their genuine difficulties. They should also be persuaded to play a significant role in the privatization of large public sector enterprises. In fact, they should be at the centre of the state calculations instead of playing a marginal role and letting the major projects go to the foreign bidders.

President Pervez Musharraf and his ministers talk of the investor-friendly policies that they say have been adopted. If a policy is business-friendly on paper it is not enough. It should be business-friendly at the execution stage and until the very end when the project begins production.

It may be worthwhile for the government to listen to the experience of some of the entrepreneurs who have completed their projects in recent times and contrast the actual experience with the smooth policy laid out on paper. The president and his ministers speak of the macro-economic stability or progress they have achieved, including the foreign exchange reserves of 11.5 billion dollars, favourable balance of payments, a surplus of over two billion dollars and the striking home remittances of overseas Pakistanis of almost four billion dollars. While these are commendable achievements, partly helped by the post-9/11 developments, other factors of real interest to the investors too must be taken into account. In fact, those factors may be of overwhelming importance to the investors, particularly foreign investors who think globally.

Some of these factors may be worse in some other developing countries, but there may be other compensatory features including larger profits or prospects for larger business there later.

The governor of the State Bank, Dr. Ishrat Husain, on a visit to Dubai prior to the annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank, addressed businessmen there. He spoke to them about ten factors which should make foreign investors prefer Pakistan to other countries while deciding about their investment. But he did not mention any of the adverse factors. May be it is not the official policy to throw light on the darker side.

But that was done gently or diplomatically by the British High Commissioner Mark Lyall Grant when he visited Faisalabad last week. He spoke of how the British businessmen were interested in doing more business with Pakistan and making investments here in the advanced textile sector. Then he spoke of corruption and bureaucratic hurdles in Pakistan. He also spoke of the law and order problem as another deterrent to foreign investment.

The fact is that when the “travel advisory” of many western countries is against visits to Pakistan and when multinational chiefs meet their principals in Pakistan in Dubai instead of Karachi, their enthusiasm to invest more in Pakistan will be small. Earlier they used to call their principals in Pakistan to Bombay. But now Bombay is out of such schedules because of strained India-Pakistan relations. When the President Musharraf met a US telecom mission led by Gen. Anthony Zinny, he explained the benefits the investors will have if they invest in Pakistan and said the country had one of the lowest cost of doing business in the region. Making comparisons of the cost of doing business in each of the countries of the region accurately may not be easy. But the fact remains that corruption and bureaucratic red tape increases the cost of doing business because of the delays in getting numerous permissions for the facilities essential for running the day-to-day business smoothly.

In fact, a recent World Bank report had dealt with the problem of red rape extensively and listed the differing cost of setting up an industry and managing it in various developing countries. We still have the red tape problem in plenty, particularly at the lower level of officialdom despite slogans to the contrary from the top. That is one of the causes of corruption.

We have too many holidays that interrupt official work and factory production.

Law and order is a deterrent to investment in Pakistan. The domestic investors are more affected by that than are the foreigners. Many keep a large number of armed guards in special vehicles to protect them at their offices, homes and as they drive around. Their wives find this arrangement much inconvenient. There have been many kidnappings of middle level businessmen, and their children who are let off after a large ransom is paid. Many no longer rely on the police to secure their freedom. As this is being written a ghee trader in the city has been kidnapped. The CPLC has become ineffective in this area after the change at its top. The Time magazine of the US recently described Karachi as the toughest city in Asia. Foreign investors cannot ignore such reports when they make their investment choices.

The British high commissioner in his Faisalabad speech talked about India-Pakistan relations and its unsettling impact on the region. He said 56 years had been lost and he did not know how long would it take for the conflict to be resolved.

If the relations between the two countries were normal they would have found a larger and more profitable market in the region. Instead the fallout of the conflict makes foreign countries pull out their diplomats from time to time.

He did not mention the political instability in the country, while others do so in private. He is aware that the political situation has kept the country out of the Commonwealth for four years. Even a year after the general elections we do not have a stable government and a working parliament, from which the opposition walks out every day. The larger Alliance for Restorations of Democracy is calling for demonstrations against the government every few weeks and demanding the trial of the generals who toppled a democratic government and the judges who approved this action. This is not the kind of statement which can help major multinational companies take decisions for long-term investment or expand the existing businesses to invest more.

In such circumstances we may not get the best prices for public sector enterprises, such as Habib Bank, KESC, PSO and PTCL which we want to privatize. Arab entrepreneurs may prefer running projects, like the United Bank as they want to see what they buy; but they may not invest far more and expand them as the much larger western corporations would do.

Of course, we are now on a better financial footing with a foreign exchange reserves of 11.5 billion dollars, a surplus balance of payments, and an export trade rising by over 20 per cent. The Karachi Stock Exchange index of around 3,900 points is very encouraging to the foreign investors. Pakistan can now easily honour its commitments to repatriate the capital of foreign investors, their profits, royalty etc.

But the strong macro-economic factors have to go along with happier micro-economic conditions, including reasonable levels of employment to keep the purchasing power of the people up and consume what the foreigners produce. Along with that there has to be political stability of a reasonable kind and regional peace. All that would give a far better value to our rupee as well.

Gen Musharraf has now become a contentious figure with more and more opposition leaders calling on him to discard his uniform and seek real political support. Having ruled the country for four years he is well advised to lower the political heat in the country and make necessary concessions to guide the people.

The World Bank and the IMF have been voicing the fear that if he is out of the political scene his economic reforms may not have the popular backing which is essential to make them a success. The macro-economic reforms need consolidation while there has to be positive improvement in the economic sector, particularly in the area of employment and social sector development. He cannot achieve that without massive investment over a period of ten years in all essential sectors, which have remained neglected.

GEN Pervez Musharraf had taken his vision of ‘enlightened moderation’ to the OIC summit at Putrajaya, Malaysia. No sane person contests his views on religious bigotry and militancy.

However certain discrepancies are too conspicuous to ignore. At the level of public policy we are proudly part of international campaign against terrorism, but at the societal level things seem moving in a different, probably in opposite direction.

In the political context, the regime has locked itself in a conflicting equation with moderate political forces. Paradoxically, it has sought compromise with those who are least likely to agree with its agenda of reforms and foreign policy preferences. In the societal context, people are less comfortable with Pakistan’s perceived pro-West foreign policy. While the ruling coalition takes pride in being ‘tight with President Bush’, majority of the public opinion leaders observe the ritual of an ‘obligatory anti-Americanism’.

Why is the gulf between the rational interests of the state and public opinion widening? What could be the long-term consequences of this dichotomy between the state and society? Answer to these questions brings the pathetic state of education into the picture. Every system takes care to promote and sustain a set of values supportive to its basis.

Education is the most important tool of spreading awareness and a catalyst for change. However, education must not be used as a technique of brainwash and propaganda, to serve short term political interests of the ruling elite. Unfortunately, what we have in the name of education — apart from many other ills — is the hangover of Gen. Zia’s Islamization policy. We have radically changed our public policy priorities while keeping the ideological orientations of Zia era intact. How can we reconcile this fundamental contradiction between the policy and the orientation?

Muslim scholars define jihad in terms of a sustained effort to discipline one’s own ‘self’ in obedience to God and it also implies an endeavour for social justice, peace and fair play.

In modern times, the machine of Jihad was set in motion in the wake of Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. After all, the successful US strategy against the Soviet Union in the final phase of the cold war set the stage for the rise of religious extremism and international terrorism in South Asia by pitting the jihadis against godless Communists in Afghanistan.

George Crile has made an embarrassing revelation in his book titled, Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert operation in History. He says that Pakistan got Israeli weapons during the Afghan war, and Gen Zia-ul-Haq was pragmatic enough to approve the deal. The CIA sponsored and managed the production of Islamic books on a massive scale to prepare the hearts and minds of the Muslims for the US-led Jihad.

This produced the phenomenon now termed as religious extremism and terrorism. This is how the “Jihadi mentality” got penetrated into our society. In the aftermath of Afghan war we were left to face the spillover in the form of weaponization, drug-culture, sectarianism and terrorism.

Turning back to the main concern of our discussion, the appalling failure of the regime has been its inability to deconstruct the intellectual and ideological foundations of religious extremism and sectarianism. Bomb blasts, targeted killings, and indiscriminate firing at places of worship are symptoms of the poison of hatred injected in the body of society, in the name of religion.

Rigid indoctrination leads to intolerance and fanaticism. Which is the real killer. As Voltaire had warned, “Beware of a man who says, believe in God as I do otherwise God will punish you. He would say tomorrow, believe in God as I do otherwise I will kill you.”

No enlightenment is conceivable in a society where the public discourse remains hostage to various threats. Freedom of expression is still a privilege of a few at the top, not the universal right of the people. Enlightenment precedes education. Notwithstanding the tall claims made with regards to raising the quality of education, there is little progress on the ground.

Our education system has been obsessed with ideology. Much of the distortions and doctoring was done during Ziaul Haq era when the textbooks were subjected to tempering, deletion and additions, to suit the ideological preferences of the regime. The libraries of educational institutions were purged from thousands of ‘un-Islamic’ books, under a directive from martial law authorities. Teachers’ appointments were made not on the basis of competence but on their ‘piousness’ and religiosity.

So the teachers were made to harmonize with the already Islamized text. Indoctrination seems the sole purpose of such textbooks. This breed of teachers has degenerated the academic atmosphere. Academic questions are interpreted as challenge to the authority of the teacher.

No wonder, the academic environment has deteriorated to the extent that there is little difference between teaching and preaching. A number of teachers have openly affiliated themselves with religious parties, even militant” jihadi” organizations.

They do teach and preach their respective party’s narrow worldview to the students. None is able to stop them, neither the fellow teachers nor the students because the parties they belong to actively support them.

Religion should empower not enslave. It should enlighten, not make beasts out of humans.

shahidanwar91@hotmail.com

UNFORTUNATELY, corruption has been on the rise ever since we attained independence. But it is only in the recent period that it has emerged as a topic of debate. All efforts at trying to curb the evil have failed because these had at best half-hearted support of the rulers and at worst been their cynical move to score points.

Most diplomats posted in Islamabad believe General Musharraf to be personally honest. But an equally unflattering domestic perception has started taking hold that the general is not averse to collecting around him corrupt people so long as they serve his key interests. The corrupt tend to indulge in their innate desire to steal. When they are given important positions, corruption can only go up, not down.

The general has prescribed ‘a merit-based system to check corruption’. But merit is not what counts in his political system. Political opportunism reigns supreme and that is evident from the manner in which the PML-Q was formed after three years of ‘careful and deliberate preparation’.

Corruption is a universal phenomenon. Even the United State, which has ‘independent’ judiciary, and all the paraphernalia that goes with democracy has shown blatant disregard for propriety by indulging in massive corruption particularly during the presidential election of George W. Bush. Whether it is Halliburton, Enron, Anderson or award of a plethora of contracts without bids running into billions of dollars — particularly in Iraq, the situation is no different.

Causes of corruption are many but the basic one is the failure of good governance, which involves recruitment, promotion and posting in the bureaucracy on the basis of merit. Considerations other than merit including mass scale induction of the military into the civil services seriously militate against the concept. People who are incompetent or achieve their position not through merit but through connections generally tend to be corrupt. Good governance implies the existence of an independent judiciary, a conscious citizenry and above all a free press.

Pakistan can be proud only of having achieved substantial freedom of press which has highlighted some of the worst bureaucratic cases of corruption; but in the absence of an independent judiciary and conscious citizenry which comes through education, all attempts at trying to eradicate corruption have come to naught. The rulers on the other hand, have developed an immunity to press reports by contemptuously disregarding them. There are very few press handouts these days contradicting critical reports. The life span of the reports being not more than 24 hours, the story soon recedes into oblivion.

Honesty is a personal quality and is imbibed primarily in the family. Much is made of an argument that increase in salaries will bring about a reduction in the level of corruption. This is a facile argument advanced by those who wish to do nothing or want to justify their failure to do something about it. Honesty tends to be a matter of conviction. An enabling environment is of course needed.

One has known some very junior employees maintaining very high standards of honesty. One of them, a grade 16 officer, supplemented his income by repairing radios after office hours. After all, one has seen some very low paid school teachers in the government schools from whom one learnt a great deal, who were very honest and hard working. One has also known crooks in high places although they were well provided for.

Going back a few centuries, during the Mughal rule it was routine even for kings to accept presents appropriate to their status before granting royal favours. The practice travelled down to the level of the lowest functionary of the state. Over the centuries, accepting bribe for routine jobs has become a second subcontinental nature. And yet India is perceived to be less corrupt, which does not mean much, perhaps because there the institutional framework and the constitutional machinery has not broken down and democracy has not floundered.

Unfortunately corruption in Pakistan has increased by leaps and bounds in sync with authoritarianism. Things have moved in quite the opposite direction. It is primarily because the people have lost control over their governments. There was a time when corruption was well under control and was limited to lower levels only. Common perception in the past extended to the bribes demanded by a police officer or a ‘Patwari’. That had become part of our folklore.

District level officers and above were relatively free from the taint. The same cannot be said any more even of the highest in the country. Corruption has become a way of life. Corruption in higher places is much more endemic and more intense and pervasive. The rulers use the corruption index extensively as an alibi for their failure to control corruption or to conceal their own corruption.

There is a Chinese saying that the fish starts rotting at the head. There is an equally apt axiom that says that snow starts melting at the top. Someone asked Habib Bourghiba, the former President of Tunisia as to why there was so little corruption in his country? He shot back ‘because I am honest’. Corruption in high places is peculiar to big contracts. It is typical for a development project, already padded with huge commissions, to get revised at least three times over. The sanctioning authority — NEC, ECNEC or CDWP — show lack of control over the process while quietly accepting revisions. The revisions become necessary on account of incompetence, some of it deliberate, and mostly out of the desire of executing departments to provide for greater share of corruption. To name a few, Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) and National Highway Authority (NHA) are two such organizations. Usually their contracts lack transparency. Delays in the award of the contract after bids have been received may run into years.

Now a word about accountability. The process of selected accountability, which focuses only on the political enemies, or the unconnected bureaucrats, has had exactly the opposite effect i.e. of increasing cynicism and with it the level of corruption. Except for a selective exercise not much dent has been caused.

Gen Musharraf recently addressed a conference on combating corruption in the public and private sectors. He suggested the same routine remedies for this cancer eating into the vitals of society. He said that corruption at the highest level is unpardonable and that the corrupt should be punished. He didn’t say who should do the punishing.

Frequent military rules do not help create a democratic order. Strong institutions are based on strong and eternal values. And until the rulers and their official aides uphold such values, good governance will be a distant dream. There was a recent case in Lahore, where a policeman was only doing his duty by having the tinted glasses of a car removed. He was arrested, handcuffed and humiliated and taken to military headquarters because the car belonged to a major-general. So much for the respect for law! One can count a number of such cases of high handedness.

The general also advocated other means to check corruption like reducing human contact through e-governance, improving the quality of law enforcement and an honest, dedicated and correct leadership. While reducing human contact through e-governance may be a welcome wish, how many millions in the country have access to the Internet, and how many have the required skills to access it? Even otherwise, computers would be conveniently down when needed.

The good general had expressed similar sentiments in December 2001, when he said: ‘corruption had eaten the nation like termites from within’. The process has not been reversed or even halted.

While it is good to do away with the discretionary power of officials and introduce uniform rules in a country, with too many people and too few supplies, the officials will need to use discretionary powers to help the people in distress or in greater need than others. The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank are coming up with two to three million dollar loans to finance certain reforms excluding judicial reforms. This is a very costly way of reforming ourselves. These are placebos without any nexus to the problem. If the diagnosis is misplaced, the patient is unlikely to be treated.

An honest, dedicated and sincere leadership, which the president regards as imperative for eradicating corruption, is possible only under a democratic dispensation. Leadership tries to create ideal conditions in society, and tries to steer the nation to progress. If the people are vigilant and uphold the principles of democracy, that should not be difficult to achieve.

sshusain@hotmail.com

“MUSLIMS are filled with feelings of impotence and frustration as some of their countries are occupied, others are under sanctions, a third group threatened and a fourth group accused of sponsoring terrorism.... Muslims abroad are considered with suspicion, besieged, deprived of their rights.”

Listen to the words of Abdelouahed Belkeziz, secretary-general of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) at its 10th summit in Putrajaya, Malaysia, and you would think all the problems of the Muslim world stem from outside. His sentiments were echoed by many others at the triennial Muslim heads of state and government gathering. American policy under George W. Bush and post-9/11 was particularly singled out for criticism.

Looking at the Muslim world after 9/11, it is indeed impossible to avoid the conclusion that it has been badly affected by Republican unilateralism. First Afghanistan, and then Iraq were directly hit by the American military machine. Rhetoric coming out of Washington suggests that Iran or Syria could be next. Only marginally less direct has been Israel’s assault on the Arabs in its vicinity: greatly intensified occupation of Palestinian territories, blatant disregard for human rights, dismissal of the peace process, and — the latest move — military attacks on Syria. Other governments facing Muslim opposition (notably Russia and India) have also jumped on the ‘war on terror’ bandwagon, and used it to denigrate and crush their foes.

True as well, Muslim communities living in the West have seen themselves viewed — and treated — with suspicion. Civil liberties and justice have been pushed into second place by the overwhelming drive to preserve ‘national security’. Humiliation, discrimination and overt injustice have been the lot of many an expatriate Muslim.

Muslims today are facing a huge threat from the outside world. But in the rush to lodge their multiple grievances against America and the West, many lose sight of the woes that are self-inflicted. For the painful truth is that a good proportion of the blame for the current dire situation of the Ummah rests on Muslim shoulders.

Iraq is as good a place as any to illustrate this point. What allowed Washington to attack and occupy Iraq? Not weapons of mass destruction (as in North Korea’s case, actual possession would have been a deterrent to US attack), but the cruel dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Had Iraq been headed by a democratically elected ruler the US would have found it infinitely harder to attack it. Saddam’s denial of democracy to the people of Iraq created the opening — provided the pretext — for America to invade.

Iraq’s dearth of democracy is replicated in many of its Muslim neighbours. The OIC summit was a gathering of monarchs, military rulers, dictators and other leaders who pay only lip service to democracy — genuine democrats were few and far between. So endemic is the democratic deficit in the Muslim countries that the question to ask is not ‘how many governments are not democratic?’ but ‘how many are democratic?’ — for the former far outnumber the latter.

Lack of democracy brings weakness. Muslim governments that cannot claim the support and legitimacy of their own people are vulnerable to outside pressure. This was true of Iraq, and of Pakistan. The military government knew that, had it not cooperated with the US war against terror, its undemocratic credentials would have been used to cause trouble for it. [Conversely, for a government seeking legitimacy at home, the promise of outside western support was a big incentive to agree to US demands].

Until true democracy becomes established as the norm in Muslim countries they will always be vulnerable to outside finger-pointers and meddlers. Until the Ummah sheds its self-appointed leaders and governments, it will always face the threat of betrayal from within — of being sold out by figures more concerned about self-preservation than the national interest. Muslims complain of the denial of civil liberties in the post-9/11 West: they point to the blatant injustice of the Guantanamo detentions. But how many get justice at home?

Saddam’s Iraq was probably the extreme example of human rights abuse, but the same thing occurs to lesser degrees in virtually every Muslim country. Illegal detention, torture, state-sanctioned killings, discrimination against women and minorities: — these and other forms of abuse are rampant in the Muslim world.

In our own Pakistan we regularly read of prisoners dying in police custody, women being raped and then charged under the Hudood Ordinance, innumerable people falling victim to malicious prosecution under the blasphemy laws, etc. The fact is that, whatever the rhetoric, on average Muslims in the West have more rights than those living at home.

If Muslim governments have no respect for the rights of their own people, how can they expect that respect from others? In the post-9/11 world ‘terrorism’ has become almost synonymous with Islam and Muslims. The public face of the Ummah is dominated by Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hanbali and their ilk. Moderate Muslims complain that such fundamentalists do not represent mainstream Islam. But where are the voices of moderate Islam? What effort has the Muslim countries made to present its other face to the West?

While terrorists and fundamentalists are not majority Muslims, no one can deny their existence. For many, the first base of operations is their native Muslim homelands; the West only gets targeted later. Look at the hundreds of acts of sectarian and ethnic murder carried out in Pakistan in recent years. What is this if not terrorism? Homegrown and home-targeting terrorism? How much effort (real practical effort as opposed to verbal promises) has the government made to eradicate it?

Along with terrorists, all Muslim societies have their share of religious zealots. Figures and groups who, while perhaps not engaging in the same violence as Al Qaeda, nonetheless promote extreme forms of Islam. Our own anti-Shi’a preachers and the latest injunctions coming out of MMA-ruled NWFP (banning women from being treated by male doctors) are cases in point. Again the question arises: how much effort has the government made to curb such extremists and hatemongers?

Until Muslim governments eradicate the terrorists operating within their countries their plea that Islam should not be equated with terrorism will fall on deaf ears. Until Muslim leaders (political and religious) promote tolerance and moderation within their own societies, the Islamic fraternity will be stuck with its image of intolerance and extremism.

In explaining western domination over the Muslim world, one should not underestimate the influence of money. There is a considerable gulf between the economies of the West and those of the Muslim world. While extraneous factors, including a legacy of colonialism and exploitation, are partly to blame for this state of affairs, so too is self-inflicted corruption and mismanagement. Oil-rich countries like Saudi Arabia certainly cannot plead lack of resources. What have they done with their huge wealth? They have used it to support gluttonous lifestyles and import western armies.

Money talks. If Muslims wish to be taken seriously by the West they have to develop financial clout. Many already have the means to do so. Others (including us) could greatly improve their situation by curbing corruption extravagance and mismanagement. And the really impoverished could be helped up the ladder by development support from their Muslim brethren.

Which brings us to the final (and perhaps biggest) self-inflicted reason for the Ummah’s plight: lack of unity. There is strength in numbers. The Ummah certainly has the numbers — one fifth of humanity — to be a force in the world. The fact that it is not has much to do with the endemic divisions within it. Many of the bloodiest conflicts involving Muslims in recent times have been against fellow Muslims. Even where there is no conflict, the inability to agree on and implement collective programmes renders the Ummah ineffective. Israel, surrounded by a vast desert of impotent Arabs, is the ultimate case in point.

Abdelouahed Belkaziz was justified in complaining about the way Muslims have been treated in the post-9/11 world. But before (or alongside) griping against George Bush, Muslims should question their own conduct — as rulers, governments, religious leaders, societies, ordinary people. There is much that is flawed within the Ummah: much that can be fixed only from within.