| October 31, 2003 | Friday | Ramazan 4, 1424 |
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ARD leader’s arrest
Pindi’s municipal woes
The case against Mr Hashmi is steeped in mystery. Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat did not know the details and said the district administration would come out with a press release — which it did not. The ARD leader said the letter he had been accused of distributing had been written by someone in GHQ. Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad said the letter was fake. If so, who did the faking and with what motive? And why should the government feel so worked up over a letter which its minister says is not genuine? Arresting the ARD leader in a hurry only makes the government’s position seem very shaky. By detaining Mr Hashmi the government has made the national scene grim. It should blame only itself if it finds the opposition hardening its stance. We believe it is in the interest of political sanity that Mr Hashmi be released immediately. The genuineness or otherwise of the letter can be established even without the Muslim League leader being kept in jail.
PAKISTAN’S response to India’s recent 12 confidence-building measures has been described in the Dawn report of Wednesday’s briefing by the foreign secretary as “wholesome”. Perhaps this is just about the right characterization of Islamabad’s stand. The foreign office took its time in fashioning a reply to the Indian CBMs, announced earlier this month. Some of the points indicated by New Delhi were tricky and needed careful consideration, and there was disappointment here that no indication had been given at all about the possibility of resuming a composite dialogue between the two countries. But most people agreed that the proposed CBMs, in addition to some of the steps already taken and others proposed by Pakistan, should be considered as a basis for moving forward and cutting our way through to the core issues. It was also pointed out that many of the links now being cited for restoration were broken off by India, and that it was right that the initiative for their revival should have come from there. But there was a great deal of nitpicking going on in both Islamabad and New Delhi, and India’s defence minister made his own negative contribution by a war-like statement. So, it’s a relief that, despite reservations and qualifications, most of the CBMs have been accepted, at least in principle.
No one knows each other better than Indians and Pakistanis, and there is obviously some mutual point-scoring going on. India had said a bus service should be started between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad. The guile was detected: Pakistan considered that this would somehow confer legitimacy on the LoC as a permanent dividing line, and has agreed to it provided the travel documents for Kashmiris using the service are issued by the UN. That takes care of that one because India is not likely to accept any UN involvement in this or any other matter relating to Kashmir. Offering medical help for Kashmiri victims of rape and violence is also a non-starter, and will be seen by Indian hard-liners as gratuitous. The problem of a linkage between air and rail services remains, but both sides have agreed to talks about the former in early December and it is possible that a second rail link to Rajasthan might in time materialize. The Pakistani attitude on visa camps, sporting links and land-border crossing facilities for senior citizens is positive.
All told, the situation looks somewhat better than it did earlier. It is important that rather than unilateral announcements at press conferences and briefings and the usual grandstanding, follow-up measures are quietly deliberated upon between senior officials. It would be even better if talks could be held at the political level, in which case it is often easier to skirt around technical hindrances. There has not been any really meaningful interaction at this level, and both Pakistani and Indian leaders should seriously work towards ministerial talks. The Kashmir issue, and the participation of the representatives of the Kashmiri people in a comprehensive dialogue, can also only be dealt with politically, as the tentative explorations between the Vajpayee government and the All Parties Hurriyat Conference show. In the meantime, civil societies in India and Pakistan should keep up their pressure for the creation of a less conflict-ridden and more peaceful South Asia. The value of such pressure, sustained through inhospitable circumstances, should not be minimized while going through the slow improvement in Indo-Pakistan relations.
REPORTS about frequent outages of water supply in sections of Rawalpindi are common. Several reports in Dawn paint a sorry picture about the quality of municipal services being provided in Rawalpindi, particularly the water supply and sewerage system. According to official figures, more than 82,000 cases of water-related diseases were registered in the basic health units of Rawalpindi division during the past year. The figure does not take into account those who sought treatment at private clinics and public hospitals, as well as those who were down with water-borne diseases but did not seek medical treatment at all. Studies conducted by the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources has pinpointed domestic sewage to be the major source of pollution of fresh water sources, followed by industrial effluents.
Not only is the existing sewerage system in Rawalpindi faulty, but it is highly inadequate as well. According to a technical survey, as much as 70 per cent of the city areas do not have a proper sewerage system. Granted that Rawalpindi is an old city, but given the shift in the federal government to Islamabad in the 1960s, Rawalpindi’s municipal services should have been developed to a higher level of expansion and efficiency. Instead, as a comprehensive survey notes, the available civic services and amenities are hardly adequate to cater to the basic needs of the city’s burgeoning population, while many low-income areas do not even have access to potable water. The relevant local governments in Rawalpindi division, in cooperation with the provincial government, will need to do their part in bucking up on municipal development to prevent Rawalpindi from deteriorating further.