THE present model of globalization is not working for Africa or other least developed countries, says the director-general of the International Labour Organizatiaon (ILO), Juan Somavia. He wants global policies to change to put jobs at the centre of the development debate in an employment-centred approach to alleviate poverty.

Addressing a conference of 53 African governments, employers and workers he said “the extensive policy advice given to Africa needs a reality-check — a wake up call.” He argues: “Work is at the heart of the economic political and social concerns of the people. So let us make decent work in al countries the new organizing factor for a globalization that works for all.”

Today, even ordinary work is hard to come by for the millions in scores of developing countries. And when work is available the wages are too low because of competition. Unemployment is a problem not only in the least developed or developing countries but also in the developed countries, like the US, Europe and Japan. In the name of globalization and rapid economic progress through stepped up exports there has been constant cost-cutting in the industrial and commercial sectors and it is being done at the expense of the workers who lose their jobs.

Globalization means the rapid movement of goods, services and capital, but not labour. Hence the unemployed workers cannot move from one country to another in search of employment. After 9/11 such movement of workers has become even more difficult, at least in the case of the United States and other western countries, because of new laws enforced there to keep strict check on illegal immigration or mere suspicion of Muslim migrants, as from Pakistan, having links with terrorist groups.

That adds to the problem of unemployment in a country, like Pakistan, with 149 million people. Hence the government is forced is look for remedies to prevent the unemployed from committing suicide, or taking to crimes or selling their vital organs for simple survival. All that has motivated Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali to set up a Task Force for Poverty Reduction and Employment generation. He has given the task force a month to produce a report. This body headed by Investment and Privatisation Minister Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh is meeting every week to come up with “a set of practical measures for raising employment in the country.”

The task force has set up three sub-committees. The first one is to determine the extent of poverty, whether it afflicts 32 per cent of the population or 38 per cent, as the officials disagree on the figure. The second sub-committee will determine the role of the public sector and the third committee is to decide the role of the private sector.

Dr. Mushtaq A. Khan, director Planning Commission, says although the growth rate of poverty had slowed down compared to the 1990s it had increased from 30.6 per cent to 32.1 per cent in 2001-2002. But the fact is the quality of life of 50 per cent of the people above the poverty line is not good either. The top 20 per cent have it all and more.

He says poverty is increasing because of macro-economic stability in the country and its trickle-down effect will be visible when investment rises to 18 per cent of the GDP and growth rate rises to six per cent. In fact, if the economic progress has to be rapid, the investment rate should be between 20 to 25 per cent of the GDP, and the growth rate around 8 to 9 per cent, as in China.

Public sector spending has to increase rapidly to create far more jobs. With less money to be spent on debt servicing in the coming years, the government can afford to spend more on large infrastructure projects. New roads, restructuring the old roads instead of merely repairing them and building bridges and a larger railway network are absolutely essential and urgent. All that would call for very large spending.

The private sector undoubtedly needs to be persuaded and won over in a big way. The ministers will have to establish personal contacts with the current and potential investors to induce them to invest more. Their genuine complaints in respect of taxation and bank loans have to be met and they should be provided cheaper power. The workers too have to be cooperative in the interest of more jobs.

The government will take concerted measures to check poverty and unemployment in the country, says the prime minister. He is also talking of promoting talent and merit. What is important is that these things should pass beyond the stage of slogans and rhetoric. What he promises should be done on the ground and what he achieves should be visible.

Chief executive officer of the Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund Kamal Hayat says micro-finance should not be considered the prime panacea for poverty reduction, but rather as one of the instruments for its removal. He is right. Too much cannot be expected out of the micro-finance network too soon. He says micro-finance would have its effect on poverty reduction in the next five years as it is a very new phenomenon in Pakistan.

Too many persons with borrowed mini-credit may not be able to make its best use unless properly guided. They have to be assisted for the purpose. Arrangements to supply raw materials to them and enable them market their products will have also to be made. Otherwise many of the units can fail in the manner the cooperative system has failed in Pakistan. Of course, the micro-finance organization should not be closed down if it suffers initial losses or setbacks.

Dr Mushtaq Khan has spoken of the trickle-down effect of the current proposals for poverty alleviation. It may be noted that such promises in the past had turned out to be false. It only made the rich richer and the corrupt officials more corrupt. Hence the World Bank and other donors have sought to assist the provincial governments and the NGOs direct instead of filtering the aid through federal agencies.

Now while the Asian Development Bank is criticising Pakistan for its poor performance in the use of aid, an independent US-based Environment Defence Organization has come up with sharp criticism of the ADB’s performance in Pakistan. Its reports presented at a seminar in Islamabad talk of the failed projects of the Bank costing 4.6 billion dollars out of the loans of 6.5 billion dollars Pakistan has to pay the Bank. It is surprised that should happen in the second largest recipient of ADB aid in Asia after Indonesia and the same mistakes being committed again and again. There was no monitoring of the actual assistance received by the beneficiaries and in the process the larger landlords benefited at the cost of the small farmers. The waste of the funds was immense.

The ADB has come up with a strong denial of the report and presented its case. It calls the report partisan and biased. But what is, indeed, welcome is that the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and the IMF feel the need for independent evaluation of their performance and the extent to which their aid reaches the beneficiaries. It is time the intended beneficiaries, too, monitor the use of aid earmarked for them and the projects designed for their welfare.

But while the national or international agencies may be able to check the efficacy of the external aid or large foreign borrowing and, international agencies may set up independent evaluation units who is to check gross misuse or waste of the national resources which may now rise to 18 per cent of the GDP or more?

The parliamentary committees are ineffective, and while late in coming into existence, they are non-functional thereafter, except in seeking automobiles for their chairman and seeking other benefits for their members. And the key Public Accounts committee has been a howling failure over the decades. The committee has to spend hours and days on the report of the Auditor General but is not prepared to do that.

Feudal lords are not accustomed to looking at their own account books for long and instead rely on their accountants who usually mislead or misguide them. It is the committee system which is the essence of parliamentary system and not mere open debates or walk-outs. But our rhetorically inclined politicians have no time for looking at accounts books which show the vast misuse of public funds in a poor country.

May be the committees could be given a chartered accountant or two to do the needful and detect the serious flaws in the accounting. If serious accounting frauds are being detected in the American corporate system there is no reason why our governments, military or civil, should get away with their follies.

Coming back to globalisation mode in which jobs are at the centre of the development debate, it is not easy to achieve that when job cutting and wage cutting are the norms of the day to compete effectively in the export market. Pakistan cannot arrest the process of globalization, but we can certainly strengthen the economy and the process of production to make our goods less expensive and more competitive. In fact we have no other option except to prepare ourselves to meet the global challenges.

We have also to try through the World Trade Organization to make the globalisation less inhuman or more humane so that small countries and the poor men do not get crushed in the process. Terrorism cannot be stopped by force and coercion alone. If the poor of the world continue to suffer in an endless manner they may develop other tendencies more difficult to cope with or endure.

IMAGINE if President Musharraf’s journey a week ago on Sunday had ended differently. Imagine if the bomb that blew a huge hole in the Ammar Chowk Bridge had exploded sixty seconds earlier. Imagine Pakistan without President Pervez Musharraf.

What springs to mind? Shock and sadness, of course, at the violent demise of a leader who, despite his many faults, is still more admired than loathed. And questions: ‘Why was he killed? By whom? How could it happen?’ Not a few would answer ‘fate’ and ‘history’ — no Pakistani military ruler has ever left office voluntarily. But the overwhelming and enduring emotion would be uncertainty.

What will happen to Pakistan? Will Pakistan continue to support the US-led war against terror? Will it continue the ‘peace process’ with India? What will happen on the domestic front? Will liberalism remain the order of the day, or will it presage a return to the old days of state-enforced piety? How will the fundamentalists and militants react? What will happen to the local government system?

A comparable event in many other countries would not generate the same reaction. If Tony Blair died tomorrow, there would be the same shock and sadness, the same questions of why, but not the same uncertainty. Why the difference? Why the uncertainty in Pakistan — especially given the fact that there is nothing wrong with many of Musharraf’s policies?

For the course he has set Pakistan on is generally the right one for the country. Domestically, a drive to curb militancy, sectarianism and religious extremism; and a reform programme that takes decision-making to the grassroots and promotes better service delivery. Internationally, policies that acknowledge international realpolitik (the sole superpower status of the US); and that seek to reduce tension in the region, possibly leading to a permanent resolution of the Kashmir dispute. None of these policies blatantly go against national interest.

One can (and many do) disagree with the motives and/or the wisdom of some of Musharraf’s actions. Was the local government system introduced solely to improve the lot of the Pakistani masses, or was it also intended to dilute the power of federal and provincial politicians and create a pro-Musharraf constituency? Is Musharraf’s willingness to make concessions to the Indians foolish and short-sighted? Is he going too far in kowtowing to the US? All justifiable questions, but the bottom line remains that his policies are generally designed to serve the national interest.

There are of course exceptions to this. Aside from the way he took power the two big ones are the referendum (an inexcusable abuse of power) and the propensity to appoint military figures to head civilian institutions. The takeover of civilian bodies by men in khaki has been unprecedented under Musharraf. NAB’s transformation from an anti-corruption task force into a coercive stick for the military government to use against non-compliant politicians, is the third big exception. There is no justification, no national interest service, in any of these. But even with these blemishes, on balance it is hard to find issue with the substance of many of Musharraf’s policies. Why then would they be so endangered if he is not at the helm?

The reason, as well as the distinguishing feature that explains the uncertainty here but the lack of it in London, is the way so much in Pakistan is dependent on the person of the national leader — President Pervez Musharraf. Virtually all major policies implemented by this government originate in the person of Pervez Musharraf.

The decision to support the US-led war against terror, and specifically to cooperate with the American attack on Afghanistan, was purportedly taken by Musharraf while talking on the phone to Colin Powell. A process of consultation with senior political and other figures did take place - but only after Musharraf had committed Pakistan to the US side.

The pledge to send Pakistani troops to Iraq was even more blatantly made by the President alone. Within hours of George Bush making the request to him during their Camp David meeting, Musharraf announced on American TV that he had ‘agreed in principle’ to send Pakistani troops. It was only the popular backlash at home — strongly against deployment — coupled with the rising coalition body count in Iraq that prevented Musharraf acting on his pledge. The same could be said of the president’s hints about recognizing Israel.

In the ‘peace process’ with India, Musharraf is by far the most prominent player on the Pakistani side. True, Prime Minister Jamali made the official invitation to Vajpayee to come to Pakistan (in the summer), and he announced Pakistan’s unilateral ceasefire along the Line of Control. But no one doubts that those initiatives came from the president and his circle of advisers. Pakistan’s latest peace gesture — flexibility on the UN resolutions on Kashmir — was made directly by Musharraf. There was no prior public debate about the concession: no discussion in the National Assembly, or even in the cabinet. The local government system differs somewhat in that it has the collective stamp of military government — rather than the purely personal stamp of Musharraf — all over it. Decentralization in Pakistan owes its creation and early nourishment very much to the army. For a process that seeks to promote grassroots democracy and participation, it was imposed in a distinctly undemocratic top-down manner.

The extent to which ‘Pakistan’ is a one-man show is quite astonishing. But it alone does not account for the vulnerability of Musharraf’s policies. Had the ‘one man’ been elected democratically with a wide support base (like Mahathir Mohamad, for example), his policies would still stand a good chance of surviving without him. But Musharraf’s route to power — a military coup and a rigged referendum — does not fit that description. The president owes his position to the strength of the army, and to the willingness of various politicians to cut deals with him and provide the facade of democratic rule. Such foundations do not confer legitimacy or durability.

The risks to the local government system, the normalization process with India, the domestic drive to eradicate sectarianism and so on, stem not from what they are, but from how they were introduced: by a combination of military rule and one-man decision-making. It is this combination — not the substance of the policies — that makes them so vulnerable.

Consider the British example again: policies in Britain (with the possible exception of Britain’s Blair-driven participation in the Iraq war) are introduced on the much wider basis of elections, cabinet discussions, and debate and approval in the Parliament. There is an institutional basis to policy-making in the UK. That institutional basis ensures that even if one foundation stone (Tony Blair) is removed, the whole edifice does not come tumbling down.

This is the most important lesson to be learned from the assassination attempt: the unhealthy dependence of so much in Pakistan on just one man. That dependence has to end. The basis of policy-making has to be widened — made collective and institutionalized. Only then can Pakistan face the possibility of Musharraf’s departure with — if not confidence — at least a measure of equanimity.

First, the results of the Russian parliamentary elections on 7 December 7: United Russia, the ‘party of power’ that supports President Vladimir Putin, wins a large majority. Second, the results of the Russian presidential election next March: Putin wins by a landslide. Third, a question: can Russia be a democracy?

Putin himself is ambivalent on the question. “I’ve been hearing allegations (about the roll-back of democracy) for four years now, since I became president of the Russian Federation,” he said in October. “If by democracy one means the dissolution of the state, then we do not need such democracy....I don’t think that there are people in the world who wantdemocracy that would lead to chaos.”

The message is underlined by United Russia’s election posters, which show a mosaic of the faces of fifty Russian heroes arranged to form a map of Russia — and include the faces of Lenin, Stalin and Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet secret police. The message is not that Russia needs Communism back, but that it needs to be led by a strong man who gives orders and is obeyed — like Putin, for example.

There was a frantic flurry of speculation last month when Putin’s government arrested Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia’s richest man and CEO of the Yukos oil company, the world’s fourth largest. It was particularly noted that if the fallen oligarch is convicted of the charges he faces, involving tax evasion, embezzlement and other corporate misdeeds, then the state will confiscate his assets, including the 40 per cent of Yukos’s shares that he owns personally..

Does this mean that Putin is setting out to reverse the privatization of state-owned industry that occurred after the end of the old Soviet Union in 1991? And have ordinary Russians grown so cynical about politics that they are effectively abandoning democracy from below even before it can be stolen from above?

Putin has no desire to recreate the old socialist economy, and he knows that actions like the persecution of Khodorkovsky are hugely damaging to Russia’s attractiveness to foreign investors. However, he may not be able to stop important allies who missed out on the first wave of privatizations from bringing down the first-wave oligarchs, confiscating their assets, and re-privatizing them into their own pockets. Besides, Khodorkovsky had shown an interest in politics, giving money to opposition political parties, which was forbidden to the oligarchs by Putin.

The attitude of the Russian people is a harder question. They persistently show levels of support for Putin of between 70 and 80 per cent even as he manipulates them and tramples on their rights. Do they care about democracy, or is it just not a Russian thing?

The problem is that they have been fooled and betrayed so often. The ‘privatization’ of state assets was carried out in 1992 by giving each adult Russian a voucher for 10,000 roubles to buy shares in the firms that employed them — “What we need is millions of property owners, not a handful of millionaires,” said Yeltsin — but the assets were massively and deliberately undervalued. Gazprom, Russia’s biggest energy industry, for example, was valued at only $250 million, while its stock market value by 1997 was $40 billion.

No sooner had the shares been distributed than an entirely avoidable great inflation destroyed the value of the rouble (and everybody’s savings). Then along came the favoured friends of the Yeltsin ‘family’, clever young Communist apparatchiks retooled as thrusting capitalist entrepreneurs, and bought up all the innocent workers’ shares at bargain-basement prices. That is where Russia’s massively rich oligarchs come from, and why they and their system are hated.

The oligarchs financed Yeltsin’s re-election in 1996, and when he made his deal with Vladimir Putin in 1999 (Putin got the presidency in return for a promise not to prosecute Yeltsin and his cronies for corruption), they initially went along with that too. Putin had to start a second war with Chechnya in order to wrap himself in the flag and win the 2000 election. But once he was safely in office he turned on the oligarchs who represented the only serious potential threat to his power.

Putin has now driven a number of the oligarchs into exile, and he knows very well that jailing Khodorkovsky can only add to his popularity. He has silenced or shut down every independent television network, and made great progress towards bringing the print media under control. He has made some economic reforms like a flat-rate 13 per cent income tax and corporate tax cuts, and the economy is now growing fast as oil exports soar and prices hold firm — but a third of Russia’s people are still desperately poor, the population is falling by a million a year, and GDP has still not crawled back up to late Soviet levels twelve years after the fall of Communism.

So why will around three-quarters of Russians vote for this cynical manipulator with few real achievements to his credit? Because the Russian people have become deeply cynical about ‘democracy’ as they have experienced it, and respond to anyone who at least seems ‘strong’. It is a pattern alarmingly reminiscent of what happened to the Argentine voting public over a longer period of time, and left them so cynical that democracy in Argentina may be crippled for a generation. If the same thing has happened in Russia, it will be an even greater tragedy.—Copyright

DESPITE his impeccable public life , despite his soaring idealism, lofty principles and clean politics, despite his notable accomplishments and distinctive contributions towards advancing the Indian cause, and despite his long years of singular service to the community and the country, the Quaid-i-Azam was known as ‘plain Mr Jinnah‘ till late 1937. However, his progression from ‘Zaimul’s Millat‘ and ‘Quaid-i-Millat‘ early in 1938, to ‘Quaid-i-Azam‘ within two years was phenomenal.

Just as the title, “Mahatma”, conferred on Gandhi by Rabindranath Tagore, became instantly popular, so did the prefix, “Quaid-i-Azam”. This was indexed by references to Jinnah in the Muslim press, by the slogans raised at political moots and public meetings, and, above all, by Gandhi’s letter of January 16, 1940, in which Jinnah was addressed as Dear “Quaid-i-Azam.”

How did this spectacular transformation come about? Because in those three critical years (1937-40), he had donned the mantle of an “event-making man” in the Sydney Hook sense, because, on the conceptual plane, he had fulfilled the role of a standard-bearer the Muslim cause was in search of, and, on the empirical plane, of a tried and tested leader the beleaguered Muslim people were in quest of. Also because in fulfilling that role he proved himself to be the right man in the right place and at the right time.

And because, in assuming that role, he had held forth the bright prospect of creating “a fork in the historical road,” which would redeem the down-trodden Muslims and put them on the path to the portals of power and the pinnacle of glory. Also, because he had squarely fulfilled the Hegelian leadership test which lays down that “the great man of the age is one who can put into words the will of his age, tell his age what its will is, and accomplish it. What he does is the heart and essence of his age; he actualizes his age.”

Now, how did he manage to fulfil this role so superbly? Equally important, how did he manage to convince the Muslims, ever so sceptical about their leaders’ claims and credentials, that he would do it where others before him had failed so miserably? All said and done, he launched himself on a twin quest. First, the quest for a pan-Indian Muslim community, that is, a united and solidified “Muslim India” within the larger subcontinental context as the “third side” in the political triangle of India’s body politic, so that it could negotiate from a position of strength and as an equal with the other two sides, in the distribution of power in the future Indian dispensation. And, second, the quest for an equitable share of power in the future Indian dispensation, a quest that seemed forlorn, given the dismal Muslim situation in mid-1937 when Muslim India was a “no man’s land”, to quote Jinnah.

What was remarkable about this twin quest was that it was an integral part of Indian Islam’s legacy, a quest dating back to Shah Waliullah (1703-62). An outstanding seer and a man of vision, Shah Waliullah had formulated the doctrine of “Indo-Muslim resistance to the concentration of power in non-Muslim hands”, and got it entrenched in the Muslim psyche through his religio-political movement to a point that it became a cornerstone of their legacy on the political plane.

Both the religious-oriented Deoband and other madressahs and the West-oriented Aligarh despite the diversity of their response to the imposition of British rule and despite their heterogeneous leadership, were parallel as well as complementary developments. Both signified and found expression in cultural self-assertion, and were basically directed towards mobilizing the Muslims by providing linkages between the leadership and the educated elites (if not the bulk of the community), setting up separate, but more or less comparable, networks of communication, organization, recruitment, and mobilization.

All this led to strengthening their community consciousness and providing “structures within the Muslim community which were alternatives to the political and administrative structures of British rule” on the one hand and those of the Hindus on the other. This was dramatized by, among other events, the setting up of the Mohammedan Educational Conference (1886) and the launching of the campaign for an Aligarh Muslim University (1898), the idea having been first mooted by Sir Syed’s son, Syed Mahmud, way back in 1873. The university proposal had to wait for some two decades to materialize, but the Conference proved extremely consequential in immediate terms.

Designed to bring together Muslims from various regions to discuss their differing problems, it served as a forum for Muslim intelligentsia on an all-India basis, to set priorities and formulate plans for self-regeneration, and to articulate and press its demands and grievances, thereby assuming the role of an Indian National Congress for Muslims. With an all-India focus, the Conference was remarkably successful in enhancing Muslim self-awareness as a pan-Indian community. Cultural self-assertion, underscored by these moves from the early 1870s paved the way for political self-assertion some three decades later.

Thus, the twin quest for a separate Muslim identity and for an adequate share in power had inspired all Muslim movements, and demands, whether religious, educational, cultural, or political, since the 1870s — in particular, the Aligarh movement (1870s), and its organizational offshoots: the Mohammedan Educational Conference (1886), the Urdu Defence Association (f.1900), the demand for separate electorates (1906), the founding of the Muslim League (1906), and the Muslim University Movement (1910); the Pan-Islamic movements beginning with Italy’s raid on Tripoli (1911) and ending with the Khilafat Movement (1918-24); the Kanpur Mosque agitation (1913) and the Lucknow Pact (1916). To this end were also directed the subsequent Muslim League resolutions of 1924, 1925 and 1926, which progressively took a more concrete shape in the Delhi Muslim Proposals (1927), the comprehensive League resolution of December 31, 1927, the All Parties Muslim Conference resolution (1929), and Jinnah’s Fourteen Points (1929).

Indeed the quest for a pan-Indian Muslim constituency inspired Jinnah’s riposte to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the Congress president, when he sought to impose a “two-forces” doctrine on India’s body politics in 1936. “...in the final analysis”, he asserted, “there are only two forces in India today — British imperialism and the Congress representing Indian nationalism”, adding, “all ‘third party’, middle and undecided groups etc have no real importance...” To which Jinnah’s response was: “I refuse to accept this proposition. There is a third party in this country and that is Muslim India...”

To strengthen this claim, Jinnah breathed new life into the moribund Muslim League, and organized it methodically from the grassroots level. He extended its support base to encompass the whole of the subcontinent; he made its policies and programmes coherent and viable; he infused enthusiasm and confidence in the rank and file; he laid out the grassroots organizational networks; built up communication channels; and fashioned a chain of command through a structured leadership. Consequently, within three brief years (1937-40), a revitalized Muslim League which, under his astute leadership, developed into a formidable political machine capable of confronting and countering the long-entrenched Congress, both at the ballot box and on the streets.

Thus, by 1942, the League, which had secured only 112 out of 491 Muslim seats in the 1937 provincial elections under the 1935 Act, had mustered strength to the point that it commanded the allegiance of 304 out of 524 central and provincial assembly members. Equally important, between January 1, 1938, and September 12, 1942, the League won 46 out of 56 Muslim seats in by-elections, as against only three by the Congress, and between September 1942 and mid-1945, the League had secured nine out of fifteen Muslim seats, the rest going to independents and none to the Congress. This meant that the League had acquired a social depth among the Muslims comparable to the Congress among the Hindus. One immediate and more manifest result of all this was a quickening of community consciousness and strong Muslim solidarity, making the pan-Indian Muslim community concept and the “third party” status claim a fait accompli. Clearly, in the context of the Muslim leadership’s prolonged and desperate quest for it since Shah Waliullah, this indeed represented a singular achievement. That’s why the title, Quaid-i-Azam, came to acquire a synonymatical status with his real name — Jinnah —-by 1940.

To Indian Muslims in the crisis-laden 1940s, Pakistan represented a charismatic goal — a goal congruent with the concept of the charismatic community. And since the dethronement of this concept, in mundane terms, had haunted Muslims ever since they had incrementally lost political power to the British, beginning with Plassey (1757), the “call for Pakistan” energized them beyond belief and enthused them instantly. For one thing, the “call”, with its messianic hope of a restoration of power and glory to Muslims, tended to gather all the Muslims on one platform as shown by the 1945-46 general elections results. It ensured power for them in their (numerically) dominant areas. Thus, the twin quest for a pan-Indian Muslim community and for restitution of power finally reached fruition under the leadership of Jinnah.

And, if only because of these singular achievements, he became an “event-making”, rather than a mere “eventful”, man in the Sydney Hook sense. An event-making man, who had helped create “a fork in the historical road” and left a “positive imprint of his personality upon history — an imprint that is still observable after he has disappeared from the scene.” He, thus, became the crystal in the crucible of Muslim leadership since about 1800 A.D. and that explains why he was hailed as the Quaid-i-Azam during his lifetime.

The writer is the founder of the Quaid-i-Azam Academy and a well-known author.