| 09 July 2004 | Friday | 20 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425 |
Police and provincial control
Who invented ORS?
Fighting in Ingushetia
Promotion & move over cases
'Can a bigot be cultured?'
ADB-funded project in Sindh
Funeral bandits
CPLC role
Misplaced priorities
'All change...'
To send a letter to the Editor
Click here
I am glad Zulfikar Ali Bhutto has finally been given credit - and that too by an Indian - for successfully defending and maintaining Pakistan's position on Kashmir at Shimla when the only cards he held were his intelligence, his charm and his diplomatic skills.
However, I reject M. J. Akbar's contention (Dawn, July 6) that "Jawaharlal Nehru went to the United Nations in 1947 in the hope that the UN would be an honest broker."
Mr Nehru went to the United Nations because he was confident of Pakistan being declared an aggressor, which would have legitimized India's annexation of Kashmir. That did not happen and much of the credit for that belongs to Chaudhri Zafrulla Khan, Pakistan's brilliant foreign minister.
I also find Mr Akbar's implied charge that it was Pakistan that did not pull out its troops from Kashmir, thus styming the Security Council resolution of August 13, 1948, without any basis in fact.
Let me quote to Mr Akbar Joseph Korbel, a member of the UN Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP), who wrote on March 4, 1957, in dealing with the same charge against Pakistan, "This is not true. Pakistan was not expected to withdraw her forces from Kashmir as long as there was no agreed-upon plan for simultaneous Indian withdrawal."
India obstructed one effort after another to have that come about. Hence the stalemate. Ultimately, it entirely repudiated the Kashmir resolutions. I find it depressing that there is not one Indian commentator who can be honest about Kashmir.
KHALID HASAN
Washington, USA
(2)
I believe that a large number of Pakistanis and Indians are extremely happy after the recent thaw in relations. To make this lasting, a permanent solution has to be found to the Kashmir dispute. It would make the solution far easier if:
1. India realizes that despite its far stronger military prowess, it has not been able to force Pakistan to renounce its Kashmir policy.
2. Pakistan realizes that despite spending the largest part of its budget on increasing its armed might at the cost of education, healthcare, social welfare, poverty alleviation, agriculture and industrialization, it has faced four setbacks on the battlefield.
I beg to submit the following solution:
1. Pakistan's sovereignty should be recognized in the Northern Areas - Gilgit, Skardu, Hunza, etc.
2. India's sovereignty should be recognized in Ladakh and Jammu (minus the few areas with the Muslim majority adjoining the Kashmir valley).
3. Azad Kashmir and the Kashmir valley both should be given by Pakistan and India, respectively, what one might call independence. It should be something like the Indian constitution's article 370.
Kashmiris in their respective areas - Azad Kashmir and the valley - should have freedom to rule the way they like, except for defence and foreign affairs. In Azad Kashmir these areas would be looked after by Pakistan and in the valley by India. The shape of the mutual relationship between the two Kashmirs would be their decision.
4. The border between the two Kashmirs should be made safe to enable Kashmiris to travel, with identification papers like identity cards.
GHULAM KIBRIA
Karachi
Police and provincial control
In an article (Dawn, June 21), a proposal to create three new posts of regional inspectors-general of police in Punjab has been castigated as being an exercise in "departmental empire-building" aimed at "weakening the hold of the provincial government over their police hierarchy".
As a former policeman I cannot help but take issue with this. Under the Police Order of 2002, law and order (and the police) remain very much a provincial subject. The new public safety commissions reinforce and not detract from provincial control.
Administrative concerns associated with policing have always been and will continue to be a regional matter, which is why we have a number of local and special laws which are area-specific.
The fact is that while the Police Order of 2002 has vastly expanded their areas of responsibility, very little has been done to provide the police with the requisite numerical strength, equipment and the wherewithal to discharge this responsibility.
An inspector-general of police sitting in a corner of the province cannot in this day and age effectively supervise the police in distant Dera Ghazi Khan. Memories are still fresh of the gigantic failure of One Unit.
As far as the PSP cadre itself is concerned, officers now serving at the middle levels are facing a solid promotion block. Some competitors who entered service over 20 years ago are still awaiting elevation to DIG (grade 20), whereas those who had opted for other services were promoted long ago. What effect does this have on the morale of the very people who are supposed to bring about a qualitative improvement in the police force as a whole?
Dedicated and well-trained terrorists armed with the most sophisticated weaponry are terrorizing our cities. There is a war in the streets and our police are dying and fighting in this war. Surely, they deserve a few extra posts in grade 20/21.
The PSP cadre in grades 20 to 22 must be expanded pari passu with regional needs and the operating environment.
S. ASIF MAJEED
Karachi
Who invented ORS?
Dr Hussain Bux Kolachi's assertion that ORS is a Bangladeshi invention is not correct (Dawn, July 5). In 2002 three Americans (Hirshchhorn, Nalin and Pierce) and an Indian (Dr Mahalanabis) were awarded the Pollin Prize in paediatric research for their seminal contributions to the discovery and implementation of oral rehydration therapy in the 1960s and the early 1970s.
Moreover, it is common knowledge in the medical fraternity that in the late 1950s and the early 1960s, basic scientific research carried out in the US uncovered the interactive mechanism of salt and sugar in the intestines.
From this discovery, it was hypothesized that this could be applied to fluid loss in cholera. To further this idea, two American doctors, Richard Cash and David Nalin, joined the Pakistan-Seato Cholera Research Laboratory, Dhaka, in 1967. In medical literature, these two American researchers are credited with the first clinical testing of ORS.
At around the same time, a team of medical researchers associated with the Johns Hopkins University International Centre for Medical Research and Training in Kolkata started large-scale testing of ORS for the treatment of cholera.
By 1969, both projects had published reports of successful ORS use in the treatment of adult cholera patients. Further field tests were carried out in the US, the Philippines, Turkey and Iran in the early 1970s.
All of these tests were either US-funded or had US researchers in the team. The breakthrough came in 1977 when two US-funded projects in Bangladesh and Costa Rica provided definitive proof that childhood diarrhoea and severe dehydration can be effectively treated with ORS.
Once the efficacy of ORS was established, WHO, USAID, Unicef and the UNDP joined hands to establish the World Health Organization Diarrhoeal Disease Control Programme in 1978.
This brief history clearly illustrates that medical research, even of simple drugs, costs millions of dollars and it takes at least a decade or two to produce a drug which could be safely used. Moreover, such medical research requires trained, qualified and dedicated researchers, a breed which is often not found in countries like ours.
IRFAN KHAN
Karachi
Fighting in Ingushetia
Two years ago 110 rebels were killed or wounded in clashes with Russian soldiers in the ongoing fighting in Ingushetia, a Russian province, on the border with the breakaway republic of Chechnya. The Chechen rebels had allegedly crossed into Russia from neighbouring Georgia and clashed with Russian soldiers.
In the last week of June this year, between 200 and 300 Chechen rebels simultaneously struck three towns in Ingushetia, killing 100 people, setting fire to a police building, attacking 14 other sites, and shutting major roads in the region before disappearing in small groups back into Chechnya.
They left a scene of devastation in the centre of Nazran. In the beginning of this month, two senior police officers and three armed men were killed in the Ingush town of Malagobek.
Ingushetia houses tens of thousands of refugees who fled the war in Chechnya, and many Chechen rebels have taken shelter there. Many of those who led the last week's raids were ethnic Ingushes allied to separatist Chechens.
Those raids dealt another blow to the Kremlin, which is struggling to crush the Chechen freedom movement and stop it from spreading. It laid to waste Russian claims that Moscow has asserted its control over the region.
According to the Human Rights Watch, human rights violations that have been long the hallmark of the Chechnya conflict are increasingly spilling over into Ingushetia. Human rights groups have also documented a number of summary executions in recent months and attacks against civilians resulting in deaths and serious injuries.
The attack in Ingushetia was a personal humiliation and defeat for President Putin and his policy in the troubled region. It has shown the failure of his policy not only in Chechnya but in the entire north Caucasus. The guerillas have succeeded in storming one of the regional capitals, Nazran, and in destroying the symbols of power and law-enforcement buildings.
PROFESSOR (DR) P. NASIR
Gujrat
Promotion & move over cases
Injustice is quite inadvertently inflicted by civil servants on their own brethren. In several cadres like DMG, lecturers, engineers and doctors, an employee is entitled after every five years to be moved over to the next grade, i.e. from grade 17 to 18 and from 18 to 19.
Thereafter, it becomes a matter of promotion, and the procedure of promotion is followed. In the simple process of move over, red tapism has crept in and the procedure of promotion has begun to be followed and the move over has been made subject to the preceding three years' good ACRs (annual confidential reports).
ACRs are usually not written in time. Notwithstanding that ACRs are confidential, at least for the expectant candidates for move over or promotion, such candidates are made to run after officers who are responsible for getting ACRs written. Thus, years are lost and the delay so caused practically amounts to monetary punishment as move overs or promotions are not effective retrospectively.
To remedy the situation, move overs or promotions should be ordered in time and the officers responsible for writing ACRs should be required to explain the reason for delays.
MUHAMMAD IQTEDAR ALI KHAN
Karachi
'Can a bigot be cultured?'
This is about Mr M. J. Akbar's article "Can a bigot be cultured?" (Dawn, July 2). The first time I heard about banning Dante was in the 1950s. The late lamented Professor Hameed Ahmed Khan was informally talking on the subject in the staff lounge of Dyal Singh College where I was a lecturer in those days.
I always abhorred the banning and burning of books and individuals. And here we were being told to ban one of the greatest works of world literature. Not having adequate intellectual baggage to dispute the remarks of the learned professor, I had to keep silent.
Later, I read Divine Comedy in Italian, and more importantly, in its historical perspective. Mr Akbar calls Dante a bigot, and not only denies his standing as the epitome of mediaeval European culture, but straight away questions him being a cultured person.
Coming to bigotry first, Divine Comedy is largely a literary expression of the beliefs of the mediaeval church, which was still consigning thousands of individuals to flames for mere aberration of reason.
The centuries of the Crusades had accumulated copious propaganda giving an outrageously distorted picture of Islam to enlist fanatically destructive recruits. Dante was not a Wycliffe or a Voltaire.
It would take centuries for the religious tyranny and obscurantism to be finally quashed in the 18th century by the Enlightenment and the motto of Voltaire: "ecrasez l' enfame" (crush the infamy) of ecclesiastical tyranny. Dante was the product of his times.
Now we come to his culture. Dante's writings show his mastery of the learning of his time. His book Convivio, written during the first years of the 14th century, is considered an encyclopaedic summary of the contemporary European culture.
Undoubtedly, it is a sign of his culture and erudition that despite the ecclesiastical obscurantism, he was aware of the great intellectual achievements of contemporary Islam.
He calls Averroes (Ibn Rushd) the Great Commentator and places him alongside Avicenna (Ibn Sina) in the first circle of l'Inferno. Despite ecclesiastical interdiction of pagan literature, he takes the Roman poet Virgil as guide in his journey through l'Inferno.
Dante's love for Beatrice began at nine. His first literary work narrating this love, written at the age of 28, is one of the finest specimens of love poetry. Beatrice was not, or was, as Mr Akbar surmises, an "artistic conceit"? So what?
DR ZIAUS SAMAD
Viale Marco Polo, Rome, Italy
ADB-funded project in Sindh
The Sindh government has yet again agreed to get into hundreds of millions of more debt with the Asian Development Bank. Had the government been more active in organizing public debate and discussions, perhaps it would have been convinced that there is no need of external debt, and that such debts are not cost-effective, promote corruption, and hence add to the burden of the citizens.
The government still has an opportunity to reject the loan by not complying with the conditions (as it did with regard to the dubious Korangi Wastewater Project some years ago).
One hopes that the government will give this suggestion serious consideration. Since the Sindh government may have little discretion in the face of pressure from Islamabad and Manila, making the best of a bad situation could be to ensure minimal use of the loan funds and to use the funds effectively.
We, the Citizens Alliance in Reforms for Equitable and Efficient Development (Creed), have had a first look at some aspects of the DSSP loan taken from the Asian Development Bank.
Our impression is that the loan permits substantial unjustifiable expenditure such as luxury vehicles for government officials and donors, inflated salaries for civil servants and massive consultancies to bribe the civil society and pamper international friends of donors. There is also confusion about the responsibilities of the finance department, special project units and their internal and public accountability.
Public representatives in general and senior political leadership in particular need to nurture informed debate to prevent foreign loans from becoming another burden on the poor.
SARAH SIDDIQI
Creed, Karachi
Funeral bandits
It is not unusual that wedding parties are looted. But robbers adopted a new tactic at the Mewashah graveyard in Karachi recently. As mourners were busy with burial rites, a few hoodlums approached.
They whipped out their guns and demanded cash. A few people who came later sensed trouble and informed the police on their mobile phones. A police van soon arrived there, and the thugs escaped.
This event should serve as an eye-opener for people who carry a lot of cash to places where they don't have to spend it. Wedding hosts get security guards deployed for the safety of their guests, as well as of their expensive cars and jewellery. Now it seems similar arrangements are required at funerals also.
RAFI ADAMJEE
Karachi
CPLC role
It is heartening that the Citizens-Police Liaison Committee, under the leadership of Mr Sharfuddin Memon, has extended its area of operation and is no more confined to cases of car jacking and kidnapping for ransom.
The CPLC is accessible to all who seek its help in the solution/settlement of any problem relating to individuals or groups, be it money matters, payment of rightful dues or petty family disputes. And the problem is solved without incurring any expenses by persuasion and discussions. Here are two cases in point:
The managing committee of residents of an apartment complex had referred two cases to the CPLC. In one case the owner of an apartment was not paying maintenance charges for the last several years. The arrears running into six figures were paid by him when he was told that the managing committee was going to the CPLC for adjudication.
In the second case, another owner withheld payment of her contribution to the upgradation projects of the building. The CPLC intervened and persuaded the owner to pay.
With such help from the CPLC, it can become easier and simpler to maintain standards of hygiene and sanitation and provide all other facilities to residents.
CAPTAIN M. SHAHBAZ KHAN
Karachi
Misplaced priorities
This is with reference to the fixing of new, specially-designed blocks along the roadside and the islands of Karachi's Sharea Faisal. One fails to understand why this was done when the old blocks were in good shape.
These blocks are also being fixed in old city areas like Gari Khata and Burnes Road which have narrow and broken roads. At some places on M. A. Jinnah Road, footpaths are being raised to the level of new blocks. Shopkeepers are wondering what they will do if it rains and rainwater enters their shops.
Each of these blocks must have cost Rs125. Fixing it will cost Rs100 - somebody must be making big money. Karachi needs a lot of funds for education, healthcare, sanitation, etc., and does not require these blocks at least at present. The authorities must pay attention to the city's deteriorating sanitary conditions and carefully prioritize their objectives.
MOHAMMAD RAFI
Karachi
'All change...'
I agree with Ms Iffat Idris's point of view ("All change and no change", July 1) as regards the replacement of Mr Jamali, and considers it the voice of the soul of the democratic and progressive class in Pakistan.
The establishment is requested to end its dictatorial role in governance and let democracy flourish in the country.
KHALIL LAGHARI
Islamabad
You can also send letters to the Editor
Just send your message to the following address:
Make sure you include your full name, postal address, e-mail address, and in the case of Pakistan your day-time telephone number.