| 13 July 2004 | Tuesday | 24 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425 |
India's positive approach
Shutting doors on Pakistanis
Politics of the budget
President Pervez Musharraf now has a new prime minister in place and a prime minister in-waiting. By engineering these changes in the top echelon of the leadership, the general has very deliberately decided to opt for an evolutionary approach for giving the country a political system that, unlike those that preceded it, might prove to be durable.
What will be the main ingredients of the system that will be in place once the script developed by the president is fully played out? President Musharraf will remain the man in charge, calling the strategic shots in two areas - foreign affairs and internal politics.
His will be the main face the world's leaders will see as representing Pakistan. He will determine the direction the country will or should take in order to become a meaningful player in the global political system.
He will also retain the backing of the country's powerful military which will ensure that the coercive power will be available to the state whenever it is needed: to put down, for instance, sectarian violence in Karachi; to fight Islamic extremists in the country bent upon disturbing the status-quo; to expel foreign Islamic militants who have entered the country in search for sanctuaries.
The evolution of the system the general seems to be developing is not contingent upon his continuing to remain in uniform. There is no reason why he should lose the military's support were he to shed his uniform in favour of civilian attire.
Pakistan's military - notwithstanding some of the impressions that have been created about its political role inside and outside the country - has never ventured into politics to serve the interests of whoever were the commanders at any particular time. It intervened only when it appeared that the country was seriously veering off course, economically or politically.
After two elections, one for a seat in the National Assembly and the other within the National Assembly for electing the leader of the majority party, Shaukat Aziz will be installed as prime minister.
What will Aziz provide Musharraf? He has proved to be a competent manager of the economy and a persuasive spokesman for the country on economic matters both within and outside the country.
His new position will demand the display of similar talents in the arena of politics. Here he will have to give three different but related messages to the people.
One, to the people of Pakistan that the politicians have weakened political institutions to such an extent that, without oversight by a powerful institution such as the military, the country cannot hope to escape chaos if the system is left once again to its own devices.
Two, that all societies must evolve their own political systems - a Westminster style democracy is not necessarily the right structure for a country in Pakistan's situation. Three, that there cannot be any doubt that a system that allows full representation to the people is vastly superior to the one in which one person or a few people wield total power.
Installing a representative form of government does not simply mean handing over power to the people chosen in elections. Given the make-up of the Pakistani society, representation must be obtained at three levels - federal, provincial and local.
If these are two sets of responsibilities likely to be acquired by the country's two senior leaders and if they are likely to work in support of one another rather than against each other, Pakistan is clearly headed towards a French type of structure.
As they say, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it must be a duck. In the interest of clarity there will be no harm if President Musharraf explains to the people of Pakistan and to his many foreign audiences that that is the direction he is taking.
To proceed in that direction, the president will need to amend the Constitution one more time and to introduce at least four changes in the various laws and practices that currently underpin the political structure.
In order to be the first among the two "not quite equals," it would be a right move to have the president elected by popular vote rather than indirectly by a combined sitting of the national and political assemblies. This could be done after President Musharraf's current tenure as the head of the state runs its course.
An evolutionary approach such as the one President Musharraf appears to be taking would also require strengthening the system where weaknesses exist. Perhaps the most problematic part of the existing political system is the way the political parties work in the country.
With the possible exception of the Jamaat-i-Islami, no other political party has been built on strong political foundations. The governing party in the present National Assembly has morphed several times and it is only now that it is attempting to bring about some organizational improvements.
It is known that General Musharraf is interested in rebuilding the Pakistan Muslim League into a vibrant political organization with a programme of reform that appeals to the people and with grass roots support that will deliver to the citizens' needs at the local level. This is the area where not only the president but also the prime minister-in-waiting must devote his well demonstrated energies.
The military government has already provided him with the scaffolding he can use to create a development-oriented three-tier system of government - at the federal level at which policies are made and resources for the government's work are mobilized, at the provincial level where the bulk of the work pertaining to economic development gets done, and at the local level where people's needs for social services get to be satisfied.
If the PML is to become a truly representative organization, it must have appropriate presence at all three tiers of government with the ability and personnel to serve the citizens at these different levels.
Its platform should clearly indicate what it expects to achieve at these levels for the people whose support it will seek. It should also present to its membership for their approval the slates of candidates it will field at the national, provincial and local levels.
If Gen Musharraf succeeds in his "Project Pakistan" historians will find that one of the important contributions he made was to bring the government closer to the people by creating a representative system of local bodies. However, for local government to succeed it must be embedded in the political system.
Critics have said that Pakistan's military governments have always relied on local governments to bypass the established political structure. That may have been the principal reason why President Ayub Khan established his system of basic democracies and why President Ziaul Haq held local elections long before permitting a national poll.
But it must be recognized that the BDs played a critical role in ushering in the green revolution in the late 1960s and in bringing the government to the people's doorstep.
The system put in place by the Musharraf government can also be similarly effective - perhaps even more so. The most attractive part of the new structure is to put elected persons - the nazims - at the head of the districts and municipalities.
Musharraf's system of local government will be resisted by two powerful vested interests - the members of the political establishment and the members of the civil bureaucracy.
Both groups stand to lose; the former because of the loss of patronage to build support for themselves in their constituencies, the latter because of the loss of authority they have enjoyed since the days of the British raj.
The Musharraf-Aziz team must strengthen the system in part by allowing the political parties to contest elections at this level the next time around. Also, as I said in the article in which I looked at the budget proposals for the year 2004-2005, it is a mistake to place funds for local development projects in the hands of the legislators.
That is not their task; that is the task of the people elected to various local councils. While it is in the interest of Messrs Musharraf and Aziz to build a strong base of political support for themselves, they should also develop a framework which allows not only the PML but all political parties to become truly professional organizations.
This would require amendments to the Political Parties Act of 1962 in particular to stop financial misconduct. This could perhaps be done by giving these organizations access to public funds.
In a report produced two years ago for Britain's Department for International Development, Prof Mohammad Waseem and I made several proposals for funding political parties.
Among them was the recommendation that political parties should be provided state matching funds with a qualifying threshold of 7.5 per cent and 15.0 per cent votes in national and provincial elections. The use of these funds should be subject to strict audit by the Election Commission.
We also suggested that every party that puts up candidates for elections must publish audited statements of its accounts including the sources of funds and detailed explanations of all expenditures.
These audited statements should be sent to the Election Commission for its approval. Also sent to the Commission for its record but not the approval should be the manifestos and political programme of the parties.
It would enormously help the strengthening of the political party system if each organization that has received votes beyond a certain threshold is provided state funds to establish headquarters in Islamabad and in the provinces where they are active. Funding for these centres could be obtained from those donors who have interest in promoting political development.
Another area of reform is to help the legislators perform the functions for which they are sent to the various assemblies by their constituencies. Again, referring back to the report Prof Waseem and I wrote, the government could create a separate legislative service for providing staff to the members of the national and provincial assemblies, allowing committees in the assemblies to access specialist expertise, and enhance Senate's powers to cover money bills.
Financial resources for service should come directly from the National Assembly and not be subject to control by the government's executive branch. The service's work could also be overseen by the Elections Commission.
It is clear that strengthening the foundations of the political system will also require creating a fully autonomous Election Commission. This can only happen if the chairman and the members of the Commission are responsible neither to the executive nor to legislative branches of the government.
They should be appointed for fixed terms which could not be renewed. They could be nominated by the Supreme Court for approval by the Senate. To ensure protecting the rights of small parties, the confirmation of the Commission should not be a majority in the Senate but by a vote of at lest three-fourths of its members.
These are just some examples of the changes that might be introduced in the system to make it really effective and to provide institutional support to the two persons who are about to take their place at the helm of affairs.
India's positive approach
India's foreign policy formulated by the Congress party led by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was based on non-alignment. It is only natural to expect that the present Congress-led coalition government would promote the goals of multipolarity in International relations and against hegemonism of the kind being practised against countries such as Iraq.
The United Progressive Alliance in New Delhi, led by the Congress party, faces many dilemmas and problems in formulating foreign policy. Some of these problems have been inherited from the outgoing National Democratic Alliance government.
What are going to be the foreign policy priorities of the new government? There is a feeling amongst political groups that have assumed power that the course of events followed by the previous government needs correction.
The first challenge for the new government is to undo the pro-American tilt of the earlier government, as some analysts feel that during its six years in power the NDA government's handling of many important foreign policy matters were not in the best interest of India.
The BJP leadership favoured special relations with the US and had given a great deal of importance to its strategic relations with Israel.
Brijesh Mishra, National Security adviser of the BJP government, had earlier called for a Washington-Tel Aviv-New Delhi axis during a visit to Washington. In line with America's long-term strategic goals, Delhi was expected to curb China's growing influence.
India had also welcomed US missile defence programme aimed specifically against China. Jaswant Singh, former external affairs minister, even supported the continuation of US military bases in Central Asia countries that share borders with China.
China, on the other hand, does not consider India as a rival. It considers that maintaining friendly relations with its neighbours serves the best interest of China's security.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist), which supports the Congress coalition, seeks a clear commitment from the Congress that there would be special alliances with Russia, the European Union and China.
There is a demand from practically all elements in the present government for a foreign policy reorientation towards West Asia, including a reversal of pro-Israel policies and reiteration of India's traditional ties with the Arab world and support for the Palestinian cause.
The Communist Party wants the new government to make its displeasure with Israel known, specially over the latter's present aggressive actions against the people of Palestine.
In accordance with the policy of the earlier Congress governments, there should be an explicit commitment to multipolarity. It requires a critical reference to US unilateralism in world affairs.
The government is expected to promote multipolarity in world relations and oppose all attempts at unilateralism. The Indian foreign minister, while emphasizing the continuing relevance of the non-aligned movement in international affairs, stated that there was a need to make a distinction between the concept of non-alignment and the non-aligned movement. He said India was non-aligned even before the creation of the NAM.
A common minimum Programme issued by the Congress party relating to foreign affairs says: "Even as it pursues closer strategic and economic agreement with the US, the United Progressive Alliance will maintain the independence of India's foreign policy stance."
The foreign policy document of the Congress party does stress the improvement of ties with China and the continuation of the dialogue process with Pakistan. The South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (Saarc) is evidently a priority for the new government.
One of the important policy decisions to be taken by the new government is concerning Iraq. earlier, the Indian parliament had adopted a resolution saying that India was against sending troops to Iraq.
In the light of the unanimous resolution passed by UN Security Council, which India was quick to accept, it appears that the position is to be discussed afresh by the Indian cabinet committee.
During his recent visit to the US, foreign minister Natwar Singh stated that the Indian government would take a fresh look at the question of sending troops to Iraq.
In a statement the Communist Party of India (Marxist) pointed out that for the past 14 months there had been an uprising in Iraq. "The Iraqi people have had no say in choosing their government.
So there is no change in the situation." Janata Dal (secular) which supports the government from outside has made it clear that there is no question of sending troops to Iraq to strengthen American occupation. Let us see what policy decision is taken by the new government in this regard.
As far as India-Pakistan relations are concerned, the Congress-led government is expected to pursue a more consistent policy on the peace and normalization process as opposed to the policies of the National Democratic Alliance government.
The Congress did not support the snapping of sporting links, the banning of overflights and the scrapping of train and bus links with Pakistan following the attack on the Parliament House in December 2002. Natwar Singh has stated that he has a deep commitment to the peace process with Pakistan.
At one stage Natwar Singh had suggested that the Sino-Indian border talks could be the model for the resolution of the India-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir. The Indians must realize that their border dispute with China is in no way comparable to the dispute over Kashmir.
Similarly, commenting on relations with Pakistan immediately after taking over, he had said that the Shimla agreement was the "bedrock" of India's policy towards Pakistan.
Later, he clarified that not only Shimla agreement but also the Lahore declaration of 1999 and the Islamabad Declaration of January 2004 would be the basis of negotiations to resolve the Kashmir and other disputes.
India and Pakistan are both nuclear states with a well developed delivery system. This is one field where an understanding between the two countries to establish a nuclear restraint regime is possible, indeed necessary.
In fact, a meeting to develop nuclear confidence-building measures, has already been held in Delhi (June 19 and 20), where they agreed to alert each other of potential accidents or threats, They also reaffirmed their moratorium on conducting further nuclear tests "unless in exercise of national sovereignty."
They also agreed to formalize an understanding to notify each other when they conduct missile tests. An understanding or agreement in the nuclear field will go a long way to help make progress in other areas where problems require solutions.
The Congress government's approach to the question of a gas pipeline from Iran via Pakistan is positive. The previous government had misgivings about the project as the pipeline has to pass through Pakistan territory.
India now is willing to consider the project if Pakistan provides security guarantees for the pipeline. Pakistan is keen on the project, seeing it as a major CBM and also a revenue generating enterprise. It is ready to provide the guarantees necessary to expedite the project.
Foreign secretaries of two countries have already had a successful meeting on June 27-28 at which, apart from other issues, the thorny question of Kashmir was also discussed. The foreign ministers have already met on the sidelines of some international conferences.
It has been announced that Foreign Minister Natwar Singh is scheduled to pay an official visit to Pakistan on July 20. One hopes that the nuclear talks and resumption of dialogue as well as the exchange of visits by foreign ministers will eventually lead to a summit meeting. With all this we seem to be on track.
The writer is a retired major-general of the Pakistan Army.
Shutting doors on Pakistanis
Last week the BBC aired a documentary on the plight of Pakistanis living in the United States. It made my blood boil. These were decent, God-fearing people who had got caught up in events not of their making, even remotely, and whose lives had been shattered by a fear-driven bigotry that found legal validity in either new laws or old ones stretched to the limits of absurdity.
There was something Kafkaesque about it and altogether unworthy of a country that owes its greatness to its own rich immigrant past. I thought how different it had been when I had studied at the University of Southern California.
My book about those days, As Time Goes By, was an upbeat, thumbs-up account even though the shadow of McCarthy had fallen on the landscape. I was a child of the last days of the British Raj and to be in a free country was something that I treasured.
I had been an outspoken student and never afraid to speak my mind and rather than be persecuted or hounded, I was honoured and was made a member of Blue Key, a national fraternity of outstanding student leaders.
There was a race clause in its membership rules. Blue Key kept out the Afro-Americans. Outraged by this as were other members of our chapter, I was sent to Chicago for Blue Key's annual convention and I led the movement to have the race clause removed.
"I want to go back home and tell my countrymen how wonderful America was but what if they asked me about Blue Key? How could I explain that its doors were shut to some Americans because of their race?" I had said in my speech or words to that emotive effect.
I had written a scathing article in The Christian Monitor about McCarthyism. I had criticised it on a television and radio programme. I had said that McCarthyism posed a greater moral danger than communism.
And I wondered as I watched the BBC documentary what would have been my fate in the present climate of fear. Would I have been one of the passengers on the "planeloads" of Pakistanis who have been deported for some minor infraction of immigration rules, some so minor that they make a traffic offence seem like a felony. But an even more dangerous development is the delay/denial of student visas. I was sent a copy of a statement issued by the Association of Pakistani Physicians of North America (APPNA).
It raises the concern that "the doors of higher education are being shut to Pakistani physicians in United States." It makes depressing reading. Here are some extracts: " Of the total 1133 J1 visas for physicians approved by Education Council for Foreign Medical Graduates (ECFMG) in 2003, Pakistan remained on top with securing 154 of them with India closely trailing behind with 142.
While this news is a source of pride for every Pakistan it also has a depressing side as well. Only 33% of these individual were able to join their residencies on time as opposed to 60% of Indians and 80% of overall physicians.
"Of 154 Pakistani physicians seeking J - 1 visas for first-year residency positions in 2003, only 40 arrived on time, 12 were one to 14 days late, 24 came within 30 days, and 42 were more than a month late.
Data from ECFMG suggest no other country had 42 residents who were more than a month late. The remaining 36 could not arrive in US and therefore their residency contracts were cancelled.
This number of 21% was much more than the 6% of Indian Physicians, who had a similar fate. It's apparent that this change in political climate has been particularly punitive for physicians from Pakistan".
This year again, the Association of Pakistani Physicians of North America has been contacted by numerous physicians who have been denied entry into the United States. Some of them are physicians trying to come to the US in order to take the Clinical Skills Assessment test, which IMGs are required to pass before participating in the Match.
Others were denied visas to the United States after successfully securing residences here after having completed an exhaustive process of taking the required exams and interviews".
This is a strange kind of bigotry. To shut its doors to young men and women who want to go to the United States for higher education is not to make the United States safe from terrorism. The world will only be safe when it is free of fear.
To an extent it was understandable that immediately after 9/11, there should be this across-the-board putting down of shutters and because terrorism was a faceless enemy, like an epidemic of an unknown disease, precautions of the strictest kind could have been justified.
But a lot of time has elapsed and the shock-effect of 9/11 should have worn off. America's strength may come from its military but its greatness comes from its Bill of Rights and from the values it enshrines.
The highest form of patriotism comes from defending these values. Without them, America would be just another country. Its military might protects its shores but not its soul.
Terrorism is everyone's war. Those very Pakistanis whose visas are being delayed or denied could easily be its victims for most of the victims of terrorism are innocent men, women and children. Why should they be twice punished? The stereotyping of Pakistanis as potential terrorists is an outrage as is the rampant anti-Americanism. Both are the products of a closed mind.
The Statue of Liberty, the lady who lifts a lamp besides golden door was once a shining symbol. There is the danger that it might just become a tourist attraction. American should go back to being Americans, not global warriors.
Politics of the budget
An accidental government can only present an incidental budget. The most honest statement made by finance minister P. Chidambaram was that we should wait for seven months.
Only by next March will we know whether this government has legs: you need legs to walk towards an economic horizon. At the moment, it lives on friendly crutches that want to travel in harmony but can tilt in different directions.
The finance minister assured the parliament that he would be around when he said, "Main Hoon Na." In July 2004 that has a poignant resonance, imbued with personal faith, a government's hope, and a coalition's charity. In March 2005, that claim will presumably be backed by more assurance.
Every budget has a constituency, which is why politicians vie for the finance and railways portfolios. Two budgets were presented last week. There was clarity in one, because railways minister Laloo Prasad Yadav is not troubled by any confusion. He is his own constituency.
Everything he has done since winning the general elections has been geared to one objective: winning the specific elections of Bihar, due soon (possibly as soon as in October). He wanted to be home minister not only in recognition of his self-esteem but also to use that office to reinforce the Muslim vote in Bihar.
We would certainly have had some sharp announcements on Gujarat, POTA and Ayodhya by now if Laloo Yadav had got the job. As railways minister, he is preparing an enquiry into the incident at Godhra.
Every signal he has sent, from earthen pots in trains to virtual-ticketless travel to photographs showing him cleaning his teeth with a neem twig, has the same message: he is working for the Backward castes, artisans and Muslims, the framework of his electoral alliance.
He has found 7,000 vacancies and created some 30,000 new jobs (Indian railways is already the second largest employer in the world after the Chinese army). These carrots are going straight to his voters in Bihar. Populism? Sure. If you are not populist how can you get the popular vote?
Chidambaram's constituency was compulsion. He had to hide a coalition survival plan into the budget by rewards to the victors. There is nothing particularly wrong in this, except that there were too many victors.
At the top of the list was predictably Laloo Yadav, who got a "Bihar Package" worth Rs 3,350 crores. There is no clarification about whether this is fresh money or simply the funds left over from the Rs 4,000 crores offered to Bihar by the previous government but not utilized because in the bad old days money would be given only against defined schemes. This time the money will be handed over to Rabri Devi to be used as she wishes.
In all likelihood a good part of it will be used to clear the backlog in government salaries so that there is relief when assembly elections come around. But the Congress and the NCP also took away Rs 500 crores in drought relief to ease the pain before the Maharashtra state elections, so Laloo cannot be faulted alone.
The BJP looked after itself and its partners when it had the chance, the most infamous case being the world tour of Andhra Pradesh MLAs that was funded by Delhi. The politics of the budget was evident in the punishment handed out to those who have dared to oppose the government.
And so Uttar Pradesh got nothing. The message was that as long as UP does not vote for the Congress, it would not be paid any attention. Orissa had the temerity to vote for Naveen Patnaik, so it went off the financial map of India. On the other hand, free electricity to farmers in Andhra Pradesh is getting every bit of sympathy from Delhi.
The problem with this budget, though, is not in its politics. Since every government is political, every budget will be, to some extent, political. The problem is that it was not anchored on any new idea, or perhaps any idea at all. It was an accountant's budget, a summing up rather than a vision; with a lot of red herrings strewn about to make it look prettier than it really is.
This is not Chidambaram's fault, really. No finance minister can afford a large idea unless he is permitted the flexibility needed to raise resources that can back up that central objective. Nearly 90 per cent of a budget feeds upon itself, year after year.
The rough calculus is this. Defence and planning eat up half the budget (note, however, that twice as much is spent on plans than on defence). Subsidies and salaries account for some 20 per cent, and 27 per cent is paid out on interest. Add a few packages and there is not much left.
The finance minister could not raise taxes on income or wealth for fear of alienating the urban middle classes, and he could not raise resources from disinvestments since that was a whipping boy of both the Left and the Congress in the elections. And so the service sector, which furnishes the biggest chunk of our GDP, is bound to get hit He cannot have a revenue-neutral budget, can he?
The last budget that Chidambaram produced, when I.K. Gujral was prime minister, is widely described as "dream budget". Well, this one is full of dreams. It is full of good intentions, without offering any clue as to how to achieve them.
The finance minister wants to cut the revenue deficit to 2.5 per cent by the end of this financial year and eliminate it by 2008. I too dream of owning the Buckingham Palace.
How he can do so without a whisper on cutting government expenditure, or ending the profligacy of states is beyond rational understanding. But to be fair, maybe this is a subject he will take up when he presents his "real" budget in March.
The government is fortunate that it inherits an 8.2 per cent growth in GDP. A bullish economy does not taper off unless hugely mismanaged, and both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Chidambaram know their responsibilities. (Note: Subramaniam Swamy helpfully points out that in 1996 Chidambaram inherited a growth rate of eight per cent and brought it down to 4.6 per cent after two budgets.)
The simple truth is that there is no money to pay for any of the stated objectives, minor or major. It was politically necessary to advertise a thrust towards agriculture, but look at the figures for spending on irrigation: Rs 829 crores.
Compare this with the outlay on civil aviation, which is Rs 1,603 crores. At the very least this should have been the other way round, particularly since Air India and Indian Airlines should be either profitable or privatized. (Curiously, the finance minister has actually made life harder for the nationalized airlines with his tax on leased aircraft, but that is another story.).
Similarly, there is much talk of a Suez Canal between the east and west coast, etc, but the outlay on water bodies is just Rs 100 crores. I suppose there should be enough to pay for an initial project report, which can then be described as progress.
There are other problems. Investment in primary education, for instance, will emerge out of a two per cent cess. This is an excellent intention patched together in a hurry.
Any careful study of the state of education would prove that government-administered primary education is the problem, not the solution. The infrastructure is rotten and the commitment worse. It would have been far better to incentivize the private sector into rural education, and ensure better quality on a wider base.
But, as noted earlier, problems of detail are not the real problem. It is evident that there was not enough time for the government to put together a theme and make its first budget into a launching pad for five years of power.
The prime minister said recently that he wanted the Indian economy to follow the Chinese model. I presume he means that in only the vaguest sense, because the Chinese model cannot be created without a party dictatorship that ensures minimal wages and draconian discipline upon assembly-line labour while ensuring the highest returns to foreign capital.
A report in the International Herald Tribune by Keith Bradsher from Guangzhou might serve as a further warning. It is headlined 'Some regions thrive; others stagnate'.
This budget will not create any problems in the coalition, since everyone understands the need for give and take. The criticism by the Left about some of the provisions, like the increase in foreign direct investment in insurance, is par for the course.
The Left never expected to agree with everything a Congress finance minister did, and will restrict itself to verbal distance if it cannot force any changes. If there is a problem, it might be with the electorate, which has high expectations from any new government, particularly one born in surprise.
This, after all, is the first chance that the Congress has had after 1991 to give a new shape to the Indian economy. The moment was right for a big idea. Instead, we got neither a good budget nor a bad one. We merely got a boring one. A government cannot afford to look stale so quickly.
The writer is editor-in-chief of Asian Age, New Delhi.