| 30 August 2004 | Monday | 13 Rajab 1425 |
Short cut to fame and fortune
Discarding the habit of patriotism
Statistical silence
Several foreign academicians who were recently in Islamabad attending a conference, were very impressed by the well-planned layout, greenery, cleanliness and disciplined traffic of the Capital city. So awed were they by Islamabad city that a tinge of jealousy could even be detected from them, one of whom is an Indian residing in the US.
By comparison with many cities in the developing world, Islamabad definitely comes up among the top in looks and orderliness. A major reason that has been cited for this is that it is a relatively new and young city.
Another reason is the limited growth so far of the industrial and manufacturing sectors, which in many cities are magnets for mass rural- urban migration leading to the urban unruliness commonly associated with encroachments.
Yet though, like many other cities in the region where anti- encroachment drives by municipal administrations are a common, routine phenomenon, Islamabad too has had its fair share of anti- encroachment campaigns.
In fact, the anti-encroachment drive in the Capital Territory was recently stepped up with the establishment of a separate, exclusive directorate for anti- encroachment in the Capital Development Authority.
Previously, anti-encroachment was being handled by CDA's Directorate of Municipal Administration, aided by the Enforcement Directorate. Anti-encroachment drives in the past had mainly targeted the hundreds of Chappar (roadside) hotels, the kutchi abadis, and the street vendors and shopkeepers who encroach on the roadsides, pavements and footpaths in different markets of the city. Encroachers have been booked and fined, their makeshift structures demolished and removed, and their possessions confiscated.
In several instances, the authority's zest in removing the encroachments had even led to violent clashes between encroachers and the police, both in the urban and rural areas, with CDA often vowing to continue the drive until the elimination of all encroachments, or as two CDA chairmen have described it, until the Capital is free from "this evil".
Results, however, have been mixed, with many anti- encroachment drives in the past failing to yield the desired outcome. As it often happens in other cities too, the street encroachments reappear again on the same site as the hawkers and vendors restart their business.
While encroachments are usually blamed for spoiling the beauty of the city and increasing pollution, those in the suburb or rural areas block new developmental efforts.
The authority is said to have failed to gain possession of thousands of acres of land in the suburbs of the Capital Territory, despite several anti-encroachment drives there.
Unauthorized built-up units on some of these agricultural lands facilitated owners to demand, as compensation by CDA for acquiring their lands, the much more expensive residential plots within the Capital Territory instead of the cheaper agricultural land in Punjab and Sindh.
The controversy over compensation by CDA has resulted in long-drawn litigations, which have stalled the development of new residential sectors like D-12 and E-12 for as long as nearly 20 years.
With the recent establishment of the new Anti-Encroachment Directorate, yet another ever more fervent clean-up campaign has been kicked off in the Capital Territory. CDA is planning to arm itself with more teeth to fight encroachers, especially in the rural areas, through amending the rules and regulations regarding land acquisition that are enshrined in the 1960 CDA Ordinance.
Some other cities in the region have even tried implementing steeper fines and encroachment removal charges, as well as passing anti-encroachment bills that make residence in a slum, street vendoring and construction in undeveloped suburban areas illegal.
But in many instances, such attempts by civic administrations to ensure that anti-encroachment drives yield better results are often disappointing. This is because encroachment is like cancer, which grows again after being removed, unless a cure can be found for its persistent reappearance.
The growth of encroachments like kutchi abadis and street/pavement vendoring represents the basic failure of governments to discharge their constitutional obligation by devising plans for maximum utilization of the potential of lands, for appropriate rural employment measures, as well as for a housing/accommodation policy that is need-based rather than wealth-based.
Since urban development and planning in the Capital, as with many other cities, lack an appropriate housing plan and the provision of other auxiliary facilities for workers and migrant labour, it is natural that non-beautifying, haphazard phenomena like kutchi abadis, street vendors, chappar hotels, etc., should emerge to meet the needs of the very working class who is responsible for building Islamabad city with its labour.
Development activity in Islamabad is expected to speed up in the near future. CDA has already announced a number of projects, including a flyover at Zero Point, an underpass at Jinnah Avenue, extension of Blue Area, recreational facilities at Rawal lake and Fatima Jinnah Park, renovation of the facilities on Margalla Hills at Daman-i-Koh and Pir Sohawa, as well as the development of new sectors.
Unless the needs of the working class who are involved directly or indirectly in these projects are met in a planned and organized manner by the authorities concerned, encroachments can only be expected to grow side by side with the development of the Capital.
Short cut to fame and fortune
Young people in my neighbourhood call Mr Shaukat Aziz 'Short-cut Aziz'. When I asked one of the boys why was the change of name necessary, he replied, "Sir ji, in your time he would have been called Via Bhatinda Aziz."
"Don't be disrespectful to the new prime minister. He is St Patricks, Burnhall and all, you know," I told the boy. "You may be right, Sir, but right now he belongs to the PML and PML stands for Parvez Musharraf League. You are much better qualified than Short-cut Aziz and had you been in the PML, you would have stood a better chance of making it to the prime minister's house," said the boy.
"Don't be stupid. Mr Shaukat Aziz is the best man for the top slot," I said. "It is a dog eat dog world Sir ji. You do not know anything about politics." The boy ran away but he set me thinking. The opposition had boycotted the prime minister's election in the National Assembly because its candidate, Mr Javed Hashmi, was not allowed to be produced in the House.
The speaker had accepted Mr Hashmi's candidature but had ruled that he could not be produced in the House. Perhaps a decision to this effect was taken elsewhere. I was sorrier still at the opposition's boycott of the election. It was a grave setback to the democratic process or whatever passes for it in our country. But why should I bother with all this?
******
Patrick French is barely 40. His book, Liberty or Death received rave reviews when it was published. On British economic problems after the war, French wrote:
In April 1945 the economist John Maynard Keynes prepared a paper for the War Cabinet on Britain's 'overseas financial policy for the period of transition following the defeat of Japan'.
It was a document of substantial historical importance, since it identified and summed up the economic bind in which successive British governments were to find themselves over the next ten years.
He pointed out that 'by cunning and kindness', Britain had managed to keep most of its wartime debts in sterling rather than in foreign currency or gold, and that it was therefore in the debtors' interest not to disrupt the British economy.
However, the debt had now reached the 'prodigious total' of 3,000 million, which made British post-war financial independence from the United States impossible without substantial cuts in public spending.
Keynes took the view that imperial profligacy was the obvious target, since Britain's 'financial embarrassments' were 'mainly the result of cash expenditure' in Africa, the Middle East and India, 'without the Treasury knowing either beforehand or afterwards, what it has been spent upon'.
Between 1942 and 1944, the British government had spent 2,000 million on policing and administering the Empire: 'Thus it is this expenditure which is wholly responsible for our financial difficulties.'
Keynes asserted that from the date of a ceasefire in Asia, Britain would be running an overseas deficit of around 1,400 million a year, and that unless such spending was brought 'under drastic control at an early date ... our ability to pursue an independent financial policy in the early post-war years will be fatally impaired'.
Sadly, this advice was ignored both by the Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his successor Clement Attlee, although it was a problem that had been deepening for the previous two decades.
Churchill hoped the Empire might somehow be conjured into continuity, while Attlee deluded himself into thinking all former imperial subjects would unite for evermore in a gooey bond of brotherhood called the Commonwealth. The Empire was no longer turning a profit, or even paying its way.
Between 1924 and 1937 Britain's trade surplus with India had fallen from 75 million to 23 million, yet few politicians had been willing to accept the advantages of British withdrawal. The result was what the historian Correlli Barnett has called 'one of the most outstanding examples of strategic over-extension in history'.
Even at its zenith, the coherence of the British Empire depended on self-confidence. It was never the unified pink swathe of territory seen in old atlases, but a collection of dominions, protectorates, crown colonies and dependencies held together with the aid of propaganda and the Royal Navy.
In retrospect it is surprising it lasted as long as it did, since, with the exception of Malaya, all the imperial colonies were losing money from the 1920s onwards.
The Suez crisis of 1956, which is often depicted as the moment of Britain's final imperial collapse, was in fact little more than the spasmodic twitching of a phantom limb.
After Indian independence, Britain continued to play at being a major world power, maintaining a large standing army in the Middle East, acting as banker to the sterling area with the aid of American cash, and investing millions of pounds in East African groundnuts.
The result was systemic economic and political decline, encouraged on all sides of the House of Commons, which was to have a destructive lasting effect on Britain. By 1950 the Colonial Office was to have tripled its pre-war size, and Britain would be spending between 3 and 4 per cent of its gross national product on Commonwealth defence.
The belief in Empire remained long after its practical uses had evaporated, but rather than accept the fact and cut loose from old ties, successive governments preferred to concentrate on the management of decline.
Discarding the habit of patriotism
During the Narasimha Rao era, a European diplomat got rare access to a prison in Srinagar where he asked an inmate about the care being given by his Indian captors to issues of his basic comfort and human rights. "Oh, thank you, kind Sir.
We are treated rather well by the authorities," the prisoner replied instantly. Asked which part of Kashmir he belonged to, pat came the answer: "I come from POK, Sir."
Had the inmate called out his address as Azad Kashmir or something equally appropriate to go with his status as a Kashmiri prisoner in an Indian jail, the diplomat would have probably found his story more convincing than was eventually going to be the case. But 'POK' tended to give the inmate away.
And yet we can understand the compulsions of a tutored prisoner performing the role of a planted PR man, so what if he manages to miss the crucial distinction between Azad Kashmir and POK.
On the other hand it seems far more difficult to comprehend the reasons for the so-called independent and objective journalists of India and Pakistan to fall into the trap of official jargon that comes with their respective nationalist historiography.
Is it professionally kosher for journalists to flaunt their nationality, quite often even their patriotism in war and in peace? To a few of us in the profession the question might seem instantly absurd.
Should we have expected American and British reporters who covered World War II from the battle-zones, from the frontline trenches, to allow for any heroic description of the Nazis? It's a valid question, but one that can be tackled with equally tantalizing counter questions.
Was it then not patently unpatriotic of all those American journalists in Vietnam who refused to turn the blind eye to the blood curdling massacres of My Lai? Was it not a betrayal of the "home team" to expose the heart-rending trauma of the napalm-stricken naked Vietnamese girl that was to be etched in everyone's memory for ever?
Conversely, and in a more contemporary context, if patriotism is indeed a legitimate emotion for journalists to possess, then why do we feel exasperated by the deeds of the so-called embedded journalists who covered the war in Iraq from the exclusive perspective of the American war effort, often for the exclusive benefit of the Pentagon? And how then should we regard the contributions of those few western journalists, such as Robert Fisk, for example, who never ever relented from the avowed mission of reporting the truth as they saw it, to expose the horrors of war from close, bodily harmful quarters?
These issues are urgent and relevant for journalists in South Asia. Aspects of these ostensibly semantic issues have been raised informally among journalists, including several times during the meetings of this or that forum claiming to represent the region's media.
The use of certain descriptions such as Azad Kashmir and Held-Kashmir are patently Indo-Pakistani in origin and currency. These represent narrow nationalist points of view and are not even used in neutral forums such as the United Nations.
Why don't we leave it to the officials to quarrel for as long as they like about whatever differences they see in the use of the words "issue" or "dispute" to go with their respective views on Kashmir? Is it not possible to sit across the table over a couple of days to thrash out a common lexicon for issues and ideas that divide us so meaninglessly?
There is a great penchant among our tribe to hold veritably incestuous meetings in this country or that to pontificate on matters of high diplomacy where senior journalists from the charmed circles assume the role of make-believe foreign secretaries as it were to prepare a draft or a declaration with great deliberation.
It is a shame on the other hand that we have to lean for help on organizations such as the Committee for the Protection of Journalists based in New York for elementary help, for example to find out which colleague has been incarcerated or simply bumped off mysteriously by our respective government agencies.
Why do we allow our establishments to get the better of us? Why is it that we carry verbatim our spokesmen's briefings without asking them: How come you quote Amnesty International's report to reinforce your briefing about ethnic upsurge in, say, Karachi, but reject the same Amnesty as a western propaganda tool when it seeks to visit Kashmir to probe rights abuses there?
Why do we sometimes behave worse than the tutored, planted jail inmate when it comes to reporting cases of terrorism against each other? Every Indian who has returned from a foreign visit has had a first-hand experience of the immigration official's scowl as he turns the Indian passport a dozen times over and through some high-tech contraption before determining the holder's true credentials.
This exercise could sometimes take quite a long while. Consider on the other hand our quick conclusions when we rush to tell the stories of so-and-so Pakistani terrorist in Gujarat or so and so RAW agent in Karachi who were killed in an encounter. No passport, no immigration official. Only the killer's word.
It is not a difficult task to call the bluff of our self- styled minders. Yes, it is true that in the process we may have to forgo an invite to a presidential banquet here or a prime ministerial junket there.
But we can begin by asking a simple question that Arundhati Roy asked the other day. "Just who do you suppose holds the keys to war or peace between India and Pakistan?" she wondered.
Do we for that matter care to know what brought about the change of heart within the Indian establishment between December 13, 2001, when we were suddenly set on the course of a ghastly nuclear war and April 18, 2003, when a dramatic but as yet unexplained craving for peace suddenly took over?
There was a very interesting analysis in The Washington Post recently about the newspaper's error of judgment in not taking the alternative view of its reporters seriously when they questioned the basis for the Iraq war. The article by Howard Kurtz should make a highly relevant subject of discussion when journalists from our region meet the next time.
* * * * *
Hailed by India's Election Commission as a move to uphold the cause of democracy, the country plans to help "young democracies" around the world with personnel and other expertize to conduct elections.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for this was inked by the Election Commission and the United Nations in New Delhi which Chief Election Commissioner T.S. Krishna Murthy described as a "historic and unique moment".
UN officials say in the years ahead, the world body would have to face incredible challenges to provide assistance to countries including Afghanistan and Iraq to conduct elections there.
Statistical silence
In 1995, the number of Internet users in the country was a mere 1,500. Nine years on, the number has risen to over 1,600,000. But this information technology revolution seems to have tiptoed past government offices, where Internet facilities have failed to make work-shy officials more responsive to public queries.
These feelings where expressed by a friend who sent an email to the Sindh Bureau of Statistics a month ago and has yet to hear from the government department.
The friend, a reporter by profession, needed some information and chanced upon the website of the Sindh Bureau of Statistics on the worldwide web. In response to his email, he promptly received a message from the bureau which said: "Dear --: Thank you for your query at www.sindhbos.gov.pk. Shortly an assiciated (sic) person will contact you in this regard."
The friend says that the exchange of emails took place on July 23, and there's been silence since then.
Karsaz Road
Finally, I.I. Rahimtoola Road is being widened. Popularly known as Karsaz Road, it has been a motorists' nightmare. Traffic is fast, most of it airport-bound. There has been no median, with large buses and minibuses hooting and shrieking to scare car drivers out of their way.
This busy artery is now being widened, and the old road will be one of the two tracks divided by a median. More than 50 per cent of the job has already been finished. Thanks are due to the Karsaz naval establishment, which agreed to let the road be widened.
Also undergoing repair and widening is the old Dalmia Road that runs from the National Stadium to Rashid Minhas Road. Used often as an alternative to University Road, it was narrow and full of potholes, bumps and ditches.
It saw some repairs on the eve of Armistice Day (Nov 11) last year when foreign diplomats came to the cemetery to pay homage to the war dead. Improved, it should serve to take some load off University Road.
For the first time in decades, someone appears to be taking care of Karachi. Roads have been repaired and given a black top, parks have been laid, and new flyovers are being built.
The mayor has made us feel there is someone who is looking after Karachi - although so much more needs to be done, not least to clear the city of garbage and its mounds of plastic bags.
Untended school
If you wallow in disorder and dirt, you get accustomed to it. This is true of a government girls school on M.A. Jinnah Road. Generations of girls have passed out of the Government Girls School No 1, Jacob Lines.
Going by the school's present appearance, it seems that those who run it do not have even the most rudimentary idea of upkeep. The school's boundary wall hasn't seen a whitewash for decades, nor has anybody bothered to give a new coat of paint to the black gate.
There isn't even a signboard to direct those looking for the school. Even the chowkidar at the gate did not know the name of the building he was guarding. When asked what the school's name was, he had to seek the help of another man. This man pointed to a blackboard on a wall inside the school.
We, must, of course, ignore the wall chalkings on the boundary wall - from political slogans to miracle cures by quacks. But the school authorities can at least manage to whitewash the boundary wall, paint the board and give the school a signboard.
Godsend for KBCA
Prices in the real estate market have reached dizzying heights. A house which cost Rs4.5 million two years ago is selling for Rs7.5 million. The prices of apartments have shot up even more. In many cases they have doubled.
The explanations for this phenomenon are as varied as there are experts claiming to know all about it. Some say the after-shocks of 9/11 are now being felt and since many Pakistanis are returning home, they are buying houses/apartments to live in.
Others attribute this to the house loan policy of banks which allows people to take loans while mortgaging their property. Still others speak of the growing insecurity in the city which is driving people to move into flats which are deemed to be safer.
All this has resulted in agents chasing prospective buyers and sellers. They are also responsible for a boost in the prices of property, for they bring in the speculation factor.
All this would have one believe that the turnover in the property market must be fast and transactions must be taking place rapidly. But that is not really the case. The biggest hurdle is the Karachi Building Control Authority which is supposed to give a no-objection certificate for every apartment or house sold.
The KCBA promulgated this rule to curb the "unauthorized, illegal and haphazard construction" that is destroying Karachi. The Sindh High Court upheld this rule, which is fair enough if one keeps in mind how the builders have played havoc with the landscape of the city.
But as it is said that one man's meat is another man's poison, this law which has made the task of people wanting to sell or buy property more difficult, has been a godsend for the KBCA.
An NOC which officially requires a fee of Rs200 now costs as much as Rs15,000. You refuse to pay the money and your file will inevitably be lost and you can forget your transaction.
The KBCA even claims that it delivers the NOC to people's homes free of charge if they are disabled and cannot put in a personal appearance as they are supposed to do - though the rules are nowhere clearly written.
Small wonder that one deputy registrar's office which was registering 25 sale deals in a day now has only five coming in. Won't all this be added to the cost of the property?
Din at the zoo
A visit to the Karachi Zoo reminds one of a mela and not a zoological garden. On Sundays, most visitors appear at the site in their finest clothes and bring all their family - not to see the animals but to use the grounds for playing and passing time.
While there is nothing wrong with that, the whole place assumes a carnival-like air, and all sorts of vendors come to the place to sell their wares, ranging from children's toys to toothbrushes.
The zoo administration seems to have liked the idea because they have deputed a man outside the reptiles enclosure who bellows into a loudspeaker the fact that there are a number of freaky animals on display.
While parents relax and gossip, many children take to throwing stones at the animals, particularly the alligators. To add to all this is the zoo's special display: the once favourite half-man, half-lion exhibit, which is now supplemented by a man in a cartoon outfit sitting on top of a ladder broadcasting the qualities of the creature at the top of his voice - again through a loudspeaker.
Barna in town
Veteran journalist Minhaj Barna was here last week for a short stay in a city that saw him emerge as a trade union leader and which he has forsaken for a calmer, retired life in Rawalpindi/Islamabad.
He came to the offices of Dawn to meet old colleagues and friends, and a great deal of nostalgia floated down the corridors. Memories of the movement for press freedom launched under his leadership during the Ziaul Haq regime were revived, and it was also recalled how the wives of journalists had turned against Mr Barna.
He is forever sending our husbands to jail, the wives used to complain but would nevertheless turn up to head protest demonstrations. But the 1977-78 movement, in which journalists were even sentenced to flogging, represents an inspiring moment in the history of the Pakistani press.
Mr Barna says he is spending his time in seclusion writing a book that will attempt to place the journalists' struggle for a free press and better working conditions in a political perspective, and thus build on the chronicling work done by the late Zamir Niazi.
email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com.