| 08 September 2004 | Wednesday | 22 Rajab 1425 |
Monitoring educational institutions
Pakistani rice market
Role of military
Killing of hostages
'Rothbard Doctrine' and US policies
Ayub Khuhro as defence minister
Telephone complaint
Government colleges
Constitution of Muslim League
Major Shabbir Sharif
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I am a farmer and own 350 acres of fertile land, five kilometres above the tail of Reti Minor in Daharki Taluka, Ghotki district. This land is on the bank of the canal, well laid out with exclusive pucca watercourses. This season too, like the previous two seasons, I was not able to sow a single acre of cotton, the only cash crop in this area, due to lack of water.
When the aab kalani (irrigation) season starts, it is a free-for-all situation on the canals. Upstream farmers install suction pumps of 12" to 18" diameter to draw water.
If their land is at a distance, they break modules which are only brick walls to enormous sizes or cut the canal banks to draw out even the last drop of water. Thus, they cultivate 100 per cent of their lands, sparing not a single drop of water for tail-enders whose hue and cry falls on the deaf ears of the authorities concerned.
This is the fate of all tail-enders whose number runs into thousands. It was only after Nadir Akmal Khan Leghari came personally to this canal and pulled up the officials that water trickled down and I was able to sow 50 acres, out of 350, of 'bajra' (millet). How many places he can visit is a million-dollar question.
The chief minister seems to be a down-to-earth politician as he has deputed the Rangers to control this daylight robbery (now people steal water at night). The irrigation minister has asked a committee to look into this mess. We hope this does not end like the Boston tea party.
Unfortunately, the money earmarked for irrigation projects is used to enrich officials and political bosses or their cronies. The pet method used is to delay implementation of a proposed project until a few days are left for the irrigation season to start. Contracts are awarded to cronies and hangers-on who bring more misery.
To remedy the situation, the upgradation of the irrigation system should be a continuous process, planned, executed and monitored by dedicated engineers, with an eye on both future and present needs.
Moreover, small irrigation channels should also be lined along with the watercourses because most of the water pilferage takes place there. The Irrigation Act should be amended to empower officials to run the system smoothly. The offence of water theft should be made non-bailable.
The dichotomy between the irrigation department and the Sindh Irrigation Development Authority has also sabotaged the system. We are inclined to undermine time-tested systems without proper research and planning, rather than improve upon them. The sooner this is resolved, the better.
Wahs (medium-sized canals) need full rehabilitation. Patchwork repair by petty contractors should be avoided. Similarly, interference by influential persons to change technical parameters of plans to benefit a few individuals at the expense of the common farmer must be avoided. Also, farmers should use canal water judiciously and thus avoid causing distress to lower-end farmers.
CHAUDRY RUSTAM ALI
Daharki
Monitoring educational institutions
It was good to read (Dawn, August 29) that Sindh Chief Secretary Mohammad Aslam Sanjrani had held a meeting to improve matters in the education department. It was reportedly decided that provincial secretaries who were education secretaries in the past would pay surprise visits to public sector institutions and present their recommendations to the education secretary.
A committee of former education secretaries has been constituted for the purpose. The chief secretary, who presided over the education department in the past, has also been included in the committee as a member.
On the recommendation of a former education secretary, it was decided that the chief secretary would also pay surprise visits to public educational institutions and suggest ways and means for their improvement.
Whereas the report highlights the concern of the chief secretary to focus attention on the education department and other spheres under his administrative control, there is another side to be considered.
As the chief secretary is the busiest executive in the secretariat, it is too much to expect him to pay surprise visits to educational institutions and hammer out methods for their improvement. It should be left to his discretion to do so if he gets time.
Also, how embarrassed the incumbent education secretary will feel when advice is heaped on him by former education secretaries. Again, why should secretaries of other departments come forward to cleanse the education department instead of putting their own departments in order?
So, it will be appropriate to consider the setting up of a resource committee in each department, comprising senior department officials, a retired expert on the subject, a nominee of the head of the department from outside, a journalist/information official (this can be revised suitably).
The committee will work as a watch-dog under the direct control of the head of the department in his/her supervisory and advisory capacity. It will receive complaints from public and monitor their process till the cause of the complaint is removed, in a way that the normal business of the department is not hampered.
The committee will recommend measures to reduce paperwork, cut delays, control expenditure and improve punctuality and decorum in office. It will also attend to the welfare and training of staff. Thus, it will relieve the head of the department of a plethora of routine matters, allowing him more time for surprise visits, effective implementation of policy, etc.
MOHAMMAD ALEEM SHAIKH
Karachi
Pakistani rice market
This is with reference to the news item "Pakistani rice losing Saudi market" (Dawn, August 4). As I have lived in Saudi Arabia for more than 25 years and have been involved in selling and marketing FMCG items, in both commodity and branded categories, and in meeting various Pakistani, Indian and other countries' trade delegations and commercial consuls, I take this opportunity to submit some points:
1. Traditionally, Saudi Arabia is a parboiled or 'sella' market. We in Pakistan started putting up a proper plant for parboiled rice only last year, while India has specialized in manufacturing and supplying machinery and plant for parboiled rice for the past two decades. India is producing hundreds of varieties of rice but the most wanted is 'basmati' which is produced only in the Punjab area only of the two countries.
2. Parboiling mechanism starts at the paddy stage and once the husk is out, it will produce only white rice.
3. From 1974 large numbers of Pakistanis have started moving to Saudi Arabia and as the majority of them is Basmati users, they have attracted Saudis who have developed a taste for 'basmati' as white rice and 'biryani' as a supreme rice dish.
4. Indian 'basmati' is always 40 to 50 per cent more expensive than the Pakistani rice.
5. Indian rice is freely available whereas the Rice Export Corporation of Pakistan promotes wholesale trade instead of branding and image-building.
6. Indian rice traders have opened offices and warehouses in Gulf countries. They buy from the RECP big quantities of rice which they mix with Indian 'basmati' and sell as Indian rice.
7. Pakistani traders have started selling rice in Saudi Arabia but they are not able to maintain quality. This is damaging the reputation. However, there are some Pakistani companies which have earned both business and name in the last 10 to 12 years.
8. The role of our consulate in this regard is very in effective as it does not provide any effective guidance to either local traders or Pakistani exporters. On the contrary, the Indian commercial section of the mission is more active with local buyers in promoting Indian goods.
N.H. HAIDRI
Karachi
Role of military
On my recent visit to Pakistan I viewed a private TV channel's talk show broadcast on August 31. One of the participants, a retired general and the serving head of Pakistan's biggest steel mill, stated that the cream of Pakistan went to the army where they were trained and groomed for two years.
I am afraid that the cream of Pakistan goes to its medical and engineering universities, to institutions like GIK, LUMS and IBA. The best of them proceed to become PhDs and end up serving under mediocrity.
If what the honourable general said was to be assumed to be the gospel truth, then why has the developed world not acquired the services of its uniformed bureaucracy?
We live in a world where specialists alone, having been trained and educated in their specific fields, are expected to deliver. There is no room for those who consider themselves to be jack of all trades. In the developed world there is rule of law.
Their professors, scientists, doctors, engineers, lawyers and others are the highest paid and get the best perks. The Third World instead is ruled by mediocre people who unfortunately consider themselves to be the cream. That is our dilemma - being ruled by dictators and self-imposed emperors and kings.
The world's most advanced and powerful army is commanded by its elected president and not by a uniformed general. The president of the US is the supreme commander of all US forces. The strength of the developed world lies in its technological superiority and the economic boost that accrues from it.
During World War II, when more than half of London was destroyed by Nazi Germany, the elected civil premier of the UK continued to rule it. When asked to declare an emergency, Churchill said that as long as the civil courts could function, imposition of martial law could not be justified.
GUL ZAMAN
Peshawar
Killing of hostages
What a travesty of justice it was to hold RAW responsible, as was done by a Pakistan government official (Dawn, Sept 3), for the reaction in Kathmandu to the savage killing of 12 Nepalese hostages by a militant group in Iraq this week.
Even if RAW were in it, this 'opportunity' to interfere was provided by none other than the militant group in Iraq which claims to be killing innocent souls in the name of a certain 'cause'.
No end can be justified by means that are reprehensible on all grounds. And, no end can possibly be achieved through barbaric acts that violate all basic laws of nature.
The above is only one of the innumerable brutal acts committed by desperate militant groups in Iraq, which have been on a hostage taking and killing spree for quite some time now.
Even more appalling is the fact that these Muslim militant groups are not being condemned for criminal and absolutely irreligious acts either by Muslims, in general, or by Muslim governments, in particular.
Only those with a this-worldly personal and political stake are speaking up against specific situations arising from some 'politically incorrect' hostage taking as those of French journalists. The otherwise deafening silence on this issue in the Muslim world has brought things to a pass that even innocent young children are being taken hostage.
Unless the Muslim conscience wakes up to save its own identity, the Ummah is likely to sink deeper into crises it is trying hard to emerge from through reliance on means forbidden in religion.
DR MAHNAZ FATIMA
Karachi
'Rothbard Doctrine' and US policies
The late Murray N. Rothbard, an Austrian economist who taught in the US, wrote in 1990 a satirical piece entitled "Invade the world". He wrote: "Very few other countries are as politically correct as the US, or have the wit to impose a massively statist programme in the name of 'freedom,' 'free trade,' 'multiculturalism,' and 'expanding democracy.'
And so, since no other countries shape up to US standards in a world of sole superpower they must be severely chastised by the US, I make a modest proposal for the only possible consistent and coherent foreign policy: the US must, very soon, invade the Entire World!"
The policies advocated by Washington in the post-Cold War era and particularly after 9/11 strongly reflect on the US administration's commitment to the "Rothbard doctrine" of invading the world.
In a speech delivered to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London on September 13, 2002, Richard Haass, president of the US Council of Foreign Relations, elaborating on this new doctrine, said: "9/11 and its aftermath accelerated new thinking that had already begun about the limits of sovereignty.
Today we are on the cusp of a third adjustment to our thinking about sovereignty. Classical notions of deterrence have little relevance for groups like Al Qaeda, which have no constituencies to defend, no borders to protect, and no traditional national assets to preserve. We need to act against these threats."
The US attack on Afghanistan would have been politically impossible without a justification that could distance US foreign policy from itself and Muslims from Muslim causes.
The neo conservatives' doctrine of the 'axis of evil' which refers to three regions of geo-strategic importance to the United States has to be understood in terms of US geopolitical objectives: (i) identifying pivotal areas in Iran, (ii) to secure access to Central Asia, (iii) to secure its presence in the Middle East and the Gulf through Iraq, (iv) to tame North Korea to keep Japan within the circle of American military influence and (V) to contain China.
The presence of American troops in the Middle East, South Asia and, above all, in the Gulf has strengthened US strategic depth across the Muslim world, whilst American bases in Egypt and Djibouti secure the oil supply lines of the Red Sea.
Moving US bases from Germany and other western European countries eastward to the new Europe will create a chain of US bases and military alliances from Poland to Turkey and Central Asia to South Asia, slicing all the way through the Eurasian land mass, and thus cutting any emerging geo-political alliances between Europe and Russia and eventually China.
This grand strategy need not be discerned as a manifestation of strength but as an attempt to deflect the consequences of the growing economic weakness of America.
The US has lost all its manufacturing capacity and its external financial deficit is so large that it is unsustainable. It is in this light that we must view the reactions of France, Germany, Russia and China. The American project aims to clip their wings.
S.Q AFZAL RIZVI
Karachi
Ayub Khuhro as defence minister
Hamida Khuhro's pen-picture of her late father Mohammad Ayub Khuhro is interesting (Dawn, August 14). He literally lived the reputation of a strong man of Sindh politics and was a scourge of his political adversaries.
I had had a glimpse of his strong personality. Mr Khuhro was defence minister. An important military mission came from the US for crucial talks on defence matters. Mr Khuhro, in his position as minister for defence, led the Pakistan team. For some reason he fixed the venue of the talks at his residence.
I, in my position of information officer attached to the ministry of defence, arranged photographic coverage of the talks. The participants anxiously waited for Gen Ayub Khan, commander-in-chief of the army.
Mr Khuhro signalled me to take photographs and leave the room. Then he called his private secretary and ordered him to close the doors and not to allow anyone to enter.
Gen Ayub presently entered the private secretary's room. He was politely informed that the talks had started. Gen Ayub did not utter a word, left the room, got into the President's House car and drove away.
Come the 1958 military coup by Gen Ayub, Mr Khuhro was the first politician who was imprisoned on charges of misdoing that ended his eventful political career. Mr Khuhro was not known to easily forgive his political adversaries; he found a match in his namesake.
SYED AFZAL HUSSAIN ZAIDI
Islamabad
Telephone complaint
Please note that we requested in August last year shifting of telephones - 5311519, 5311488, 5311496 and 5311402 - from 174-A Lalazar to 65-A Lalazar, Thokar, Lahore, but the PTCL has done nothing in this respect so far.
We are continuously in touch with Johar Town and Mustafa Town telephone exchanges, and have made many verbal and written requests, but in vain. Will the high-ups at the PTCL solve our problem?
IRAM NAWAZ
Lahore
Government colleges
Do our leaders know the importance of education? If they do, why have they decided to denationalize government colleges and other educational institutions? Poor people in Pakistan have only a few good institutions whose fees are affordable.
I beg the government to reconsider the decision.
ABRAR ALI BUTT
Karachi
Constitution of Muslim League
In a letter (dated Sept 19, 1945) to my grandfather, Brig. Sir S. Hissamud-Din Khan, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah wrote: "With regard to your previous registered letter, you must have by now read in the press or heard on the radio that in the matter of selection of candidates it is entirely for the Parliamentary Boards, Provincial and Central, to decide whom to give the official ticket on behalf of the Muslim League.
These are our own tribunals, created by our own constitution, and as the President of the All-India Muslim League, I cannot do anything or say anything, which might directly or indirectly influence them. I hope that you appreciate my position.
"It is open to any Mussalman, if he so decides, to send in his application in the ordinary course according to the rules and I hope that the Board will do full justice in the selection of the official Muslim League candidates."
My question here is: do these Muslim League parliamentary boards as envisaged by the Quaid exist? My second question is: does the constitution of the All-India Muslim League that the Quaid talks of as 'our own constitution' exist? And if so, are Muslim League candidates awarded tickets on the basis of this constitution?
WG-CDR SARDAR AHMED SHAH JAN
Peshawar Cantt
Major Shabbir Sharif
The seventh paragraph of the news report "Defence of Pakistan Day today" (Sept 6) says that Major Shabbir Sharif was posthumously awarded the Nishan-i-Haider for sacrificing his life in the 1965 war.
Major Sharif was awarded the Nishan-i-Haider after he embraced martyrdom during the 1971 war, and not during the 1965 war.
SHAHID MASHEDY
Fullerton, CA., USA
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