| 22 December 2004 | Wednesday | 09 Ziqa'ad 1425 |
Issue of car premiums
Eliminating the drug scourge
One can perhaps understand Mr Ataullah Mengal's reasons for feeling frustrated. Addressing a press conference in Karachi on Monday, the Rahbar (Guide) of the Balochistan National Party announced that his party was breaking off negotiations with the government because there was no point in having talks at "gunpoint".
He alleged that the recent bomb blasts in Khuzdar and Quetta were engineered by secret service agencies and that members of the Baloch Students Organization were being victimized on "fictitious charges".
There were other charges, too, including the familiar one against the "establishment" - that it was suppressing the small provinces. What is astonishing is that Mr Mengal dismissed the development programmes now in progress in Balochistan as an attempt to turn the Baloch into a minority in their own province.
Undeniably, Balochistan has suffered long years of neglect. But the important point is that Balochistan is not alone in that category, for the entire country is in a mess.
One cannot, of course, use this as an argument to justify the injustices to which Balochistan has been subjected. But the idea here is to stress that the people of Pakistan on the whole are far from that stage where they would have been if rulers - both in uniform and in mufti - had been a little more responsible in their conduct and run this country democratically and constitutionally.
What precisely are Pakistan's problems? The country is mired in poverty. In terms of literacy, higher education, technological development, healthcare, child welfare and women's rights, Pakistan is far behind many other third world countries.
Even within the Saarc region, Pakistan lags behind in matters of literacy and higher education. The failure to effect land reforms and liberate the tenantry has militated against the emergence of a prosperous and vibrant middle class.
Industrial development has been lopsided, with industries concentrated in a few pockets. In addition, repeated military interventions have served to retard the growth of democratic institutions and spawned parochial tendencies.
The growth of religious militancy is the direct result of policies in whose formulation the people's representatives had no say. Pakistan can get out of the poverty trap, and the problems mentioned above, through a democratic struggle aimed at changing the existing order of things.
The aim for all political parties should be the overall progress of the nation as a whole within a democratic framework. It is towards this end that all political parties - even those with a limited, regional programme - should work. There is no denying the government's mistakes in dealing with Balochistan.
If a major Baloch party headed by a veteran leader has broken off talks, then the government must try to know the reason for it. The charges of victimization of BSO members must be investigated, and those in the agencies who have acted irresponsibly and arrested the innocent should be held answerable for their misconduct.
As the country's largest province, Balochistan has had a raw deal. Now it deserves more than its due share of the cake to remove the effect of past injustices. The government must demonstrate its sincerity in holding talks with Baloch leaders and convince them that its aim is to address the grievances of the Baloch people and remove them.
Issue of car premiums
The two-month ultimatum given by the industries minister to car manufacturers for eliminating premium on new cars seeks to address a problem that has been plaguing car buyers for over a year now.
In that context, the minister's deadline does not really resolve anything and in fact highlights the government's inability to make life easier for ordinary car buyers by removing the excessive premium (as much as Rs 200,000 for some models) that one has to pay for prompt delivery.
While the government has allowed imports, the fact is that from July 2004 (when the decision went into effect) till November a few hundred cars were brought into the country - almost all brand new luxury cars.
So, while in theory arrival of imports should have helped lower premiums, nothing of the sort has happened because the imported vehicles are not affordable substitutes for locally assembled automobiles.
The minister is right in saying that increases in production levels should help lower costs by bringing economies of scale to the manufacturers (something that partly explains why prices in India are much cheaper for the same brand models) and could bring down prices.
However, there are two caveats to this: one that economies of scale come into play only in the long run, so that the salutary effects, if any, will not be seen for some time.
And two: that there is no guarantee that the lower costs would necessarily be passed on to consumers unless of course the government ensures that the car manufacturers do that.
Besides, nothing has been done so far to minimize the role of the investors who are the root cause of the exorbitant premium and the unscrupulous dealers who openly market cars, ensuring immediate delivery only if the higher price is paid.
The requirement that anyone booking a new car must have a national tax number has not been able to free the market from the manipulation of the speculators/dealers mafia.
Rather than giving 60-day ultimatums, the government should do more to facilitate the import of smaller cars and crack down on the unscrupulous dealers and speculators whose manipulation and greed are forcing ordinary car buyers to pay exorbitant amounts for cars that are already overpriced.
Eliminating the drug scourge
While Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has asked the ministry of narcotics control and the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) to concentrate on measures aimed at reducing narcotics demand, the fact remains that drug addiction in the country is inextricably linked to poppy cultivation in Afghanistan.
In fact, last month's disclosure by the ANF that heroin addiction was on the rise in Pakistan came on the heels of a sobering UN report Afghanistan Opium Survey 2004 that showed poppy cultivation in Afghanistan to have increased by 64 per cent over figures for 2003.
Moreover, following the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban, who had banned poppy growing in their country, an increasing number of tracts of land in Balochistan and the NWFP have been brought under poppy cultivation.
This itself now poses a problem, apart from what should be done to limit opium production in Afghanistan, which remains the world's largest narco-driven economy, and one that is in the hands of criminal elements.
The international community's assistance is urgently required to adopt measures proposed by the UN to combat the scourge. These involve operations against heroin laboratories and traffickers, support to Afghan law-enforcement agencies and concerted attempts at poverty alleviation.
Helping Kabul extend its writ to all 32 provinces in Afghanistan will go a long way in frustrating the designs of local warlords and drug barons who are in large part to blame for the country's narcotics trade.
Given international cooperation, Afghanistan would be in a position to take its cue from previously notorious narcotics centres like the Golden Triangle where drug production has declined drastically thanks to alternative development schemes. An effective solution to the problem in Pakistan - a major trafficking route - can only come about when it has been successfully addressed in Afghanistan.