| 03 January 2005 | Monday | 21 Ziqa'ad 1425 |
Testing times for all good men
In the event of a tsunami...
At the World Family Summit in China last month, the federal population welfare minister had admired the way China's government had controlled its population and improved the country's socio-economic indicators. He also reportedly said Pakistan and other countries would like to learn from China's successful experience.
Indeed China might not have achieved the kind of economic success that it has, had it not been for its stringent one-child family planning policy adopted since the 1970s.
This policy has enabled the country to reduce fertility rate to below the level of substitution, thereby effectively controlling excessive population growth, and thus enabling increase in the national income per capita.
It is a different thing altogether whether any country would want to adopt China's draconian family planning policy that has, until only recently, emphasized on punitive measures to restrict the family size to one child. Tiny Singapore is another country which also managed to control its population growth in the 1970s and 1980s through a firm two-child family planning policy.
In Pakistan, the population welfare programme is one of the oldest in the world, family planning activity having first been undertaken by the private sector in the first half of the 1950s, and in the first half of the 1960s the first family planning programme in the public sector was started under the ministry of health and social welfare.
Thereafter, successive five year development plans had made allocations for various population welfare programmes. But as the population welfare ministry itself admits on its official website, the population welfare programme in Pakistan has not yielded the kind of progress as compared to other countries like Bangladesh and Indonesia.
In fact, the population growth rate, which was 2.45 per cent in 1961, hit an all-time high of over three per cent after the breakaway of East Pakistan (3.66 per cent in 1972, 3.05 per cent in 1981, and 3.1 per cent in 1991). Thus, Pakistan's population rank in the world rose from 14th in 1950 with 33 million people, to 6th (and fourth in Asia) with 145.5 million people in 2002.
Although the current population growth rate is down to 2.2 per cent, this, according to the official website, is still considerably high compared to the average of 0.9 per cent for the developed countries and 1.7 per cent for the less developed countries.
According to one estimate, Pakistan's population will double in the next 32 years at the current growth rate of 2.2 per cent! The negative social and economic implications of this largely unchecked growth have been pretty obvious.
On the one hand, there is a shortage of the good things like educational and health facilities, housing, food, living space, arable land and clean water; on the other hand, there has been considerable increase in the bad things like unemployment, land fragmentation, overcrowding, katchi abadis, poverty, crime and environmental problems.
The negative economic impact of high population growth over the decades is reflected in the following comparative statistics between Pakistan and South Korea posted on the website of the federal ministry of population welfare.
During the five decades from 1950 to 2001, the population of Pakistan increased 4.3 times from 33 million to 142.5 million, whereas the population of South Korea increased only 2.4 times from 20 million to 47.7 million.
Over the same period, the per capita income in Pakistan increased by only five times from $79 in 1950 to $429 in 2001, whereas South Korea's per capita income increased by 129 times from $82 in 1950 to $10,550 in 2001!
Note the difference in per capita income between Pakistan and South Korea: in 1950 it was only $3, but in 2001 the difference was $10,121! While economic policies in the two countries determined these statistics, the rate of population growth must also have played a part.
This is reflected in the fact that Pakistan's per capita income had increased only five times over five decades while its GDP had increased 186 times from $20 billion in 1950 to Rs3,726 billion in 2002. It is only logical that the more people a country has, the smaller is the size of the economic cake per person.
The high increase in population in Pakistan has also been accompanied by a large increase in the rate of unemployment. In the three decades between 1970-71 to 2002, the number of employed persons increased by only two times from 18.5 million to 38.3 million, whereas the number of unemployed increased by eight times from 0.4 million in 1970-71 to 3.3 million in 2002.
The federal government has blamed the lack of progress in the population welfare programme of the past decade on the lack of backing from the community due to religious, social and cultural norms of the society, and the low literacy rate among the womenfolk. But this lack of backing from the community is also due in large part to the failure on the part of the government to overcome the fear of doing something potentially politically unpopular: by effectively mobilizing the ministries concerned, NGOs, and the media, and widening the net of coverage and accessibility of family planning services in the country.
Although family planning may seem to be a personal concern of the individual family, its successful implementation is of national significance. In this respect, every one-child family in China over the past three decades has played a role in realizing the economic success that China is basking in today.
The federal population welfare minister recently announced the revival and strengthening of the 1994 National Trust for Population Welfare, which is supposed to coordinate the activities of the government, the foreign donors, and the hundreds of NGOs working in population welfare which are attached with it.
The minister also announced the intention to begin construction of a Population House in Islamabad in mid-2005 to provide state-of-the-art facilities to those involved in promoting population and family welfare.
Realization at the highest political level of the social and economic consequences of high and unchecked population growth rate is not enough. This has to be translated into specifically focused, targeted and active programmes aimed at achieving population replacement level and reducing the population growth rate. Only then can Pakistan, like China, increase its national income per capita, reduce poverty and achieve economically sustainable development.
Testing times for all good men
Remember the $400 million that Jimmy Carter once offered Pakistan to lead the fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan? The offer was summarily rejected as 'peanuts' by Islamabad.
Now George W. Bush has come up with one better. He wanted to pledge all of $35 million as American's contribution to South Asia to overcome what must be the region's worst natural catastrophe in history.
Indeed, the tsunami disaster like most crisis situations has brought out the best and the worst in people. This is the way it usually works and the tragedy of December 26 that devastated vast swathes of South Asia is no different.
Volunteers of a Muslim 'jamaat' have come in for unusual praise from the usually aloof people in Tamil Nadu for their generous and studiously non-sectarian service to the victims of the calamity. The ethnic wars in Sri Lanka and Indonesia too have been put in suspended animation if not entirely frozen to enable rival sides to tend to the needy.
If Mr Bush sticks out like a sore thumb among the people who are volunteering to help the tsunami victims, there are as usual the good Americans too who present a thoroughly agreeable image of their country. These people are equally appalled by the callousness their president has displayed over the aid package.
Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy was one such who expressed his outrage on behalf of his compatriots. "Let's put $35 million in context. We spend $35 million every single day before breakfast in Iraq."
More than a hundred thousand people were killed in the aftermath of the tsunamis that struck fateful Sunday. Many thousands more are expected to perish in the weeks and months ahead as disease, hunger and homelessness take hold.
Leahy urged the Bush administration to use some of the unspent billions of dollars already earmarked for the war efforts in Iraq. He noted that additional funding could come as part of a supplemental budget request for Iraq.
"We like to talk about morality in this country," Leahy was quoted as saying. "We're blessed with more wealth and better living conditions than anywhere in the world. What does it say to our morality when we tell the poorest of the world that we are not going to share these blessings with them?"
UN emergency coordinator Jan Egeland has been quoted separately as describing the Bush offer of help as "stingy", thus prompting the American government to increase its charity to $350 million. To use Leahy's analogy the new sum represents 10 days' budget (before breakfast!) of the American occupation of Iraq.
The flip side of the Bush approach to a crisis like the one confronting us is the example of Rehmatullah, described by the Indian Express the other day as simply a tirelessly compassionate man from Cuddalore, the second hardest-hit town in Tamil Nadu when the killer waves came.
According to an Express report, a mosque in Cuddalore along with the local 'jamaat' of volunteers have emerged as the rallying point for thousands of fisher folk-almost all of them Hindus and Christians.
There are hardly any Muslim fishermen in Cuddalore, most of the local Muslims are traders. And even though Indonesia and India are the top two countries for the highest number of Muslim citizens, there have been no Muslim casualties in Cuddalore.
"We came to know when people came running to the masjid, minutes after it happened. We decided to do what we could do," says Mohammed Younus, president of the United Islamic Jamaat.
Within minutes of the tsunami striking Pudukuppam, Samayarpettah, Chinnoor and other little villages along the Cuddalore coast on Sunday morning, Younus had summoned his flock.
Within half an hour, his men had left their shops and homes for the beaches in their goods vans, cars, two-wheelers and cycles, picking up and rushing the injured to hospitals.
By noon the jamaat on its own had organized milk for a few hundred babies, and food for over 3,000 survivors. By evening, about 3,000 Muslim men were tending to over 10,000 Hindus and Christians in makeshift camps in the local schools, according to the Express.
A few hundred of the survivors were invited to stay in the masjid, where they are still putting up. Since the tragedy struck, the Jamaat has employed 24 cooks working round the clock to feed about 9,000-odd survivors, some in the relief camps and others in the five battered villages.
The administration provides the rice and milk, and the Jamaat buys the vegetables and everything else on its own. There are about 20,000 men under the Jamaat, and the huge community kitchens that it had been using for its frequent community feasts were immediately turned into relief kitchens.
As the bodies began piling up, Younus asked his men not to hesitate. And, for the last few days, they have been doing what might be unthinkable for many Muslims: carrying bodies on their own shoulders and cremating them.
"To the possible extent, we have been making sure that the Hindu bodies are burnt, and Christians are buried. They should not feel offended in death," Younus reasoned.
In their own way, both Yunus and Rehmatullah may have mockingly endorsed the Kiplengesque dictum - East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet - unaware in their humility that the onus of the civilizing mission may have shifted, somewhat.
* * * * *
Mahatma Gandhi would have probably remained a mere Gujarati lawyer had he not become a national leader by popularizing the padyatras or peaceful protest marches against colonial rule. In the era of India's free-market reforms the padyatras seem to have a acquired a new patron - the corporate czars.
Four villagers from Chorvad in Junagarh district, the native village of the troubled Ambani family, have set out on a 500-km-long 'padyatra' to the temple town of Nathdwara in Rajasthan to pray for a truce between the two warring Ambani brothers, heirs to the Reliance Industry. Let's see if Gandhi's methods bring the same results to India's growing corporate world.
In the event of a tsunami...
The fisher folk in Karachi and other coastal areas had good reason the other day to offer a thanksgiving prayer. They had been spared the death and destruction caused by the terrible tsunamis that hit countries from Indonesia to Somalia on Dec 26.
In 1945, Karachi felt the effects of a tsunami generated by an earthquake in the Arabian Sea that struck the Makran coast with great force. Although the city itself sustained little damage, several hundreds died in the coastal areas of Balochistan, and entire villages were swept away. The impact was felt as far away as in Mumbai.
How prepared are the city and our coastal areas to face a similar event today? The land has been stripped of its natural defences like mangrove forests, and development has taken place close to the shores.
We have no warning system in place to inform us of a surge in water and have little information on quakes and tidal waves. Even if those living along the shores were informed in time that the ocean was about to unleash hell, who would conduct the evacuation operations? How would traffic be controlled? Would airlift operations start for fishermen out at sea? Where would the homeless be accommodated? How would disease be controlled in the wake of a disaster?
Unfortunately, we haven't given much thought to these questions and to disaster management strategies - first because of our fatalistic attitude to life, and, second, because we are simply too lazy to plan for calamities.
Countless people who died in the Asian tsunami could have been alive had seismic activity under the ocean been detected by scientists and conveyed to countries in this region.
A woman of substance
Normally the part of Abdullah Haroon Road which houses the electronic market has rows of cars parked and refrigerators and deep freezers in their original packing heaped on the pavements, but on Sundays the entire strip wears a deserted look.
Except for an occasional vehicle or pedestrian, there is nothing on what is otherwise an important artery. However, on the last Sunday of 2004 there were rows of cars, double-parked, with a crowd of people trying to enter the BVS Parsi High School.
The occasion was the retirement dinner for Ms Dino Mistri, the septuagenarian educationist who was awarded Pride of Performance three years ago. Such has been her influence over the school and its students that the number of gatecrashers - all her well-wishers - was almost the same as the invitees.
All the speakers spoke highly of her invaluable contribution to the school. She was emotional and so were many of the teachers who were groomed by her. There were parents too; a good number of them were fathers who had once studied in the same institution.
One old student said: Twenty-three years ago I used to scale the wall, until Ms Mistri caught me. I am out of practice otherwise I would have done the same this evening. I am sure this time she wouldn't have caned me."
Such has been her following that when Ms Mistri went to the US, where her two sons have settled, for cancer treatment to Luper Hospital, Washington DC, she got a call from an oncologist in Florida who had been her student.
"You don't have to spend a cent. I own a cancer hospital and I shall see to it that you get the best possible treatment. This is the least I can do for you. Please come here, I am sending you an air ticket."
"I didn't go, but I was so touched. The desire to live and fight against cancer was strengthened," recalls the lady. Ms Mistri was given her appointment letter on July 19, 1951. But she had worked as a casual employee for five years before that.
In 1972 she was appointed principal and then stewarded the institution with distinction for more than three decades. Coincidentally, the school was built in 1859 by her great grandfather, Seth Sapurjee Supariwala.
On Dec 31, 2004, when she left the school premises for good, her voice was choked with emotion, but she smiled and told one of the parents who met her that "there is another school and another bunch of kids waiting for me."
She had an offer from a reputed private college to take over as its principal, but the college is far off, the school that she is joining is close to her house. She didn't take even a week off and took up her new assignment the very next day she left BVS.
Bouncing back
Large cities have a tendency to bounce back quickly after debacles. Cultural activities in Karachi, which were revived to a certain extent early last year, have - touch wood - reached a new high after Eid.
There was a time when even culinary activities had almost come to a halt. In the 1990s when there were incidents of sniper firing, places such as the Boating Basin in Clifton started wearing a deserted look.
Diners didn't want to become victims of stray firing. The restaurant business suffered a great deal. Now outdoor dining has become more popular once again. A food street has emerged in Husainabad also. The 'charpoy' joints are thriving.
As for cultural activities, the Jewel of the Crown exhibition is attracting scores of school children, escorted by their teachers, and those interested in the history of the city.
As word goes around, more and more visitors will come to the exhibition. Even under-privileged students are able to go to the Mohatta Palace Museum, where all school students - irrespective of their own and their school's financial status - are admitted free. Only the teachers have to purchase admission tickets and that too for just Rs10.
The Kara Film Festival is back, with more entries and more foreign delegates. However, the venue, Pakistan Institute of International Affairs, leaves much to be desired. Quite obviously the auditorium was not made for film screening.
A cinema owner who recently sold his theatre was heard saying that with the cinema business at its lowest ebb, the owners of show houses would have been too happy to rent out their premises to the festival committee.
More and more music programmes are being held in Karachi and what is more they have become regular features of the city. The audience is swelling by the month, if not by the day.
The one-year-old Karachi Chapter of the All Pakistan Music Conference which has been holding concerts every month since its establishment, is planning a two-day music function on a large scale, like the one it did at the Hindu Gymkhana.
The Sunday book bazaar on the lawns of Frere Hall is back, though the number of buyers is currently low. Considering that some weekly bazaars too now have bookstalls, the lower turnout in Frere Hall is understandable.
That Alliance Francaise, Goethe-Institut and the Italian Culture Centre have reopened is another heartening factor. Even the Pakistan-American Cultural Center seems to be rubbing its eyes. A photographic exhibition at the PACC is an encouraging sign.
email: karachi_notebook@hotmail.com.