PRIME MINISTER Shaukat Aziz took the nation by surprise when he announced last week that the growth rate in the current financial year would be 8.35 per cent instead of the budgeted 6.6 per cent. It thrilled the votaries of growthmanship.

That growth rate, to be achieved for the fifth time in Pakistan’s 57-years history, places Pakistan in the forefront of the high-growth states of Asia. In fact, he expects the agriculture-led high growth to improve further when the entire wheat crop is harvested by the time his government presents the budget next month or it is passed by the Parliament. He may then announce a full 8.5 per cent growth.

The phenomenal rise in the growth rate has been led by a 7.5 per cent growth in agriculture, primarily in cotton and wheat, a 15.4 per cent rise in large-scale manufacturing and 7.9 per cent growth in the service sector. He has later said every sector of the economy has recorded a double digit growth.

The address to the inaugural session of the Annual Plan Co-ordination Committee baffled those who received official papers after he had left the meeting which placed the current year’s economic growth rate at 7 per cent, inclusive of a growth rate of 4.8 per cent in agriculture, 12.6 per cent growth in large-scale manufacturing and 6.2 per cent in the service sector. The gap between the PM’s speech and the figures in the official document is large.

Keeping up the same trend, he said per capita income in the year increased by 6.43 per cent to 700 dollars and purchasing power parity of Pakistani wage earners moved up to 2,200 dollars to 2,500 dollars. But in reality the average Pakistani’s wages continue to be miserable, even of those employed in the flourishing textile industry, which has grown in the current year by 24.5 per cent, while large scale manufacturing rose by 12.1 per cent.

In monetary terms the output of crops can be shown as larger by raising support prices frequently. The price of wheat has been raised by Rs. 50 each for two years to raise it to Rs. 400 for 40 kilograms. The support price for cotton has also been consistently enhanced. If a generous support price is given to wheat to avoid food shortages, the cotton is enjoying support price so that the farmers will keep on producing more.

The real gainers are not the small farmers with their large debt and other financial obligations in a feudal set-up, but the big farmers. Many small farmers are not able to get the full support price for their produce as they can’t carry their produce to the Mandi, and so sell to the middlemen at a lower price.

High inflation too swells up the size of the GDP in monetary terms. Even when the GDP is calculated at constant factor cost the base for calculation is as recent at 1999-2000 and not of a much earlier period. Ultimately what matters is how low or high is the inflation deflator to determine the real economic growth or GDP. If the deflator is low the GDP rate is very high.

The deflator in Pakistan is usually pretty low, and so higher economic growth figures are achieved. In fact the official inflation figure even now is much lower. Real inflation is now surely far higher than 11.1 per cent. Hence, moves are being made for a new inflation index that reflects the reality. What matters is the prices of the items which the people often use and not the prices of hundreds of items which they seldom use.

Expressing per capita income in dollars — 700 dollars now — can also be misleading as the dollar has gone down by 30 per cent against the euro in three years and lost far more over a longer period of time. If we take our per capita income at the year 2000 in terms of dollar it may not be more than 500 dollars. The same goes for the purchasing power parity of the rupee.

Hence we have to moderate our pride in our achievements, try to firm up what we have achieved and move ahead from a strong base.

There has been a great deal of talk about the larger allocation for the Annual Development Plan — far larger than the current year’s allocation of Rs. 202 billion. And we were also told the money allocated has been used promptly, and the performance in this regard is 100 per cent, more so when the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have been breathing down our necks to make us spend what they had lent. But after the first nine months of this financial year it has been noted that only 49 per cent of the development funds have been utilized. Evidently our capacity to use large funds well is not as adequate as it should be in spite of the criticism by the World Bank and the ADB.

Shaukat Aziz says that if contractors could not complete their contracts in time the departments should look for better contractors. This indeed is imperative. The setback, in particular, is in the social sector and that ought to be remedied punctiliously.

The next budget would be presented on the basis of the existing National Finance Commission award unless the President Musharraf intervenes and brings about a settlement between the centre and the provinces. The gap between the centre and the provinces is not too wide and is bridgeable if the will is there. The issue should not be allowed to hang fire indefinitely, and the suspense sustained needlessly.

Mr Shaukat Aziz says instead of cutting a small cake into too many pieces the cake should be made larger enough to be shared by all. He can raise larger revenues either through additional taxation or by plugging the leaks in the taxation departments, which are said to lose 40 to 50 per cent of the revenues through corrupt practices.

There is another means through which he can earn more revenues: by checking the vast and varied smuggling which is estimated at six billion dollars. Afghanistan leads the way with a smuggling of 1.5 to 2 billion dollars. Other sources of smuggling are Dubai, Iran, China, and India.

The goods which go to Afghanistan make a U-turn and come back, and sometimes the goods are unloaded in Pakistan before they reach Afghanistan. And in spite of the fact that Chinese goods are very cheap, there is a large scale smuggling. If this widespread smuggling is checked the net gain in taxes can be one billion dollars or about Rs. 60 billion with which he can help the provinces generously. But the governments intends to opt no such radical course and wants to work within the existing system. It will raise the tax revenues next year to Rs. 670 billion from the current year’s revenue of Rs. 590 billion which is an improvement of Rs. 10 billion over the budgeted revenues of Rs. 80 billion more.

The government wants to raise tax collection to 13 per cent of the GDP instead of the current 11.1 per cent and the budget-makers have been asked to keep that target in view while drawing up taxation proposals.

But it appears that Rs. 40 billion out of the new revenues would be lost as enhanced pay scales to the government employees and pensions. The pay rise may be 15 to 20 per cent. The provincial governments are reported to have refused to increase the pay scales. If the Centre wanted the provinces to pay more to their employees the Centre should fund them, they say. If the provincial employees are paid more the same will have to be done for the local government employees as has been the pattern so far. And that could mean less outlay on social sector development and more inflation.

While the centre has not been able to come up with an NFC award, the provinces have more reasons to be unhappy with the centre. The centre is charging up to 18 per cent on loans to provinces while they can get loans from banks at around four to five per cent. But the centre would neither reduce the interest rate nor let the provinces borrow from banks so that they can repay the old loans and reduce their financial liability.

The fact is the centre has been charging a 10 per cent interest in the past on grants it received from donors and burdening the provinces excessively. Meanwhile, provinces like Sindh and Balochistan and Azad Kashmir have been wanting their own banks in the manner the Punjab and Frontier governments have their own.

While the economic growth rate has touched the figure of 8.35 per cent, inflation rate is estimated at 11.1 per cent. Instead of getting the benefit of higher growth and higher production, the people are becoming victims of inflation. While the per capita income stands at 700 dollars, one third of the people are living below the poverty line of a dollar a day and 80 per cent below two dollars a day. And large scale unemployment is a serious problem. The new investment made in the textile industry, about 4 billion dollars, is mostly in labour-reducing automatic devices. So employment does not increase along with an increase in investment.

The stock exchange boom and the real estate boom have not been helping the poor and the unemployed. They put a lot of money into the hands of the affluent to splash and enjoy themselves.

The stock exchanges want more companies to be listed on them. The government wants the same. But the government has done away with the tax incentive for companies seeking stock exchange listing. Until the year 2002 there was a 10 per cent difference in the tax rates of the listed and non-listed companies. Until then the corporate tax of listed companies was 35 per cent while that of non-listed companies was 45 per cent. Since then the rate has been coming down at the rate of two per cent each year. And that is unfair if the government wants more and more companies to get themselves listed on the stock exchanges.

The Karachi Stock Exchange has repeated that request in its pre-budget memorandum. The government should respond to that with at least a five per cent difference between the two kinds of companies.

The government has come all out in favour of the private sector, throwing almost all fields open to it. In effect, it has no check on it even when the private sector abuses that freedom through their cartels or monopolies. The success of the cement sector and the sugar mills in defying the government demonstrates the ample clout of the private sector.

Eventually it may be too late to tie down such elements in the private sector. Corporate success without a corporate conscience can be very injurious to society.

Many companies are buying back their shares from the general public so that their owners can reign supreme in their fiefdoms. The feeling of ‘share and care’ is fast eroding as the new business graduates take over from their religious-minded parents. Corporate ethics need to be refurbished and strengthened instead of letting monopolies and cartels thrive and one-man companies flourish at the cost of all others.

THE British government recognises two kinds of freedom. There is the freedom of the citizen, which it appears to perceive as a threat to good order.

It has permitted (through the Serious Organised Crime Act) the police or courts to ban any public protest. It is introducing identity cards, restricting immigration, seeking to curb the right of habeas corpus and extending antisocial behaviour orders.

Then there is the freedom of business. Though the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise are already incapable of dealing with tax evaders, Gordon Brown is cutting 10,000 of their staff. Tony Blair is trying to destroy the European working time directive, which prevents companies from working their employees to death. The draconian measures in the Queen’s speech restraining the citizen were immediately followed by a promise to deregulate business. The government is prepared to micro-manage us, while leaving the more powerful agents — the corporations — free to manage themselves.

Like the patricians in Coriolanus, Tony Blair will “repeal daily any wholesome act established against the rich, and provide more piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain the poor”. For business to be free, we must be kept in check.

This isn’t, according to the high priest of this religion, how it was meant to be. Adam Smith held that market freedom was desirable for one reason: that it improved people’s lives. Where he perceived that it had the opposite effect, he called for restraint. “Those exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments,” he wrote. Governments have “the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it”.

Such warnings were of course ignored. Sixty years later, John Clare surveyed the devastation wrought by the new liberties. “Thus came enclosure — ruin was its guide / But freedom’s clapping hands enjoyed the sight / Though comfort’s cottage soon was thrust aside / And workhouse prisons raised upon the site.”

But the most breathtaking contradiction of the past week was the prime minister’s demand for respect: for everyone except those whose lives we are destroying. We might no longer be allowed to wear hooded tops in public places, but we will remain free to kill the people of South Asia.

Though Tony Blair has acknowledged that climate change will radically alter human existence, there were no new proposals to tackle it in the Queen’s speech. Figures published by the Office for National Statistics last week show that greenhouse gas emissions from flights by UK residents almost doubled between 1990 and 2003, while emissions from private cars rose by 14 per cent. Britain’s carbon dioxide production is supposed to fall to 80 per cent of 1990 levels by 2010, but even before the air transport figures are counted, it has risen in the past two years. Only government intervention could put us back on course, but Blair has already filled up his legislative programme: his contribution to solving the problem will now, it seems, be rhetorical.

It is not just that we are free to kill other people; market freedom constrains us to do so. The economy is so organised as to make it almost impossible to do the right thing. If your village isn’t served by public transport and there is nowhere safe to cycle, you have, for all the talk of freedom to drive, no choice. If the superstores have shut down all the small shops, you must give your money to a company whose purchasing and distribution networks look like a plan for maximum environmental impact.

So we are encouraged by the market and left free by the law to inflict the most grievous harm that any group of people has ever inflicted on any other. There are several good reasons for supposing that climate change, within the course of this century, will throw the world into food deficit.

The glaciers of the Himalayas, which feed the great rivers watering the farmland keeping Asia alive, are disappearing. As the temperature rises, plant growth in the tropics is likely to slow down: already this appears to be happening to rice crops in the Philippines. Drought zones are expanding: even in the early 1990s the nomadic people I worked with in east Africa were complaining that the 40-year famine cycle had been compressed to four or five.

Already, with a net food surplus, some 800 million people on earth are permanently malnourished. With a net food deficit, this figure could rise into the billions. We will be responsible for this. By the time we reach the end of our lives, every one of us, however kind and mild and well-meaning we might be, will have been responsible for the equivalent, in terms of human suffering, of a medium-sized act of terrorism.

Climate change reverses Smith’s central dictum: that “by pursuing his own interest [a man] frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it”. Now the interests of global society will be served primarily by restraint.

Everything we thought was good turns out also to be bad. It is an act of kindness to travel to your cousin’s wedding. Now it is also an act of cruelty. It is a good thing to light the streets at night. Climate change tells us it kills more people than it saves. We are killing people by the most innocent means: turning on the lights, taking a bath, driving to work, going on holiday. Climate change demands a reversal of our moral compass, for which we are plainly unprepared. It is hardly surprising that no government really wants to confront us. It is left to Greenpeace, which occupied the Range Rover factory last week, to restrict the exercise of market freedom that Blair refuses to touch.

As Gordon Brown, the man who keeps the markets free, says, “what is morally wrong cannot be economically right”. In terms of raw GDP, Adam Smith’s “perfect liberties” are economically right. No one who has understood the threat of climate change could fail to see that they are also morally wrong.

The Economist argued recently that the best means of solving this problem is through greater market freedom: this, of course, is the cure it prescribes for all ills, even before it has investigated the nature of the disease. The problem is that the deaths of people in Bangladesh or Somalia cost us nothing: we have no financial incentive to minimise them.

We can deal with climate change only with the help of governments, restraining the exertions of our natural liberties. So far, however, when confronted with a choice between the two sacred commodities - market freedom and human life - the one they have chosen to preserve is market freedom. —Dawn/Guardian Service

A WISE man once told me, “War is hell, but it’s good for the economy.”

He was talking about the Pentagon’s announcement that it intends to close down military bases all over the country. What he really was talking about was “jobs.”

Nobody wants a war, but many people want to manufacture the stuff you need to fight one.

Even your most dovish congressman or senator doesn’t want to close a military installation in his or her own back yard.

Congressman Everett F. Livid said, “You don’t close bases to save money. That’s not the American way. I will fight or filibuster any attempt to chop the installation at the Happy Mountain Air Force base in my district.”

“But the Cold War is over.”

“It could start again at any moment, and I want this country prepared to bite the bullet.”

“But Rumsfeld says by closing the bases he will save taxpayers billions of dollars.”

“It isn’t his money. It’s the taxpayers’ money.”

“Why don’t you be honest about it? If your base is closed and 14,000 people are put out of work, it could cost you the next election.”

Livid snapped, “What a terrible thing to say. We have to give our brave boys the best defence money can buy. I have been in Iraq and every soldier thanked me for what we are doing for them at home.”

“Do you think the president approved of Rumsfeld’s hit list?” “I’m sure he didn’t know anything about it.” “How do you know?”

“He was surprised and told me the only thing he’s interested in is Social Security reform. I pointed out that if people could invest in the stock market, and the bases were closed, the military-industrial-complex bubble would burst and people would lose their savings.”

“What you were telling the president, in effect, is that if he allows Rumsfeld to close the base in your district, you would not vote for his Social Security reform.”

“I wouldn’t put it that way. Look, the economy of Happy Mountain feeds off of the base — barbers, real estate, coffee shops and Wal-Mart. McDonald’s has announced it’s ready to pull out if the base is closed.”

“Have you told Alan Greenspan about this?” “All he cares about is raising the interest rate.”

“How do you feel about the closings of bases in other states?”

“I don’t care about them. If we’re going save money, I’d prefer that other states take the hit.” I told Congressman Livid, “This is the first time I’ve seen you so livid.”

“How can I go home and face the people who thought I would protect them?”

“It wont be easy,” I admitted. “But what Rummy says and what he does are two different things. The pressure is going to be on him.”

“If the plan goes through, and the people at the base protest in the streets, it will be safer to go to Iraq than Happy Mountain. I have just begun to fight. And so has everyone in Congress. Our slogan is, ‘Don’t Close Our Bases — Close Theirs.”’

“That’s a good banner to hang on Main Street,” I said.

“That, and, ‘War Is Hell, but It Still Buys Your Groceries.”’—Dawn/Tribune Media Services

THE failure of American intelligence agencies to detect the 9/11 terrorist plot and later to discover that Saddam Hussein no longer had weapons of mass destruction has incited a drumbeat of criticism, and has led to a reorganization of the intelligence system that may leave the CIA a shell of its former self and a graveyard of ruined careers.

Before we go too far in our efforts to “reform” the system, we should remember that although constructive criticism has great value, obtuse criticism leading to imprudent change may make the nation less safe.

Two cliches about our intelligence system are fast becoming dogma. The first is that intelligence failed in the 9/11 and Iraqi WMD cases because the entire intelligence system is “broken.” Usually when we think of something as being broken we assume it can be fixed or replaced and, either way, that the problem can be put behind us; our watch is broken so we fix or replace it and the problem is solved.

But the intelligence system cannot be fixed like a broken watch (although it can be improved) because the conditions that cause it to fail are inherent in the nature of intelligence. Those conditions are numerous: Intelligence seeks information about people — usually foreigners having their own language and a mentality that may be so alien as to be unfathomable by us — who are assiduously concealing it.

Effective intelligence requires secrecy (particularly as to sources), which widespread sharing of intelligence data compromises - yet without that sharing, it may be impossible to assemble the data into a meaningful mosaic. Intelligence is collected and analyzed in a political context that may warp intelligence analysis. Working conditions in intelligence are bad because of the unavoidable preoccupation with secrecy and security, the disdain of a democratic society for spies, and the asymmetry of failure and success in intelligence operations.

What’s more, congressional oversight is erratic. Congress cut intelligence budgets in the 1990s just as intelligence challenges were mounting. One of the intelligence community’s severest critics, James Bamford, acknowledges that “the real problem [with U.S. intelligence] is simply the nature of the post-Cold War world.

During the half-century when Moscow sat fixed at the centre of a giant bull’s-eye of intelligence targets, prioritization was easy.... When the Soviet Union collapsed, the giant bull’s-eye disappeared and was replaced by a shooting gallery with black silhouette targets popping up everywhere - in back, in front, behind rocks, under bushes. The public, the press and the Congress were requiring the intelligence community to see everywhere at all times, which was not only impossible but also irrational.”

The impression that the intelligence system can be “fixed” — implying that all intelligence failures are avoidable merely by the exercise of due care — leads to overselling intelligence as an element of national defence. To think that changes in organization, practices and personnel can make intelligence a fail-safe enterprise is a dangerous illusion, encouraging underinvestment in other, often more costly, means of defence, such as tightening our porous borders, screening foreign visitors more carefully and stocking vaccines against possible bioterror attacks.

The second cliche is that American intelligence services are excessively “risk-averse.” Risk-aversion is an inevitable rather than accidental tendency of civil servants; we don’t want them to be engaging in risky behaviour, as if they were speculators in the commodity markets. The tendency to risk-aversion is exacerbated in the intelligence arena by the asymmetry of failure and success: Failures are vivid, frightening, unforgettable, while successes are taken for granted (when they are known, which often they are not). “Nothing happened” is the standard intelligence success.

Consider the criticism that the CIA is too cautious about recruiting as case officers Americans of Middle Eastern origin, especially if they are first-generation Americans with relatives still living in the Middle East. Or that the CIA is too reticent about sharing secret information with other agencies that might need it, such as local police departments.

In both cases, if the agency took the risks their critics asked them to take, there would be embarrassing failures - case officers who turned out to be moles or leakers; secrecy that was compromised. These failures would be denounced as scandals; the official who had signed off on the recruit who turned bad, or the person who shared information with an agency that subsequently leaked it, would be disgraced.

Yet if failure were avoided and risk-taking in recruitment and sharing improved the agency’s performance, the improvement would be gradual and diffuse, and little or no credit would accrue to the official who had taken the risks. So it is best from a career standpoint to play it safe - and the drumbeat of criticisms of the intelligence agencies as risk-averse will, ironically, make them play even safer by underscoring the career repercussions of an intelligence failure. —Dawn/Los Angeles Times Service

THE Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory (Pemra) Amendment Bill of 2005 passed on May 16 by the National Assembly replaces the Pemra ordinance of 2002 which till now provided the framework under which the regulatory authority was operating. The legislation, which gives sweeping powers to Pemra to regulate the electronic media in the country, will now be laid before the Senate which will vote on it in its next session. Once that is done and the president signs the bill, its various provisions will come into effect.

The manner in which the new law was passed by the lower house of parliament was pretty similar to much of the legislation that has been passed by this government — that is, rushed through without any debate and without considering any points raised by the opposition, or, as the case may be, by any member from the treasury benches. Prior to its tabling before the National Assembly, the amendment bill was presented to the parliamentary committees on information and broadcasting where members of parliament were to discuss and debate the proposals and make suggestions.

However, at no stage did the government solicit any feedback or seek any advice from proprietors of TV channels, cable operators or radio stations. A delegation of cable operators did recently meet the Pemra chairman (who is a former senior police official) and conveyed to him its concern regarding the new law. The chairman is reported to have told them that unless they planned to break the law they should not be too worried.

As for the new law itself, a closer examination of its provisions and a comparison of these with the text of the 2002 ordinance will reveal that the regulator’s power to shut down broadcasts and cable operations has been significantly increased. In addition, some checks and balances provided in the old law, like providing the licence-holders a forum for redressal of grievances, have been done away with and the discretionary powers of Pemra to grant licence-holders exemptions from certain provisions of the broadcasting law have been enhanced.

Perhaps the most disturbing change has been in the terms and conditions of grant of a licence. Pemra has now been empowered to shut down or cancel a licence if a broadcaster airs programmes or advertisements that contain “pornography, obscenity, vulgarity or other material offensive to commonly accepted standards of decency”. This clause was absent in the 2002 ordinance and contains words that are vague and ambiguous and a phrase — ‘commonly accepted standards of decency’ — whose meaning and intent can be open to widely divergent interpretations.

There are many in this country who are of the opinion that even PTV and other Pakistani channels telecast profanity and vulgar programmes and if any one of them were to become the head of Pemra or if the current head were sympathetic to such views, it could well lead to quite a lot of channels being heavily punished or even shut down on what are essentially frivolous grounds.

A standard for broadcasting that uses a criterion as subjective as this is bound to open up a Pandora’s box in that there is great divergence of views on what constitutes vulgarity or obscenity.

This new provision becomes even more alarming when Pemra’s actions in recent months against cable operators are taken into account. In almost all cases, the regulator acted against operators on charges that they were showing films or programmes, with pornographic or vulgar content and even took the rather extreme step of ordering a ban on some English channels. In not a single case was action taken against any operator on grounds of unreliable or shoddy service, something that seems to be missing entirely from the regulator’s mandate. That the programmes telecast on Indian channels were perhaps equally ‘vulgar’ or that those channels had taken on the mantle of guardian of public morality, was apparently lost on Pemra.

Governments in Pakistan have often used loosely defined or ambiguously worded rules and regulations to control the media and this particular one with a vague reference to adherence of ‘commonly accepted standards of decency’ seems to be just another such device. Under the new Pemra law any TV channel could have its licence revoked if it telecast material, which in the eyes of Pemra, was contrary to the standards vaguely mentioned by it. This can be easily used by the government to shut down channels airing programmes critical of the government.

Admittedly, there is no such thing as absolute freedom of expression, but such freedom should be qualified by limitations that have more to do with libel, defamation, slander and the right to privacy and not a government official’s interpretation of vulgarity or worse still, ‘commonly accepted standards of decency’.

Other than this, the number of members who will sit on the board of Pemra has been increased from nine under the 2002 ordinance to 12. Compared to before when four of the nine members were to be government nominees, now the number of such appointees or nominees has been raised to seven. This also means that the government’s influence and control over the regulator has been increased since all decisions of the authority will be taken by a majority vote.

The chairman of the Central Board of Revenue has also been co-opted as an ex-officio member, perhaps because of the fact that under the new law all dues such as outstanding licence fees, renewal fees or fines imposed by Pemra on a broadcaster will be recovered as land revenue arrears.

Besides, in the past, governments have used the tried and tested method of harassing media organizations by simply sending their proprietors tax notices and in that context the inclusion of the CBR chief on the Pemra board as an ex-officio member would raise some questions.

Licence holders will also be required to constitute an ‘in-house monitoring committee’ to regulate all content that goes on the air.

The logic of this is debatable especially since most credible TV channels would have a defined hierarchy for editorial supervision and control of on-air content.

Under the 2002 ordinance, licence holders had the right to contest any action by Pemra by referring the matter to a government-constituted committee headed by a retired high court judge. The new law omits this provision altogether.

Similarly, under the 2002 ordinance, the authority was granted the right to exempt any broadcaster from following the rules and regulations provided that such grant of exemption was given in writing and based on “guidelines and criteria identified in the Rules” and made “in conformity with the principles of equality and equity as enshrined in the Constitution”.

The new law abridges this significantly and Pemra now has the right to grant exemptions if it is of the view that it “serves the public interest”. Again, this provision could well be used as part of a carrot and stick policy to reward broadcasters who toe the government line.

The new law gives further teeth to Pemra in that “officers of federal, provincial and local governments, including the capital and provincial police, shall” assist the authority in the discharge of its functions and in applying the provisions of the new law to any broadcaster. This was something missing in the 2002 ordinance. Pemra will also now be able to seize a broadcaster’s equipment after determining that its on-air content violated the provisions of the terms and conditions under which the licence was granted.

This means that the authority can now shut down a channel and confiscate its equipment if any of its programmes are deemed to be in violation of “commonly accepted standards of decency” or if they are considered to be against the “national, cultural, social and religious values and the principles of public policy as enshrined in the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan”.

Clearly, this will allow the authority considerable leeway since it has been invested with the authority to determine whether a programme or show is violative of any of these.

Certain provisions of the new law are well-meaning, especially the one that relates to the requirements of the authority’s chairman/woman, that he or she be “an eminent professional of known integrity and competence having substantial experience in media, business, management, finance, economics or law”. However, the current chairman, though a senior ex-government servant, was a police official and served for many years in that capacity. His last assignment was as secretary in the ministry of communications.

It would have been better if the authority had been invested with powers to regulate broadcasters and cable operators with reference to the quality of their service rather than the content of their programming. If something is bad or of mediocre quality and has scenes that many would find vulgar, then it will die out itself and viewers will just switch over to other channels. That is precisely what is happening in the case of Pakistan’s film industry.

Email: omarq@cyber.net.pk