CHINA’s bid for the purchase of the US oil company, Unocal, has led to an outcry in the US, with a host of strategic national security considerations being cited by powerful sources in calls to block the bid. One US Congressman was rather blunt when he said that “being a free trader did not mean being a sucker and a patsy”.

In Pakistan, by contrast, concerns raised by several quarters about national security implications of the sale of entities in strategic sectors to foreign elements did not even elicit a response. Instead, the government used strong-arm tactics to neutralize union opposition to the privatization of PTCL, the country’s giant telecommunications corporation.

Pakistan’s coterie of generals have more than once used the armed forces to serve US foreign policy interests in disregard of Pakistan’s own interests. And the recent military intervention in PTCL raises apprehensions about its use in future to protect foreign investor interests from ‘labour trouble’. It would indeed be tragic if the country’s armed forces are turned on the very people whose sweat sustains it.

The PTCL privatization has proved to be a politically divisive issue. Spearheaded by PTCL unions, the protest was the first major trade union action in recent times and the strikers were opposed to privatization in terms of principle; issues of job security and benefits were secondary. This was in sharp contrast to the early 1990s, when the All-Pakistan State Enterprises Workers Action Committee (APSEWAC) opportunistically abandoned opposition to privatization and limited their negotiations to the size of golden handshakes.

The privatization debate in Pakistan continues to be based on the explicit premise that the public sector is inefficient and corrupt and the implicit assumption that the private sector is the unquestionable answer to efficient economic management. The fact is that there is no factual basis for either of the two beliefs. There are more than a dozen instances of successful and profitable public sector enterprises, which show that the public sector can be efficient and can contribute positively to the national exchequer as well as to the economy.

After all, PTCL is not only highly profitable, but has posted record improvements in service quality and reduction in telephone rates compared to what these were two decades ago. Pakistan State Oil, National Bank of Pakistan, etc., are other current cases of successful public enterprise management. PIA has not only become profitable, but it is eminently superior in punctuality and service quality to any of the private airlines.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are many dozen cases of private sector failures and several graveyards across the country of failed private sector projects over the last quarter of a century, resulting in default in bank loan repayments to the tune of billions of rupees. The point is that there is nothing inherent about the efficiency of the private sector or the inefficiency of the public sector. Millat Tractors was a profitable public sector enterprise, which continues to be a profitable privatized entity. On the other hand, Zeal-Pak Cement was a profitable enterprise under the public sector, but went bankrupt within months of privatization.

Corruption too is not a monopoly of the public sector while the private sector is not a paragon of virtues. Corrupt practices — tax evasion, violation of labour, environmental and other laws, false declarations to banks and to customs authorities, wilful violations of contracts and defaults on payments between firms, providing one set of high quality samples for approval and another substandard set of goods in the ultimate consignment, insider trading in the stock markets, hoarding, black-marketing, supply of adulterated goods, unfair labour practices, etc., are endemic in the private sector.

The weakness of Pakistan’s private sector in terms of a vision to innovate and the courage to take risks is also now apparent. Textile is the largest industrial sector in the country and Pakistan ranks among one of the top seven textile exporters in the world. To this end, Pakistan annually imports over half a billion dollars worth of textile machinery and equipment. The growth of the textile industry has produced a number of powerful business houses each of whose combined ‘white’ and ‘black’ wealth in Pakistan and abroad can total a few hundred million US dollars.

Yet, not one single such entity has displayed entrepreneurial vision and courage to invest in the production and export of textile machinery and equipment. The private sector has consistently complained of the absence of a congenial, enabling business environment in the country. However, capital is highly mobile and does not respect national borders. If Pakistan did not provide the appropriate space for investment, a dynamic private sector would have invested in other economies — for instance, in Dubai; which is closer to Pakistan, but whose economy is dominated by Indian business houses.

The fact is that Pakistan’s private sector is only capable of operating in a protected environment, where excessive profits are derived through ‘connections’ and through the ability to bypass tax, labour, environmental and other laws. Cost efficiency, innovation and other traits that are critical elements of the private sector in other countries are still in their infancy in Pakistan.

Not surprisingly, the private sector is unable to occupy the space that the public sector is being forced to vacate. There are no national private sector groups that can come forward with the size of capital required to enter a bid for any of the large public sector entities currently up for sale. Under the circumstances, if a doctrinaire position is adopted, whereby the private sector is unable to invest and the public sector will not be allowed to invest, there emerges a recipe for the country to remain trapped in a low level economic equilibrium or to fall under the tutelage of foreign financial and commercial interests.

While there are many ills besetting the private sector, the public sector is weighed down by similar and perhaps more serious problems. After all, if a dozen or score of public enterprises can be identified as having been or being run efficiently and profitably, there are many more that were run inefficiently and unprofitably. Collectively, public enterprise losses constituted a net drain on the public exchequer. The responsibility for these losses cannot, however, be placed on the public sector per se. The coup of 1977 had the full support of Pakistan’s private sector stalwarts, who wished to see the reversal of nationalization .

However, General Ziaul Haq’s military regime had no political incentive to privatize state-owned units or to ensure the efficiency of public sector enterprises. In fact, it aimed at using public enterprises for its own political ends. The regime sorely lacked legitimacy and was devoid of any kind of moral qualms to hang on to power. It used corruption as a tool to purchase support and public enterprise resources, including that of nationalized banks, proved to be effective instruments. The corruption and inefficiency that the Zia regime encouraged in the public enterprise sector enabled the pro-privatization lobby to mount a vilification campaign against the public sector.

However, vilification of either the public or the private sector would be counterproductive. The two sectors are like two arms of the economy and need to complement each other for the sake of overall economic development. While the rationale for the private sector is evident, that of the public sector needs to be enunciated. All public enterprises were not necessarily set up with the financial profit objective in mind. Some industrial units were set up because of the need to establish a capital industry base, others were set up in remote areas in line with the regional development perspective, and yet others were set up to meet basic consumer needs.

Employment levels in all these units were consciously higher in order to meet the social goal of providing employment. All these units had cost elements that would not have arisen if they had been set up with only the profit objective in mind. For example, units set up in remote areas with the objective of regional development incurred higher freight costs in shipping in raw materials and inputs and shipping out finished products. Again, these units also had higher labour costs.

The performance of these industrial units needed to be judged by the criteria of social and economic benefits. Yet, they were subjected to a performance evaluation on the basis of market profit criteria and condemned. Of course, there were units that were downright inefficient and corrupt. However, voices that drew attention to the technical unfairness in setting up these units under one set of criteria and then subjecting them to performance evaluation under another set of criteria were drowned out by the Washington-driven political cacophony against the public sector.

It is worth recalling that Pakistan invited a US-based economist in the early 1980s to prepare a comprehensive framework and an accounting system for efficient management of public sector enterprises. The accounting system placed items such as the additional freight or employment costs incurred for the purpose of meeting social goals into a separate account and which was not to be included in financial profitability calculations. Profits that a public enterprise earned from placing low interest loans in higher interest-bearing accounts were classified as non-operating profits and also excluded from profitability calculations.

The voluminous report was submitted to the government, but has never seen the light of the day on account of pressure from the Washington-supported private sector lobby in alliance with the then military regime.

The privatization policy in Pakistan has never commanded a moral base. The argument for privatization was first presented on the grounds that public enterprises were loss-making entities and a burden on the national exchequer. Yet, the first phase of mass privatization in the early 1990s began with sell-offs of profitable units. Currently, entities a la the Habib Bank, PTCL, PSO, etc., were or are profit-generating entities. Far from being a drain on the national budget, they were/are actually contributing to containing the fiscal deficit. However, there appears to be a pathological desire to sell; — a compulsion that is so strong that, if domestic buyers are not available, these entities must be sold to foreign interests.

EXEMPLIFYING the majority comment in the Indian media, the respected Indian commentator, Prem Shankar Jha, ascribed the “breakthrough in the India-Pakistan Delhi summit to President Musharraf’s willingness to replace a territory-centred approach to the resolution of the Kashmir problem with a people-centred approach that relies upon soft borders and an increasingly free social, political and economic interaction between the people of both parts of Kashmir”. A transition hailed in India as the end of Pakistan’s ‘irredentist claim’ on the erstwhile state rooted in the religion-based division of the subcontinent.

Earlier, A.G.Noorani, a more persuasive friend of the Kashmiri people than many Pakistani liberals, had argued that by consistently urging both sides to move beyond their respective ‘stated positions’, ‘negate’ extreme positions (plebiscite or the Line of Control as permanent division) and, above all, leave aside the UN resolutions, the Pakistani president had challenged the political and mental inertia of the leadership of both countries.

This radical change in the Indian perception of the Pakistani leader has encouraged many Indian analysts to advise their government to re-open the question of Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which once embodied the mirage of autonomy chased by Sheikh Abdullah. Revived autonomy within immutable territorial frontiers could, in this analysis, usher in a new era of friendship between the two neighbours. This optimism has generally overshadowed the diehard opinion that Pakistan cannot be trusted — a reservation that has still enough adherents in the Indian establishment to stand in the way of an early agreement on the redeployment of forces in the frozen wastes of the Boltoro-Siachen glaciers.

In Pakistan, the purported abandoning of the country’s traditional stand on Kashmir has caused considerable unease. A spate of articles and statements, including from former diplomats with considerable experience of dealing with the issue, has expressed apprehensions of a diverse nature, largely because of manifest asymmetry between Pakistan’s unilateral concessions, which are basic and substantive, and mostly cosmetic flexibility from the Indian side. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s repeated assertion that a peaceful settlement with Pakistan precludes any redrawing of the map has led to fears of Pakistan accepting an inequitable solution.

There have also been arguments that the benefits of a rapprochement between the two nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours outweigh the price of maintaining an absolutist posture on Kashmir. Anchored in the larger effort to de-politicize and de-ideologize Pakistan’s polity, the proponents of this view offer the promise of rapid economic development, alignment with the dominant forces of global power and defeat of religious extremism that threatens the country’s social progress and darkens its international image. A cleverly crafted series of articles contributed by a World Bank veteran to Dawn builds a statistically-packed narrative of profit and loss attributable to Pakistani commitment to Kashmir, though this narrative gives short shrift to human aspirations for freedom and dignity.

A similar calculus will make a mockery of the great anti-colonial movements of the 20th century including the heroic struggle of the Algerian and Palestinian people. The tabulation of Pakistan’s disproportionate defence expenditure to project the implied assumption that by downgrading the cause of Kashmir the country would make a dramatic reduction in the defence outlay is rather naive and betrays a lack of familiarity with the real dynamics of the state of Pakistan.

A former diplomat who served as foreign minister in President Musharraf’s pre-election military government has struck a more balanced note. Rightly fearful that the search for a just and equitable solution of the Kashmir problem would be jeopardized by avoidable controversies, he has made an urgent plea for building a new consensus taking into account the factors that have led to a re-thinking of Pakistan’s approach to the issue. Sadly though, he describes the dissenting voices as ‘shrill’ and feels that a ‘sober analysis of the new policy’ was ‘lost in the confusion and cacophony of (these shrill) voices’. The process of building a consensus needs greater tolerance of the din and noise of democracy and the right to express different opinions.

An authoritarian political culture and the compulsions of self-censorship noticeable among analysts, academics, journalists and media people discourage an explicit identification of the factors that inhibit national consensus even on such crucial issues as Kashmir. Most of these factors can be attenuated or modified to the advantage of the decision-makers if they are dealt with upfront.

By far the biggest obstacle to a consensus on Kashmir is the larger political conflict in Pakistani society. The combative approach of President Musharraf to politics and personalities is countered by his opponents by denying altogether the legitimacy of his power, his honesty of purpose and intention and the validity of even those decisions which have served Pakistan well. The existing polarization frustrates efforts to place issues of national security and survival outside the arena of political confrontation.

Another source of current unease about the Kashmir policy is the perception that President Musharraf is a man in a hurry and that Kashmir may become a victim of precipitate action liable to unacceptable consequences. Baseless as this apprehension may be, it is fortified by the all too frequent claims of his political associates that a solution of the Kashmir issue is just round the corner. By investing 2007 with a quasi-theological significance, all the president’s men create the unwarranted fear that the Kashmir file may be prematurely closed on terms decidedly disadvantageous to Pakistan.

Building a national consensus on foreign and security policy will remain problematic as long as the perennial tension in civil-military relations continues to be the main matrix of Pakistani politics. But there are encouraging signs that a grand compromise with India need not be too divisive. There is already a tacit consensus that problems created by the messy partition of 1947 and perpetuated by confrontational postures and doctrines are simply not amenable to resolution by military force. In India too, the doctrine of limited war, propounded by some strategic thinkers, has withered away after the military stand-off of 2002.

The likely benefits of a cooperative relationship are also beginning to be perceived, though rather dimly. The real challenge now is that the projected edifice of peace and friendship is not constructed on the debris of the aspirations of the people of Kashmir.

Misgivings in this regard can be considerably allayed if it is clearly acknowledged that the two countries have not yet arrived at a point where a solution acceptable to the three parties — India, Pakistan and the people of Kashmir — has emerged. It is simply not decision time for the final settlement in Kashmir. Recognition of this reality has made many analysts suggest that Pakistan should wait for better times — a course of action which is neither feasible nor desirable. A better option is a proactive engagement with the Kashmir issue on the clear understanding that its solution will entail exploration of at least two distinct stages without prejudice to the historical positions of the two countries.

India and Pakistan reaffirm time and again that they have made the strategic choice to sustain the present peace process through the ongoing composite dialogue. They can sanctify this commitment by entering into a solemn non-aggression pact and by negotiating strategic restraint measures. Progress in this direction would facilitate disengagement and substantial demilitarization in Jammu and Kashmir, a key concept in President Musharraf’s thinking. It would also set the stage for the conceptualization of autonomy for the interim period spanning an agreed number of years.

Given the ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity of Jammu and Kashmir, the substance of autonomy may vary from region to region and will have to be articulated through representative assemblies created through free elections on both sides of the Line of Control.

During this interim period, Pakistan can showcase autonomy and democracy in Azad Kashmir and the Northern Areas and thus demonstrate the viability of the project of a freely associated sovereign sub-state. In the Indian-administered regions the interim period should take the Kashmiris well beyond the heavily eroded Article 370 so that the elected assembly or assemblies acquire the political capability of self-governance and interaction across a softer Line of Control. India and Pakistan may establish a joint commission to facilitate and oversee this interaction in specified areas such as intra-Kashmir travel, trade and cultural exchanges.

The parties concerned should use the interim period dynamically to conceptualize Kashmiri sovereignty and its linkages with either India or Pakistan or both of them. This will be a creative quest for the reconciliation of Pakistan’s principled position that the final status of Kashmir will be determined by an exercise of the right of self-determination with the Indian stand that there cannot be a redrawing of the map. There are more ways than one to exercise the right of self-determination and maps can always be redrawn if the final settlement protects the core interests of all the parties.

The ultimate test of the project will be the valley and parts of Jammu that have witnessed a violent struggle against an almost mythical accession to India that was never put to the vote promised in the UN resolutions. Only an ingenious construct of the sovereignty of this heartland of the old state will permit a final settlement. It is a difficult but not an impossible undertaking, particularly if the interim period leads to a fundamental transformation of India-Pakistan relations.

As far as one can see today, the only hope of reviving the 1947 state as a new United States of Jammu and Kashmir lies in India and Pakistan agreeing to giving its people the choice of acceding to either state or becoming an altogether independent state with special treaties with the two subcontinental powers.

Since this is an unlikely proposition, the final solution would probably comprise complex inter-relationships involving two or more quasi-independent Kashmiri states located under overarching, parallel and clearly defined super-sovereignties of India and Pakistan. It may well be that the Valley settles for an overlap of institutions that spell out the respective sovereignty of the two South Asian neighbours of Jammu and Kashmir.

It will never be easy to negotiate the final status of Jammu and Kashmir, but the sincerity and resolve with which India and Pakistan can realize the intermediate stage with its emphasis on demilitarization, self-governance and political autonomy will provide the basis for a final solution. Failure to rise to this historic opportunity will put this ultimate solution beyond the grasp of the two countries for many more decades.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

SECURITY-related issues aside, coercion is not necessarily of the essence of good governance. It is certainly not a cornerstone of a democratic system. Yet, given the highly objectionable treatment of Pakistan’s HRCP chairperson, Asma Jehangir by the Punjab police and the repressive measures adopted more recently in the PTCL privatization affair, it certainly seems to be among the preferred policy options of the government of the day.

The targeting of Asma Jehangir appears to have been a gauche exercise of male chauvinism masquerading as ‘fundamentalism’ under siege. In another political context it might have signalled something else: the dying throes of an order. In our case, all it seems to have been is a symptom of peeved defiance, of the powers that be cocking a symbolic snoop at an institution which, more than any other, stands for civil morality.

By contrast, the handling of the issue of the privatization of 26 per cent shares of a state-owned utility reportedly registering windfall annual profits has slightly more serious implications. So far as one knows, there was no immediate exigency of state so grave as to warrant military involvement rather than bonafide negotiations with the different telephone workers’ unions in this regard. What, then, might seem to have lain behind the bulldozing of this matter? Besides the demands of transparency, those in power appear to have forgotten that the writ of government exists by dint of a ratified popular consensus, not in spite of it.

Certainly, in a democratic dispensation where trade union muscle has an almost sacrosanct relevance, being among the guarantees of a balance of power between society and state, resolution rather than enforcement in industrial disputes would be considered the norm. Given this perspective and the not altogether unsound caveat about disposing of the ‘family silver’, we can reasonably harbour doubts, its use as an expedient trade deficit cover notwithstanding, about the recent Etisalat deal.

What sort of mindset is it that thinks nothing of assailing one of the few champions of social justice in the country, less still of muzzling a victim of organized rape, while seeking, outlandishly, to regiment economic progress in our midst? Clearly, one that subscribes to a belief in a kind of patriarchal diktat and is far from democratic.

Under normal circumstances, authoritarianism would not pass for democracy. Yet it is allowed to in Pakistan. It is partly our fault, as Pakistanis, as well as that of successive governments of the US, that this is so. Senator Raza Rabbani of the PPP may have been stating the obvious when complaining to Christina Rocca, the US assistant secretary of state, while she was last here, of the absence of democracy in Pakistan. But he would also seem to have been doing a little more. His words would appear to have been designed as a discreet reminder to Ms Rocca about the US president’s pledge, made in his eloquent state of the union address, to spread ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ worldwide and the fact of his not having delivered on this in the context of Pakistan.

While such diplomatic pressure is definitely called for from time to time, let us not be oblivious to the subtle ambiguities of US foreign policy. Whereas the avowed objective of the world’s sole superpower seems indeed to be to restore democracy where possible, it is at the same time not to impose it on ‘the unwilling’. There is a curious lacuna here which smacks a little of realpolitik and merits looking at closely the current American stand on democracy.

Having said that, we could be asking ourselves a relevant question: do we fall in the category of ‘the unwilling’? In the light of the ‘war on terror’ and its logical equation with militarism, it would certainly seem to be to the advantage of the US to believe this to be so. Of course, this is very much the view of our right wingers, secularists and fundamentalists alike, who hold, formally or informally, that western-style parliamentary democracy is pernicious. The logic of the view is simple. According to this, the record of the three chief exponents of democracy in Pakistan, Z. A. Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, speaks for itself. It is thought to constitute incontrovertible historical proof of the failure of the democratic system, or at least the Westminster-based variety, in relation to us. And, of course, to those of this persuasion, the Bhuttos and Sharifs are both anathema.

The point, though, is, is it really wise or, for that matter, patriotic to sustain this animus or in fact the virtual ban on perfectly credible political leaders on an indefinite basis if it is at the expense of the country? The slightly sanctimonious argument that they are corrupt and hence ineligible for the highest public office in the land does not hold good since, as we all know, corruption is endemic in the subcontinent besides being alive and well in Pakistan even today.

There are those of us who are not partial to any specific political lobby but see only too clearly the damage being done to the social fabric on account of what is, in effect, a yawning political vacuum tricked out as government. Moreover, what should be of profound concern to us all is not just the terrible economic privation around us but what seems to be partially responsible for it: a deep-seated despondency or malaise among our all but disenfranchised masses.

Fresh local bodies or general elections that are transparently free and liable to lead to some degree of popular participation through bonafide political representation may not prove an instant remedy but might just kick-start our poor into redeveloping a sense of social and economic purpose.

In view of the numerous different agendas that bedevil a society seriously at odds with itself, this and not any incoherent form of agitation can bring about meaningful sociopolitical change. In other words, mobilizing the masses is today possible only electorally. Nobody knows better than they what the dynamics of democracy are. Also, they expect the electoral process, as it is their right to, to afford a catharsis or, at least, provide an opportunity for a vital expression of political choice rather than be a merely preordained affair.

Needless to say, many realize that democracy as a mere shibboleth will no longer do and that the purely rhetorical Aristotelian construct with its stultifying superstructure, and no base as such, has outlived its day. It is also apparent that a deconstructed, revitalized system — or new beginning — is urgently called for.

Adherents of the status quo in the establishment seem, partly at the behest of the US, to be playing a rather dangerous game. If this time round elections, local or national, are rigged to ‘keep religion out’, they will simply prove counterproductive, give no relief to the poor and in fact widen the fissures at the heart of our society. Good sense demands that we accept political and cultural realities for what they are and strive instead for the creation of a consensual and composite society. This would, more than anything, be of the essence of pluralism and democracy. Inevitably, one is left wondering here quite what became of our earlier goal of national reconciliation.

A READER wondered if there was really any point in columnists continuously badgering the Pakistan establishment, week after week, month after month, when people at the helm of affairs don’t take the slightest notice of what is printed and carry on doing just what they please.

Writers have, in fact, been italicizing not just the gross misgovernment that takes place at various levels of administration, but also the orgy of extravagance and waste indulged in by men in and out of uniform. But it hasn’t made the slightest difference. It is this total disregard for the views of columnists that makes some writers want to chuck away their political notebooks and sit before the idiot box, glass in hand and feet on the table.

A decade after television had been introduced in Pakistan, we still had only two channels on state controlled TV. Programmes, we were told, were selected for their social message and viewers who were not knocking back chasers or trying out the new Latin American dance at the club, gravitated once a week to the Ponderosa. This was the 600-acre ranch home of the Cartwright family, where Little Joe, Hoss, their father and the Chinese cook who produced hay wagon breakfasts, laid down the law in that part of Nevada.

Each episode was prefaced with the display of a map to provide some kind of cartographical focus and to remind viewers that Bonanza, which was a natural successor to Rawhide, was filmed near the shores of Lake Tahoe in the Sierras halfway between Squaw Valley and Carson City. The serial had a special appeal to people in this part of the world when they discovered that the head of the family played by Lorne Greene had been widowed thrice and had a son from each of his three wives.

Bonanza had become essential viewing, like The Forsythe Saga and The Fugitive before it. In those days timings of marriage ceremonies in Karachi had to be adjusted according to the screening time of these soaps. It just wouldn’t do to miss an episode. Bonanza ran for 13 action-filled weeks and finally came to an end when Hoss pegged down from unnatural causes. But in the process the serial had driven Roy Rogers and Gene Autrey, horse, guitar, spurs and all into the bottom of the Grand Canyon. These two cowboys haven’t been heard of since. Nowadays viewers have over 90 channels provided by cable networks and often complain that in spite of the variety there is really nothing to watch or look forward to. Take for instance the Indian channels of which there are at least eight in one form or another.

One longs to see something by Satyajit Ray like The World of Apu , or by Shyam Benegal. Like Manthan. Instead one is inundated by heaps of candy floss nonsense in which a variety of skimpily dressed leading ladies who all look alike, with their blue-tinted contact lenses and long hair dyed the colour of rust, gyrate across the floor with one of the Khans or the Kapoors, united by the vague consciousness of a shared activity.

Two weeks ago this writer was in a particularly masochistic mood and decided to sit through one of these sagas. He was absolutely dazzled by the film’s visual opulence expressed in the four-hour-long extravaganza. The brocaded costumes were quite resplendent as one took in the riot of colour — flaming orange, emerald green, copper sulphate blue, egg flip yellow and imperial purple. And the song-and-dance sequences, overflowing with performers, were beautifully choreographed.

One searched in vain for a story or a theme which would distinguish the production from a documentary, and was informed later by a neighbour that the motion picture was a tale of unrequited love. There was nothing to stop one from chuckling at the film’s straight-faced excess, but when it finished one had no great desire to see a similar epic in the near future.

Which leaves the news and the sports channels which are expanding on what one has already read in the papers in the morning, and, of course, wrestling, in which a number of Neanderthals who have just been let out of the zoo entertain the denizens of the new world.

As this writer is a sucker for the old stuff he invariably hooks onto the TCM channel whenever BBC Prime has one of those infernal gardening programmes in which a suburban housewife suddenly discovers she can have a garden better than her mother-in-law’s, or when somebody is telling an old codger that the dirty looking vase that he had brought to the auction was worth anything between a hundred and a hundred and twenty pounds.

The only problem with the films shown on TCM (Turner Classic Movies) is that they can hardly be called ‘classics’ in the sense generally understood by the word. They are just films that were made before the ‘40s, and before directors decided that a story wasn’t complete until it had at least three car chases, a black captain of police and a Chinaman who learned his English in the flight from Hong Kong.

But once is a while they come up with delightful golden oldies like The Adventures of Robin Hood and Casablanca. Nobody expected the latter in which Humphrey Bogart starred after two other actors had dropped out, and in which a totally disinterested Ingrid Bergman was killing time before acting in For Whom The Bell Tolls would be such a hit.

What emerged from the disarray was 98 minutes of quotable celluloid gold, a film that made screen legends of Bergman and Bogart. Who can ever forget that great line uttered by Claude Rains dressed in a black Vichy regime uniform complete with belt and boots - “Round up the usual suspects?” Its jaundiced protagonist Rick came to symbolize America’s transition from isolationist to neutrality to heroic participation in the Second World War. More than 60 years later, its appeal remains undimmed.

Nevertheless one longs to see a channel devoted exclusively to the real classics, western and eastern, which shows films made by Rosselini, Pabst, Lubitsch, Fellini, Visconti, Ray, Wender, Resnais, Antonioni, Eisenstein and Pagnol. Since the likelihood of something like this emanating from the West is remote, perhaps a serious cinema buff in Pakistan or India could undertake such a project. Since most of these films are over 40 years old there ought not to be a problem with copyright.

Wouldn’t it be nice to see during the first week films like The Bicycle Thief (Vittorio de Sica), Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman), Les Enfants du Paradis (Marcel Carne), Man of Marble (Andres Wajda), Rashoman (Akira Kurosawa), Sous les Toits de Paris (Rene Clair), Ballad of a Soldier (Grigori Chukhrai), The Music Room (Satyajit Ray), Brief Encounter (David Lean) and Los Olvidados (Luis Bunuel)?

Since there is little else to choose from in the channels one has been sticking close to and not straying too far from UK TV (Granada) which demonstrated quite a while ago that eventually the cowboys were driven off the prairie by policemen with trouble at home. That was when the Karachi television public was introduced to a clutch of British sleuths led by John Thaw, who plays Detective Inspector Morse of the Thames Valley Police.

Morse, who doesn’t appear to have a Christian name, is an orthodox, restless and headstrong middle-aged bachelor whose cases often bring him into contact with Oxford’s academic community. A loner by nature he is both tender and tetchy. His sympathy with the victims of crime and his wistful longing for unattainable women match his disdain for abusive authority figures.

He brings a passion for real ale, crossword puzzles, poetry and the operas of Wagner and Mozart, which made the connoisseur forgive him for his flawed reasoning and premature conclusions. Until something better comes along, this writer has decided to stick with Morse.