Invite Amartya Sen to nuclear CBMs

IT SHOULD not go unnoticed that, true to form, India and Pakistan were haggling mulishly over some minor details of their so-called nuclear CBMs on Hiroshima Day, an occasion when they might have done better reflecting on their own destructive arsenals.

In the end what the two sides achieved by the weekend was an inane agreement on the right distance from their borders to test-launch their nuclear missiles, which both are cultivating to target and annihilate the other side with if sufficiently provoked.

That their discussions threatened to get bogged down on completely minor issues compared to the global fears of holocaust they continue to generate can be tested by a simple question. Has the cloud of a major war, inevitably a nuclear war, vanished for ever from South Asia as a result of their confidence-building measures? The resounding answer is no, not at all.

As long as nuclear weapons form part of their offensive or defensive, dormant or proactive arsenals, all the talk of CBMs in South Asia are eyewash. This is what Professor Amartya Sen also seems to argue in his new book The Argumentative Indian .

It may have been a coincidence that Prof. Sen was in Delhi in connection with the book release when the CBM talks got underway last week. It would have been a good idea to invite him over for a chat with both the teams before the formal talks to drive some urgency and a good measure of reasoned sense into the discussions.

“Weapons of mass destruction have a peculiar fascination,” they would have heard him say. “They can generate a warm glow of strength and power carefully divorced from the brutality and genocide on which the potency of the weapons depends.”

The great epics provide thrilling accounts of the might of special weapons, which not only are powerful in themselves, but also greatly empower their possessors. As India, along with Pakistan, goes down the route of cultivating nuclear weapons, the imagined radiance of perceived power is hard to miss, says the good professor in an entire chapter titled “India and the Bomb”.

Although a faithful rehash of a lecture he delivered at a Pugwash conference in 2000, the chapter on India’s nuclear pursuits is a lucidly argued essay that looks at nuclear prowess anywhere with deep suspicion.

Prof. Sen discusses at length the various arguments that are proferred on economic grounds about South Asia’s poverty and so on to crticize the bomb.

But, he adds, “Ultimately the argument against nuclearization is not primarily an economic one. It is rather the increased insecurity of human lives that constitutes the biggest penalty of the subcontinental nuclear adventures. That issue needs further scrutiny.”

What of the argument that nuclear deterrence makes war between India and Pakistan less likely?

“Why would not the allegedly proven ability of nuclear balance, which is supposed to have kept peace in the world, be effective also in the subcontinent? I believe that this question can be answered from four different perspectives,” says Prof. Sen.

First, even if it were the case that the nuclearization of India and Pakistan reduces the probability of war between the two, there would be a trade-off here between a lower chance of conventional war against some chance of a nuclear holocaust.

No sensible decision-making can concentrate only on the probability of war without taking note of the size of the penalties of war should it occur. Indeed, any significant probability of the scenario captured by Arundhati Roy’s description of ‘the end of imagination’ can hardly fail to outweigh the greater probability, if any, of the comparatively milder penalties of conventional war.

Second, there is nothing to indicate that the likelihood of conventional war is, in fact, reduced by the nuclearization of India and Pakistan. Indeed, hot on the heels of the nuclear blasts, the two countries did undergo a major military confrontation in the Kargil district. The Kargil conflict, which occurred within a year of the nuclear blasts of India and Pakistan, was in fact the first military conflict between the two in nearly 30 years.

Many Indian commentators have argued, says Sen, that the confrontation was helped by Pakistan’s understanding that India would not be able to use its massive superiority in conventional forces to launch a bigger war in retaliation precisely because it would fear a nuclear holocaust.

Whether or not this analysis is right, there is clearly substance in the general reasoning that the enemy’s fear of nuclear annihilation can be an argument in favour of military adventurism without expectation of a fuller retaliation from the enemy. Be that as it may, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and no matter what the explanation, nuclearization evidently has not prevented non-nuclear conflicts between India and Pakistan.

Third, the danger of accidental nuclear war is much greater in the subcontinent than it was in the Cold War itself. This is not only because the checks and controls are much looser, but also because the distances involved are so small between India and Pakistan — that there is little time for any conversation when a crisis might occur and a first strike were feared.

“Fourth, there is a need also to assess whether the peace that the world enjoyed with nuclear deterrence during the global Cold War was, in fact, predictable and causally robust.

“The argument for the balance of terror has been clear enough for a long time, and was most eloquently put by Winston Churchill in his last speech to the House of Commons on March 1, 1955. His ringing words on this (‘safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation’) has a mesmerising effect,” says Sen.

But Churchill himself did make exceptions to his rule, when he said that the logic of deterrence ‘does not cover the case of lunatics or dictators in the mood of Hitler when he found himself in his final dug-out’.

So the next time Meera Shankar and Tariq Osman Hyder meet, they know who to invite over to give their CBM talks a bit of meaning and lots of credibility.

THE DEGREE of improved atmosphere between India and Pakistan is often reflected in the ease with which diplomats conduct themselves on the telephone.

A certain diplomat loves to poke fun at everything that catches his fancy, including news headlines.

“I am catching your cows for 2,000 rupees a piece,” he responded merrily to a simple greeting from an Indian interlocutor. It turned out that he was having a laugh at the Delhi government’s plans to round up stray cattle by rewarding their captors.

Local body ‘waste’

Discerning voters feel a deep sense of concern at the manner in which the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and the Jamaat-i-Islami have been indulging in mutual recrimination since the announcement of a date for the first phase of the local body elections.

The Sindh Minister for Local Government, Waseem Akhtar, told newsmen the other day that the erstwhile city government had wasted Rs5 billion earmarked for development projects over three years.

Now, this is a serious allegation. Five billion rupees is a major chunk of the entire development budget. If “wasted” in this context means spending money on wrong priorities, that is one thing. But if it implies wrongful spending, then it’s far more serious. But why hadn’t the minister spoken up when the “waste” was taking place?

Activists close to the decision-making body of the Muttahida say that Mr Akhtar is a strong candidate of the party for the coveted post of Karachi nazim. Since he has been minister for local government for quite some time, he knows the working of the city government inside out.

However, the minister should have realized that his accusation does not leave him free from taint. After all, development funds were wasted, if at all, on his watch. He did not have direct control over the funds, but he could have set alarm bells ringing when he found out – or when it was brought to his notice – that uplift funds were being squandered.

And this brings us to another anomaly of the devolution plan put in place by Islamabad-based political engineers in 2001. City and district governments across the country complained bitterly during their term that they were too reliant upon the federal government for regular release of funds to be independent in the exact sense of the word. And yet funds, once released, were entirely at the disposal of the city government, so much so that provincial ministers felt that they would be better off in the city government set-up.

Murphy’s Law

Strapped for cash, a colleague, who had run out his cheque book, drove straight to the nearest ATM of his bank on the first of the month. His consternation knew no bounds when the ATM screen flashed a message saying that the bank’s communication link was down.

Knowing that even if he applied for a cheque book that day it would not be available before at least two weeks, he decided to call the bank’s head office to find out what had gone wrong. He dialled the PTCL’s central directory assistance, better known as 17, to find out what the phone number was. But there was something wrong with 17. Every time a prerecorded message said that his call was being connected to such-and-such operator, the call became disconnected.

A little later, he tried to call 17 from his cell phone. And this time a message flashed on the screen of his cell phone informing him that the network of his cell phone operator was busy. Giving up, the friend sat back, convinced of the wisdom of Murphy’s Law: anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

Airline blues

It is a pity that air travel, at least on domestic flights, no longer means a hassle-free journey characterized by dependable punctuality. It is true that fierce competition has forced airlines to lower fares, but their performance still leaves a lot to be desired.

Passengers flying from one city to another for fixed appointments – seeing a doctor, going for a job interview, or simply reporting back to work after a vacation – can no longer be certain of reaching their destination on time. Their plans are thrown into disarray every time their plane develops a “technical fault”, a term that covers a multitude of sins.

Airlines staff are not always nice to passengers who become deserted in this way. Sometimes the passengers are put up in hotels, given proper food and their money is refunded. But other times they are treated shabbily and made to make do with skimpy meals.

One feels that the government would do well to establish an aviation regulatory body, possibly under the cabinet division, to not only sort out the fare issues of various airlines but also keep a watch on their performance. A regulatory organization like the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority or Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority may be needed.

Toxic fumes

Just imagine what officials of the customs must have felt when they burnt 24 tons of hashish and 240 kilos of heroin the other day in the open. Indeed, what would the people of the neighourhood, as well as animals and birds, have felt? All of them should be excused for being a little intoxicated.

It is not that the customs, who burn narcotics on a regular basis, do not know about the harmful impact of the open burning of drugs on the environment.

According to the Sindh Environment Protection Agency, the customs have been advised to use an incinerator to destroy the drugs they seize in their raids. “Customs used an incinerator last year to destroy drugs. I don’t know why they have discontinued the practice,” says SEPA deputy director Shahid Lutfi.

Mr Lutfi points out that clouds of toxic fumes escape from the pyre of burning drugs. “Toxins generated by burning drugs are generally short lived, yet their harmful effect on those around the place where burning takes place is profound. Arrangements should be made to use the two public incinerators which are currently employed for disposal of hospital waste only,” he suggests.

But Dr Saleem Azam, who has been working for rehabilitation of drug addicts for the past 25 years, says the confiscated drugs could be put to better use. “I wish this stuff, which is worth millions of dollars, could be saved and used more profitably by, say, selling it to pharmaceutical companies,” he says.

Plentiful ban

Thinking that the ban on fishing during the breeding season would leave her with no choice but to cook chicken for dinner, a friend nevertheless decided to visit the fishmonger’s hoping against hope for at least a limited choice of the family favourite.

To her surprise, while there were few customers, baskets of fish and shrimp, mixed with ice, lay on the canopied pavement, waiting to be purchased. There was ladyfish, salmon, red snapper, pomfret, to name just a few. The fishmonger was delighted at the sight of one more customer and boasted that fishing had never stopped, not even during the breeding season, and was continuing at a time when the waves were in full force in the ocean.

The fish appeared very fresh with clear eyes, firm to the touch and with hardly any smell. The deep water colours still glistened on their slimy backs – light pink and aqua blue. Whatever misgivings the friend might have had about eating fish in the breeding season, she cast them aside and told the fishmonger to cut thick “fry” pieces from the salmon. A customer, who had been in the navy, told her that it was better to buy the big fish than the small ones as the former were caught in deep waters. Small fish, he said, were more likely to be affected by factory effluents, and would create health problems. But a niggling question remained: just how ethical was it to kill fish during the breeding season? On the other hand, how could the fishing community, already leading a hand-to-mouth existence, manage to subsist without going out to sea? — By Karachian

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