| August 27, 2005 | Saturday | Rajab 21, 1426 |
To send a letter to the Editor
Click here
Jinnah & Nehru
Above the law?
Need for tobacco control
Underpass mess
Ibn-i-Khaldun and free market
Girl child stigma
Gaza evictions
20-rupee note
Agricultural country
Cantonments
WITH the rising cost of oil, one has a right to expect some sense of consideration from those who have taken upon themselves the onerous responsibility of running the country.
There appears to be a real lack of understanding since ‘energy’ is being considered an expendable necessity. Why is it so difficult to understand that energy needs to be conserved? We do not even include the word ‘conservation’ in our thinking processes.
Energy needs to be conserved in every sector, but two areas require special attention if we really want to reduce the long- term impact of high energy costs.
Industries use an enormous quantity of gas and oil and with subsidized gas available to them, they can afford to waste and they waste knowingly. Whether you analyze a cement plant or sugar mills or conventional industries generating steam or hot water (chemicals, textiles, tyre manufacturing, etc), we are totally inefficient and it is the nation that pays for this inefficiency by doling out funds to subsidize natural gas (and oil to some extent) when this money is so desperately required for basic needs like health, education and the civic infrastructure.
Building designs, even in the major cities, are wasteful of energy. Even buildings constructed by professionals lack basic energy conservation concepts. Our building code, prepared in the late 80s by the ministry of housing and works, was never approved by the ‘competent authority’ and now, instead of a code to meet green building concepts, we want to develop a hi-fi building code which can never be applied in a country like ours. Requirements of rating green buildings are known widely and these can result in as much as 50 per cent energy and water savings.
What should we be doing? For industries, efficiency must be enforced through intelligent counselling. Even with subsidized electrical energy and gas at half the international price, our cost of manufacturing major items is higher than the cost of imported items. Textile products continue to be under pressure from ‘cheap’ competition since we just refuse to use energy-efficient processes for production of electrical energy and steam or hot water so essential for textile finishing.
Our sugar production costs are so high that imported sugar with freight and handling can be sold at a lower price. The same is the case with cement or even steel products. We just refuse to upgrade our processes to make them more efficient and there is no advice from those who are responsible for this nation’s destiny.
If an industry applies for natural gas to be used in most inefficient boilers for steam or hot water, sanction is given without much ado, but if an industry applies for gas to be used in an efficient combined heat and power system, this will be referred to Islamabad for approval under the power generation policy. Can anyone justify this logic?
What are other countries doing to encourage combined heat and power systems? The US even gives special privileges to sell additional power at a reasonable cost. Down the line even Bangladesh has a much higher gas tariff for inefficient boilers producing steam or hot water compared to tariff for power generation.
For buildings the energy wastage is phenomenal. Buildings get approved without the basic conservation requirement. Once in a while, one sees an advertisement from Wapda seeking to discourage the use of airconditioners (one typical airconditioner stops power for three power looms) but there is no ‘competent authority’ to ensure that buildings are built with energy conservation features which would require less energy and still be reasonably comfortable.
AAZA
Karachi
APROPOS of Dr Aftab Ahmed’s rejoinder to Mr M. J. Akbar (Aug 23), the following quote from Leonard Mosley’s meticulously researched book, The Last Days of the Raj, should be of considerable historical curiosity.
“This (the Cabinet Mission Plan) was an arrangement which the Muslim League had accepted until Nehru’s maladroit repudiation of the grouping scheme. Nazimuddin now proposed that Congress should make a declaration.
They should announce that they had accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan not as they interpreted it, but as the Cabinet Mission had intended it. They should also guarantee that no minorities in the Groups should be allowed to opt out of them before the 10-year period specified by the Cabinet Mission Plan. The scheme, in other words, should be given a chance to work.
“In these circumstances, Nazimuddin told Wavell, the Muslim League might reconsider its rejection of the scheme and decide to come into the interim government.
“Wavell (in a dialogue) put the question frankly to Gandhi and Nehru: ‘Will you give me the guarantee the Muslim League is asking for?’
“He was almost immediately plunged into the most difficult argument he had ever had with Gandhi, who chose this day to be at his most polemical and devious. Here was a saint who, in his ashram, could dispense great wisdom and counsel tolerance, understanding and the necessity to give rather than take. But on this evening he spoke purely and simply as a Congress politician.
“Give me a simple guarantee that you accept the Cabinet Mission Plan,” asked Wavell.
“We have already said that we accept it”, replied Gandhi, “but we are not prepared to guarantee that we accept it in the way that the Cabinet Mission set it out. We have our own interpretations of what they propose.”
M.J.AS’AD
Karachi
THIS refers to Syed A. Mateen’s letter ‘Above the law? (Aug 19). In Pakistan it is very common that those who happen to have authority consider themselves above the law. In this particular case it is a matter of disgrace that violence was committed by the son of a minister responsible for law-making and its monitoring.
I would like to quote an example of the Father of the Nation. The Quaid-i-Azam used to go to the Domlottee rest-house to spend Sundays there with his sister. Once, railway crossing of Malir was closed as a goods train was about to pass. The gateman, seeing the governor-general’s car, opened the gates and gave a signal to the chauffeur to cross.
The Quaid stopped the driver and beckoned the gateman. He asked him to close the gates and let the goods train pass first. This was done.
We request the president and the prime minister to order the minister concerned to apologize for the misdemeanour committed by his son.
S.M. ZAKERYA KAZMI
Karachi
TOBACCO use is the leading preventable cause of premature mortality and morbidity in Pakistan. Smoking is known to cause heart disease, chronic obstruction, pulmonary disease, stroke and many forms of cancer. Each year about 100,000 people die in the country as a direct result of tobacco use.
Despite the staggering impact of smoking on health, approximately 40 per cent of adult males and eight per cent of adult females smoke on a regular basis in Pakistan. The government has taken some measures for tobacco control by introducing the Prohibition of Smoking Ordinance 2002. The ordinance banned smoking at public places as well as in public transport, and also put restrictions on tobacco advertising. Unfortunately, very little follow-up was subsequently made to implement this ordinance.
A major barrier to tobacco control is the perceived need and reliance of the government on the revenue generated from the tobacco industry. In 2003, the revenue Rs32.36 billion. Pakistanis burn away Rs56 million every day in smoking cigarettes.
In addition, about an equal amount of money is spent on using smokeless tobacco in the form of ‘paan’, ‘gutka’ and ‘naswar’ — major causes for head, neck and oral cancer in the country.
There is no data available to measure the cost of healthcare needed for the treatment of diseases caused by tobacco. Our government must realize that tobacco control is highly cost-effective as a basic public health package and it compares well with other interventions like child immunization.
The government must stop relying on money generated from the tobacco industry and find an alternative source of revenue collection. It must raise the taxes levied on tobacco products and stop allowing tobacco companies to sponsor sports and musical concerts. All billboards on tobacco must be removed.
Seminars should be arranged in all educational institutions in which special emphasis should be on educating young people in the dangers of smoking. Smoking cessation clinics should be set up to guide people who wish to quit smoking.
PROF (DR) Javaid Khan
Karachi
WHO will hold the Karachi Port Trust and the Frontier Works Organization (FWO) accountable for the mess they have created in Karachi’s Clifton and Defence areas?
Anyone who lives there or who has recently driven through the area will be able to testify to the agony and hardship caused by the unplanned and haphazard digging accompanying the construction of the Clifton underpass.
In countries where government agencies are held accountable for their deeds and where the flow of information from the government to the general public is subject to greater transparency, such a large undertaking — as the construction of the underpass undoubtedly is — would have been subject to proper planning. The views of the general public, especially the area’s residents who would be most affected by the road construction, would be solicited and taken into consideration. Also, any major diversions, detours and related/ancillary digging would be notified well in advance. Alternative routes would be such that they would be able to accommodate at least part of the traffic load.
Unfortunately, as things currently stand none of this is the case. A couple of weeks ago the FWO decided on its own to dig up the stretch of the main Clifton road (Khayaban-i-Jami) from what used to be Schon Circle to the Boating Basin roundabout (there is no longer a roundabout there though). This means that traffic coming from Sunset Boulevard, and wishing to go to Mai Kolachi or the part of Clifton near Bilawal House and further, has to take the side road.
The only problem with this is that the side road is a shambles — rather has been for years — and no one in the city government (or is it the Clifton Cantonment Board?) bothered to do anything about it. That this should happen to roads in an area that is (for some reason) thought by many in Karachi to be a ‘posh’ neighbourhood speaks of the authorities’ indifference.
Every day, the area — home to dozens of schools, banks, eating places and other commercial establishments — sees massive traffic jams. A ride through the side road will reveal that the heavy traffic that uses Khayaban-i-Jami is now using the side road and in the process its craters and potholes are getting even larger. At about the same time, this portion of road was dug up, the road-building agencies also decided to close off Queen’s Road (M. T. Khan Road) to traffic from one direction. Motorists travelling from I. I. Chundrigar Road to Clifton or Defence and wishing to use the relatively quick Mai Kolachi route now have to endure delays as they negotiate a treacherous stretch of road through Sultanabad, straddling Queen’s Road.
Their agony does not end there, since as they reach Khayaban-i- Jami and the Boating Basin intersection (situated at the end of Mai Kolachi), there is often a huge jam lying in wait for them. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that in most cases a crucial stretch of the road is riddled with large potholes and craters, which probably escaped the FWO’s attention. The same is the case for the road which connects Gizri and Civil Lines/Frere Town via the Submarine roundabout, since there too gutter water has made a small stretch of road almost impossible to cross, resulting in unneeded delays.
LALARUKH EJAZ
Karachi
PRIVATIZATION is a widely discussed theme these days in the context of the worldwide retreat of the public sector. A large number of countries, including Pakistan, are currently engaged in one form of privatization or other.
In this regard, it may be relevant to point out that Ibn-i- Khaldun (AD 1332-1406), the greatest Muslim social scientist, in his Muqaddimah (literally an ‘Introduction to History’ which has been described by the renowned historian Prof Arnold Toynbee as “the greatest work of its kind that has been created by any man in any time or place”) strongly supported free private enterprise and advocated that “capitalists amongst the inhabitants of cities need rank and protection”. He was, like Adam Smith, against government meddling with the market mechanism by inequitable taxation or by direct participation in production and distribution. He believed that state monopoly in commerce and agriculture ruins the economy.
Ibn-i-Khaldun states: “The finances of a ruler can be increased and his financial resources improved only through the revenue from the taxes. The revenue from taxes can be improved only through the equitable treatment of people with property and regard for them .... other means taken by the ruler, such as engaging in commerce and agriculture, soon turn out to be harmful to subjects, to be ruinous to revenue and to decrease cultural activities”. Also, like Adam Smith, Ibn-i-Khaldun noticed that productivity depends on the extent of the market, division of labour and specialization.
With his profound historical, political and economic insight, Ibn-i-Khaldun warned that the growth of absolute power in the state is the cause of decline of economic prosperity. For, according to him, absolute power has to be preserved by expanding bureaucracy, army and the police which have to be supported by increased taxation, confiscation and worst still by direct interference of the state in economic activity by engaging in commerce and industry.
Ibn-i-Khaldun’s empirical social inquiry gave him the unique perception of causal inter-dependence of political and economic power as well as pressures which are generated by vested interests in an organized society. His object of study was neither the ideal Islamic state nor the articulation of a speculative philosophical concept in this regard as was done by Plato. His focus was on man in society with natural laws governing life in a state inspired by ‘Asabiyah’ or national consciousness.
AFTAB AHMAD KHAN
Karachi
REFERENCE news report ‘Woman with four daughters jumps into canal (Dawn, Aug 21), I was shocked at the horrifying news. We keep coming across instances of women suffering in one way or another simply because they gave birth to girls.
The wife has no control over the sex of the newborn. Her genetic contribution does not affect the sex of the child. Hence, scientifically it is the husband who is responsible for the sex of the child, and has to bear all the blame. The pre-Islamic practice of burying alive girls was condemned by Islam and the practice was forbidden.
Practising obstetricians are rarely interested in the sex of the children a couple already have or of the child about to be delivered. Sometimes a couple may long for a girl child, but most couples want boys. In the management of a pregnant woman this vital cultural fact should be a consideration.
PROF A. MAJID MEMON
Karachi
AT present in Gaza there is a lot of hue and cry over the evacuation of settlers. This grief is minuscule compared to the forced evacuation of Palestinians and the razing of their homes by the Israeli army. The Palestinians are still living in refugee camps. They were deprived of fertile farm lands and forced to inhabit the desert like nomads.
The Gaza settlers are actually being relocated to other occupied zones in the West Bank. Therefore, moving a few settlements from one place to another like chesspieces is no solution. The only roadmap for peace is a return to the 1967 borders.
The quartet and the UN should introduce a two-state solution which is viable and acceptable to the Palestinians on whose land the dispute exists.
RAFI ADAMJEE
Karachi
THE newly-introduced 20-rupee note does not seem to be up to the mark in the sense that some of its features are not pleasant. There are three apparent defects. First, its size in relation to other Pakistani notes is quite small, giving the impression that it is not worth the denomination.
Second, the facsimile of the Quaid-i-Azam printed on the note is too large in proportion to the size of the note and thus quite unattractive.
Third, the quality of the paper used seems inferior to the touch in relation to other paper currency.
If possible, these defects should be removed in the next print of the notes.
M. A. TALPUR
Hyderabad
THIS refers to Mr M. Siddique Suleman’s letter ‘Agricultural country’ (Aug 19) in which he has asked as to how Pakistan can be called an agricultural country when it has been importing wheat for 55 out of its 58 years and 65 per cent of edible oil throughout its existence.
At present we are importing 16 agricultural commodities plus meat and livestock to cater for the food requirements of our people at a cost of $5 billion per annum.
Pakistan has 49 million hectares of cultivatable land and has the largest canal irrigation system in the world, with 60 per cent of its population out of 150 million engaged in agricultural activity throughout the year.
The natural resource base of Pakistan will suggest that it has the potential to meet the food needs of the population. What is the reason behind the agrarian crisis in Pakistan? Like Mr Suleman, I am also looking forward to learn from the ministry of agriculture about the factors responsible for the prevailing agricultural crisis. The best defence of a country lies in self-sufficiency in food.
Dr JALALUDDIN
Karachi
I WANT to draw the attention of the chairman of the National Reconstruction Bureau towards the statement of the chief election commissioner that local body elections would not be held in the cantonments.
Four years ago too, people living in the cantonments were neglected and no election was held. Now again the same storey has been repeated.
In the absence of representation, day-to-day problems of the people are not solved by the officers concerned.
I request the president to ask the chief election commissioner to hold elections in the cantonment areas also.
SH. AFTAB AHMAD
Karachi
You can also send letters to the Editor
Just send your message to the following address: letters@dawn.com
Make sure you include your full name, postal address, e-mail address, and in the case of Pakistan your day-time telephone number.