Now Vision 2030

AFTER trying with large visions in small areas, we are now opting for a grand vision 2030. In fact the National Economic Council approved the vision in principle in May last year and is to be taken up more seriously and in detail now. It is a comprehensive vision and promises almost everything to every group to make the state truly modern.

Vision 2030 provides the norms for a modern political system and seeks rapid and sustained economic growth with social justice. It seeks thorough reform of the civil services and a sound regulatory system with equity for all a wholesome judicial system that ensures what is promised is delivered to the people without fail.

Neither the long-term vision is new in Pakistan nor its varied commitment nor is what it promises disputable.

Shortly after the success of the second five year plan in the 1960s the Planning Commission came up with a 20 year vision. Since that was not making much headway because of political tumult the planning commission came up with a 50-year plan, with almost the same objectives. That did not make any headway in the 1990s, so now comes the vision 2030 spanning 25 years — the longest vision inclusive of the current year.

The new vision talks of every basic problem of the country except population planning or it does not give the problem due importance as the population growth has come down from 3.1 per cent annually. Population planning should receive greater and sustained attention to reduce the pressure not only on the state, but also the families, particularly the mothers. More so, if we want the women to play a greater role in the economy, instead of having a marginal, organized participation.

The difference between the vision now and the past is that the industrial and infrastructure sectors are greatly privatized and the state cannot make them conform to any expansionary target. Instead the market will provide the incentives for expansion and penalize the defaulters financially.

Hence the ask of regulating effectively the vastly expanded private sector which controls the key services should be done by the regulatory bodies without which monopolies and cartels will thrive and create the kind of problems which the sugar sector has with sugar touching Rs 50 a kilo.

Justice for all and in time is very essential as without that a rich group of people in collusion with the corrupt executives can inflict great pain on the poor. The common man needs fair wages instead of inflation robbing them of much of their earnings and the banks denying them a fair return on their small savings. Unless the three things go together the demands of equity cannot be met and the common man get out of his financial trap, while the rich groups have too many avenues to make quick money. Hence the vision 2030 begins with a call to end low savings rate and poor return on savings and the low investments that follow and result in poor small production in a largely populated country.

Vision 2030 will focus on poverty alleviation, promotion of education and public health and providing essential services to the people and ensure proper justice.

Surely with one third of the people living below the poverty line of one dollar a day, it should not take 25 years to banish poverty in our midst. It should be and can be done much quicker if inflation is firmly controlled and better returns ensured on small savings, certainly above the inflation rate.

Meanwhile, we have the UN millennium goals to half the poverty in the world by 2015, reduce illiteracy and promote women’s education. Those goals must be achieved in Pakistan as well as in other developing countries and we should then move ahead from the UN goals to the distant 2030. The approach paper of the vision emphasizes four levels — nature of the state, economy, society and global imperatives. And it gives a great deal of importance to reforming the civil services “without which the vision cannot be implemented, no matter how well that is formulated”.

It gives equal importance to the reform of the judicial system, without which justice cannot be ensured for all.

The state, says the vision should be able to provide justice, security, health, sanitation, drinking water and other social services. Providing clean drinking water can cut the stomach diseases by half at least.

Now that the privatization has become extensive, will the so-called public-private partnership in many areas become a reality and the private sector play fair in such partnerships.

The allocation of funds for the vision’s key sectors is not enough. Now the government has been stressing that four per cent of the GDP will be spent on education — a distinct improvement from 2.5 per cent of the GDP. What is important is not only the promised money should be spent but spent properly and in good time. And the educational funds allocated to the centre, provinces and local governments should be audited properly.

In fact the vision 2030 should have given a great deal of importance to the educational and social welfare allocations.

The funds earmarked for the public sector development programme for the current year have not been spent as targeted due to delay in the release of funds and the delay in the staff recruitments in Punjab and Sindh.

The report for the first half of the year shows only 39.6 per cent of the allocated amount has been spent despite assurances that the implementation will not lag behind the targets. Of course we don’t need the funds for education to be spent so fast that we are left with too many ghost schools, ghost teachers, ghost hospitals and ghost doctors. A pre-expenditure audit to make sure the money goes where it is intended can be more helpful. But the pre-audit has never been popular with our officials more so when the funds are released so late.

Of course the role of the police is very important in modern society. They should become the guardians and zealous enforcers of the law instead of those who violate it merrily and make the people fear the police more than the criminals and so avoid reporting crimes to the police.

It is said of the rape of women in Pakistan that the same happens in the West, the US in particular. But unlike in Pakistan that is not gang rape and not committed by the police ordinarily and at police stations. When the guardians of law become the lawbreakers in the manner our police often tends to become, the people particularly the women suffer excessively.

So the reform of the judiciary cannot be of great help to the people without the reform of the police to help the judiciary. The two systems have to go hand in hand and one without the other helping it will be totally helpless.

The police has to detain and furnish the culprits in courts and also produce the right witnesses instead of hired ones. Without the police taking this first essential step, even the best of courts cannot render justice to the wronged and punish the guilty.

The quality of the administration in a country is judged by what happens to a letter from an ordinary citizen to the relevant officials. Can it achieve anything without a citizen pursuing his plea from office to office? When he has to do that, corruption begins and thrives and once the evil practice begins it gets to be endemic.

The vision stresses the need to conform to international standards as we get integrated more and more with the rest of the world and seek more foreign investment, foreign tourists and for more of our people to get abroad and work and earn home remittances which we need. The vision calls for 15 to 20 panels of five or six specialists to discuss every aspect of the national problem and suggest effective remedies.

The vision says nothing very new. Far more important is achieving what has been set forth as a goal in the past as well as now. Concrete results are what matter, otherwise the suggestions for improving our socio-economic order can be plenty.

Good nukes, bad nukes

JUXTAPOSED this week are the two poles of the emerging world: India and Iran. They are alpha and omega, the dream and the nightmare. One symbolizes the promise of globalization, the other the threat of global disorder.

What they share, unfortunately, is a passion to be members of the nuclear club. India has nuclear weapons; Iran wants them. Between them stands the United States, trying to set rules that will apply to both — rewarding the good boy while maintaining an ability to punish the bad one.

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously observed that intelligence “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time.” That has always seemed to me like an argument for enlightened hypocrisy. And maybe it’s the best explanation for why we should say yes to India’s nukes and no to Iran’s. The two cases are different because — they’re different. The same rules don’t apply to both; one has shown that it is benign and the other behaves like a global outlaw.

President Bush’s trip to India this week sets the nuclear issue in all its hypocritical glory. The centrepiece of the visit, it is hoped, will be an agreement that, in effect, validates India’s accession as a nuclear weapons state in exchange for its acceptance of new safeguards on its civilian nuclear programme. An Iranian observing Bush’s visit might conclude that the lesson is that if you can somehow manage to build a nuclear bomb despite the West’s antiproliferation efforts, you will eventually get away with it.

Iran would be dangerously mistaken if it made that assumption. The real lesson may be that rules are sometimes less important than behaviour. The world is ready to accept India as a nuclear power because its actions have given other nations confidence that it seeks to play a stabilizing role. A world where behaviour matters gets the incentives right: It forces Iran to demonstrate its reliability so that, over time, it can be seen in the same league as India and Pakistan.

One common thread in U.S. policy toward India and Iran is the insistence that enrichment and reprocessing of nuclear fuel be under some form of international supervision. The agreement Bush is seeking during his trip — to separate India’s civilian and military nuclear programmes — embodies that idea. So does Russia’s proposal to provide enrichment for Iran’s nuclear programme. Iran suggested last weekend that it might accept this plan. Most observers remain dubious, but if Iran is really willing to outsource its civilian nuclear fuel, that might be a breakthrough.

The Bush administration is weighing a more ambitious idea that all nuclear enrichment and reprocessing should be capped — so that no new country can join the club. Sen. Richard Lugar has submitted such a proposal, based on suggestions from Ashton B. Carter, a Harvard University expert in nuclear policy. Under the Lugar plan, countries that forgo their enrichment and reprocessing programmes would have guaranteed access to nuclear fuel at reasonable prices. Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, proposes to take internationalization of fuel supplies a step further — so that all enrichment and reprocessing would be under the IAEA’s control.

How can the world foster civilian nuclear power without further proliferation of weapons? That conundrum was the starting point for the drafters of the Non-Proliferation Treaty in the 1960s, and it has become more urgent today. There’s an emerging consensus that nuclear power is the best way for China and India to modernize without adding disastrously to global warming. John Ritch, head of the World Nuclear Association in London, argues that the world will need 10,000 civilian nuclear reactors by the end of the century, compared with 440 today. How can we manage this explosion of nuclear power while avoiding a mushroom cloud? That’s the backdrop to our debate about India and Iran.

Harvard’s Graham Allison tells his students that the Iranian nuclear issue is a “slow-motion Cuban missile crisis.” By that, he means that miscalculation on either side could have catastrophic consequences for the world. Allison’s famous study of the missile crisis, “Essence of Decision,” explained how both firmness and flexibility allowed President Kennedy to avoid war. One of Kennedy’s secrets, it could be argued, was a policy of strategic hypocrisy — responding to a constructive Soviet message that could resolve the crisis and ignoring a subsequent belligerent one.

The West is still waiting for the constructive message from Tehran. In the meantime, we should all learn to live with a policy that says yes to India and no to Iran.—Dawn/Washington Post Service

US human rights record

ISLAMABAD will be sealed off so that President Musharraf can welcome US President George Bush to his capital. Bush is making the journey to compliment and compensate Musharraf on services rendered in the ‘war on terror’.

Musharraf is hosting Bush to bask in the glory of a renewed alliance with the United States and to strengthen his faltering grip on power. Nowhere is human rights on the agenda.

In the run up to the trip, Bush has praised general Musharraf’s “vision for a democratic Pakistan” and his commitment to “free and open elections” Unless Bush knows something that Pakistanis do not, it appears that the continued disregard and undermining of the Pakistani Constitution, the marginalization of mainstream political parties, and the failure to hold a credible election is an odd formula for a democratic Pakistan and the Bush administration’s broader commitment to “fostering democracy in the Muslim world.”

The skewed view of President Musharraf held by Bush is certainly based on shared values. But rather than the shared value of democracy that Bush likes to speak about, what Musharraf and Bush have in common is a shared commitment to the priority, above all else, of the ‘war on terror.’ Bush has been gushing about Musharraf’s role therein, appreciating his “commitment to joining the world in dealing with Islamic radicals who will murder innocent people to achieve an objective.”

Given the conduct of the Bush administration in this context, the US president’s appreciation of the Musharraf government is hardly surprising. International human rights law contains no more basic prohibition than the absolute, unconditional ban on torture and “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.” To date, the Bush administration’s understanding of the term “torture” remains unclear. As Human Rights Watch has noted: In March 2005, Porter Goss, the CIA director, justified water-boarding, a sanitized term for an age-old, terrifying torture technique in which the victim is made to believe that he is about to drown.

In testimony before the US Senate in August 2005, the former deputy White House counsel, Timothy Flanigan, would not even rule out using mock executions. Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the deputy director of national intelligence and one of those who oversees the CIA, explained to human rights groups in August 2005 that US interrogators have a duty to use all available authority to fight terrorism. “We’re pretty aggressive within the law,” he explained. “We’re going to live on the edge.”

As Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and Bagram have shown, the US has not lived on the edge of legality, it has clearly and frequently crossed it into territory previously thought to have been the preserve of rogue governments. In December last year, Human Rights Watch listed 26 documented persons being held as “ghost detainees” at undisclosed locations outside the United States. They are being held indefinitely and incommunicado, without legal rights or access to counsel. Most of them were arrested in Pakistan and some may still be detained here. The US used to denounce “disappearances”. It now appears to be engaging in them.

In January 2005, the Bush administration began claiming the power to use cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment so long as the victim was a non-American held outside the United States. In December last year, under political pressure, President Bush was forced to withdraw his opposition to legislation sponsored by Republican Senator John McCain banning cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of terrorist suspects. However, the US is the only government in the world known to have claimed this power openly, as a matter of official policy, and to pretend that it is lawful

In Pakistan, the US has also found a willing partner to employ what the FBI describes as “locally acceptable forms of interrogation.” The routine use of torture in Pakistan by both civilian law enforcement and military agencies is well documented. What is surprising is the use of torture by the Pakistani security and intelligence services to interrogate both US and other foreign citizen suspects in the country.

For example, during eight months of illegal detention in Pakistan, Zain and Kashan Afzal, US citizens of Pakistani descent, were repeatedly tortured, allegedly by Pakistani authorities. During this period, FBI agents questioned the brothers on at least six occasions without intervening to end the torture. Instead, they threatened the men with being sent to Guantanamo Bay if they did not confess to involvement in terrorism. They were released in April 2005 only after Human Rights Watch intervened in their case.

Instead of publicly condemning this behaviour President Bush is coming to Islamabad to grant legitimacy to the “democratic” vision of his Pakistani counterpart and award him a Bilateral Investment Treaty. The promotion of trade and commerce between the United States and Pakistan is commendable. But Bush’s silence on human rights and the US government’s outsourcing of torture will bring nothing but a poverty of dignity to both.

The writer is a South Asia researcher for the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Bush’s crucial visit

GEOPOLITICAL realism demands that the United States, being the sole superpower of our times adopt a policy of even-handedness towards Pakistan and India. It should strengthen its strategic ties with both of them. Regrettably, however, the United States, desirous of India playing a dominant role in Asia, has entered into an alliance with it last year and has thus thrown its weight behind it for that purpose.

It seems that in order to fulfil its strategic objectives in Asia, the United States has sought to strengthen India militarily and has apparently lost sight of the adverse implications it will have for Pakistan. Political observers are completely baffled by the strange behaviour of the US, which describes Pakistan as its most allied ally in Asia. However, Mathew P Dale, who was a senior adviser on South Asia in the State Department, some years ago, has provided the answer.

In his candid statement, Mathew has stated that in the past there were attempts to impose intellectual constraints such as balance or evenhandedness in American policy towards Pakistan and India. Those days are over, if indeed they ever existed. At any given moment or on any given topic the United States might appear to be evenhanded that would be an incidental outcome of a policy, not the objective of the policy — meaning thereby that America tents to be partial to India.

The existing US policy towards Pakistan reflected, as enunciated by Mathew, is one of expediency. Regrettably, our policy-makers have once again failed to see which way the wind is blowing in the corridors of power in Washington. They remain content with the heap of praise showered by the US leaders and its media on Pakistan for its role in the fight against terrorism.

If Pakistan wants to avoid a bitter disillusionment, it should evolve a clear-sighted policy that would protect its long-term strategic interests in the region and beyond. It should not, however, be interpreted as meaning that a change in Pakistan’s policy should underestimate its strategic ties with the US which are rightly seen to be of great importance to the country.

During his forthcoming visit to Pakistan, President George W Bush need to be convinced that the US-India strategic partnership will not promote any discernible American interest in South Asia where India’s continuous desire for political and military hegemony has already created serious concern to this country. America’s partisan attitude in favour of India is bound to create awkward problems for it.

The US policy-makers are probably convinced that Pakistan will continue to play the role of a toady in consideration of the financial assistance it receives from the United States. Given the favourable attitude of America to its ruling elites, there would be no opposition by it to the proposed US-India strategic partnership. To some extent, it is true as, for many years, the policy-makers in Pakistan have kept silent over the emerging “new relationship” between Washington and New Delhi that poses a real threat to Pakistan’s security interests in the region. The US-India Strategic Alliance is now a fait accompli.

During the last five years or so, Pakistan’s relationship with the United Stated has undergone a significant change. Pakistan is an important partner of the United States in its global war against terrorism. Pakistan is therefore, thinking in terms of the US as the main source of support for strengthening its defence capabilities to address its security concerns in the region. Regrettably the United States strategic partnership with India has largely falsified this hope.

Pakistan’s annoyance with the United States on this account is fully justified. The Bush administration was by no means unaware of the adverse implications of the US-India agreement for Pakistan. But it made no effort to allay Islamabad’s concerns on this score and has tended to pay greater attention to India’s interests. Needless to say, a weak Pakistan which occupies one of the most strategic areas in the world would not be in the United States’ global interest and it should therefore rectify the situation without undue delay.

Our media, both official and private, is trying to make the people of Pakistan believe that President Bush would take personal interest in getting the Kashmir problem resolved. President Bush’s address at the Asia Society’s meeting and the interviews he gave to some of the Pakistani media men on the eve of his trip to South Asia may have created this impression. However, some political observers in Pakistan believe that Bush’s emphasis on the need for an early resolution of the Kashmir dispute was an empty rhetoric. Their argument is that President Bush’s predecessors had also made a similar plea but nothing came out of all because of India’s inflexibility and obduracy.

It remains, however, to be seen if the strategic partnership between Washington and New Delhi makes any difference to India-Pakistan relations and that President Bush would indeed be able to play a meaningful role on Kashmir during his visit to the subcontinent. The US policy-makers should, however, realize that a South Asia at peace with itself is in the US interest and, therefore they must strive hard to resolve the Kashmir problem which is not only a perennial source of tension between Pakistan and India, but can also be a destabilizing factor in the region.

The writer is a former ambassador.

How to lose friends

AMONG many other things, the president’s job description requires him to keep abreast of economic and political developments around the world; respond to disasters such as Hurricane Katrina; oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; appoint people to run embassies and government departments; come up with solutions to the health care crisis, the education crisis, the energy crisis; and represent the United States at major international conferences.

When he does any of these tasks poorly, the American people and their politicians are well within their rights to criticize him, as we often do, too.

On the other hand, the president’s job description does not include taking a personal interest in decisions about whether foreign companies based in countries that are America’s allies should be allowed to purchase other foreign companies that are based in countries that are America’s allies. This is particularly the case when such purchases do not have any discernible impact on American security whatsoever.

In other words, the White House’s “admission” that President Bush was unaware that Dubai Ports World, a company based in the Uae, had purchased Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., a company based in Britain — and thereby obtained management control of the business operations of six US ports — strikes us as completely unnecessary. Why should the president know?

Twelve government departments and agencies, including the departments of treasury, state, defence and homeland security, had examined the deal over a three-month period and found it acceptable. Perhaps the White House should have anticipated last week’s political storm and prepared for it. But because the objections are irrational, even that complaint is questionable.

At a hearing, senators complained that they had not been notified of the transaction — though, as Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert M. Kimmitt noted, the companies involved had issued a press release on the matter in November. Senators complained, in the face of considerable testimony to the contrary, that the government’s review had been “casual” or “cursory.” And, in attempting to cast aspersions on the reliability of the United Arab Emirates, they reached back to its behaviour before Sept. 11, 2001 — a standard of judging under which neither the Clinton nor Bush administrations would fare all that well.

In fact, as administration officials testified last week, since Sept. 11 the United Arab Emirates has been a valuable ally. Last year, according to Deputy Defence Secretary Gordon R. England, 56 US warships, 590 US Military Sealift Command ships and 75 allied warships were hosted in the United Arab Emirates — at a port managed by the very same Dubai Ports World.

To our knowledge, none of the objecting members of Congress have expressed alarm at the national security implications of that situation.

— The Washington Post