THE per capita income of Pakistanis has risen to 846 dollars, says Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. Until recently he used to mention the figure of $800 but has now raised that figure by over five per cent and calls that a record. It is the outcome of higher economic growth, he argues.

But the common man will not feel thrilled, not because the figure represents a weak dollar in relation to the euro and other strong currencies of the world by about 30 percent, but because that does not represent the earnings of average Pakistanis, much less of the low income groups, and of course, that is far above the earnings of the poor whose numbers the social scientists say is increasing, while the government asserts it is increasing.

The real mischief is played by the inflation, particularly in food prices, rent and transport costs which make the modest rise in wages meaningless. In terms of rupees, the per capita per family income comes to Rs 50,760. For a family, the income multiplied by six members comes to a total of over three lakhs.

The $846 per capita income has been reported at a time when the minimum wages of workers is reportedly being raised from Rs3,000 to 4,000 a month. It has come at a time when the State Bank of Pakistan has come up with Rs 5,000 currency notes to make it easy for the rich shoppers to handle big money easily. But the real rich, particularly in the urban areas, do not use cash as much as they use credit cards. And they are soon to move on to online shopping.

The State Bank governor Dr Shamshad Akhtar, who presented a facsimile of the Rs 5,000 note to President Musharraf, says the higher currency note is not designed to accommodate the increasing inflation but has come in the normal course of issuing higher denomination currency notes.

Dr Ashfaq Hasan Khan, economic advisor to the ministry of finance, says the government has spent a trillion rupees on poverty reduction and social sector programmes during the last four years. While the break-up of the large figure has not been given by him, it is not proper to mix the poverty alleviation spending with the social sector development spending.

Countries which do not have significant poverty, as is the case with Europe, spend a great deal on social sector development such as education, public health, art and culture, sports and environmental protection and they don’t mix up that essential spending with poverty alleviation efforts.

Dr Ashfaq says that as a result of such spending poverty has come down from 32.1 per cent in 2000-2001 to 25.4 per cent in 2004-05. And rural poverty has declined from 39 per cent to 31 per cent and urban poverty from 22.7 per cent to 17.1 per cent.

The fact is, as admitted by him, one fourth of the people are still very poor. And a few will accept his figure of 17 per cent decline in poverty in the urban areas conspicuous for their strings of katchi Abadis with their varied abuses. And now while there are protests against shortage of water in large parts of Karachi and other cities, the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency has warned that river water in lower Sindh can be dangerous for consumption because of the large quantity of chemicals and other effluents pumped into them by the factories all around. It has come up with the warning after testing the water from four canals coming off Kotri Barrage. Stomach diseases in an epidemic form are quite frequent in lower Sindh with heavy casualties from time to time.

The difference in the estimate of poverty springs from the fact that the government does not use the international scale of a dollar a day for income, but a far lower figure and thereby gets a lower figure of the poor. The government and the social scientists should use the prevailing international yardstick of a dollar a day for determining the extent of poverty. Then the gap between these two estimates or studies will narrow.

The fact is that if the standard of living of people in the dollar-a-day category is not good enough, the other 40 per cent who earn two dollars a day or Rs 120 are also not doing any better. And inflation makes it far worse. The president, the prime minister and the State Bank governor are really concerned about inflation but the situation is not showing any improvement. It gets worse as the price of essential goods rise. Now we are told that inflation rate next year would be 6.5 per cent. We have had such projections before as well but the reality has been different.

After the monetary control has been marginally tightened, the blame for the higher prices of essential goods including milk has been put on the distribution system. But the government while admitting the folly of the distribution system does not want to punish any one.

The public Accounts committee of the National Assembly wants the people holding high offices and responsible for a major rise in sugar prices to be punished but the government does not want to do that. Instead, it prefers the persuasive approach as well as import of a million tonnes of sugar. In respect of cement too, the official policy is to allow its import and make it tax free. Beating the culprits hard with a feather will not pay dividends.

Meanwhile, the Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry has suggested reduction of sales tax from 15 to 10 per cent and doing away with tax on essential goods. The government may find that a costly proposition, but some hard steps are essential to bring down inflation.

India, in spite of its caution in permitting foreign retailers to operate in the country, has allowed the US Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, to open its sales outlets in its cities. For India it is a daring experiment. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has been talking of allowing some German companies to open a few cash-and-carry stores in Pakistan. But the move is making a slow progress, the retailers will have contacts with the rural producers as well to lower the cost and give a fair deal to the farmers.

The middlemen in the trade or ‘artis’ make very unconscionable large gains and exploit both the growers and the consumers. Both need help by improving the system of distribution and not by adding another wholesale market alone and if the foreign retailers have to be allowed to improve the distribution system let us begin with one or two chains.

Meanwhile India wants to trade with Pakistan with only a small negative list instead of a long positive list which has touched almost 1,000 items. But some Pakistani traders do not like the Indian negative list and want it to be shelved. This is a feasible proposition worth considering.

At a time when we are opting for a large-scale privatization, we should not be oblivious of what has happened to chairman of Enron, Kenneth Lay, and Jeffrey Skilling, its chief executive, in the US, where they have been convicted for fraud and conspiracy. The executives could face long jail terms when they are sentenced in September. In the east, the founder of Daewoo has been sentenced to ten years for fraud committed in that major conglomerate.

The government is proud of its liberalization, deregulation and privatization policy. The private sector is happy about that as it is the principal beneficiary. But that sector does not reflect the virtues and wholesome practices which will make a success of that policy. It has not convinced the public that it will do an honest job and think of the consumers first. The National Assembly and the Senate have been calling for exposing and punishing those who indulge in unethical practices in respect of sugar and cement transactions. But the government has been trying to shield them from the wrath of the political leaders.

At the same time it is not explicable how the public accounts committee exonerated three retired generals for committing the terrible folly of procuring grossly defective locomotives from China only on the basis that they were bought in good faith. How could the generals have been so negligent when negotiating in a $98 million deal? Now the Monopoly Control Authority is to be changed into a competition promoting commission. How will the hitherto moribund body turn to active promotion of competition remains to be seen? Sleepy horses don’t run so fast. The competition has to be promoted by cutting down corruption, eliminating red-tape and weeding out all measures aimed at promoting cartels and reducing taxes.

The private sector needs a new culture, a new value system and real competition without the abuses of the cartel system. It is not enough if the FPCCI has set up a venture capital fund, it has to clean up its roots and branches and become wholesome tree. The public sector development programme for next year is to be Rs 415 million which is a record allocation primarily aimed at job creation, says the president. And the government has to make the best of that.

It has to mobilise the money allocated particularly for the basic infrastructure and the large reservoirs and without enough power; neither public nor private sector can develop fast enough. The KESC can promise no loadshedding but can’t prevent breakdowns in power supply unless much is invested to replace the archaic system. Hence the much needed money has to be found and directed into the channels to obtain the best possible results.

FOR those who have been working for decades in the US to raise awareness about climate change, this is a moment charged with opportunity — and with peril.

A series of events — beginning with Hurricane Katrina and continuing through the release of Al Gore’s new movie — has finally pushed the issue near the forefront of the public agenda. It doesn’t yet rank quite up there with the war on terrorism or the high price of gasoline, but it’s clear that the next bad storm season or prolonged drought will seal the deal; even as things stand now, there’s no chance that it will simply be ignored in the next presidential campaign, not with evangelical leaders and Greenpeace activists taking turns pressing the question.

But here’s the danger: 20 years of inaction, and especially the Bush administration’s stupendous record of ignorance and neglect, have set the bar so low that any legislation at all may look like real progress. The utilities, the coal companies and Detroit may find themselves able to easily set the terms of any deal that will, in turn, set policy for the next 20 years — and if it’s a deal that’s too modest in attempting to rein in carbon emissions, then it may be worse than no deal at all. Precisely because we’ve wasted the past two decades, we need real, not token, action now.

So here’s how to tell if your politicians really get global warming:

* Is it just one more issue on their list of topics, somewhere between trade policy and failing schools — or do they understand it for what it really is: the first civilization-scale challenge that humans have yet faced? Newly emerging science (including some that the Bush administration tried to force NASA climatologist James Hansen to suppress) shows that we have underestimated the scale and urgency of the crisis.

Everything frozen on Earth is melting fast, for instance, threatening to produce an inhospitable planet in the decades ahead and an unbearable one in the lifetime of those being born. Political rhetoric needs to reflect the stark fact that this is an emergency.

* Do their proposals come with big numbers — 50 per cent reductions in carbon emissions, say? They don’t need to achieve those numbers overnight (the various European countries aim for them in the 2030-2050 range), but real reductions, as opposed to slower growth rates of emissions, need to begin within the next few years, according to the most recent science. This implies Defence Department-scale budgets for technology development and for implementation of those technologies we already know how to use — wind turbines, say.

* Do they avoid a fixation with any one technology? The idea that nuclear or “clean coal” or, for that matter, wind, will by itself solve our energy gap is nonsense, and it usually masks an ideological argument from one side or the other. There are no silver bullets, only silver buckshot.

Given the scale of the problem, the cheapest solutions (beginning with reducing the massive energy waste in our system) make the most sense. This implies a large role for markets — but only once government policy has made the cost of fossil fuels truly reflect the damage they do.

* Do they understand that technological change alone cannot achieve the 70 per cent reductions in fossil fuel use needed to stabilise climate? We’ll also need real shifts in attitude, behaviour and habit. These changes are possible (the average Western European uses half as much energy as the average American while leading a quality life), but they will take real political leadership on issues ranging from mass transit to sprawl to the size of cars.

* Do they avoid the temptation to scapegoat China and the rest of the developing world? This has been the safety hatch for politicians who wanted to avoid even baby steps such as the Kyoto treaty: They piously insist that the Chinese cut their carbon emissions alongside ours.

But this makes no moral sense: The Chinese, who use an eighth as much energy per capita, are only beginning to burn fossil fuel in large quantities, and they’re using it to pull people out of poverty, not indulge their taste for Lincoln Navigators. And it’s politically hopeless: The Chinese, and the rest of the world, simply will not accept the idea that the atmosphere belonged to us, we filled it with carbon, and now they need to find a new strategy for development. Our only hope — and the only just solution — is a massive transfer of technology and resources to the global south so that those countries can develop differently.

There are schemes that would make all these items possible, even affordable: big taxes on fossil fuel rebated to citizens to reward lower energy use; small taxes on currency speculation to underwrite the cost of building windmills in China; a switch of subsidies from fossil fuel to future fuel.

It’s not ideas we’re lacking; it’s a prevailing sense of the mortal danger that we’ve wandered into, a danger that demands leadership willing to set the bar high. —Dawn/Washington Post Service

THERE was no room for revolutionary politics in Gandhi’s Congress. But the communists and socialists were tolerated while the struggle for independence was on.

During the war the Communist Party of India opted out of the movement against the British because Britain and the Soviet Union were a part of the coalition against Hitler. Socialist Congress party leaders who decided to go underground were active during the Quit India movement of 1942.

The main leadership of the Indian National Congress including Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel were in jail so the struggle was taken over by the socialists. They were influential in the eastern districts of UP where the major action took place. The revolutionary cadre of the party took control of district Ballia. As a result, the district magistrate Nigam and the superintendent of police Riazuddin were dismissed from service because they failed to defend the city. Later Nethersole the notorious commissioner of Benaras division declared, “I have conquered Ballia back for the empire.”

Soon after independence, the influence of the CPI increased and it was able to get a couple of seats in the provincial assembly. Poverty among the low castes and Dalits was growing and ultimately the ethnic parties of the Dalits and Yadavs took control. But they are also failing and for the last few years the Maoists have started gaining ground in these districts. These areas of eastern UP bordering Bihar and the Tarai region bordering Nepal are reportedly facing an upsurge in Maoist activity owing to a caste struggle. The Nepalese Maoists are also taking shelter here. There is hardly any border control. Many Nepalese work as domestic workers and farm labourers in the Tarai region of UP.

Since the merger of Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) and the Maoist Communist Centre of India into a united Communist Party of India (Maoist), there has been a fast upsurge in red activity in India from the borders of Nepal to the shores of Tamil Nadu.

According to a survey by the New Delhi-based Institute of Conflict Management, the insurgency is taking place in 15 states of India. It says that the Maoist presence is visible in 170 districts. Ajit Sahni, executive director of the institute, says, “India shining is coming under increasing threat from the reds. And now the government can only ignore it at its own peril.”

Apart from Chattisgarh the movement is very strong in the Gadchiroli and Chandpur districts of Mahrashtra; the whole of Jharkhand, the Central Bihar districts of Aurangabad, Jahanabad Nawada and Patna. The story is similar in areas of West Bengal, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh. At many of these places, the Maoists are running a parallel administration where people go to get justice and pay taxes.

In their area of control, they charge traders and forest contractors 10 per cent of their income. In these areas ‘jan adalats’ are very common. They dispense speedy justice while the police and other state institutions have become redundant. Local NGOs and social workers say that ‘jan adalats’ have gone a long way in increasing the influence of the Maoists and in enlarging the area under their control.

Urban areas in these states are also affected by this insurgency. According to Sanjay K. Jha of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses in New Delhi, the Naxalites have used the urban centres as hideouts and for logistical support including the transport of arms and mobilisation. He adds that the arrest of Nepalese Maoists in the Indian cities show that Naxalites in both the countries are collaborating with each other.

In a newspaper interview, a middle-ranking Maoist leader from Jharkhand said, “We are surrounding the cities as per Maoist principles. Capturing them is the last part.” The capital city Ranchi is surrounded by the insurgents who also have a presence in 10 other districts as well. The Bharatiya Janata Party rules the state and it has no plans to seriously counter the uprising of the lower castes and the deprived segments of society.

Indian security experts talk of the maturity of the insurgents. They say that if there is pressure on them they move to a neighbouring state. The BJP and communist governments accuse each other of harbouring militants. In February this year, one saw during an assembly session the chief minister of West Bengal, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, accusing the opposition led by the Trinamool Congress of encouraging the Maoists.

He said, “You are in touch with the BJP-led government in Jharkhand, which, in turn, is in touch with you. The equation is clear.” He also announced his two-pronged strategy to combat the Maoists: eradication of poverty and tough police action. The Maoists also back and vote for assembly candidates whom they find sympathetic to their cause. The Communist Party of India (ML) has members in several states assemblies.

Last year, when talks failed between the Andhra government and the Maoists, both resorted to great brutalities. First, the police killed Naxalites by the dozen. Later, the Naxalites killed civilians who they suspected of being informants, and members of the police. There were also attacks on police stations in the Nizamabad and Guntoor districts of Andhra where policemen were killed. Violence is breeding violence which is not helping anyone’s cause.

Last year in the neighbouring state of Karnataka Professor V.S. Sridhar — a human rights activist — of Bangalore’s Vijay College was beaten up by students who accused him of being a Naxalite sympathiser. He had criticised the killing of a Naxalite. According to the professor, “The fear of the reds has entered the urban consciousness.”

Bangalore, India’s Silicon Valley, is also facing resistance by tribals and Dalits who form the backbone of the insurgency. Police say that there are 600 trained Maoists in the valley who put up posters even in the posh areas of Bangalore. Recently, they issued a press release from Jayanagar, an upscale south Bangalore colony.

Lal Salam, Bollywood’s boorish take on the Naxalites, collapsed at the box office everywhere but in Bihar where it ran to packed houses in towns like Patna and Buxar. The reason was that the People’s War group unofficially adopted the movie as part of its cultural promotion package and encouraged its followers and sympathisers to watch the Nandita Das-Sharad Kapoor starrer. Its pirated copies were shown in the remote villages of Bihar, Jharkhand and UP.

With these violent movements taking place in so many states of India, one may form the erroneous impression that Indian democracy is failing. Indian political institutions are strong enough to face the challenge from the Maoists. In the Indian political culture, the leadership of all political parties and groups is prepared for dialogue among themselves, even if they harbour extremist viewpoints.

Nevertheless, the Congress, ethnic and the BJP governments in the disturbed areas, disregarded the needs of the deprived communities, leading the tribal elements and the Dalits to follow the Maoists even if they don’t understand their philosophy. Over the last 15 years, these parties have moved to the right obstructing the goal of eradicating poverty. During this period, the influence of rich non-resident Indians (NRI) has increased. The NRI are the main financial backers of militant Hindu organisations and have a strong hold on the Indian economy.

The last time that India was partitioned it was because of the Hindu-Muslim divide. This time there is a danger of a divide between the poor and the rich. One hopes that the Indian political culture will save the situation this time although the Left is much bigger than it was 60 years ago.o