| January 25, 2007 | Thursday | Muharram 05, 1428 |
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Of being unequal
Dams and vested interests
Misguided Taliban policy
A retreat forthcoming?
Twilight of tolerance
National leadership failure
Mosques and ownership laws
Many challenges to come
Implementing court orders
Canadians there to help
Readers are requested to restrict their comments to a maximum of 400 words. We reserve the right to edit letters for reasons of clarity and space. Letters, including those by e-mail, should carry the complete postal address of the sender. The views expressed in these columns do not necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper.—Editor
THIS is with reference to Zubeida Mustafa’s article on the above subject (Dec 27) and a response to it through an article by James Trevelyan (Jan 4). Foreign expertise has been provided to Pakistan mainly through technical assistance for IFI-funded projects or in support of projects of bilateral donor agencies.
These projects have been major disasters in social, technical, environmental and financial terms. They include the Left Bank Outfall Drainage, Right Bank Outfall Drainage, Karachi Urban Development Project, the Second Urban Development Project, Greater Karachi Sewerage Project, Karachi Special Development Plan, Hyderabad and Faisalabad Water Supply and Sewage Projects and a long list of other similar programmes both in rural and in urban sectors.
According to evaluations made by the agencies themselves and by ADB Watch/Asia Pacific Island Alert, Pakistan projects have been failures or are unsustainable. Engineers, planners and affected communities in Pakistan know the extent of these failures and do not really have to depend on these evaluations.
It must also be noted that Pakistani planners and engineers objected to the designs of many of these projects, predicted their failures and suggested alternatives. Pakistan has paid a heavy price for the incompetence of foreign expertise and the failure of its rulers to listen to or consult local experts.
James Trevelyan has rightly pointed out that low-tech engineering is weak in Pakistan. However, foreign technical assistance for numerous low-tech projects varying from the BIAD Unicef Project in the 80s to the Faisalabad Area Upgrading Project in the present decade, and everything in between, has delivered nothing in terms of engineering knowledge.
Their evaluation reports, though often glossing over important issues, make sad reading. The OPP’s experience with UN foreign experts of low-tech engineering was very disappointing. They ridiculed the OPP’s approach and proposed fancy options that we rejected. Their alternatives, which they implemented in their pilot areas in Orangi, proved unsustainable and were wound up after a colossal waste of good money whereas the technologies we adopted are replicated not only within Pakistan but in many countries around the globe.
It is important that Pakistani engineers and planners learn from the ‘developed’ world but it is equally necessary for them to understand that the developed world’s knowledge that they acquire is to further the developed world’s agenda of dominating us. Most engineering universities today in the English-speaking developed world are funded by the ‘aid’ business.
Pakistani engineers and planners, and the academic institutions which train them, need to develop a structure of thinking that makes questioning and innovation possible and research programmes that can relate engineering and para-engineering skills to our social and environmental conditions. Unless we do this and lobby our rulers for its extension, Pakistan will continue to be the victim of foreign expertise.
ARIF HASAN
Karachi
THIS refers to Mr Jawed Naqvi’s column ‘On a prescription for Indians to seriously fight racism’ (Jan 22). In the Indian context the fight is over. They passed legislation prohibiting untouchability. It is a criminal offence not to allow untouchables to mix in the main stream of society. That is theory, please do not take risk talking about ‘practice’. We have an invisible taboo regarding mixing of people belonging to different districts in the same provinces, regarding intermarriages, etc., in this 21st century too.
Devotees of Lord Krishna call him ‘Ghana Shyam’ meaning a very ‘dark-skinned’ god. But these devotees do look for fair-skinned sons-in-law.
Skin is a matter for humans. During bhajan these devotees prefer to sit beside another fair- skinned bhakta .
I am thankful to you Mr Naqvi for writing at length about this race questions. I am much better informed because of your column. Frankly, I was under the impression that untouchability is confined to India alone. You have it in Pakistan too?
You and I are not likely to see it go away in our life times. We will continue to be in anguish for a long time to come.
By caste, I am Brahmin belonging to the Vaishnavite brood. Thanks to liberal education and then living mostly in cities and settled there, I am ‘one person’ here in the city and quite another when I go to visit my village.
Here in the city castes mingle thoroughly, reference is never made to it, though names and surnames reveal all.
At the dawn of independence we dropped our caste prefixes, but we are now browbeaten to recall and suffix them. Yet, no harm done. Money is the additional caste, new race and the mark of new elite. There you are, we gladly earn money to keep our caste intact. Dear sir, it is hard work indeed.
Enacted laws we have prohibiting untouchability. But, they are not acted upon. They say, knowing the problem is half its solution. So, we have hope. Sea changes will occur. We Brahmins are getting a good thrashing, but we practise yoga and do not feel the pain. Some how, I have not come across a single person in my 82 years of life who is not one up on the other.
Inequality and untouchability is practised among persons of the same caste. There is that one-upmanship among the untouchables too. So, I concluded being unequal is the natural state of man. But, stating this openly is taboo.
M. Krishnamachary
New Delhi
THIS is in response to your editorial ‘No trifling with dams’ (Jan 23). There is a famous quote that whatever you intend to do, you will find someone to oppose you. That is what we have in Pakistan in the case of dams. Everyone knows that construction of dams is necessary. Everyone knows that it will benefit the country. Then what causes the delay?
In the issues related to society as a whole the criterion to adopt or discard a project is the so-called marginal method. If the number of people who will benefit from the project is in excess of the number of people who will be affected negatively, then that project is regarded as feasible.
The problem in Pakistan’s case is the existence of so-called vested interests. These vested interests portray the negative side of the projects after getting them many times magnified. By so doing, they actually portray themselves as the guardian of the interests of the poor people when, in fact, they have their own interests at the forefront.
If the feasibility report and other procedural requirements have been fulfilled, and that too by some independent agency, then there must not be any delay in these projects. The government must keep the greatest good of the greatest number of people as the guidepost before it and not be swayed by the opposition of a small fraction of its coalition party.
UMAD MAZHAR
Karachi
THE vehement official denials by the government of Pakistan notwithstanding, mounting evidence as reported by disparate sources clearly points out that the government is turning a blind eye to the rapidly expanding role of Taliban with Quetta becoming their virtual capital in exile.
The justification for this previously failed policy of ‘strategic depth’ might be to safeguard Pakistan’s interests in the event that Nato and US forces pack up and the Karzai government or another such government to follow is run over by the Taliban in the future.
However, Pakistan is paying a heavy price and will continue to pay even a greater price in terms of the radicalisation of its people and ‘Talibanisation’ of most of the country.
Reverting to the mediaeval days in the 21st century cannot but impede the progress of the country, bringing it up to the same low level of advancement as the Taliban.
It may be more advisable for both governments to agree that Pakistan will do its utmost to control the Taliban upsurge and Afghanistan will look more towards Pakistan for cooperation than to either India or Russia.
MASOOD HAIDER
New Jersey, USA
THREE years ago the US went to war in Iraq on a lie. Iraq is devouring resources at an unprecedented scale and producing nothing in return. There is no more ‘happy talk’ from officials in the Bush administration about how Iraq will pay for itself through oil revenues, as Paul Wolfowitz stated unwisely. Iraq has become a black hole which has swallowed up half a trillion dollars in three years.
The US administration’s debate on Iraq is now a grim realisation of reality which is painful but not an unfamiliar experience of retreat, like Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia. In 1989, the USSR also went through such a bitter experience in Afghanistan, resulting in, finally, its disintegration.
Now the strongest democracy has acted again undemocratically by resorting to a pre-emptive attack on Somalia, thus setting a dangerous precedent for others to follow. One can very well imagine the future world where some countries will be making pre-emptive attacks on their neighbours or a small weak country.
What is the justification for killing innocent men, women and children just on suspicion of being ‘suspected’ Al Qaeda or Taliban member?
ABID M. ANSARI
Islamabad
THIS has reference to Prof Eice Muhammad’s letter ‘Twilight of tolerance’ (Jan 14) in response to mine (Dec 15) in which I had tried to analyse the facts about the moribund socio-economic problem, as well as about the law and order problem that had deteriorated, starting with the decline of Mughal authority, whatever system of education was prevalent in the subcontinent.
I thank Prof Eice for correcting me about Aurangzeb’s stay in Deccan for 20 years as a prince. However, he has failed to mention that as an emperor he went to Deccan again in 1681 to take command of the army, never to return. During 26 years’ stay, he remained embroiled in fighting with Marathas and the remaining Muslim states of Bejapur and Golkanda till 1707 when he died and buried at Khuldabad.
His absence from the capital for almost half of his reign and endless wars were the chief causes that weakened the empire. After his death, another war of succession ensued. These wars drained the treasury, while the seat of power went to an imbecile, aged son of the deceased emperor who ruled an unmanageable and economically shattered country for about four years as Bahadur Shah I.
After his death in 1711 till 1858, anarchy prevailed. Of the next eight emperors whose combined reign spanned only for 52 years, four were murdered, one deposed and only three died peacefully on the throne.
Nadir Shah Afshar, a Turk from Iran, attacked India in 1738 and sacked Delhi. As a result, the already weak empire started disintegrating. The two important provinces of Oudh and Deccan seceded, and emboldened Maratha freebooters regained their lost positions.
Vestiges of imperial power were destroyed by the first Afghan king, Ahmed Shah Durrani, who invaded India four times before fighting Marathas at Panipat in the fifth invasion: which seldom brought solace to the emasculated Mughal authority, least of all “sustaining for 100 more years”. After dislodging Marathas, when General Lake entered Delhi in 1803 to save Shah Alam, he found the hapless old and blind Emperor in their captivity.
Prof Eice has contested that the period of turmoil and thugs does not cover the Mughal era but has admitted at the same time that thuggery was suppressed by Lord William Bentinck (1833-35) when Akbar-II was sitting on the throne of Delhi (Punjab, Bengal, Bihar and a part of Orrisa excluding). He is right that Hyder Ali and Tipu resisted British power but he must also admit that they could not sustain against their superior arms and highly disciplined forces, besides depending on the losing French power.
He has failed to appreciate that I had mentioned Al-Beruni being out of context, as the topic under discussion was the role of Muslims in establishing educational institutions in India whereas this great scholar belonged to Central Asia and that too before Muslims established themselves in India.
It was after Baghdad’s fall that Muslims’ intellectual activity came to a grinding halt in the Islamic world, including Spain which fell in 1492. This atrophied mindset continued even during the periods of great Mughals and Ottomans. Emperor Akbar though great patron of art and literature refused the printing press brought by the Portuguese in the 16th century on the plea that its use will render the ‘kaztibs’ jobless.
Mr Mansoor Alam, in his article ‘This dream of Islamic renaissance’(Jan 15), has rightly said that Jehangir showed no interest, when the British came to the court, in finding out how they had travelled across the seven seas. The Ottomans who ruled over one-third of Europe paid no attention to the discovery of Americas. Neither of the two empires built any university or encouraged the learning of science and other modern disciplines.
I appreciate Mr Eice’s yearning for developing inter-faith and internecine harmony, but these ideals are conceivable only when we learn from history how to evade its verdict of being condemned to repeat the same.
MANZOOR H. KURESHI
Karachi
THE recent racism row over a UK reality show left me wondering whether the news channels and media would have been so apologetic if the racism was directed at a Muslim participant, or to be even more specific, a Pakistani participant. My opinion was that most likely it would not because our government has failed to command any real respect for the country and its citizens on the world stage.
My thoughts were vindicated by an op-ed that appeared in Dawn entitled ‘A society dripping in racism” (Jan 22) by Martin Jacques. After drawing a comparison between the recent row over Big Brother and the Danish cartoon controversy, Mr Jacques states “such was the reaction in the Islamic world that it could not be ignored. That, though, was in the context of the Muslim world which, in global terms, remains weak and marginalised. Racial abuse of Indians is a very different matter. India is a rising giant; we can no longer afford to ignore, as we once did with impunity, the views and feelings of a country that represents one-fifth of humanity.”
Something has to give lest the Muslim world go from being “weak and marginalised” to “totally irrelevant and dispensable”.
A.A. AHMAD
Lahore
THIS is with reference to the story ‘Uproar in Senate over razed mosques’ (Jan 23). The manner in which the MMA has reacted to this action clearly begets the point that anything resembling a mosque is above and beyond the jurisdiction of the law of the land. According to their view, any mosque that has been created by the ‘faithful’ does not need to deal with issues such as landownership laws, after all these laws were created by men who are entirely ignorant of the ‘bigger’ picture so to speak, for it brings our entire ‘faith’ into question.
Regarding the reconstruction of mosques, a plausible alternative that can be offered to the students holding a public library (someone needs to explain to them that it can actually be used to read books) hostage is that they be built on lands owned by MMA party members, for they truly are the torch-bearers of anything Islamic in our country and also don’t believe in such futile concepts as landownership laws. Thus, they cannot and should not object to their land being used to create mosques.
KAMAL HUSSAIN ALVI
Islamabad
WOULD anyone believe that I have sent many letters on some important national issues to the former elected prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, and also to President Tarar but none of them received a reply.
On the contrary, when I send mail to President Musharraf, I receive a response.
Amazingly, those who claim to be democratic take voice of the public easy, but the one who is blamed for being a dictator cares enough to respond.
Let me add here that after the Quaid-i-Azam, President Musharraf is the first ruler of Pakistan who realised the pain of affected Kashmiris and has taken bold steps to solve this 60-year-old problem.
For the first time Pakistan’s Kashmir policy has compelled India to be defensive, as previously India was always misleading the world regarding Kashmir. President Musharraf has finally pushed the ball in India’s court. India is now thoroughly confused.
Also, being a nuclear Muslim country in the present scenario has many challenges, so to overcome these challenges, and for finding a solution to the Kashmir problem, Gen Musharraf should continue.
HAYAT MALICK
Lahore
THIS refers to Mr Khalid Qureshi’s letter ‘Implementing court orders’ (Jan 20). The writer sounds like an honest enough not to heed the advice of the locals.
There are a few ways he can get his house back. He can knock on every door of ‘authority figures’ to see who want to make a change in the daily life of a struggling ‘honoured’ Pakistani citizen.
He should be ready for a long haul, he will need much walking, talking, calling, writing, seeking help, etc. Or get the guys matching his calibre, or while he is at it, he should get a few more.
He should set a reward for the expulsion job (be honest). Better yet he should sell that house to the police officer he called, he can get it back from him.
Also, before he embarks on this journey, he should forget who he is or was and what he did for whom. Sometimes and to some people it just doesn’t mater.
For good old time sake, those cricket days give him a ‘bouncer’ he will remember. Show his tormentor he can play cricket in the real sense too.
People fight for ‘haram’ money all the time, at least his was honest and hard-earned. Good luck.
M. FURQAN-ULHAQ
Detroit, USA
AS a Canadian-Pakistani I was extremely pained to read Raja Asghar’s report entitled, ‘Coalition attack condemned’ (Jan.23). Hopefully, in this US-led attack on a Pakistani post in the North Waziristan tribal area, no Canadian troops were involved. Supposedly, Canadian troops are there to help in the social, economic and educational development of that ill-fated country, long ravaged by the British, the Soviets and now by the Nato-led coalition forces.
JALALUDDIN S. HUSSAIN
Quebec, Canada
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