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| February 22, 2007 | Thursday | Safar 4, 1428 |
Payments to power producers
A brutal beheading
Coming to grips with malnutrition
An enduring tragedy
JAMES MORRIS who has been heading the Rome-based World Food programme for five years to help the hungry says 18,000 children died everyday in the world because of hunger and malnutrition. Today, he says, over 850 million people are hungry and malnourished and a 100 million of them are in China and 40 million in India.
NOT a day passes without fanaticism making its presence felt in Pakistan. On Tuesday, when the nation had not yet recovered from the shock of the Samjhota Express carnage in India a day earlier, a bigoted cleric shot dead Zille Huma Usman, Punjab’s Minister for Social Welfare. To add poignancy to what was both a national and family tragedy, she was being showered with rose petals by party workers when the killer struck and took her life and that too on a day that was her wedding anniversary. The police said the man, who had been acquitted earlier by court of the charge of murdering four female models, shot Huma because she was not wearing a hijab. He was also against women becoming “rulers”. This is no place to go into the hijab and “rulers” controversy but briefly it can be recalled that the ulema had supported and campaigned for Ms Fatima Jinnah in the presidential election against Ayub Khan in the sixties. As for the hijab, it is a recent phenomenon in Pakistan, or else women have worn their traditional dress without inviting censures from the ulema. That both hijab and the “women as rulers” should arouse such repulsion and cause men to murder women underlines the backwardness that has characterised Pakistan since Ziaul Haq’s days.
There was a time in Pakistan when women rode bicycles, music was played loud at restaurants and governments’ family planning campaigns in the media drew little opposition. Today, bigotry has reached a level where people kill a doctor because he wants to give polio drops to infants. The sect to which one belonged was once a personal affair, unlike today when the state’s coercive apparatus turns – perhaps justifiably – cities and towns into fortresses to prevent fanatics from spilling blood on solemn occasions. Decades before Benazir Bhutto became prime minister, women were vice-chancellors, judges, lawmakers, ambassadors, engineers, doctors, journalists, and in the film industry and other professions. Even today they are fighter pilots and CEOs, and the army had a woman general. But because of the hate campaign being carried out by a section of religious bigots, the whole environment is changing for the worse, making the world equate society in Pakistan with that in Afghanistan.
This regression from normality has many causes, one of them being the misuse and misunderstanding of the Quranic injunction that calls upon believers to “preach good and prevent evil”. However, Iqbal quotes Mishkawth to say that everyone does not have the right to preach. Today, from the illiterate to the highest among the politicised clerics, everyone believes he has the right to preach good and evil of his own notion, and if anyone resists, it is his duty to enforce these with resort to force if necessary. This is a direct outcome of the relegation of the fundamentals of Islam – love, brotherhood, tolerance, peace and general good -- to a secondary lace and a misplaced emphasis on Islam as a political doctrine that brooks no opposition, tolerates no dissent and seeks conformism with resort to violence, even if the victim is an innocent person like Zille Huma. It is wrong to consider this a law and order problem. Ignorance and bigotry have gone deep into society, and those who can reverse the situation are the non-political ulema, if there are any. The government’s responsibility is that it should not surrender to bigotry and, instead, encourage such of the ulema as have the moral and intellectual strength to take on the challenge.
GIVEN the severity of the energy crisis, Pakistan can ill afford to send the wrong signals to existing and potential power-sector investors. It is estimated that summertime demand for electricity exceeds supply by almost 2,000MW, a gap that may rise to 5,300MW in three years’ time. The government’s failure to plan for future growth has meant that, in addition to long-term infrastructure projects, the power sector now requires massive investment over a fairly short period. Clearly, the state cannot go this route alone. To raise the generation capacity to the required level, the independent power producers (IPPs) will have to play an important role if the situation is to be turned around over the next few years. Existing IPPs must be encouraged to expand capacity and new investors, both local and foreign, will need to be convinced that Pakistan is an attractive business option.
Delaying payments for power purchases runs counter to this. At a meeting on Tuesday with the minister for water and power, representatives of the IPPs reminded the government that Wapda still owes them Rs8 to Rs10 billion in outstanding power purchase dues. While there are indications that this grievance may shortly be addressed, it should have never arisen in the first place. Besides rule of law, the sanctity of commercial contracts is a primary consideration for investors trying to identify the countries in which they should put their money. Pakistan is one of many choices available, and a failure by state-run organisations to honour agreements is anything but a plus point. Given the ease with which capital now moves around the globe, Islamabad must go the extra mile in making the country — handicapped as it is by security and image problems — an attractive destination for international investors. In the case of the power sector, delays by the state in meeting contractual obligations can lead to higher tariff demands by IPPs looking for a cushion against bureaucratic hurdles and disbursement issues. At the very least, allowances are likely to be made for the interest that would have accrued had payment been made on time. These pressing problems must be sorted out on an urgent basis.
IT should come as no surprise that an Afghan was publicly beheaded in Miramshah on Tuesday, after his hands and feet were chopped off near a security checkpoint where he was found. This is the fate that awaits those who the militants in the area consider to be spies. Since militants are a power unto themselves, they deem it fit to practise their own legal system – based on a strict version of Islam – and can order people executed without any fear of reprisal from the federal government. Since the troubles began in the tribal areas in 2004, hundreds of men have been executed by the militants on charges of being pro-government spies – and few have been apprehended for their crimes. Government negotiations with tribal chiefs in the area have largely focused on the government ensuring that no army post or personnel are attacked and that foreigners in the area have to obey the laws or leave the country. Suffice it to say that those portions of the deal have been violated several times and yet nothing has been done.
The solution still lies in a political dialogue. That is the only way out of this cycle of violence in the area. The government must establish its writ of law and ensure that its laws – not deals -- are not violated. This means that those who order that a man be executed because he is considered a spy need to be held answerable. But that alone cannot bring peace and stability to the region. To bring the people of the tribal areas into the mainstream – something that has long been overdue – development work must be speedily carried out so that they can have the benefits of education, healthcare and gainful employment. Only then will they be able to see the pointlessness of supporting militants’ obscurantism.
The number of malnourished people has decreased from one fifth to one sixth of the population, but the actual number is growing by five million every year because of the increase in population. Increase in their number on one side and the rise in the number of natural disasters like tsunami, the earthquake, as in Pakistan, and man-made tragedies as in Darfur in Sudan and Lebanon are aggravating the problem.
India and China are focused on the problem but others have to do far more urgently, he says. He has come up with no figure for Pakistan, elsewhere in Asia 100 million are hungry and malnourished and another 100 million in Africa.
Mohammed Yunus, last year’s Nobel Prize winner for peace has a solution to the problem, which he describes “as his next big idea” after his remarkably successful micro-credit network which covers 6.6 million households in Bangladesh. That comes through his new “social business enterprise” in the form of a cup of yogurt to combat malnutrition. It will be sold as cheap as seven cents a cup. He is setting up a yogurt factory near Bogra in collaboration with the famous French food and drink company Danon. If the project is a success he plans to set up fifty more yogurt factories in Bangladesh. And the Unicef is so fascinated by the idea; it is interested in replicating the project elsewhere in the world where there is gross malnutrition.
He has a clientele of 6.6 million borrowers of the Grameen bank network to patronize and benefit by the project. Some of them will raise loans to keep cows to provide milk to the factories. Some of them will sell yogurt from door to door and many of them will buy it because of their faith in the system and it is a cheap way to get the right nutrition. He has explained it all in a detailed interview with the Fortune magazine whose editors are fascinated by the scheme.
In the earlier years nutrition experts in South India had said that if the school going children were given a nutritious mid-day meal in school that will prevent gross malnutrition and promote education. The experiment was conducted in Tamil Nadu schools with notable success.
Yunus asks that if unalloyed capitalism with unfettered competition is a success how come two percent of the Americans, Europeans and the Japanese own more than half the global household wealth? And how it is that more than three billion people or almost half the world population lives below the poverty line. And how do the votaries of capitalism explain the thirty six million people below the poverty line in the US itself? He asks
And how does that happen in spite of the great philanthropy in the US? The Financial times, London has reported that 60 Americans gave $50.5 billion as charity in 2006. And that was a leap forward from the $4.3 billion the American rich gave in 2005. The leap took place because of the $43.5 billion which Warren Buffet, the investment Guru, announced in 2006.Yunus says one need not blame the markets, it is the corruption and dictatorships that must be blamed. What is wrong is the capitalist order without social conscience which needs to be modified. If Yunus’s new enterprise is a success and as popular as the earlier micro credit enterprise that will become popular and borrowed in many countries in the world including Pakistan where the malnutrition among the poor is widespread. In Bangladesh itself half the people live below the poverty line and the remedy which Yunus offers at seven cents a cup is cheap and accessible to most people. But in other countries it all depends on the price at which milk is available, as in Pakistan where it is high priced and greatly diluted.
The Financial Times also carries a full page advertisement asking where a litre of water is more costly than in central London? It answers the question saying in the slum of a developing country.
That is the predicament of many in Pakistan’s slums when a worker seeks clean water after a hard day’s work and a long travel time to reach the factory and return home. We have a distributive pattern in which many who pay or are billed do not get water and those who don’t pay like the official VIPs or groups prone to violence get the water.
We are now shown the other picture. We are shown a picture of tomorrow when the country will be booming with new industrial cities, industrial estates and industrial parks with more fancy projects to come.
President Musharraf has just laid the foundation stone of what is projected to be the large industrial estate in the country -- M3 industrial city near Faisalabad -- which will be by the side of the motorway. The 4500 acre city promises to provide four million jobs altogether when completed within 5 to 18 months. Attached to it will be a labour colony with 400 acres. This is the third industrial estate to be opened within a few days in Punjab. The Sundar industrial estate near Lahore will provide jobs to one million people. The renovated Kot Lakhpat industrial estate was also opened by President Musharraf. Sindh has for long taken pride in the SITE as the largest and oldest industrial estate in the country, but now Sindh is being left behind by Punjab. The M3 industrial city will be the largest industrial estate in the country. Sindh should wakeup to do what it should in the industrial and job creation sectors urgently. It should revitalize the old SITE, the Korangi industrial estate and the EPZ in Karachi. It should come up with a new textile city soon along with an industrial park. It should expand and strengthen the Nooriabad industrial estate by giving the right incentives to investors there.
We are told that Qatar is to invest $ 4-5 billion in industries, oil refineries and infrastructure development in Pakistan in 3-4 years. The investment will be done by both the Qatar public sector and the private sector. Negotiations for the final agreement are highly advanced.
Meanwhile, the CBR has done well to reduce the import duty on service sector imports which includes medical tourism, hotel industry and chain stores to five per cent. The fact that some of the equipment to be imported are locally made will not stand in the way of the duty relief. The government wants to encourage foreign investment in the retail sector for the promotion of chain stores. Of course shortage of power can be a major deterrent to the new industries. The new industry estates will have to arrange for their own power supply instead of depending on the undependable Wapda.
Welcome indeed is the American investment of 16 million dollars in the textile industry in Lahore. We hope more Americans will follow suit so that we can have real competition in textiles in the domestic sphere as well. The government has approved a scheme to raise the target for the number of households receiving micro-credit from one to three million by the year 2010. This is too long a period; the target should be achievable by 2009 if not 2008.
Along with that the newly approved small and medium enterprises scheme should be implemented vigorously. That means production at three levels simultaneously through micro-credit, small and medium enterprises and the large-scale industries. The three together can increase production in a big way, augment the exports and raise the economic growth rate. But it all depends upon how well the schemes have worked.
What matters is the effective and sustainable action following the slow or delayed decision making. The action should be efficient, economic and truly effective to change the face of the country and wipe out poverty from our midst altogether.
PEACE is returning to Chechnya. Large parts of Minutka Square, a gateway to Grozny city centre, have been rebuilt. Shops and businesses are returning and the capital no longer reverberates to the nocturnal sound of gunfire. For a province brutalised by 12 years of war, there is some relief that order is at last being restored.
The bearded face of the man responsible for the reconstruction appears everywhere. Ramzan Kadyrov, who was last week appointed president of the republic by Vladimir Putin, is 30, an amateur boxer who boasts a fleet of Porsches, a friendship with the convicted rapist Mike Tyson and a lion and a tiger as pets. One placard pictures him next to his murdered father Akhmad and Mr Putin. It is known locally as the Holy Trinity: the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost.
Mr Kadyrov personifies much of the tragedy visited on his people. A rebel fighter turned by the Russians, he and his clan have pacified the province by establishing a rule of medieval brutality. The murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya accused Mr Kadyrov of personally assisting in the torture of suspects. Human Rights Watch last year documented 82 cases of torture by forces under the control of Mr Kadyrov's paramilitary groups.
— The Guardian, London