Asking for too much?

THE Scotland Yard team, inquiring into the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, has finally made public a summary of its report. The report appears to endorse what the interior ministry had cited as the cause of death within days of Ms Bhutto’s tragic killing. It also acknowledges serious flaws in the initial handling of the case including the hosing away of evidence from the crime scene and the absence of post-mortem findings (because none was carried out as was required under the law). Rather than clear the air, the report raises more questions than it answers.

Thus, one could argue the very purpose of seeking the expertise of a foreign police force has been defeated. Whether she was killed by a bullet or received fatal wounds on being thrown against the escape hatch of her bullet-proof land cruiser during the shooting and suicide bombing may have been important to the government and the Pakistan People’s Party. However, it was of little consequence to independent observers. What was important was to ascertain how the security breach occurred which allowed the assassin to come within a metre or two of a major national leader who had been the target of a similar attack just a couple of months earlier. Now the police officer in charge of the investigation has told the media that establishing whether there was a security breach and, if this was the case, assigning responsibility for it was not part of his mandate.

So, what was the brief given to Chaudhry Abdul Majeed who, haltingly, read the report summary before a battery of TV cameras and reporters? And what were the terms of reference for Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism specialists who ‘assisted’ the Pakistani investigators? On the face of it, both teams worked to establish merely the cause of death. It is unfortunate that a national leader is murdered in broad daylight in a public place and the probe into her killing stops well short of finding the answers and identifying those responsible. That the Scotland Yard was involved and submitted a report may enable the government to claim that it openly and earnestly investigated Ms Bhutto’s assassination but it won’t satisfy neutral observers. Worst still, the Pakistan People’s Party will continue to cry foul and demand a wider international probe under the aegis of the United Nations. There will be allegations of a cover-up. It’s already being said that the Scotland Yard’s terms of reference established by the Pakistani authorities didn’t leave much room for its detectives to conduct a wider probe. Nearly a month and a half after the tragedy the manner in which the probe was conducted and its findings will now become a hotly contested bone of contention. It will definitely figure prominently in the election campaign but the nation is none the wiser about the circumstances of Benazir Bhutto’s death. Was this too much to expect of a team of experts said to be the best of the local and British investigators? Perhaps it was.

The evolved Kashmir stance

THE sudden emergence of retrograde voices, including those of some opposition politicians and high-ranking former servicemen, as heard on Feb 5 in regard to Pakistan’s Kashmir policy is indeed disappointing. It resounded very much with a past that forestalled any move towards the settlement of the longstanding dispute with India. It was only in recent years, beginning with the composite dialogue that the two countries committed themselves to under the Islamabad Declaration signed in January 2004, that any thaw in bilateral relations has come about. Though slow-moving because of the chronic nature of the dispute, the process has somewhat eased the lives of Kashmiri families living on either side of the Line of Control. For instance, the start of the Muzaffarabad-Srinagar bus service, which had remained but a pipedream since the severing of travel links in 1948 between what is today Azad Kashmir and the Valley, was a major breakthrough in reuniting Kashmiri families. The accommodation of the Kashmiris’ wishes shown by both New Delhi and Islamabad, such as the agreement on facilitating across the LoC travel without passports, was no small achievement. The move goes to show that at least such humanitarian steps can be further extended in the conflict-ridden zone to include more areas of cooperation in due course of time; indeed, the opening up of the LoC by the Indian authorities to help with the rescue and relief effort after the deadly earthquake struck Azad Kashmir in October 2005 is another point of reference. The composite dialogue, despite its slow pace, has kept the hope alive for easing up further pressures exerted on ordinary Kashmiris, who remain mired in bilateral disputes, and who are the most aggrieved party in the conflict.

Pakistan’s moderation of its stance on Kashmir — Islamabad now maintains that any resolution of the dispute that is acceptable to Kashmiris will also be accepted by it — is a positive step forward. All attempts at backtracking from this very sane approach must be resisted in the best interest of all concerned, not least the people of Kashmir. The weakening of democratic institutions in Pakistan should not be taken as a carte blanche by those in the opposition to derail the composite dialogue with India. What’s equally important for the detractors to note is the public response to the Pakistan-India détente so far. They should not forget that a majority of Pakistanis favour Islamabad’s evolved stance on Kashmir, and not their backtracking balderdash.

Islamabad’s libraries

EVEN before the Model Children Library fell victim to last year’s Lal Masjid affair, public library development in Islamabad, as in many other cities in the country, was not something to be proud of. The capital had no public library until the 1990s, 30 years after the city’s founding, when the Model Children Library, the National Library of Pakistan and the Islamabad Public Library were opened. The mere establishment of these public libraries, however, was no automatic guarantee of the promotion of the reading habit among people, whether for personal enrichment or for the more pragmatic purposes of education and research. This dismal scene of Islamabad’s public libraries could be attributed as much to the lack of official encouragement and funding as to the lack of an organised public library system and the absence of a library law in the country. On top of this, 2007 was a particularly bad year for Islamabad’s public libraries with these institutions either coming under attack or public access being restricted on account of their location and the turmoil in the city.

Hopefully, this picture is going to change. The recent approval by the Central Development Working Party of the Planning Commission for a new Rs60m public library in a residential sector of the capital is a positive sign. This new library is supposed to be part of an ambitious public library development project, the first phase of which envisages the establishment of seven libraries in different sectors of Islamabad. As experience shows, however, the mere establishment of public libraries is not enough to turn them into magnets for visitors, whether physically in the library premises or online. Unless public libraries are properly funded, maintained and updated regularly in accordance with new concepts and ideas in library and information science, particularly in resource-sharing and networking, they will fail to achieve what they are supposed to, that is, help revitalise the reading habit in people and promote nation-building.

Land for social protection

PERVASIVE and persistent poverty stalks rural Pakistan. For the economic managers and their tutors, this is a problem of resource scarcity best resolved by aided and indebted economic growth through advisable market reforms. The pound of flesh remains a timeless allegory.

Z.A. Bhutto’s second, serious proposal for land reforms was scuttled by General Zia’s regime. The issue remained sidelined by all subsequent governments. Will Naudero and Raiwind reverse the trend? Does the deposed judiciary acknowledge justice as being inclusive of economic equity?

Optimistically, fair and free elections provide space for renewed discussions on agrarian reforms. Not just as an instrument of eradicating absolute poverty but in order to enable substantive democracy. If not now, when?

The poor are well informed about the cause of their precarious existence — extreme inequality in land ownership. In the last census, 90 per cent of those tilling the land were found to be landless. Among landowners, the bottom two-thirds own less than one-fifth of land since the top five per cent gobble up at least one-third. This is appallingly entrenched inequity — obscene if urban ‘growth’ was not producing even plumper vultures.

Social inequality includes state farms and regular land grants to collaborators as their reward for guiding democracy. A most scandalous scheme is one that seeks to turn 80,000 acres of coastal land into playgrounds for the rich. Surely, such enclosures will diminish and destroy the livelihood of tens of thousands of fisher folk.

When will Islamabad listen to the impoverished citizens? Gwadar aside, China’s support for the generals is curious as it comes from a country that produced Mao to embolden, excite and enrich the hordes outside the Wall.

What about corporate, highly mechanised agriculture that envisages huge farms operated by wage labour? That would be pauperisation, as Professor Jan Breman informed the Asian Development Bank and the Sindh government, especially in view of the indecent work and wages that remain the lot of urban labour.

This article poses some queries and responds with obvious suggestions. The aim is to support public action beyond the prescriptions of Washington’s neo-cons, disciples in Manila, and state and non-state actors in Pakistan, who eagerly wage wars on all fronts except against poverty and inequity. Can democracy have meaning without economic justice?

Inclusive citizenship demands secure freedom from poverty or any other discrimination. Several reasons, not least dignity, point to asset transfers over income transfers. The sceptical are invited to live by the safety nets of Islamabad.

Land reforms are a good instrument of enabling fundamental rights for the rural population. What is the minimum land required to escape income poverty? Is enough cultivable land available to provide such a minimum to all rural citizens? What complementary actions are required to ensure net yields? If land transfers fall short, then what?

One approach for minimum land rests on GDP from crops and livestock. At Rs15,000 per capita, land can provide much more than a conservative poverty threshold of say Rs10,000. As a social resource, enough land is available. The land poverty line (as GDP per acre) is around one-third acre per capita, in comparison to over one-half acre per capita available from over 20 million cultivated acres.

An alternative is to use the basis of the official income poverty line — income and price affordability for the intake of 2,000 calories per day per capita. What amount of land would assure this minimum?

As a very high-calorie item, wheat is a good yardstick. Average yield of over 1,000kg per acre suggests that the annual need for 200kg per capita could be met by around one-third acre per capita; a land threshold similar to the first estimate. If a second harvest is equally productive, then the threshold could be halved — aim for more landless or less land resumption.

Universal entitlement reverses gender discrimination. Similarly, even female children are assured of assets independently of their parents. This is no mean feat in the environment of South Asia’s patriarchy.

This proposal of land-for-income security assumes complementary public action for protecting real income through prices implicit in the expenditure poverty line. Protection against debt bondage calls for assured non-farm income to offset bad harvests (and co-variant downswings). There is an implicit cropping pattern and intensity in the land GDP concept. This is also ecologically sustainable. The latter is a heroic assumption, suggesting an upward revision of the land poverty threshold. At the very least, the state should not reduce productivity, illustrations of which are the devastating LBOD and the future RBOD to drain upland agriculture, as well as the Ghazi-Barotha hydropower project to feed power-hungry elites.

Agrarian reforms could begin with sharecroppers, whose poverty forces many into debt bondage (and worse). A minimum holding would be about two-third acres per capita if net earnings are equally shared. Since net shares get manipulated downwards, a precautionary threshold would be tenant farms of an acre per capita. The vast majority of tenant farms is smaller than 7.5 acres, supporting a family of seven or more. These would require either a higher income share for sharecroppers to escape poverty, or a larger farm. An exclusive plot for subsistence seems to be the best option to ensure food needs to offset riskier cash crops for the landlord.

Why not farming cooperatives? They can protect female entitlements, and realise the economies of scale. Hence, the land poverty threshold may be lowered. The effective constraint may lie in the limits to social cooperation.

Country averages hide much variation, requiring countervailing public action. Since distant dislocations create problems for migrants and host communities, land redistribution would be restricted, say to the same district. Whatever the land threshold, both low and high productivity needs to be taken into account.

District productivity indicates a very wide range — e.g. 200kg wheat per acre in rain-fed Karak, less than one-sixth of the yield in irrigated Ghotki. With restricted population transfers, land-deficit areas need supplementary support for raising yields, and for non-farm assets and income. Land-surplus areas could fund the privilege of excluding migrants.

The Sharia bench of the Supreme Court has ruled in favour of market price for the compulsory acquisition of land. Unchallenged, the government regularly ignores the ruling in mega projects. Will it do so for land reform ceilings? Can one consider interest-free, long-term bonds for land resumption?

Subsidies will be needed for those poor unable to afford land installments even over a generation. Perhaps large landowners could be given lifetime exemption from tax on agricultural income in lieu of the ‘free’ relinquishment of excess land.

Instead of sweeping land reforms, the government could begin with titling minimum land to the poor. At least a third of the rural population would require over 10 million acres to escape poverty. Targeting invites misallocations, and hence may be messy and ineffective as compared to universal entitlements.

Starting with state land and the largest landowners, land reforms would gain mass support to counter local hostility. But an appropriate land ceiling would probably be well under 25 acres, unless the (previously) landless are supported to substantially increase yields, or provided with non-land assets or secure employment.

West Bengal and Kerala are significant examples of slow, government actions versus quick people’s actions for land redistribution. Maoist areas in Nepal are another example. Why do policy thinkers echo the ADB view of Pakistan as West Asia, specially when more Muslims live in the east rather than the west?

The writers work at the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education & Research, Karachi

piler@cyber.net.pk

OTHER VOICES - Indian Press

Global guru

Daily News & Analysis

MAHARISHI Mahesh Yogi, who died on Tuesday at the age of 91, perfected that one art of Indian gurudom that others have since tried to emulate: when your message is lost in the Indian multitudes, look west.

He was not only the first to do so, he also was among the most successful. His meeting with the Beatles…in the 1960s may have been serendipitous, but everything that happened since was a combination of hard work and clever thinking. Mahesh Yogi’s success also came from the simplicity of his initial teachings.

Unlike stricter Hindu requirements, renunciation and sacrifice were not needed. Instead, you could continue with your life as long as you meditated on a chosen mantra twice a day.

…It would be unfair to dismiss Mahesh Yogi as a mere cult leader. He captured the imagination of a people thirsting for answers, he showed them a path of meditation… Mahesh Yogi will always remain the first genuine exporter of Indian spirituality to the world. — (Feb 7)

North by north Indians

The Indian Express

WHEN the lieutenant-governor of Delhi, Tejendra Khanna, says that there is greater compliance with traffic rules in south India as opposed to the country’s north, is he doing a Raj Thackeray? That such a question is asked, and that outraged north Indian politicians across the party spectrum…are now calling for Khanna’s apology…is telling.

Some would point out that you don’t need statistics to prove that Delhiites are notoriously law-averse. Or that the road is a more unruly place in the north Indian city as compared to the…south.

At best Khanna’s comment is a well-intended exhortation to a north Indian audience. At its worst, he is guilty of sectarian generalisation. But he is certainly not dabbling in the kind of violent and intolerant us-and-them politics that the Shiv Sena has patented in Mumbai…

The real worry is that in a society of thin-skinned people the real dangers may not always be recognised and guarded against. — (Feb 9)