THE emphasis on eliminating poverty through the pursuit of social justice in the prime minister’s hundred-day programme is a welcome change from President Musharraf’s policy, which favoured the trickle-down recipe of poverty alleviation.

The previous regime’s erstwhile economic gurus went about the business of calculating the percentage decline in mean poverty in relation to the increased rate of growth, which became its battle cry. The much-advertised official verdict was that poverty in Pakistan had declined by over 10 per cent in the last four years.

The merits and demerits of the official calculations notwithstanding (the veracity of the official calculations is subject to intense debate), by becoming obsessed with average reductions the previous regime’s policy approach to poverty failed to develop an appreciation of the deep structural constraints impacting poverty in Pakistan.

These structural constraints impact poverty in a number of ways. Their primary impact is the tremendous variation in household poverty that is caused at the district and sub-provincial level. These constraints have resulted in the creation of high-poverty districts that are stuck in ‘poverty traps’, where endemic poverty is persistent over the long run. The socio-economic channels through which growth ‘trickle down’ is said to happen remain extremely fragile in these districts. That is, growth alone has not and will not deliver in these districts.

Given these poverty characteristics, it is highly probable to have reductions in average poverty coexisting with endemic poverty in the high-poverty districts. This happens because growth-led poverty reduction occurs in the low-poverty districts, where channels of the trickle-down effect are strong. The upshot of this process is that the reduction in average poverty ends up widening the poverty gap between different types of households and between households in different districts, thereby compromising precepts of social justice and democracy.

This should not be read as an anti-growth argument. The argument is two-fold: (a) growth in itself is unlikely to dent endemic poverty in high-poverty districts; and (b) social justice requires that design of policy that uses the dividends of growth to mitigate and reduce endemic poverty in these districts as well. If the objective is to eliminate poverty, then policy should concern itself with reducing the large and persisting variation in poverty across districts in addition to reducing average poverty.

I illustrate this argument about sub-provincial ‘poverty traps’ with reference to Punjab using the Multiple Cluster Indicators Survey (2003-04) of the provincial government. The important point about this survey is that it is statistically representative at the district level and allows poverty inferences to be made at this level. The analysis that follows is based on work that I am currently doing with Ms Lyyla Khalid (Lahore University of Management Sciences) and Dr Naved Hamid (Lahore School of Economics).

In order to make the argument tractable I divide Punjab into four regions. The north consists of the four districts of Rawalpindi, Attock, Jhelum and Chakwal. The west consists of the districts of Mianwali, Bhakkar, Khushab, Layyah, Muzaffargarh, D.G. Khan and Rajanpur. The south consists of the districts of the old Multan division and the old Bahawalpur state. The centre contains the remaining districts of the province.

Using a poverty line based on the Economic Survey methodology we find that north Punjab has poverty head-count ratios (HCRs) of around 12 per cent and the centre has HCRs in the range of 20 per cent. In contrast, the west and the south of Punjab have HCRs of around 45 per cent, indicating the existence of poverty levels that are more than double that found in the north-centre districts of the province.

Interestingly, rural poverty calculations show a similar trend. In the north, rural poverty remains extremely low and more or less in line with overall poverty in the region. However, in the case of the centre, rural HCRs are 10 per cent higher than overall HCRs in the region at nearly 30 per cent compared to 20 per cent. In the south and the west rural HCRs are extremely high and in the range of 55 per cent.

The severity of poverty in the south-west, measured by the shortfall in household expenditure from the poverty line, is six times higher than the north and three times higher than the centre. This indicates that more than half the rural population of the south-west districts in one of Pakistan’s most developed provinces is living in conditions of endemic and abject poverty.

Nearly a decade ago, Haris Gazdar using a different dataset that was unrepresentative at the district level, found similar gaps in sub-provincial poverty in Punjab, with the south and west emerging as the endemic poverty belt of the province. In spite of the statistical issues with the dataset, it appears that he had found an essential insight into the structure of poverty in Pakistan, which has failed to find appreciation in policymaking.

Writing at the time of independence, Malcom Darling documented exactly the same sub-provincial gaps in poverty across Punjab. This suggests that the current regional gaps in poverty across Punjab appear to have persisted over the long run.

Furthermore, our analysis suggests that seven districts in Punjab have rural poverty HCRs of over 60 per cent. These include the districts of: Muzaffargarh; D.G. Khan; Rajanpur; Rahimyar Khan; Bahawalpur; Bahawalnagar and Lodhran. Together these seven districts constitute a crescent of endemic poverty at the bottom of the province. We also find that the severity of poverty tends to be the highest in this crescent.

Punjab’s endemic poverty crescent is in stark contrast to the districts of Sialkot; Jhelum; Rawalpindi; Chakwal; Gujrat; Lahore; and Attock, which have poverty HCRs of below 15 per cent and a low severity of poverty ratio. The extremes of poverty in Punjab in 2003-04 ranged from a poverty HCR of six per cent in Sialkot to HCRs of more than 65 per cent in Rajanpur.

These findings have important implications and raise important questions. The most important implication is that there are many Pakistans existing in the state of Pakistan. The people of these different Pakistans have different opportunities, aspirations, and access to different assets and endowments and are faced with different constraints. In some parts a majority of citizens are concerned with improving livelihoods, in others they are battling to survive the disease of abject poverty.

These differences in outcomes will clearly have important implications for the design of a programme of social justice in Pakistan. The findings suggest that the one-policy-fits-all approach adopted by the provincial and federal governments is unlikely to work. This will, in all likelihood, increase the poverty gap between different sub-provincial regions and different types of households.

It also suggests that on an index of abject poverty the placement of citizens from all districts is not equal and a policy emphasis on reducing averages may benefit residents of some regions more than others, as has been the case during the previous regime. Growing gaps at the sub-provincial levels are going to weaken the country politically.

The most obvious question that needs to be addressed is why does poverty tend to be endemic and persistent in the high-poverty districts and sub-provincial regions as opposed to the low-poverty districts. And, finally, what implications does this have for policy.

The writer is an associate professor of economics at the Lahore University of Management Sciences.

ONCE in a while, there arrives a moment in the history of nations when it becomes possible to think the unthinkable, to shed shibboleths and to devise new pathways to the future. Such a moment has arrived with the swearing-in of the new democratic government in Islamabad.

Prime Minister Gilani and his cabinet should re-examine the premises of Pakistan’s national security policies, which throughout history have been determined by the army. Neither the army’s strategies, nor its war plans, nor even its budgets have ever been submitted for parliamentary scrutiny. The concern, shared by civilian and military governments alike since independence, has been that doing so would lead to a military debacle.

And what has been the result of this secrecy? Not one but several military debacles, precisely the outcome it was supposed to prevent. The army has engaged in two major and several minor wars in Kashmir that have failed to change the situation on the ground but have brought with them much economic cost, social suffering, political distress and international opprobrium. As if that were not enough, the army precipitated a civil war in East Pakistan and lost half the country.

And it did not stop there. After the country was dismembered, when the army should have gone into a quiet, self-searching mode, it chose instead to reinforce the dread of India among the people.

It was the best time to rethink national defence but the opportunity was squandered. The army chose to pursue even more aggressively a unidimensional approach to national security focusing on military strength. Thus, instead of rescaling its size to correspond with the new borders, the army grew by 50 per cent.

Moreover, girding itself for Armageddon, it began working on a clandestine nuclear programme which ultimately yielded a plethora of nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles. But this programme ultimately backfired as the US cut of all aid when the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. When Pakistan, now engaged in an arms race with a country that was seven times its size, decided to match India’s five nuclear explosions in May 1998 with six of its own, it suffered a battery of crippling economic sanctions.

Moreover, the decision to nuclearise the armed forces failed to yield a cut in spending on conventional forces. There was no nuclear dividend, and poverty and illiteracy rates continued to grow. This deepened the ethnic and sectarian fault lines in the nation’s body politic. Along the way, the population of Pakistan exceeded that of Bangladesh, in a dramatic demographic reversal.

Such is what happens when the entire edifice of national defence is turned over to the army. The French statesmen Georges Clemenceau, twice prime minister of France in the early 20th century, warned about the consequences of leaving defence in the hands of the generals, saying, “War is too serious a matter to be left to the generals.”

So what should be done? The first priority should be the creation of a parliamentary committee to review the country’s defence policies. This committee on national defence should work closely with the three service chiefs and the chairman of the joint chiefs to review the country’s grand strategy. This goes beyond military strategy, whose purpose is narrowly focused on how to win wars and even more beyond tactics, whose purpose is to how to win selected military engagements. Grand strategy addresses higher-level questions such as whether or not to go to war, with what means, at what place, against whom and for what purpose. These questions fall into the province of parliament, not the military.

Grand strategy, to be successful, has to rest on a rational, non-emotional foundation of facts. It requires a realistic framing of the threats facing the country. External and internal threats have to be identified and evaluated under a variety of scenarios. Only then can a robust grand strategy be derived that is valid for a variety of futures.

The truest manifestation of grand strategy recognises its multi-dimensional nature and suggests the deployment of complementary political, diplomatic, economic and social policies for its attainment. Rarely can the objectives of grand strategy be attained by military force alone. The armed forces, trained largely in the successful prosecution of military campaigns, have to play a role in the formulation of grand strategy but they can never play the dominant role.

Once grand strategy has been formulated, the new role of the armed forces in national defence will become apparent. Recommendations for changing their mission, their orientation and organisation and their strength will flow from such an assessment. For example, it will become clear that given the existence of a substantial, well-publicised nuclear deterrent, Pakistan does not need armed forces that are about half the size of India’s.

As discussed earlier, the large size of the armed forces has not helped Pakistan avoid military defeats. In fact, it has tempted the country to engage in adventures for which it was seriously underqualified. Operations such as those carried out in Kargil in the summer of 1999, even after the nuclear tests had been carried out by both countries just a few months prior, are a manifestation of the army’s strategic myopia for which Pakistan has paid dearly.

In addition, the large size of the armed forces has created a political imbalance in the polity that has precipitated not one but four coups. The true measure of militarism can be gleaned from the realisation that the military, even when it is not explicitly in power, governs the nation’s defence and foreign policies. In addition, the military now intrudes deeply into the civil sphere, including the universities.

Just about every senior civil post appears to be held by either a serving or retired general. In addition, military officials are awarded land that they can resell at a profit. Their position in society is out of line with that held by their counterparts in all countries with the possible exception of Myanmar. Even in China, it is the Communist Party and not the army that holds sway in national defence.

Reconfiguring the armed forces will yield three major benefits. First, the problem of terrorism will become more tractable as non-military levers are identified, developed and deployed. The American experience in Afghanistan and Iraq is a testimonial to the futility of using overwhelming military superiority against an enemy that operates among the people. Industrial armies are ill-equipped to fight such non-conventional wars and the latest testimonial to this thesis comes from a recently retired British general, Sir Rupert Smith, author of The Utility of Force.

The second major benefit from a reconfiguring of the armed forces would be the eradication of militarism in Pakistani society. Professional soldiers will wish to get back to the business of building their core competency, which is winning wars, rather than running the country. And the third major benefit would be the freeing up of scarce economic resources to promoting human development.

The writer has co-edited, Pakistan: Unresolved Issues in State and Society.

faruqui@pacbell.net

WHERE are we? It is very difficult to tell. It is easier to relate to where we have been. It may give some indication of where we may be today and where we are likely to be tomorrow.

The whole process of extinguishing democracy started as early as 1953 with the dismissal of the Nazimuddin government. Its preface was the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan in October 1951.

Although the causes are well known they are denied by most people, because they find it embarrassing. The main cause for removing Khawaja Nazimuddin was the demographic superiority of East Bengal in a one-man-one-vote system. The politicians came up with a solution: they divided the country into East and West Pakistan. The provinces in the West were abolished or suspended and control was centred in Lahore. The number in the National Assembly from East and West Pakistan was equal. The protection was inadequate because West Pakistan still had ‘provinces’ for ethnic reasons. East and West Pakistan were not at par. The West was at a disadvantage. This resulted in martial law in October 1958.

We have not had any government interested in democracy. Power, yes; democracy, no. Both civilian and military rulers have followed this path. The difference was simply between the ‘elected’ and the unelected. The elected were called prime ministers, the unelected were generals.

One wonders what people mean when they clamour for a ‘return to democracy’. Since we have never been there, how can we return? We have to create democracy. As Lenin pointed out, “If a lie is told often enough it becomes the truth.” He probably opted for that himself. We talk about parliamentary sovereignty when all that we have is prime ministerial sovereignty.

The present check-and-balance available is the much-maligned Article 58-2(b) of the constitution. It was used by Gen Ziaul Haq to remove Mohammad Khan Junejo. The People’s Party has been dismissed twice. When Nawaz Sharif was dismissed by Mr Ghulam Ishaq, the Supreme Court very sensibly decided to support Nawaz Sharif as a young man with a future. Mr Ghulam Ishaq was obviously past it.All military coups in Pakistan have so far been bloodless. Individuals did pull out guns in the last one; luckily they were not used. If people are serious they should pray that we do not precipitate another coup based on political hostility. The essence of democracy is that there are parties in power but those not in power are supposed to be regarded as the loyal opposition.

Gen Musharraf’s economic management has not been anywhere as good as claimed. His finance minister was a clever man, personable, plausible and persuasive. His PR was excellent. He did not know much about the problems of economic development. All he knew was the Wall Street mantra, deregulation, liberalisation and privatisation: there is nothing wrong with this except that it has to be fitted into the framework of savings, investments (preferably in industry) and promoting exports.

He was totally oblivious of the fact that import substitution is an essential part of the development process. It is an important channel for the transfer of technology. One of the paradigms of development is import — import substitution leading to export. It doesn’t always happen but it does from time to time if we look at the evolution of industry in developing countries. He had other quirks as well.

What made matters worse was the combination of the posts of prime minister and finance minister. Both are full-time jobs. Dr Manmohan Singh in India was finance minister. Once he became prime minister he stopped controlling the ministry of finance.

What will happen in the future? We have all the old politicians back in power. Will they turn over a new leaf? They probably need to turn over a whole new book. Will they begin to behave responsibly instead of simply indulging in patronage? The PML-N has emerged as the dominant party in the dominant province. Nawaz Sharif is a charismatic leader who is sure that he will be dominant in the future. His brother, who is supposed to be much brighter, has no choice but to walk in his shadow.

The ANP is also a provincial party but its founder, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, was a great man. The MQM is trying to break out of its ethnic confines but has failed miserably because its leader is not trusted outside Karachi and Hyderabad. If they want to change this they must try and whitewash his image as a Capo di Capo.

Is Gen Musharraf likely to survive? His heart may be in the right place but his intelligence is at the normal level of an army officer. As happens with people in absolute power he has surrounded himself with second-rate sycophants. Worse, he doesn’t like intelligent individuals — many people say it is the result of sibling rivalry. On coming to power it seemed he was set to reverse Gen Zia’s efforts to make Pakistan into an Islamic society. However, attempts on his life by the religious frightened him and he became cautious and crafty.

Unfortunately, his understanding of craftiness was to postpone decisions until he was confronted with a crisis. The tactics to successfully sack the CJ were based on the assumption of showing military strength. While this was brewing, the CJ appeared to have contacted his supporters regarding what they were prepared to do for him. By the time the moment of decision arrived, the CJ made up his mind to defy the army.

The sort of agitation on March 9, 2007 and beyond does not happen on the spur of the moment. The government was prepared to rough up the demonstrators including the CJ. It forgot that the media had become free in recent years and were delighted by the opportunity to be loudly anti-government. It also overlooked the fact that the use of force was bound to be limited. No shooting except in the south.

We are aware of what happened subsequently. The CJ became a major anti-Musharraf weapon in the political process. It is strongly rumoured in Lahore that the main support for the lawyers’ agitation, etc came from the PML-N. If it did, politically it was an excellent tactical move.

Gen Musharraf’s procrastination converted it into an excellent strategy. The PML-N has to be congratulated on its success. The hate-Musharraf campaign took off into the stratosphere until in desperation he came down like a ton of bricks on the media and the judiciary on Nov 3, 2007. We still have to see how it is going to unwind itself.

For some reason the press and the media have become very tame. It has little to do with the code of conduct imposed by the general. Unfortunately, because of our inadequate economic management since 1972 and our lack of a decent education policy, Pakistan still remains overly dependent on the US. All great imperial powers are cynical. As Jean Kirkpatrick put it when describing rulers of developing countries, “Even if he is a *#@$, he is our *#@$.” In place of *#@$, you can use whatever pejorative you fancy.

… each, though there was more than enough for all, was desirous of appropriating part to himself. Then entered violence, and fraud, and theft, and rapine. Soon after, pride and envy broke out in the world and brought with them a new standard of wealth; for men, who till then, thought themselves rich when they wanted nothing, now rated their demands, not by the calls of nature, but by the plenty of others; and began to consider themselves poor, when they beheld their own possessions exceeded by those of their neighbours. — Dr Samuel Johnson

THE ever-escalating violence, chaos and corruption plaguing us permanently are the overt symptoms of a social meltdown triggered by the incorrigibly corrupt, utterly inefficient and morally bankrupt ruling elite. Its insatiable greed for pelf and power is responsible for the destruction of the norms and values which once provided cohesion to society. As a class it is “essentially bogus”, as Gore Vidal once called the Kennedy family.

This class has justified its resort to violence, plunder and illegality on patently false slogans like ‘national interest’ and ‘Pakistan first’. It has used religion and spurious nationalism to browbeat people into silent acceptance of its scandalous ineptitude, despicable autocracy, brutal tyranny and illicit authority. It has grossly misused state authority for its personal agendas under the guise of patriotism.

The biggest disservice the elite did to society was that it deliberately and systematically destroyed all the moral, cultural, social and political values which could act as a deterrent to its iniquitous acquisition of pelf and power. These mores and norms had effectively checked many social evils for centuries.

Now this wilful destruction of the social fabric has created a social, moral and cultural vacuum, leaving the people without moorings and creating an ideal environment for the ‘essentially bogus’ lot to thrive in. It has left society rudderless and at the mercy of the turbulent sea of moral, ethical and political bankruptcy.

The basic social unit, the family, has lost its influence and hastened the meltdown. Previously where the writ of the government ended, the writ of the family used to take over. But in present-day Pakistan neither governmental writ nor the influence of the family prevails. Thus family and community disapproval, which had an effective deterrent value at one time, are now disregarded. The rulers have willy-nilly become the role models, their vice being adopted as virtue by the people.

The callousness of the elite has created a sense of alienation, deprivation and desperation among the have-nots who constitute the majority, so much so that whenever an opportunity arises they go on an indiscriminate frenzied rampage of destruction and looting. Economically dispossessed people carry a grudge against society and have no interest in preserving it.

The trend of violence here is the direct outcome of the rulers’ mindset. The state’s use and justification of indiscriminate force on flimsy pretexts has prompted some individuals, outfits and factions to consider it perfectly legitimate to use force to impose their views and writ on those who refuse to conform.

People have been cowed down into submission and passivity due to the mistrust of the rulers and the breakdown of institutions. Disenchanted and disillusioned, they have even abdicated their right to resist injustices and excesses. The fact that no one resists when crimes take place in crowded places like city bazaars and on buses demonstrates the apathy — and dread — that the elite’s brazenness and heartlessness has spawned.

The ruling elite’s corruption is a bane for the country. ‘Primitive’ societies followed rigid codes to ensure their survival. Theft (read corruption) and indiscriminate violence were taboo in those societies. Here there is neither a code nor the state to regulate life. People indulging in indiscriminate and wanton violence and brazen corruption could do well to learn from the Dayaks of Borneo, who were famous for cutting and shrinking the heads of enemies to display as coveted trophies.

The Dayak headhunters considered it immoral to kill someone they didn’t know or didn’t have a score to settle with. They were perplexed to know that people used bombs to kill and maim strangers with whom they had no feud. It was something reprehensible and revolting to them.

The Dayaks, bound by their societal codes, were a lot more civil and refined in their violence than some people residing within the boundaries of this Islamic Republic where violence and corruption is as wanton as it is irrational and immoral. I leave it to the readers to decide if the Dayaks were uncultured barbarians or if it is the ‘essentially bogus’ ruling elite here who qualify for that inauspicious title.