A disaster in the making

WHEN the size, duration and intensity of a calamity exceed the resilience of the affected population and the people are unable to cope, a crisis-like situation develops.

Today, there are strong indications that over 40 per cent of the households in the country will be unable to maintain themselves at subsistence level if food prices continue to rise in the next two months.

Nearly half the population which is already experiencing substantial food deficit is at serious risk of falling into a state of absolute hunger. Ironically, this crisis has not come as a result of a natural calamity, drought or civil war. It follows a period when policymakers claimed that the country was experiencing unprecedented economic growth. The policies designed to achieve and sustain this growth, however, left the poor with very limited choices for securing subsistence-level livelihood. What was attained in the name of high growth rate was simply a ‘capital-augmenting and labour displacing’ arrangement which was indicative of ‘growth without development’.

The majority of the poor affected by this approach belong to the class of landless crop sharers and daily wage labourers who support large families at low average per capita income levels. Households belonging to this lowest income quartile spend as much as 91 per cent of their consumption budget on food. The current surge in prices poses a real risk of starvation for them. Referring to their extreme vulnerability around the world, IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn issued a warning in the recent spring meeting of the World Bank. He spoke of the ‘terrible impact’ and ‘dire consequences’ of this development as ‘hundreds of thousands of people will be starving’.

It seems strange that the warning of starvation in the new millennium identified the same factors for the disaster as was cited by British economist Arnold Toynbee to explain the food crisis that struck southern India in September 1918.

In his report on ‘grain riots’ Arnold Toynbee wrote, “Looting and rioting were expression of the panic and anger felt by the poor classes when faced with abrupt price rises or sudden disappearance of food grain from bazaars while large quantities of grain were known to be stacked in warehouses or barges and in railway yards ready for export elsewhere.”

The same ignominious practice was allowed to take place in the Bengal famine of 1942-43. Government policies encouraged the export of grain from India to avert the risk of hunger in Britain while extending the benefit of the trade to affluent traders at the cost of poor Indians. History records the Bengal famine of 1943 as a ‘boom famine’ which was attributed to moral degradation and ethical bankruptcy.

In the subsequent years, colonial powers came under severe criticism from the press and the intelligentsia for their callousness, and it was widely realised that the state had failed miserably in protecting the citizens’ basic right to food for survival. The widespread public anger compelled world powers to opt for a collective strategy to prevent absolute hunger and starvation. Agriculture was included as one of the key sectors in the global agenda for development.

A big proportion of international aid was diverted to newly independent and developing countries to ensure food security. As a result, most of these countries provided subsidies to growers, built basic infrastructure and introduced new affordable technologies to improve the quality and quantity of production. The green revolution of the sixties further reinforced these efforts through mechanisation, electrification and the extension of irrigation canals to far-flung rural areas.

The impact of these policy measures can be gauged from the fact that the agricultural sector was contributing 60 per cent to the GDP of Pakistan in 1951. In 2007, it had declined to 21 per cent. Not only that, in the sixties to the eighties, the prices of cereals and other food fell in real terms, both in the local market and in world markets. With the onset of the new millennium, however, the world food market witnessed two radical changes, namely, a shift in grain consumption patterns and the conversion of cereals into ethanol, a form of biofuel. Both these changes have given rise to a record price hike at a time not of scarcity but of abundance of food.

Policymakers in Pakistan either ignored or conveniently overlooked these developments in the last five years. By mid-2007, world food prices had jumped by 75 per cent and the food-price index touched its unprecedented highest level. Responding to the gravity of the situation, Russia and Venezuela imposed controls on food prices. China and Brazil invoked their contingency plans. However, our authorities did not bother to take any precautionary measure to tackle the situation even at the eleventh hour.

Now when, we are included in the 36 countries facing the risk of “food riots’, the call from world experts is ‘to address this (crisis) not just as an immediate emergency but also in the medium term for development”. The policy objective in the current scenario, therefore, needs to include a short-term relief and recovery package for the poor masses in order to avert the risk of disaster of hunger. At the same time, it also needs to have medium- to long-term strategies and safety nets to prevent recurrences of food crisis in the coming years.

Conditional cash transfers through strategies like cash-for-food and food-for-work have provided immediate relief and recovery to many poor in developing countries. The rate of success, however, depends on the efficiency, transparency and capacity of the available institutional infrastructure.

In the long term, we need to transform the poor and vulnerable class into a cadre of small growers each with its own piece of land. This would reduce poverty, create employment, and increase productivity. America and Europe have achieved current levels of food security by making this possible in the late sixties. It is time we embarked on this noble mission. The first step calls for land reforms — something we aspired to in the seventies but have still not achieved.

The writer is a development professional.

nsamoo@gmail.com

Hillary’s macho instincts

YOU have to admire the macho instincts of Hillary Clinton. Asked on the day of the Pennsylvania primary what she would do if Iran made a nuclear attack on Israel, she replied: “If I’m the president, we will attack Iran... we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

And it’s perfectly true. The US has enough nuclear weapons to blast, irradiate, incinerate and obliterate all 75 million people in Iran many times over. All she has to do is press the button.

First she has to win the presidential election, of course, but American voters can rest easy in the knowledge that Mrs Clinton would not hesitate to kill tens of millions of people on behalf of their friends in Israel. What a contrast with wimpy Barack Obama, who said: “Using words like ‘obliterate’ — it doesn’t actually produce good results.” What does he use for a backbone?

Tedious purists will point out that Iran doesn’t actually have any nuclear weapons. Indeed, late last year the US intelligence agencies produced a joint National Intelligence Estimate stating that Iran has not even been working to develop nuclear weapons for the past four years.

The critics might also point out that Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons of its own, and is perfectly capable of obliterating Iran without American help. But practical politicians like Clinton know that there is always some political mileage to be gained by promising to help Israel, whether it needs help or not.

On the very same day, by coincidence, another American was revealed to be in the business of helping Israel. His name is Ben-Ami Kadish, and he appeared in a New York court-room charged with spying on the United States for Israel. Kadish, who worked at the US army’s Armament Research, Development and Engineering Centre in New Jersey from 1979 to 1985, allegedly gave secrets involving information about nuclear weapons, fighter jets and missiles to Israel in the 1980s. He was charged with four counts of conspiracy, including disclosing documents relating to national defence and acting as an agent of Israel.

Justice Department officials claim that between 1980 and 1985 Kadish took classified documents related to national defence to his home in New Jersey. The former consul for science affairs at the Israeli Consulate General in New York would come to his home and photograph them in the basement, after which Kadish returned them.

Kadish, 84, is long retired, but he is still in touch with Israeli diplomats. When he realised on March 20 that he was going to be arrested, he called his current Israeli handler, according to the Justice Department, and was instructed: “Don’t say anything....What happened 25 years ago? You don’t remember anything.” Nor is this the first time that an American citizen has been publicly accused by the US government of spying for Israel.

In the most prominent case, Jonathan Jay Pollard was convicted in 1987 of passing thousands of secret documents to Israeli agents while working at the US defence department. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for spying for Israel, and ever since then Israeli governments have been trying to secure his release. He was granted Israeli citizenship in 1998.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey, asked what Washington was going to do about the Kadish case, said that Israel would be informed of his arrest. “Twenty-plus years ago, during the Pollard case, we noted that this was not the kind of behaviour we would expect from friends and allies, and that would remain the case today,” he said. But there will be no diplomats expelled, none of the dramatics that you would see if the US government caught some American spying for the Russian or Chinese.

There is a curious asymmetry in the US-Israeli relationship. Israel is the sole beneficiary of this alliance — indeed, the US pays a significant price for it in terms of its relations with other Middle Eastern countries — and yet Israel can spy on the United States with impunity.

During the Cold War, Israel was a valuable strategic ally for the United States in the Middle East, but that ended 20 years ago. Now it is not a strategic asset at all, but a brilliantly successful Israeli public relations campaign has persuaded the American public otherwise. So much so that Israel can brazenly spy on the United States and suffer no political penalty.

Hillary Clinton presumably knows this, but she also knows that threatening mass slaughter in defence of Israel (which does not need to be defended) is a vote-winner in the current political environment in the United States. Barack Obama obviously knows it, but although he is not going to commit political suicide by saying it out loud, at least he refused to echo her blood-curdling threat. n –– Copyright

The writer is a London-based journalist.

Quest for autonomy

DURING his visit to Karachi on April 19, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani reiterated his resolve to give top priority to the issue of provincial autonomy. Such reassurances are imperative to remove the prevailing doubts amongst the people of the smaller provinces.

It is, therefore, understandable that immediately after receiving the vote of confidence, the prime minister spelt out his 100-day agenda. Amongst other things, the latter stresses the need for granting autonomy to the provinces. The prime minister also promised to delete the Concurrent List from the Fourth Schedule of the Constitution, as was the intention of the authors of the 1973 Constitution.

The prime minister is fully mindful of the commitments his party has made in the election manifesto as well as in the famous Charter of Democracy signed in London by Ms Benazir Bhutto and Mr Nawaz Sharif in May 2006.

Maximum possible autonomy to the provinces is no doubt the sine qua non for the survival of Pakistan. This was the commitment made under the 1940 Lahore Resolution and was the essence of the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946, which was accepted by the Quaid.

The federating units had opted for Pakistan on the basis of autonomy and not religion. In 1999, then Chief Executive Gen Pervez Musharraf had the issue before him and he spoke of it in his famous address to the nation on Oct 17. Like the other items of his seven-point agenda, autonomy has remained an illusion. Instead of taking steps to make the provinces autonomous, Gen Musharraf has centralised all powers in his own office.

It is, however, not understood why the prime minister or his party now need a year to abolish the Concurrent List. There is complete unanimity on this issue amongst all four component parties, namely the PPP, PML-N, ANP and the JUI, who command support of more than two-third of the members of the National Assembly.

Moreover, the commitment of other parties in parliament such as the MQM is also very categorical on this issue. In any event, prudence and caution demand that radical reforms and necessary amendments in the Constitution ought to be made at the earliest stage, to avoid friction developing among the coalition parties.

The federal government should establish its credibility and reliability. If, for reasons best known to the government, it needs one year to delete the Concurrent List, then in the meantime, it must earn the goodwill and satisfaction of the smaller provinces by immediately taking decisions that do not require any amendment in the Constitution for empowering the provinces.

The government is fortunate in having those parties in the provincial governments that constitute the coalition. Hence, it has nothing to fear and can expect maximum cooperation. To show his sincerity on this issue, I suggest that the prime minister start downsizing the unjustifiably huge federal government, which is not even sanctioned by the Constitution.

A careful study of the Constitution will show that many of the divisions and ministries in the federal government do not enjoy the sanction of the Constitution. The executive authority of the federal government is limited to what is prescribed by Article 97 which clearly provides that it shall extend only to matters with respect to which parliament has the authority to make law. The Fourth Schedule under Article 70(4) of the Constitution has specified the matters on which parliament is competent to legislate. On the other hand, Article 142(c) clearly prohibits parliament from legislating on matters not enumerated in either the Federal Legislative List or the Concurrent List.

Articles 97 and 142 read together clearly stipulate that (i) the federal government enjoys unrestricted executive and legislative authority only in respect of matters specified in the Federal Legislative List; (ii) only legislative authority with conditional executive authority is enjoyed by the federal government in respect of matters specified in the Concurrent List; and (iii) the executive and legislative authority in respect of matters not enumerated in either of the two lists, i.e. residuary powers/matters, exclusively vest in the provinces.

A scrutiny of the two Legislative Lists discloses that some of the divisions or ministries are not specified either in the Federal Legislative List or in the Concurrent List. These are rural development, local bodies, co-operatives, food, agriculture, livestock, housing, sports, youth affairs, minorities, etc. It would therefore, follow that such matters and subjects are beyond the scope of the executive authority of the federal government.

Consequently, the first category of divisions and ministries in the federal government which have not been specified in the said two lists should be in the first instance assigned and transferred to the provinces exclusively.

The second category of unnecessary divisions and ministries in the federal government pertain to matters which appear in the Concurrent List to authorise legislation by parliament, but where the executive authority to implement those laws is conferred on the provincial governments. The powers of the federal government are further clipped by the proviso in Article 97 which prohibits the federal government, unless expressly authorised by the Constitution or any law, from exercising its authority in any province on a matter with respect to which the provincial assembly has also the power to make laws.

It would, therefore, be an exercise mandated by the Constitution to transfer most, if not all, of those ministries and divisions (or at least most of their functions) to the provinces, for example, labour laws, criminal laws, family laws, health and education and laws relating to subordinate courts etc.

The third category is that of the ministries which can be clubbed together on the basis of the criteria of similarity in the nature of functions being performed by the different divisions or ministries. Hence, there is no need to have so many ministries in the social sector because the laws and functions relating to them are performed at the provincial or district levels. The role of social sector ministries in Islamabad should be limited to supervision and coordination on these matters between the provinces and international forums such as the UN organisations, donor agencies and so on.

The abolition of unnecessary divisions and ministries and the assignment or transfer of some of them to the provinces would not only result in huge savings, but would also promote a sense of security, responsibility and participation among the provinces. The functioning of the state would thus be in accordance with the concept of true federalism, as was envisaged in the original Constitution. This would also help the federal government defeat the secessionist aims and designs of extremist regional and religious forces that are threatening the integrity of the country. n

The writer is a former senator, senior advocate of the Supreme Court, former attorney-general & federal minister for law, justice & parliamentary affairs & human rights.

hnhadv@cyber.net.pk