THE 1973 oil price increase altered the relative price structure for almost every commodity globally and within each country. Three and a half decades later, the current dramatic rise in international oil prices has delivered another shock to the world economy as a whole and to the individual national economies.

Among the multiple consequences, two impacts are critical, particularly for developing countries. One, it has intensified the balance of payments burden of non-oil producing countries. And two, it has fundamentally altered the fuel-food price equation. Urgent responses are in order and at least three strategic structural shifts are called for.

The first impact – foreign exchange burden of the oil price escalation – can be seen from the fact that import of petroleum and petroleum products constituted less than one-sixth of the import bill in fiscal year 1999, rose to almost one-quarter in fiscal year 2007 and is expected to be even higher currently.

The challenge has to be met either by raising foreign exchange receipts or by curtailing oil imports. There are no sustainable sources of foreign exchange receipts that can enable the treasury to meet the substantially enhanced – and rising – foreign exchange payments on the oil account. Effort, therefore, needs to be focused on oil consumption and imports.

Pakistan’s oil consumption basket constitutes a number of products: high speed diesel, light diesel oil, motor spirits, furnace oil, aviation fuels, kerosene, etc. The transport sector is the largest consumer of petroleum products, accounting for over 55 per cent of total petroleum products consumption. The major product used in transport is high speed diesel, which accounts for over 50 per cent of all petroleum products used in the country. Clearly, attempts to contain petroleum consumption needs to be concentrated on the transport sector.

Currently, Pakistan’s goods transport is largely road-based. Over 95 per cent of freight transport in the country is carried by road and the rest by rail. There is considerable empirical research the world over, showing long-distance freight unit cost to be significantly lower for rail transport than for road transport. There is, as such, sufficient cause for exploring the feasibility of a modal shift from road to rail.

Consideration needs to be given to introducing modern high speed container trains travelling at 150-200 kilometres an hour to carry goods long distance to designated stations, from where the containers could be transferred onto trucks for onward short distance haulage to nearby destinations. Even at 100 kilometres an hour, a train can make the journey from Karachi to Lahore in less than 10 hours and to Peshawar in about 15 hours.

Road transport cannot match either the fuel efficiency or the saving in transportation time that rail transport would offer. Consumption of high speed diesel can be expected to fall, effecting savings in foreign exchange payouts. Further, if passenger carriages are added to the trains, shifts in passenger travel from increasingly expensive air travel to relatively less expensive train journeys can also occur; thereby, effecting savings on the aviation fuels front as well. Carriages that offer comfortable sleeping facility and carry passengers overnight from, say, Karachi to Islamabad is likely to emerge as an attractive alternative.

As such, even if absolute declines in oil imports do not transpire, a decline in the rate of growth would itself offer a major boon in terms of pressure on foreign exchange availability in future years. The containment of the freight cost of transporting goods can also offer a salutary effect on cost-push inflationary pressures.

The second impact relates to the fuel-food equation and will have structural impacts on the very composition of agriculture. Producing fuel from agricultural commodities has been a technical possibility for quite some time now. However, it has been economically unfeasible. The sharp rise in oil prices has extended the technical feasibility to the range of economic feasibility. Brazil, for example, has shifted a part of its sugarcane output to producing ethanol for use as motor fuel.

The choices that Pakistan will face will be manifold. If sugarcane is used to produce fuel instead of sugar, Pakistan will have to meet part or all of its domestic sugar requirements by importing sugar; ostensibly at higher world prices. If relative profitability from sugarcane rises, more acreage is likely to be brought under the crop, leading to less acreage for competing crops like wheat and cotton. The research questions that would arise would be as follows: if ethanol is produced, would the savings from lower fuel imports be greater than the additional cost of importing sugar; if more acreage is devoted to sugarcane, would the savings from lower fuel imports be greater than the cost of imports of wheat and raw cotton; and so on.

The fuel-food equation shift also carries important equity implications. The greater demand for agricultural products for producing fuel will accrue higher prices to producers. At the same time, consumers will have to pay higher prices for food and fibre products. There are loud calls already, including from the World Bank, for attention to the unfolding crisis that could lead to mass hunger arising from the inability of the poor to afford the cost of food.

The challenge is enormous and requires that the neo-liberal fiscal management paradigm be abandoned. Consumers, particularly the poor, can only be protected through targeted provision of subsidised basic food items or direct cash grants or both. Accordingly, two axioms will have to be incorporated into the policy framework: direct support to the vulnerable population and, resultantly, the presence of an accepted subsidy element in annual budgets. According to current population, income, poverty level and price data configurations, at least one third of the population will need some degree of support; requiring a reserved budgetary allocation of one percent of GDP for support to the vulnerable households.

The crisis emanating from the escalation of world oil prices needs careful attention. Left to the market, with its inherent inefficiencies and insensitivities to equity considerations, or to politically motivated government decisions determined by the strength of particular lobbies, the results for the economy can be disastrous. The challenges are structural and require detailed and comprehensive analyses; which in itself demands a greater element of analytical and planning capacity in the government. Above all, the call in this hour of crisis is for a strategic vision.

NOW that a democratically-elected government is in place in Pakistan, politics needs to be put aside as much as possible, to concentrate on what really affects Pakistanis, namely development. And in development, a major priority has to be population stabilisation.

First, a few statistics: Pakistan’s population is still growing at a high rate. Figures vary. The Pakistan government puts it at 1.8 per cent but United Nations Population Fund Activities (Unfpa) puts it at 2.1 per cent a year, one of the highest population growth rates in South Asia. Over three million extra Pakistanis are added to the population every year, people who have to be fed, housed, educated and employed. That’s a stupendous task.

In 1981, Pakistan’s population was 84 million; today, it is over 160 million, having doubled in less than 30 years. The only bit of good news in this particular area is that the average number of children that a woman in Pakistan bears (also called the total fertility rate) has gone down from 5.6 in 1990-91 to 3.7 in 2007.

A family planning programme was actually launched way back in 1952 by the Family Planning Association of Pakistan, a non-governmental organisation (NGO). India, too, initiated something similar at government level at about the same time. However, the results in both countries have been very uneven.

In India, Sanjay Gandhi, Indira’s son, tried to forcibly thrust family planning down the peoples’ throat during his mother’s notorious dictatorial ‘Emergency’ rule in 1975-77. He made sterilisation (for women) or vasectomy (for men) compulsory for families with more than two children and ‘targets’ were set for government officials. These terror tactics failed abysmally and set the Indian family planning movement back by at least two decades, with subsequent governments reluctant to pursue population stabilisation measures whole-heartedly. The tactics were also partly responsible for the defeat of Indira’s Congress Party in the 1977 elections.

In Pakistan, after Gen Ziaul Haq’s coup in 1977, the family planning programme was virtually abandoned, with Islamic fundamentalist parties, who oppose family planning, in the ascendant. Fortunately, the recent elections rejected those very parties, which should augur well for a renewed thrust in curbing Pakistan’s population explosion.

In 1992, I was commissioned by the Unfpa to write a book on family planning success stories. Eight developing countries were chosen from all over the world, which had been fairly successful in their family planning programmes. Those programmes had to be voluntary, which is why China — an undoubted ‘success story’ with an annual population growth now of under one per cent — was not chosen.

Two of the successful countries were Muslim: Indonesia and Tunisia (today, at least three more could be added: Turkey, Morocco, and, surprisingly, Iran). The main reason they were included was to show that there was nothing in Islamic teachings that opposed family planning. All that was required was enlightened leadership.

In Indonesia, the late Suharto (though much-maligned for other reasons) provided this, and in Tunisia, it was the nation’s founding-father, Bourguiba. It might surprise readers to know that in Tunisia, polygamy has been banned by law since the 1950s and in Morocco, the King’s government has made it so difficult for a man to marry more than one wife that a ‘one-man, one-wife’ policy is effectively in place.

In Indonesia, the government actually persuaded the religious leaders that bringing down the population growth rate was in national interest. A fatwa was issued to this effect and the mullahs preached the virtues of family planning from mosques.

In Roman Catholic developing countries like Brazil and Mexico as well, even though the Pope still refuses to permit the use of modern contraceptive methods, the vast majority of the people have ignored him and practice family planning.

Religious compulsions and enlightened leadership apart, while researching for my book I found that two other essential factors had to be in place for success in population stabilisation: high literacy rates, especially among girls, and good health care.

Those are the two areas where India and Pakistan have failed badly. In India, only a little over 60 per cent of the population is literate, the literacy figures for females being even lower. The picture is worse in Pakistan. As for health care, the surest indicator for this is the average expectancy of life. In India and Pakistan it is around 64 years, one of the lowest in the developing world, outside sub-Sahara Africa.

In both Indonesia and Tunisia, priority has been given to literacy and health care. Indonesia had a literacy rate lower than India’s or Pakistan’s half a century ago. Today, close to 80 per cent of Indonesians are literate. In Tunisia, the literacy rate is even higher.

Why are literacy and health care so important?

Very simple. You have to be educated to understand and follow family planning, while good health care means the survival of children to a ripe old age. If a couple knows that their two children are very likely to live into their 70s and 80s — as they do in most developed countries and in quite a few developing ones as well — they won’t have more children. And of course a variety of contraceptive methods must be easily and cheaply available.

Not that difficult to achieve, provided that political will and commitment to the cause is there. This is a vital area, key to economic progress, where India and Pakistan can cooperate to their immense mutual benefit. n

The writer, former editor of the Reader’s Digest and Indian Express, has also been a consultant for UNFPA and is the author of Family Planning Success Stories: Asia, Latin America, Africa.

singh.84@hotmail.com

FOR a man who spent almost 17 years on Death Row, most of them in the shadow of the electric chair, William Neal “Billy” Moore looks remarkably well.

Moore, a deeply committed Christian and Pentecostal minister, talks well, too. Speaking out against the death penalty has been an almost full-time occupation for 56-year-old Moore since his release from prison in 1992. In the last few days, he has spoken at the spring conference of his hosts for his visit to the UK, LifeLines, the charity that arranges pen friends for Death Row prisoners in the US, and at an event organised by Reprieve, the UK charity that fights for the rights and lives of those condemned to death across the world.

The subject is once again topical after the US Supreme Court last week gave the go-ahead for the resumption of executions by lethal injection. This followed a seven-month nationwide moratorium on the death penalty that had been triggered by an appeal from two Death Row prisoners in Kentucky. The prisoners had argued that, far from being “humane”, death by lethal injection involved the infliction of a great deal of pain and distress, which amounted to “cruel and unusual punishment”. The Supreme Court disagreed. Immediately, Kentucky and 10 other states announced an intention to recommence executions.

The case of Billy Moore, however, raises bigger questions concerning the ultimate punishment versus possible rehabilitation. The most voluble argument against the death penalty has always been that, in the absence of a foolproof system, wrongfully convicted people may die. The message that Moore delivers, on the other hand, is particularly salient, because unlike Death Row survivors who have been released after being found to be innocent, Moore acknowledges his guilt. “Oh, I did it,” he says pensively. “I did it, and I pleaded guilty.”

What Moore pleaded guilty to was the robbery and murder by shooting of 77-year-old Fred Stapleton. At the time, Moore was a 22-year-old trainee electrical engineer in the army, based in Fort Gordon, Georgia. Estranged from his wife - who was still receiving his pay cheque - and short of money to look after his four-year-old son, Moore says he was in a state of desperation when a friend told him about Stapleton. “He told me that Mr Stapleton kept between $20,000 and $30,000 in his house. I borrowed a gun, and after drinking beer and a bottle of Jack Daniels I followed my friend to the house.”

The first robbery attempt by the two men failed because of a locked door, but later Moore returned alone. “I had intended to go home,” he says, “but then, somehow, I found myself outside Mr Stapleton’s house.” This time, he got in. “I went inside and it was pitch black. I moved around trying doors, and then I heard a door open and felt something against my leg. It was a shotgun. Suddenly, it exploded. I grabbed hold of the shotgun, pulled my gun out of my pants and shot back. I heard a thump to the floor and when I turned on the light, there he lay. There was no blood that I could see. He was just lying still.”

Execution date:

Stapleton was shot on April 4 1974. On July 17, after a hearing lasting three hours, Moore was sentenced by a single judge, with no jury present, to death by electrocution and was taken to a cell on Death Row. His execution date had been set for midnight on September 13.

Without doubt, on the day of his sentencing Moore received poor legal representation. The brevity of the hearing to decide whether he should live or die is one clue to the incompetence of his lawyer. Another is the fact that when his first execution date arrived, nobody had told him it was not going to happen.

He says: “I waited. As the day drew near, I wondered why nobody was saying anything. On the day, I waited for them to come for me, but nobody came. The guards said nothing, the warden said nothing.” Here he smiles, and adds: “So I thought, ‘Well, I ain’t saying anything either.’”

The following Monday, he received a letter from his lawyer apologising for forgetting to explain that his case - like all death sentences since the supreme court suspended capital punishment in 1972 - had been automatically appealed to the state supreme court. It was then that Moore fired his lawyer and decided to represent himself. (The supreme court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.)

When he received the police case papers, he discovered the names and addresses of several members of Fred Stapleton’s family. “Immediately, I knew I had to write to that family and apologise,” he says. The family, who happened to be Christians, wrote back with an unexpected reply. “They said that they forgave me. Not only that, they continued to write. They said they had lost a loved one, but you can turn that around and use that as an incentive to help other people. And that’s what I did.”

Moore, who was on Death Row in various Georgia prisons, studied law and theology. It was six years before he and fellow Death Row prisoners were allowed to associate and to take exercise in the fresh air, and then only because of a lawsuit taken out by the prisoners against the state. He formed a Bible study group and tried to encourage other prisoners.

During his years on Death Row, 14 of Moore’s fellow prisoners were executed. He himself underwent a total of 15 stays of execution. One time he came to within seven hours of being electrocuted. The procedure, once the execution date had been set and the death warrant signed, was that the condemned man would be taken from his cell on Death Row to the “death watch” cell for the last 72 hours of his life.

Six-and-a-half years later, Moore had lost all his appeals and was faced with his final execution date when the Georgia board of pardons and appeals reviewed his case. The hearing was attended by five members of his victim’s family, who, with majestic magnanimity, were there to petition for his death sentence to be commuted. He also had high-profile supporters, including the Rev Jesse Jackson and even Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who spoke by telephone to the appeals board.

The board relented and, a year later, Moore became the only prisoner who had entered a guilty plea to murder to be released from Death Row and paroled.

––The Guardian, London

MULTAN, ever the moderate and the moderator, cannot help but act as a bridge between opposites. It facilitates the spiritual bonding of people with the Maker through the saints who have overseen the city’s progress for centuries.

It links the overbearing Punjab with the low-lying Sindh culturally and politically via the Seraiki areas.

And in recent times it has helped the Pakistan People’s Party ally with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz for a coalition in Islamabad, providing in its very own Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani a prime minister acceptable to the partners in power. For now at least.

Last week, carrying the tradition of reconciliation further, Gilani emphasised the need for all parties and interest groups to come together in a push for national progress.

In fact Prime Minister Gilani’s remark in which he lauded the army for its contribution to the cause of democracy far surpassed any earlier attempt at winning over the generals by members of his pro-reconciliation PPP since the party emerged as the largest stakeholder in power in the Feb 18 polls.

The crucial question is whether this hand of friendship extends to the ex-general who commanded the military until recently.

To the party’s supporter who believes in moderation it is important that it doesn’t jeopardise the PPP’s old reputation.

The theory has its roots in the PPP co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari’s – as yet unproven – ability to beat the masters at their own game. He is said to be stuffing his government with pro-America individuals who, we are told, would ultimately outweigh President Pervez Musharraf, thus convincing the Americans at some stage that with so many friends looking after their interests in the Pakistani establishment, they could afford to let one man go.

Given the backstage flurry threatening to overwhelm what is visible to the audience, Yusuf Raza Gilani’s is a tough act. He is required to handle in full public view the conflict raging within the PPP under the increasingly mystical leadership of Mr Zardari.

The prime minister has to stay close to the president yet maintain a kind of aloofness from him. He is under the microscope as millions look for clues to the future in the way he carries himself around. Also, and much more significantly, Gilani’s turn in the prime minister’s house has come at a time when the party is trying to formally introduce the basic changes in the power structure that its leaders had been arguing for long while in the opposition.

Not that she was ever averse to change and compromise per se but Benazir Bhutto spent the last few years of her life exploring a pragmatic and lasting solution to the problem of civil-military relations in Pakistan.

Asif Zardari himself is on record as having recognised the army as an irrefutable reality in the country’s politics. Gilani had joined Ms Bhutto’s PPP twenty years ago after the party had been summarily cleansed of many of the remnants of the old guards from the days of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Circumstances now place him in the party’s front office as Mr Zardari seeks to run shop minus Ms Bhutto and builds his own party. By all signs, regardless of how the old ideological PPP worker would justify a handshake with Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf, the co-chair may be inclined to forge closer links with the establishment.

What is more, he can find his own justification for his steps in the book left behind by the party’s last prophet, Ms Bhutto — until he can claim divine guidance for himself.

Through a re-juxtaposing of factors and actors, Yusuf Raza Gilani symbolises the returning of the old. His politics has come full circle.

Two decades and odd years ago, he challenged Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif as the leader of Punjab, and by virtue of that position, a potential leader of Pakistan, not as an outsider but as someone who was very much a part of the system.

Should he be allowed to continue, he may again come to represent that old, marginalised interest group in the country’s politics looking for resurgence through his good offices — albeit with a more favourable establishment and a stronger party cadre behind him this time round.