Walking with the ghost of Macaulay

RECENTLY I accompanied visiting scholars to places of cultural significance in Karachi. We started with the Sadequain ceiling at Frere Hall and then got a glimpse of living tradition at the ‘Tale of the tile’ exhibition at the Mohatta Palace museum.

A visit to the Governor House made it possible to see the works of Pakistani masters in its art collection. Lunch that day took us to the Tudor-style building of the Boat Club and the sunset viewed from the crumbling stairs of the Kemari jetty was a reminder of the coastal location of this bustling metropolis.

The discussion during the day on the style and dates of the places we visited all seemed to revolve around the colonial period. The styles synthesised by the colonial architects and the funds that went into building them, except for the Mohatta Palace built by its owner, a local entrepreneur, all point to how the British heavily invested in creating a new public architecture to consolidate their claim on the region.

My mind also went to two post-Partition cultural buildings in the city which too would have been included in the tour if premature decline had not claimed them. One of them is the Arts Council, circa 1960s, open, airy with uncluttered lines and access to all four floors with a wide multi-purpose ramp. The original design offers ample light and air to the users regardless of power breakdowns. Today the design has been badly mutated with a sloppily painted ugly pink facade, broken windowpanes and an interior heavily stained by paan, grime and water seepage. The standards of its exhibitions too have also lost their edge and the Arts Council has drastically slipped from its place in the 1970s as an institution of excellence in the visual arts.

Next door to the Arts Council are the grounds of the villa of Attiya Faizi and Faizi Rahamin. This writer-and-artist couple came to Karachi at the peak of their careers to contribute to the cultural scene of the city after 1947. They opened their doors to the local intellectuals and bequeathed the paintings of Faizi Rahamin and other books and artefacts, their dearest possessions, to the citizens of Karachi.

It’s sad the way their estate has been both neglected and their legacy disregarded as the land still does not have a museum dedicated to the couple. What stand on the land are a sporadically functional reference art library and an ugly unfinished concrete building. The Rahamin estate exists in a bureaucratic no-man’s-land as no one is willing to give a convincing answer about its present neglect and future conservation.

The art scholars went on to present their papers at the two-day seminar ‘An anxious century: discourses waiting to be born’ to which they were invited to attend where themes like canons of control and subordination and multiple modernities dealt with the colonial agendas of cultural dominance. Scrutinised through the framework of postcolonial theory and subaltern studies, the art critics from Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan identified Eurocentricism as a tool of neo-imperialism responsible for socialising people in a particular way of thinking and defining.

They concluded that the unfinished colonial agenda was also evident in the way most postcolonial states had yet to dismantle repressive structures that stand in the way of the dynamism of participatory democracy. Their critique of the state cultural apparatus in the region took into account the region’s highly politicised status and inability to keep up with global developments.

This is apparent in the way the Asian Art Biennale in Dhaka, with its dependency on the government-to-government network to solicit entries, often marginalises dissident voices in the field, and in Pakistan where the multi-million dollar National Art Gallery in Islamabad has yet to unveil a blueprint to determine its future direction.

The relationship of postcolonial nations with the West seems equally problematic. The geography of the empire has been redrawn and inflexible definitions like North and South, First and Third World now pigeonhole nations to push the priorities of globalisation.

The Iranian art historian talking of his own country’s post-revolution art history discussed the different stages of development leading to contemporary Iranian art and how the West which insists on viewing Iranian art only through the prism of orthodoxy and tradition is reluctant to acknowledge this changing identity of the new generation of Iranian artists.

Archive-building, research and journals from postcolonial societies, it was widely felt, were vital tools to decolonise the mind. Once authentic voices can begin to privilege local values, attitudes and practices, new cultural priorities can be set by the people.

While the group of dynamic South Asians discussed their initiative to undertake a regional collaboration to reclaim the intellectual and cultural space from Macaulay’s version of history, yet another experience brought home the fact that not only is such a challenge vital but urgent.

The experience that brought this home was a chance meeting with a researcher from UK who was collecting information to put together a people’s history of Pakistan from 1947 to 1970. She casually mentioned that she was having difficulty as there was no people’s archive available. I told her to go through the archives of Radio Pakistan and Urdu dailies if she really wanted to learn the nation’s mood shortly after independence. It suddenly occurred to me how a person with no knowledge of Urdu can even begin to do justice to such a project. Can you even imagine someone researching, say, Italian history without knowledge of Italian?

Linda Tuhiwai Smith in her book Decolonising Methodologies: Research and Indigenous People elaborates on “research as a significant site of struggle between the interests and ways of knowing of the West and the interests and ways of resisting of the Other” and points to the dangers of interpretation when authentic voices are excluded.

asnaclay06@yahoo.com

Privatising Qadirpur

LIBERALISATION, deregulation and privatisation were promoted around the world by the IMF and the World Bank and also made a condition for financial assistance to developing countries. However, the latest financial crisis has discredited this economic theology totally.

Big financial institutions like Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers have disappeared from the scene and others are surviving on a lifeline provided by governments and central banks. The trilogy of liberalisation, deregulation and privatisation has led to a global economic meltdown. The future economic policy framework is being evolved by adopting a less liberal, more regulated framework and abandoning privatisation.

Privatisation was forced by the World Bank and the IMF on Pakistan as a condition for aid in the last decade. Pakistan privatised its banks, PTCL, KESC and other utilities. The privatisation of Pakistan Steel Mills was stopped by the Supreme Court as the procedure smacked of corruption and irregularities. One of the persons to whom it was being sold was involved in seven criminal cases.

Pakistan is facing a severe balance of payments deficit and desperately seeking assistance from the IMF and friends. The Friends of Pakistan have not been forthcoming so far. Pakistan’s credit rating, ‘CCC’ with a negative outlook, is one of the lowest in the world. While Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has announced that the privatisation of the Qadirpur gas field has been put off, it is indeed perplexing that the privatisation of one of the country’s major gas fields was even under consideration when no foreign investor will come to Pakistan to assess its worth and examine the field.

The IMF was not even prepared to come to relatively secure Islamabad and forced negotiations to be conducted in Dubai. Nobody will go to visit an unsecured place like Qadirpur and the bidding for its gas fields would probably also have to take place in Dubai. Notwithstanding what the prime minister has said, if we go ahead with the privatisation we will get only a fraction of the price we would in normal circumstances.

Gas provides half the energy requirement of Pakistan. The Qadirpur gas field is the second biggest field in terms of output but is the biggest reservoir of gas in Pakistan as Sui is being fast depleted. It provides about one-eighth of the total gas produced in Pakistan and more than six per cent of domestic energy production. The Qadirpur production is coming from three known gas reserves, and four others are under development. If all these reserves become productive, the gas output of Qadirpur will almost double. Currently, foreign bids will be based on known reserves and not prospective reserves, which are larger.

No country, not even small ones like Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE, sells its gas or oil fields to foreigners. Oil and gas fields in all developing countries are under sovereign control and the same is true for Russia and all Opec members. The Chinese wanted to buy Unocal, an American oil field producing one per cent of domestic US production, but there was such a hue and cry in the US Congress and media that the Chinese were forced to withdraw their offer.

Selling assets to foreigners via privatisation does not create ‘new’ foreign investment, which would be the case were the capital stock to increase. Privatisation per se merely changes ownership without an increase in the stock of capital and output. It provides a one-time injection of substantial cash but leads to an eternal drain on foreign exchange resources of the country. Pakistan has a structural current account imbalance which in FY08 exceeded $14bn. One of the contributing factors to this massive imbalance is the higher repatriation of profits and dividends by foreign companies operating in Pakistan. The privatisation of Qadirpur would only add to the growing repatriation of profits by foreign firms.

Currently the government allows differential pricing in gas sold by the OGDCL and other foreign firms. The Qadirpur gas is sold to SNGPL at $2.16 per mbtu (million British thermal units) whereas a foreign firm, ENI, is selling gas at $11 per mbtu. If Qadirpur is privatised then the foreign buyer will demand the same price allowed to other foreign companies. This will lead to an almost fivefold increase in the price of the Qadirpur gas supplied to SNGPL and lead to an equivalent increase in the price of gas for the urea, power and CNG sectors and households. Already Pakistan’s economy is reeling from the energy crisis, and a substantial increase in the price of gas will adversely impact agriculture, industry and households.

At present gas is sold to the urea-production sector at a subsidised rate. A foreign buyer will not bear this subsidy and the price of urea will increase, resulting in an adverse impact on agriculture which needs to be given all possible input incentives.In the power sector, nearly one-third of electricity is generated from gas and this has shielded us from the international hike in oil prices. If the price of gas supplied by foreign companies moves with the price of oil, the cost of generating power will increase substantially, with serious negative implications for industry. In such a scenario, while the subsidy for power generation will increase initially, electricity tariffs will gradually increase to reflect the higher cost of gas. Similarly, the cost of CNG for the transport sector will also increase making it almost impossible for the middle class to maintain private transport.

It is a common corporate practice around the world that whenever a big corporation like the OGDCL sells one of its constituent units it consults all its shareholders. The OGDCL has domestic as well as foreign shareholders. In 2005 it sold 10 per cent of its shares through a global depository receipt (GDR) on the London stock exchange for $870m. By selling its largest gas field the profits as well as the earnings per share of the OGDCL will decline and all shareholders especially foreigners will feel cheated. This will further discourage foreign investment in Pakistan if companies shed one of the assets held at the time of the GDR sale in the international capital market.

The revenue from Qadirpur provides the OGDCL the means to drill more wells in the country. Although Pakistan has a very high success rate in oil and gas drilling less than 80 wells, of which the OGDCL accounts for more than half, are drilled each year. Moreover all drilling in relatively unsafe areas in the country is conducted by the OGDCL and many foreign firms collaborate with it. The privatisation of Qadirpur will squeeze the OGDCL’s resources for fresh drilling.

Pakistan encourages foreign investment in the oil and gas sector through lucrative financial incentives to drill new wells. If we divert this foreign investment towards buying known and large reserves we will be slowing investment in fresh drilling.

Gas is Pakistan’s only worthwhile mineral resource and we have an outstanding gas network in the country run mainly by government-owned corporations. Gas is the mainstay of the economy. The sector is running relatively well and needs no tinkering through privatisation. The privatisation of the Qadirpur gas field would not just be a mistake but a blunder for our economy.

The writer is a former secretary for planning.

We have improved, but…

MANY indicators of social development clearly demonstrate that we in Karachi exist in the lowest ranks of world society. That is reality. Plotting our position on the world scene at this one point in time presents a depressing picture far removed from the founding values of the city.

Many ask what values? They lament the fading of old virtues. In the past, a lady driver facing a stalled engine or a flat tyre, would immediately have helping hands ingeniously correct the fault, without expectation of reward. Today we are afraid of asking for help from these versatile individuals who can even place a Toyota engine in a jeep and make it work beautifully. And we fail to foster that versatility through education firstly because we prefer goods created in ‘foran’ (foreign) lands; and because we lack easily accessible technical education programmes for the illiterate. Vibrant 16 to 40-year-olds are unable to access information, develop their knowledge, analyse data for evidence, or earn a living. How will we emerge from this quagmire?

Can the general environment and streams of adult-to-adult interaction compensate for lack of formal educational programmes? It is certainly a possibility. Look at the wider landscape of life in Karachi. Look at its pretty gardens. Travel down its congested roads, where a rickshaw driver, having nearly slammed into you will give a polite rotator nod of his head which says it all — I am sorry, it was my fault, go ahead. Look at the way the yellow-black taxi, having overshot the stop line, will now reverse at the traffic light, at the behest of a non-uniformed, young, unarmed, non-authoritative citizen-police; and that too without an argument.

Though trees of the previous century are dying, choked by the oil-laden atmosphere on city roads, skills at transplanting large trees have been successfully deployed in ‘afforesting’ the landscape around Jinnah’s mausoleum. New parks encourage exercise, which fosters health. Do not these changes reflect the values our society upholds? Charting the elements of such progress provides evidence that we have taken, by design or default, a number of apparently insignificant strides towards improving ourselves.

There are other subtle almost invisible signs of progress. The youth emerging on the markets are now of similar origins to their customers. The public have a larger buying power, but the workers serving them are much better educated. The sharp dichotomisation of society now stands blurred.

Young men and women in car manufacturing and servicing plants, in banks, and in major stores are demonstrating that change is possible. They have been exposed to task-related education, rich and successful customers, world views on television, and linkages that mobile phones provide; and some have surfed the Net. In our setting, they become the ideal adult-to-adult inter-actors, for they are far more intelligent than I or the average over-40 citizen, who nevertheless, together with senior citizens can provide the umbrella that protects values.

Our inherited social structure will provide the milieu for the re-emergence of values. Karachi is advantaged by its origins in a highly tolerant and developed Sindh; and has benefited sequentially from its interactions with the British Army, the government from Bombay, migrants from India, and diverse ethnic groups from within Pakistan. As a consequence it has the accumulated wealth of rich traditions of poetry, language, respect and courtesy (of Allahbadian magnitude) within its walls. Its social heritage is responsible for its acceptance of all creeds and socio-economic groups, much as the London Stock Exchange of Voltaire’s time did.

This tolerance is accompanied by a plethora of cultural activities which go unannounced or unnoticed. There is a constant display of evolution of the greatest heights of visual art — from the likes of recognised Jamil Naqshes to the emerging Izdiyars; of poetry or book reading, for which we are indebted to Oxford University Press; and of structured musical compositions from around the world which Goethe and Alliance Francais subsidise.

The ubiquity of destructive events suggests low tolerance; but looked at through rosy tinted glasses you can see a provider of free food for the poor, home and shelter for Afghan refugees; the flagship of Pakistani philanthropy, the resident location of one of the greatest benefactors of humankind — Edhi, and the emerging playing field for the new breed of young philanthropists such as Shehzad Roy.

It appears that Karachi exists only in order that it may provide a turning plate for anyone ready to exercise their skills, drive the economy, work furiously, and progress.

Put on your rosy glasses. They are available for free, floating as virtual images in the atmosphere. There, reach out your hand, capture the one nearest to you, and put them on. Open your eyes, urge your brain to see the value of the change that is now occurring, and note the things you can do to change what is not right. Write about the beautiful things in this valiant struggling city and its country. Leave each task for the specialist to decide how it will be done; but write about what you think can improve our performance. Take pride in Pakistani goods. Criticise them and return them if they are of poor quality, demand a reimbursement, and advise as to what needs to improve. Plan the city from streets, offices and homes to complement Karachi’s Kamal, one of the best of mayors/nazims we have had. Educate another; teach computing; encourage a thirst for knowledge; buttress the confidence of youth in their thinking processes and ability to express their ideas, politely. These may be the crucial, critical steps that change the destiny of our city and the fortunes of our country.If we were to unlock our positive attitudes, we would unleash powerful forces of imagination, invention, and networks that would facilitate development and provide new low-cost solutions to our seemingly overwhelming problems.

Plan for a renewal, otherwise our giant lovely city and wonderful country will be lost. Fight for a bright future, lay down Kalashnikovs, fight for a city of peace. Illuminate your brain. Read history, ponder, write and take action.

There is much to be done. We have to “keep marching on”, as Faiz advised; as “we have yet to find the elusive dawn”.

Europe is unravelling By David Prosser

ONE by one, Europe’s economies are tumbling into recession. Ireland went first, to be followed on Thursday by Germany. On Friday, Italy joined the party with the effect that the eurozone as a whole also plunged into a technical recession, recording its second successive quarter of negative GDP growth.

To the list you can add Spain and, of course, Britain, both of which have revealed negative third-quarter numbers and are certain to double up in the fourth quarter. Of the major European Union economies, only France reported a positive GDP figure for the three months to the end of September, but that may be a statistical oddity, buoyed as the French were by unexpectedly resilient – and almost certainly temporary – consumer spending.

What is most striking about the latest data is the speed with which the decline in the European economy has gathered pace over the past few months. It would be tempting to pin the date the slowdown became a slump to September 15, the day the US Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson pulled the plug on Lehman Brothers, but, in fact, the latest updates from companies across the economy suggest trading had already gone seriously awry several weeks before then.

Still, as recently as the late summer, business leaders, politicians and the rest were talking up their chances of avoiding recession, or at least offering reassurances that we were in for the briefest of downturns. Was this wishful thinking that then distracted central bankers from focusing on the downside risks to inflation sooner than they did? Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, resolutely rejects the suggestion that the Monetary Policy Committee was too slow to react to the threat of recession. But the European Central Bank is arguably even more culpable. How else is one to read the fact that the base rate here is now lower than in the euro area for the first time since the single currency’s launch?

Jean-Claude Trichet, the ECB’s governor, still seems remarkably calm given the economic storm into which Europe is now sailing. Speaking on Friday M. Trichet did not even address such woes, instead dwelling on his pride about the extent to which central bankers have co-ordinated their response to the credit crunch.

There are some good reasons why the ECB should feel more relaxed about the eurozone’s prospects. The latest forecasts from the IMF and the OECD share the assessment that the downturn in the region next year will be less marked than in either the US or the UK. That reflects the area’s exposure to housing markets and personal indebtedness where, with one or two exceptions, bubbles have not developed to anything like the extent seen in America and Britain.

Even so, the outlook is bleak. Europe ought, in theory, soon to be enjoying stronger exports given that both sterling and the euro have tumbled against the dollar in recent months. But the theory only holds good on the assumption that someone out there in the rest of the world has money to spend importing European goods. If that is the case, perhaps they would like to start shouting about it, if only to give this part of the world some hope of a slightly less depressing Christmas.

Nor is there any prospect of Europe’s banks emerging from the gloom anytime soon. Indeed, the eurozone’s leading banks now seem to be playing catch-up with their counterparts elsewhere on the credit crisis.

The ECB will almost certainly cut interest rates further in the coming months, but its governor is in no mood to give up on his hawkish instincts. It may be some time before Britain’s base rate moves above the eurozone level once more.

There are two ways to read yesterday’s announcement from New Star that it has renegotiated its (pounds sterling)236m debt at the cost of an additional 1.5 percentage points of interest each year, landing it with an extra (pounds sterling) 22m annual payment. Optimists will take heart from the categorical rejection of rumours doing the rounds in recent months that the asset manager was close to breaching its banking covenants.

And the 9.25 per cent that New Star’s creditors will henceforth receive is not generous compared to the cost of some financial service companies’ debts (one imagines that Barclays, for example, would fancy a bit of that).

— © The Independent