| November 27, 2008 | Thursday | Ziqa'ad 28, 1429 |
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The new world order?
Time to take right decision
The other extreme
Obama factor in South Asia
In memoriam
32-year-old US frigate
First language
Covert strategy
Peshawar-Afghanistan motorway
Physician-pharma relationships
Ahmadinejad’s statement after Obama’s election was the first major proof of that hesitancy, as it depicted the confusion in the minds of all those as to how to label an ‘Afro - American’ person, whose part of the name suggests a touch of Muslim culture too.
As a resident of Peshawar, I have marvelled at the trouble-free commute to and from Islamabad afforded by the M 1 motorway. Despite the selection of poorly suited tropical trees on the motorway’s median, the route has made travel between these two major cities very comfortable and secure. To extend the existing Islamabad-Peshawar Motorway to the border with Afghanistan at Torkham involves very little distance.
Readers are requested to restrict their comments to a maximum of 400 words. We reserve the right to edit letters for reasons of clarity and space. Letters, including those by e-mail, should carry the complete postal address of the sender. The views expressed in these columns do not necessarily reflect the views of the newspaper.—Editor
THIS is apropos of Dr Meekal Ahmed’s letter (Nov 17) commenting on my article, ‘Time to cut interest rates’. My position in favour of cutting interest rates is based on more than a study of the official statistics or textbook remedies. It is based on a broader and considered view of the economy in the current international environment.
There is no question that we need stabilisation but the remedies lie on the fiscal and not monetary side. The government’s economists should discuss facts and not stylised models any economics undergraduate can cite.
In Pakistan, one telling fact is a five per cent fall in the wholesale price index in October. Its impact will be felt at the retail level soon. Freight rates have collapsed.
Advertising is so weak that TV channels have started layoffs. The GDP growth rate has nearly halved to 3.5per cent from six per cent to seven per cent.
Monetary policy actions must take a forward-looking view because their effects take around 15 to 18 months to get transmitted through the real economy. If the central bank and ‘official’ economists had done some clear thinking and good analysis, they might have been able to persuade the IMF not to insist on an interest rate rise now.
Pakistan should cut borrowing interest rates and increase deposit rates now. Why?
There is no evidence that the monetary tightening had any impact on the so-called demand management or on the imports. Oil, fertiliser, edible oil, wheat, steel, etc., accounted for nearly 70 per cent of the rise in the last year’s import bill due to the exceptional increase in commodity price.
It is simply wrong to confuse it with demand management through monetary policy in a classic sense. Pakistan’s situation is not about demand management today if components are carefully analysed.
Demand for oil (almost 35 per cent to 40per cent imported oil used for power generation) is rather inelastic in the medium term. Only a sharp increase in oil price made a small dent. Petrol rationing may have cut the import bill.
The problem is on the fiscal side. We must slash expenses across the board by 20per cent (we can’t do much about debt-servicing but nothing else should be a holy cow) and reduce government debt.
Industrial production is falling and layoffs increasing. Government borrowing constitutes almost 40 per cent of net domestic assets and has led to a credit squeeze for the private sector.
Adverse investment climate has caused flight of capital; the banking system’s deposit base has shrunk by Rs234bn in the last four months and overall money supply by two per cent. We need to lower the cost of capital at stimulate local investment activity.
Due to the segmented nature of the banking market on the deposit side, increase in the discount rate does not benefit depositors. The result is more than seven per cent net interest margin, which has increased since May.
This is unacceptable. Consumer loans (about 14 per cent of total) are already priced at 21 per cent plus. Higher interest rates would only increase non-performing loans and hurt banking system’s health.
I have argued for a mandatory increase in the minimum interest paid on savings account from five per cent to seven per cent.
The banks should learn to live with lower margins. This is a redistributional issue from banking to the borrowers and depositors due to the market inefficiencies in Pakistan.
Due to lack of fiscal space, the entire burden has fallen on energy to make up for a narrow tax base, driving up costs very rapidly. Nobody else pays taxes and consumers pay for 30 per cent generational losses.
For the first time, remittances dropped by $190 million in October.... possibly reflecting conditions in the Gulf and the US. Exports are at risk. We have a problem in terms of concentration in sectors and exports markets. Sectors like textiles and cement are highly leveraged. Export order book from the US/Europe (40 per cent of total exports) is weak. Our competitor: India’s currency has lost too but it has cut energy prices and interest rates sharply in the last one month.
The bigger risk is faltering growth and exports, not inflation, and action is needed now.
YOUSUF NAZAR
Karachi
BY electing Obama to the presidency, Americans have certainly created an underlined hesitancy in tones of radical anti - Americans all over the world, specially in the Third World and more so in radical Muslim sectors, who had been relentlessly condemning ‘white America’.
At the same time, more moderate and left - leaning groups are enthusiastically waiting on any move by Obama that can give them the chance to progress the cause of reconciliation between radicals on both sides who have polarised the world so much in past eight years.
On the one hand, the situation may seem ripe to bridge the gap between the two poles. At the same time, it has even more potential to destroy any remaining hopes of reconciliation among scared and uncertain public on both sides.
If situation takes the turn for the worse, it won’t be too surprising, as a lot of white males are already fuming and rejecting Obama as ‘half breed’ and labelling him with every other possible derogatory term on the basis of his colour and Kenyan background.
These people could easily become prey to the extremists’ lobbies like KKK and other white fascist groups which didn’t have much penetration in common society until now. On the other hand, so - called ‘liberal Muslims’ and ‘moderate Islamists’ are prone to drop the guard and may find themselves defending and reacting bitterly to a new wave of hatred towards them.
That would be the time when Obama and his aides would have to pull out some tricks under their hats to keep all the leftists, rightists and centrists just enough apart so that they don’t run over each other, as well as bring them close together so that they can really understand and accept each other.
Looks like Obama will be walking on the thinnest sword edge, with an inferno all around him.
DR SALMAN ALI
Australia
PRIME Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani said recently that the Oct 8 earthquake was a national tragedy, which affected the economic growth of the country. He was speaking at the National Disaster Management Conference in Islamabad on the occasion of the third anniversary of the Oct 8 quakes.
Mr Gilani said the country had suffered losses worth $5 billions due to the Oct 8 earthquake. The prime minister said that proper planning was required to deal with natural calamities.
The answers seem largely to be in the negative, and this means those three years after the Oct 8 calamity we are still no more secure against natural disaster than we were at that time.
It may be mentioned here that the affected people of the Margala tower are still waiting for their compensation from the government well as from the concerned quarters. The authorities concerned have not taken any stiff and strict measures to nib nepotism.
My question to the prime minister is as to how much time does he require for initiating that type of proper planning?
He should also consider the Oct 28 earthquake in Balochistan. Over 70,000 people, including 30,000 children, have been left homeless in the quake-hit areas. Unicef said that health workers had warned that deadly diseases were spreading.
If after three years the PM is still waiting for some proper planning, then how much time would he require to deal with 70,000 homeless people? It is time for the PM to take the right decision.
FAIZA SULTANA
Lahore
THERE is a lot of talk going on these days on Talibanisation in our country and the adverse effects it has started to show. The spate of suicide bombings and killings of innocent people that has gripped the country has been rightly labelled as extremism.
But one might ask, is it only the extremists of one type that we should confront, as we are trying to do, or should we also confront and stop the other types of extremism that are destroying our social values and are, like terrorism, repugnant to our religion?
The answer, of course, should be yes. So, if we think that Talibanisation is adversely affecting and taking its toll on today’s youth, especially when it happens in those places where our youth is being groomed, the educational institutions, and we condemn it because we want to see moderate, not extremist, Muslims coming out, then shouldn’t the other extreme be brought to an end too?
Moderate Muslims can only be produced if they are not allowed to go towards either extreme.
What actually forced me to write this was an event which recently culminated in one of the leading and foremost educational institutes of the country, celebrated by the name of ‘Colour Week’.
This week features the outgoing batch of final year students of the university celebrating their upcoming graduation throughout the week, which comprises various days like Cultural Day, Colour Day, etc.
During these days the students, those students who are going to become doctors and going to adopt one of the most prestigious and noble professions, celebrate wildly.
Just to cite a few examples, the activities carried out include dressing as brides and grooms and celebrating fake weddings in the premises of the university, dressing as film stars and collectively watching a film in the lecture hall, and dressing up as absolutely anything on Crazy Day, on which day some students cross the limits and come in shorts with pampers over them.
Final year students! And then to top it all, the students go in the same attire to attend their wards in a public hospital in front of the poor and underprivileged patients that, needless to say, is grossly unsuitable. Shockingly, all these activities take place with the consent of the university management.
Educational institutions are supposed to be the place for grooming and upbringing of our youth, rather than a place where our values and ethics are shattered.
Now, do we ever realise that such behaviour on the part of our students is alien to our social, moral and cultural values and abhorred by society at large. This is another extreme and must be checked.
HAMNA HANIF
Karachi
APROPOS of Kuldip Nayar’s piece, ‘Obama factor in South Asia’ (Nov 14), it is ironic that India’s policymakers are so adamant on rejecting anybody’s well-intentioned offers of expediting the composite dialogue on Kashmir. After all, it is India’s own stand that settlement has to come about through bilateral composite dialogue. Then it should be all the more happy if the sole superpower can help in facilitating the process.
The US keeps reminding that they simply want to encourage an early settlement and nothing more, while letting the Indian side stay on its own stand. Obviously both sides should be happy if problems get settled rather than lingering on ad finitum.
It is even more ironic that Mr Nayar says that the Kashmiri struggle is for making Hindu-majority Jammu to be part of their state. The whole world understands what this tragic conflict of the last six long decades is all about. Kashmiris have shed their blood for one objective, i.e., self-determination, and their struggle goes on. Let us settle this issue even if the US can facilitate it by helping the two countries in expediting the process.
ENGR. KAMRAN IQBAL
Jahangira, NWFP
I VAGUELY remember asking my dad when I was five, how old was your dad when he passed away? I remember my dad’s surprised look and laughingly he said: “Sixty-one, why?”
”Ooo ,” I said, “you have a long way to go…. “.
I was wrong, so wrong .You went much earlier, papa.
Born a British national, in Kenya, who came to study at Abbotabad Public School, but later his love and zeal for the military prompted him to renounce his British nationality. He wrote to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, asking him to grant him Pakistani nationality so that he could join the army and that is exactly what happened, he got his wish.
My earliest memories of my dad are splendid: an easygoing person, very humble, compassionate but very fearless. He just loved flirting with danger, it was almost as if he thrived on it. He had this amazing energy around him which is hard to describe. Just the word military would ginger him up.
He had an unending compassion for people and a large heart. All you had to do was ask him and he would give it to you. He told me once: “Always look after the people below you because that is really what shows what kind of a person you are.”
I still remember his enthusiasm while going on for a Wana operation and me as always complaining: “Dad you are a general. Honestly how many generals themselves do go out on an operation?”
He said: “You fight from the top, the bottom will follow the top, and if I lead, my soldiers will follow.”
Whenever I was in distress or panic, he would gently say: “Be brave, you are Faisal Alavi’s daughter.”
You are no more, all I have are your memories with me. I promise you papa I will fulfil every dream of yours. I just want you to rest in peace. Ameen.
MEHVISH ZAHRA ALAVI
Karachi
I was shocked to read (Oct 19) that our Navy is purchasing a 32-year US frigate, ‘USS McInerney’. The cost of the frigate has not been mentioned, what all has been stated is that $65 million will be spent to refurbish/rejuvenate the frigate.
This decision by the Navy is certainly mind-boggling. I also read that the acquisition of this junket was made possible when the Pakistan embassy had to launch a major lobbying effort to get congressional approval.
I am afraid that Hussain Haqqani will launch another Herculean lobbying effort to acquire a few antic war weapon/equipment from the US, e.g. Sabre jets and willy jeeps (Korean war vintage).
In my opinion what the Navy should do is to acquire more submarines. Frigate is a sitting duck whereas the submarines are the hunters. It will not be out of place to mention that during the Falkland conflict between the Britain and Argentina, one Exocet missile sank the pride of England, the ‘Sheffield’, fondly remembered as ‘Shefi’. It jolted the very confidence of Great Britain whose naval power was feared most not in the distant past.
What I want to emphasise is that the Navy should not squander its precious time by toying with the idea of 32-year-old frigate. Instead, the Navy should purchase nuclear-powered submarines and get a squadron of PAF jets fitted with Exocet missiles dedicated purely for PN missions or similar lethal missiles to take on the enemy’s surface ships or aircraft-carriers (India has two in the Indian Ocean).
Mind you, Exocet missiles flies just above the waves to dodge detection by radar. An old but time-tested adage for our Navy. Bismarck had remarked “Fools learn from experience, I learn from other’s experience”.
SAFIR A. SIDDIQUI
Karachi
IN his letter, ‘Language a cause of divide’ (Nov 26), Faqir Ahmad Paracha has argued that children will learn easily in the language they understand and, therefore, children should be taught in Urdu.
He has contradicted himself because a majority of children in Pakistan don’t learn Urdu first; they learn Punjabi, Sindhi, Pushto, Balochi, etc. It is a child’s right to learn in his/her first language, which, in Pakistan’s case, happens to be so-called regional languages and imposing another language on a young mind would be grave injustice to majority of Sindhi-, Punjabi-, Pushto-, Seraiki-and Balochi-speaking children. For these young minds, Urdu is as foreign to them as is English.
Some proponents of Urdu, who lament about the imposition of English, paradoxically support the imposition of Urdu on non-Urdu-speaking children of Pakistan.
Let us start respecting all our languages and not try to eliminate other languages in the name of Islam and Pakistan.
SHAKEEL NIZAMANI
Calgary
THIS is apropos of Sqn Ldr (r) S. Ausaf Husain’s letter ‘Kashmir tragedy’ (Nov 23). The writer must be congratulated on his commendable job in highlighting the role of the Pakistani tribal men in support of newly-established country in 1947 and existing threats to our country.
The current scenario clearly suggests that Pakistan is undoubtedly a target of multidimensional covert strategy that will ultimately lead to destruction and mayhem of Pakistanis. Our defence establishment, which swallows the biggest chunk of revenues every year, will be responsible partly for our Yugoslavia-style ending, unless the government proves it to the people that the country is in safe hands.
Once again I would like to advise our good leadership that it is never too late, so let’s not give it up. Countries are not made overnight. Threat of western economic sanctions couldn’t have done harm to us had we realised the importance of regionalism in the 1980s. We must sail through this era of change. We must get even closer to our traditional friend China and should approach India and Russia with a new resolve. No army, no air force and no navy can afford to ignore the importance of regional cooperation and peace.
SHAKIL AHMED
Dubai
Despite a need for the construction of overpasses and bridges, such a continuation of the motorway would be a direct route to the border.
The motorway extension would be much easier to maintain and protect. It would serve Pakistan’s strategic and economic interests in the overall scheme of Pakistan’s transportation network.
I can see no reason why the current government cannot lobby the western powers to finance this motorway extension since it would serve their need for a more secure transportation route while helping Pakistan’s infrastructure needs.
SOFIA BAIG
Canada
IN the last few weeks there have been several letters in your newspaper with examples of the increasing and profoundly unethical liaison between physicians and multinational and national pharmaceutical companies in Pakistan. The degree to which this practice is now rampant, and the novel ways in which it is beginning to submerge even our hallowed halls of academia, is illustrated by a photograph that appeared in Dawn (Nov 16). This shows four smiling ‘position holders’ at the convocation ceremony of a leading medical and health sciences university in Sindh, proudly displaying medals hanging around their necks.
The medals are connected to tags prominently displaying the logo of Pfizer. It seems that pharmaceutical companies no longer need inanimate billboards to advertise their products in Pakistan: our universities are now willing to offer them flesh and blood advertisement sites in the form of their medical graduates. The graduates in the picture can hold their heads high for academic achievement but the case is quite the opposite for those responsible for letting them be used as tools of marketing.
It is time the medical community and the professed leaders within our academic universities woke up to the steady erosion of the integrity of their profession through these appalling marketing collusions with pharmaceutical companies.
The practice of accepting gifts, beginning with coffee cups and cellphones to funding for international trips which to our deep shame now include umras, is so commonplace now that it has seemingly become part of our professional psyche.
It is a truism that there is no free lunch, and the insistence of medical professionals and medical universities that such practices do not influence their behaviour, and that this relationship is not to the detriment of their patients, flies in the face of copious research on this matter.
This has been well documented most recently in the extensive October 2007 report by Consumers International.
Multinational pharmaceutical companies, the ministry of health, the department of drug control and the PMDC also bear equal responsibility for the continuation of this deplorable state of affairs in Pakistan — self-serving, unethical relationships between healthcare professionals and the pharma industry.
Much has been touted recently about pharma codes being put in place in our country to guide ethical pharmaceutical marketing. Unfortunately, this does not seem to have translated into a decrease, let alone an end, to the clearly double standard practised by many pharmaceutical companies when it comes to their behaviour in developing countries.
It would be unthinkable for Pfizer to hang their logo around the necks of medical graduates of a university in a country in the developed world, as of course it would be for a university or its graduates there to permit this to happen.
FARHAT MOAZAM
Professor and Chairperson
Centre of Biomedical Ethics
and Culture, SIUT
Karachi
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