THE world is concerned about Pakistan’s future. While some might consider this concern a conspiracy to eventually interfere in the country’s domestic affairs, the fact is that 160 million people without a sense of identity is a huge crisis.

A few years ago, former prime minister Zafarullah Jamali’s statement regarding the bulk of Pakistanis not having a sense of ownership of the state had angered many who believe that they have ownership.

There was a sharp reaction from many circles who believed the statement to be in an anti-nationalist spirit. Little did the objectors realise that this is not about the bulk of the people not desiring to be part of the country, but about the majority not having any say in their future or that of the nation.

The state has existed as a centralised authoritarian entity almost since it was established in 1947. That the leadership shifts from military to civilian and back again without any substantial change in the nation’s life has reduced the element of trust between the rulers and the ruled and resulted in a general inertia in both the state and society. Some might argue that Pakistanis cannot change their conditions because of a lack of education. But the fact is that people have an understanding of what they want and what is best for them. However, given years of political mismanagement at the top, people are far too depressed to expect a change. This is a blow to their sense of national identity.

While the bulk of the people continue to vote for one party or the other, an emerging perception is to view the Taliban type as an alternative in terms of provision of justice and as a source of redistribution of resources. The presence of the Taliban type is another distraction in the socio-political system which will not transform the power equation that has prevailed in the country for years and has resulted in socio-political inertia.

A friend once explained this system to me as one in which the main beneficiaries are a handful of kingmakers. In fact, this group and their brokers dominate the state apparatus. This includes the military, drug barons, sugar barons and a few other power cartels. The kingmakers play a major role in changing the faces at the top. So, when military rule loses its credibility and is on the verge of killing the goose that lays the golden egg, a shift is allowed. Here the goose is the country, important for the kingmakers who milk its resources for their own advantage.

The next civilian ruler is allowed to remain in office until he/she proves to be a liability. In this system, the main beneficiary is not the king. So, Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Ziaul Haq, Pervez Musharraf, Nawaz Sharif, Benazir Bhutto or Asif Zardari and their next generation are simply linchpins of the system. They lose significance and their lives as soon as they become redundant for the kingmakers.

In reality the state bureaucracy, which is meant to serve the interest of the people, serves the kingmakers. Therefore, the multilateral and bilateral initiatives do not manage to create major benefits for the people. The civil society hangs in the middle, disconnected both from the system that serves the kingmakers and the public. Thus, there is very little that reaches the people. Hence, it is not surprising that the lawyers’ movement has not managed to fully penetrate beyond the civil society and reach the public.

The common man, at this juncture, is least inclined to risk his/her neck for the sake of battles fought at the level of the civil society or even by the political parties. They continue to vote because that is the only opening they have to derive some benefits from the patronage system that has remained intact over the years. The kingmakers engage in deals with outside forces and minor internal players. The primary objective of all the deal-making is the expansion of the benefits of the kingmakers, individually or collectively.

The problem with this system is that it makes society extremely fragile and erodes the sense of togetherness in a nation. It is not surprising that this system has weakened Pakistan. The state itself is vulnerable and has collapsed at many points. The state bureaucracy and their brokers, who claim to be ultra-nationalists, get upset whenever there is any mention of the state breaking down. It is considered as the greatest insult to the ideological state of Pakistan. The problem is that these brokers do not realise that it is the kingmakers who have caused the weakening of the state.

How does one begin to talk about a state where the elite does not prefer to invest its capital and is in fact taking it out? A majority of the affluent people prefer to keep two passports. Human capital stays out of the country because the system of merit does not work. The different institutions are not even capable of taking a joint position to deter a threat. The various stakeholders can’t even see that they must not arm-twist each other or score points to gain power temporarily by using a particular crisis.

For instance, the military tries to take advantage of the bad deeds of civilian leaders to improve its image which would help it back in power one day, and vice versa. Moreover, the federation is not working any more due to the fact that the kingmakers, who dominate the centre, would not allow any equitable redistribution of political and financial resources that could benefit the people. The political map of the federation has turned into one that would create greater friction than anything else. The demographic shifts in the past 60 years have not been accommodated.

The kingmakers are comfortable because if the state collapses they might be able to relocate to some other destination or create a niche for themselves in the new political space. This is a time that the state seems to be collapsing under the weight of this system. The downward spiral as far as the weakening of the state is concerned will continue unless the political relations are reshaped and the power structure is reformed and remodelled. In fact, the state needs to be reshaped as well. This is the only way to stop the failure of the state. A starting point might be to admit that the federation is no more functional.

The writer is an independent strategic and political analyst.

INDIA has known very little about President Asif Ali Zardari. His best credentials have been that he is the husband of the late Benazir Bhutto.

Even when he was elected Pakistan’s president Zardari was a distant figure, un-profiled and undefined. Since the time he has been at the helm of affairs Indians have wanted to know where he stood on many questions which have beleaguered the two countries since independence. A few days ago he provided some answers.

This was at a videoconference, part of the Leadership Summit hosted by a local English daily. Zardari’s appearance may not have been for more than half an hour in the two-day-long conference but he stole the show. There was a spontaneous applause for him. He is now a much talked about person in the country. Suddenly, he has emerged a familiar and friendly person who wants to do business with India.

What is most striking in Zardari’s statement is his assertion that his country would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in a conflict with India. This categorical assurance is a departure from the Pakistani stand which is short in conventional weapons and long in nuclear devices. I recall when I interviewed Dr A.Q. Khan, father of Pakistan’s bomb, he said that they would use the bomb in a war against India from the beginning because Pakistan could not match India’s prowess in conventional arms.

Zardari’s observation has embarrassed the bureaucracy in Pakistan. They have said no whenever New Delhi has sought in the past an agreement on no-first-use. Their rationalisation is that the nuclear weapons give Pakistan parity with India. They have reacted unfavourably, calling Zardari’s observation an ‘off-the-cuff remark’ or an ‘ill-informed statement’. However, foreign offices on both sides are quiet although the statement has created confusion.

Whatever the stand the Pakistan establishment may take, Zardari looks like he is sticking to what he has said. Asked if his country would adopt no-first-use as a policy, Zardari said he would work with his parliament towards that. But then he turned back to ask whether Indian parliament would do the same. It was a legitimate question since Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, after the Pokhran blast, said voluntarily that India would not use the bomb first. There is no reason to believe that our parliament would not convert Vajpayee’s promise into a pact.

Zardari’s other observations also suggested that he was trying to break the shackles which have restricted normalisation. He did not seem to be a prisoner of the past. Zardari’s remark on elections in Kashmir was at variance with those of Pakistan’s Foreign Office. He said that his government did not interfere in the internal matters of other states. He was replying to a question whether India could expect peaceful elections in Jammu and Kashmir. But Pakistan’s Foreign Office had said earlier that polls in Jammu and Kashmir did not reflect “authentic expression of the real aspirations of the people of the state.”

The reaction by the Indian Foreign Office objecting to these remarks is understandable. But to say “it is in Pakistan’s own interest to play a role in the region” smacks of a superiority complex. We have to understand that Kashmir is under the skin of most Pakistanis. We can disagree with them but cannot belittle their feelings.

In fact, Islamabad has always brought in Kashmir whenever there is any attempt by New Delhi to reach an agreement on trade or travel with Pakistan. Former prime minister Inder Gujral told me that he and the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif had finalised at Male a barter deal of goods till the Pakistan commerce secretary intervened to say: “Mian Sahib, what about Kashmir?” The deal never went through.

Zardari is right when he says that the region belongs “to the Kashmiri people.” But the Kashmiris too should feel that they belong to the region which has to take certain realities into account. For example, if Jammu and Kashmir were to stay as one, the ‘aspirations’ of people in the valley that have acquired a religious edge cannot be compatible with the integrity of the state. True, the Kashmiriyat is secular in content but over the years it has been disfigured by separatists. The redeeming factor is that despite the boycott call given by them, roughly 65 per cent of the people have cast their vote.

Kashmir is getting more and more entangled as the days go by. Its solution would neither be easy nor quick. Should both countries suspend all dealings of trade and business till there is a solution acceptable to Kashmir, Pakistan and India? This is the best time to expand the movement of goods and have joint ventures because the financial meltdown has made foreign currency expensive. The two can have barter trade keeping in mind that India is far more economically advanced than Pakistan which would need some concessions.

The best proposal by Zardari is to do away with the passport. One card should open all entry doors in Pakistan and India. Easy travel facilities and the absence of police reporting would go a long way to bring the peoples of the two countries together. Yet the four-decade-old mistake of not allowing even newspapers and books of one country in another persists. Mindset bureaucrats continue to have their say. Why doesn’t India remove the ban unilaterally? This will put moral pressure on Pakistan.

Talking about Zardari’s proposal of doing away with the passport, even Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah had in his mind some arrangement for easy access to each other’s country. When Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru sought to find out through Indian High Commissioner Sitaram what Jinnah would like to do with his house at Bombay, the latter reportedly said that he would want to retain it because he would be spending some days in a year in Bombay.

All said and done, Zardari has set the ball rolling. The Congress-led government still has six months to go and it can pursue his suggestions. The two countries have wasted 61 years in mutual recriminations and in pursuing hostile policies. The two must work in tandem to oust poverty as well as terrorism from the region. Zardari has given India an opening.

The writer is a leading journalist based in Delhi.

THROW a bunch of Indians and Pakistanis in a room together and soon enough you’d hear the sounds of laughter and easy banter.

A foreigner observing would wonder what the fuss between India and Pakistan is all about. These guys are enemies?

But a fuss there is and it comes down to the interests, or at least interests as defined by the foreign-policy and national-security elite, of both countries. A lot of ink has been spilled in trying to understand the reasons for the mutual animosity but little on how to move things forwards. Ok, so the countries are enemies; now how do we get them to be friends?

Peace will only come, if it ever does, through a process, not through Musharraf’s breakfast meetings or Zardari’s teleconferences. A charm offensive generates great headlines but doesn’t impress the hardened arbiters of what can and cannot be achieved. And sometimes, as Musharraf found out at Agra and Zardari is finding out this week, easy banter between a Pakistani head of state and Indians does anything but amuse security hawks on either side of the border.

What Zardari mooted in his teleconference on Saturday — a nuclear-free South Asia, a no-first-strike nuclear policy and an eventual economic union between India and Pakistan — was music to woolly peaceniks’ ears. It’s hard to argue with in principle. It’s also an extension of Benazir Bhutto’s signature achievement as chairperson of the PPP: the reversal of her father’s hawkish stance on India.

Zardari’s comments were, however, fingernails on a chalkboard to pragmatic peaceniks’ ears. By not consulting the army, and let’s not kid ourselves about civilian-military relations, before airing his opinion on its most cherished assets Zardari will have only deepened the long-standing mistrust between the army and the PPP.

Suggesting visa-free travel and an economic union is one thing, by definition requiring years of legwork that would offer plenty of opportunity to dilute their effects if so desired. It’s altogether another thing to amend the cornerstone of the military strategy against India in off-the-cuff remarks to an Indian audience. If the army high command has not reacted with an apoplectic fit of rage it only demonstrates how confident it is that the president’s utterances are irrelevant, and how fragile civilian rule really is.

Any peace process with a prayer of success has to take into account existing realities. The Pakistan Army is India-centric. It is a force raised and maintained to defend the eastern frontier against an Indian invasion. Whether the Indians have any intention of attacking is a separate matter; the fact is, at the moment the Indian armed forces are configured primarily to address a threat emanating from Pakistan. Given the disparity in conventional capabilities between the two armed forces, Pakistan has built a nuclear deterrence. Short of a decade-long restructuring and handing it tens of billions of dollars to bring its conventional capability up to par with India’s, the Pakistan Army is not going to change its approach to warfare with India. Enough said.

Yet peace is a desirable, necessary goal and a nuclear-free South Asia is something to aspire to, however distant a possibility. But how to get there? Right now the peace process is wrapped in the composite dialogue — an initiative conceived by Musharraf and Vajpayee in January 2004 and fleshed out a month later in an eight-point agenda by the foreign secretaries. Five years on, the dialogue, now in its fifth round, is often criticised for being desultory and lacking meat. What’s to be done?

While the composite dialogue may be sui generis in conflict negotiations between India and Pakistan, revisiting previous processes is instructive. Helpfully, Dennis Kux, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Centre, has a monograph on precisely this issue (India-Pakistan Negotiations: Is Past Still Prologue?) which zeroes in on the reasons for the success and failure of two particular sets of negotiations.

The first, successful one was the Indus Waters Treaty negotiations that ran from May 1952 to September 1960 and which resulted in the division of the rivers that fed the irrigation systems of Punjab and Sindh. The treaty’s longevity is remarkable, no less so than the fact that an agreement was at all possible. As Kux notes, the waters of the Indus system directly affect the lives of far more people than the Kashmir dispute. What was the recipe for success?

Key, according to Kux, was the decision of the countries’ leaderships to treat the dispute as a technical rather than political issue and to authorise the respective negotiating teams to find a solution while protecting the national interest. Economic incentives helped too: $1bn was pledged by the US and the World Bank to build dams and canals to upgrade the countries’ irrigation systems. Also important was the decision to conduct the negotiations away from the media glare, which reduced political pressure and allowed Pakistan to budge from its original position.

Kux’s contrasts the successful water negotiations with President Kennedy’s failed attempt to resolve the Kashmir issue in December 1962-May 1963. The six rounds of talks were bilateral, headed by ZAB on the Pakistani side, but were facilitated by the US and UK. While Pakistan and India agreed that an international boundary should be demarcated in Kashmir, the principles on which such a line would be drawn and where that line would actually be drawn quickly led to an impasse. India wanted the 1949 ceasefire line to be the final boundary with some modifications; Pakistan suggested a boundary that left India with just a sliver of Jammu. US Secretary of State Dean Rusk drew up the ‘Elements of a Kashmir settlement’, but the talks eventually failed. Why?

Kux recognises that unlike the water dispute neither India nor Pakistan was willing to treat Kashmir as a technical issue. Nor were the countries susceptible to economic inducements, even though India was weak after the Indo-China war of 1962 and Pakistan was dependent on US foreign assistance. And Kashmir was simply too big an issue to give the negotiating teams the authority to make the concessions necessary for an agreement.

Fatal, in Kux’s view, were the political weaknesses of the governments. Ayub was under pressure from hawks for not taking Kashmir by force when India was weak and battered by China; Nehru had been weakened by the war with China and had little room to make concessions that could have interested Pakistan.

If this journey through history is a bit dull, then that’s the point. Flashy statements by Zardari will get us nowhere. The majority in India and Pakistan may want peace but it’s the states that will fight a war. Peace will only be achieved by neutralising the enemy in the state, at home and away. So if Zardari really wants to move forwards on India, he may find it useful to look back first.

cyril.a@gmail.com

ONE feels that all is not lost when the 11th-grader Salman says teasingly about his frail-looking friend, “His intelligence is directly proportionate to the weight of his body” — a phrase he has borrowed from Amin Maalouf’s book The First Century after Beatrice. Then there is Momin, a 10th-grader who completes the novel The Kite Runner in five days for a book review in class.

It’s true that the reading habit is on the decline. Among the major causes are the emergence and the spread of the electronic media, as also the easy availability of cellphones and computers. These electronic milestones have taken our world by storm and have replaced the book, the magazine and the newspaper on the bedside table.

I can still recall a totally different scenario when, in the sixties, the electronic media was in its nascent stage. Those were the days when people were into reading in a big way and they were accorded great respect if described as well-read. Their opinions were held in high esteem. Naturally in this environment the reading habit thrived.

Schools boasted of teachers whose lessons were steeped in literature. Their students breathed freely in such an atmosphere and read for pleasure and knowledge. Daily interaction with such teachers turned their students into voracious readers. Many schools also had rich collections of books in their libraries at the students’ disposal.

It’s a well-known principle of economics that where there is demand there is supply. The prevalent reading culture of those days led to the opening of more libraries in neighbourhoods where the reading public lived. Many commercial areas also had a well-stocked reading room or two that were frequented by people of all ages. Booksellers thrived.

Interest in books declined when the internet and computers found their way into offices, homes and schools. The glamour and hype that surrounded them attracted people more than the facility they offered as tools of knowledge and communication. Not surprisingly, though sadly, public libraries went into disuse and started closing down. Bookshops began pulling down their shutters.

Karachi with its population of 15 million is now left poorer with just a few libraries restricted to some elitist clubs. You may add to these a few schools and colleges belonging to the old order whose libraries are still functional. So right now the future for reading seems quite dismal.

However, there is just a tiny ray of hope: a silver lining in the dark cloud. A few recently opened schools have invested a good amount on books for their library. The time and effort that they have devoted to the promotion of reading has started to bear fruit in the form of mature behaviour and improved academic performance of their students. This calls for making reading a shared and interactive activity with children — reading books together and discussing them.

Big names in the bookselling businesses should open chains of bookshops, the likes of Barnes & Nobles and Chapters in North America, where there is also a reading area with a snack bar and books and jigsaw puzzles to keep the small children, who accompany their parents, busy. Let people learn to savour such an atmosphere.

People should make a conscious effort to house a collection of quality books, even if it is modest. The educated among the masses should realise their responsibility to this cause as well. Whether they find themselves in an office, school or in any gathering, they should steer the course of the conversation in the direction of the subject of reading. Persistent efforts are bound to bear fruit.

Schools need to give their libraries an elevated status and appoint librarians who are qualified and love books. Teachers could help by forming book clubs in which they also participate. Such reading networks could promote the reading habit by making it a collective activity.

It is time publishers of books also addressed this issue seriously and devised strategies to get children interested in reading books. They will grow up to be adults who love books. The health of the book industry depends on the size of the readership. Besides they should find ways and means to reduce the price of books or increase the discount on them to encourage sales. Such incentives would also encourage the reading habit. What appears to be wishful thinking today could become a reality tomorrow.