Vehicle hijacking in Karachi

Karachi has become a scoreboard for hijacked cars and motorcycles. It is like watching a cricket match. Every day the score increases and hapless losers are shunted from pillar to post.

All that the relevant authorities do is to start comparing the crime rate in Karachi with those of London and New York. Why do we have to do this? For us to lose a single vehicle is very traumatic.

Police statistics in this respect are shady. Most of the time it appears that they are themselves involved. If a report is lodged with the police, and the vehicle is found, the accessories are often missing.

But this is not the end. If the palms of policemen are not greased, to claim your car you have to face presumptions like the vehicle may have been used for transporting illicit drugs or weapons.

It is a sad commentary on the way the metropolis of Karachi has acquired a reputation for. If the property of an average citizen cannot be safeguarded, what is the function of the guardians of law who have been assigned the sacred duty to protect the citizens?

The headline of a Dawn report of June 30 says: 41 vehicles taken away (9 cars, 32 motorbikes). If we take the average price of a car at Rs300,000, it comes to Rs2,700,000.

Thirty-two motorbikes at the average rate of Rs30,000 each will cost Rs960,000 - the total being Rs3,660,000. This is just one day's yield. The yearly yield comes to Rs1,335,900,000 plus the cash and jewellery on person.

Even the largest industry in Pakistan has yet to post such a gigantic 'profit'. Who are the beneficiaries of this thriving industry is not difficult to imagine. It is about time something tangible was done by the government to help Karachi rid of this menace.

We glibly talk of the eradication of crime, but the carjacking mafia keeps moving from strength to strength. The bomb blasts in mosques, the brazen murders, kidnappings, robberies and hijackings have proved to be insufficient to wake up Karachiites. God knows when we will wake up from the slumber and raise voice against the indifference and callousness of the government.

Itnay toofan uthay phir bhi na jaga koi
Ub koi hashr uthay jis say yeh basti jagay.

MIRZA ASLAM BEG

Karachi

Aladin Park tragedy

This is with reference to the death of 13-year-old Mohsin Khan, crushed under a Ferris wheel at Aladin Park in Karachi some days back. In the past one year many unfortunate accidents have taken place in the park.

Although the city nazim has ordered the sealing of the Ferris wheel and deployment of policemen over there, it's not enough. The parents of Mohsin Khan have rightly urged the government to shut down the park.

Moreover, the authorities concerned ought to thoroughly investigate not just this sad event, but also trace the dubious history of Aladin Park and put the culprits behind bars.

I'm also wondering whether anything ever comes out from the incessant discussions by the high-ups on the deteriorating law and order situation. A former chief minister of Sindh once surprisingly showed some concern regarding felonies quite common at Aladin Park; however, as usual, the culprits were never brought to book. Naturally, the staff are used to cover up criminal activities.

I believe the government is equally responsible for this, because so far it has never punished the culprits. Accidents can happen anywhere. However, what happened to Mohsin Khan is nothing less than a murder.

I don't see the point of bringing an empty oxygen cylinder in the first place, and that too after half an hour or so. On top of it, the park authorities did not bother to call an ambulance and even the taxi which was carrying the injured ran out of diesel at the last moment.

Moreover, the cabs in the vicinity of Aladin Park too have quite a reputation - the less said about them the better. According to Mohsin's mother, his ribs were broken and food started coming out of his mouth after he was pulled out, yet nothing was done to save the boy.

They wasted so much time; they just let the boy die and it's an outright offence. Someone very aptly said: "It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious."

For God's sake, this scary park needs to be continuously and properly monitored by a competent authority, if not shut down forever.

NADIRA RAHMAN

Karachi

Medical universities

This is in response to arguments against setting up medical universities by Dr Shahid Malik (June 2) and Dr Shershah Syed (June 20). Then came a letter by Dr M. Rafiq Khanani of the Sindh Medical College, Karachi/DUHS (June 23) who advocated that medical universities be indeed established.

Dr Khanani has mentioned some specific medical universities to support his argument. I may add to these names the Banga Bandhu Shaikh Mujibur Rehman Medical University, Dhaka, which is working successfully.

I met its vice-chancellor, Prof M. A. Hadi, who was also president of the Bangladesh College of Physicians and Surgeons (BCPS), during a CPSP-BCPS joint congress in Karachi in March 2003.

The experience of a medical university in Bangladesh in the public sector is successful. Bangladesh has better health indicators than Pakistan and it is a polio-free country. ORS, a Banladeshi invention, and not of western medical researchers, save millions of children's lives every year.

Our work at LUMHS to reduce lieshmanaisis (a skin disease) in Dadu and treatment of snake-bite victims are producing results. During the Indus water pollution crisis in May, LUMHS and the Sindh University responded by collecting and testing water samples.

A report in this regard was made public within 12 hours and it said that the Indus water was unfit for drinking. It suggested preventive measures like boiling, filtration and chlorination.

The vice-chancellor, Prof Jan Muhammad Memon, formed a research and surveillance committee to assess the quality of the river's water and a professors' committee on water-borne diseases treatment.

The LUMHS faculty of community medicine and public health trained supervisors of 700 lady-health workers in Hyderabad on water purification methods under the auspices of the EDO, Health, which carried this message of home-based water purification methods to 70,000 households of Hyderabad.

We are in the process of setting up a water-testing laboratory with support from the Higher Education Commission.

DR HUSSAIN BUX KOLACHI

Associate Professor, Community Medicine, LUMHS, Jamshoro

Need for participatory development

Successive governments in Pakistan have, by design or default, failed to bring about any meaningful change in the administrative set-up of the country. The devolution of power scheme and the emerging local government system represent the first serious effort on the part of government to reshape the administrative structure of governance in Pakistan.

An important benefit of decentralization process is that it brings the government closer to the people. The most publicized aim of the new plan was to bring the government to the doorsteps of the citizens and to make ordinary citizens an integral part of the decision-making process. Three years down the road, it is felt that enough has not been done to achieve these aims.

In Karachi, the new administrative setup has brought significant changes in the political, economic and administrative profile of the city. Some towns may be in need of greater financial assistance, development priorities have changed, resources may have been split and political tensions may have increased in some places or reduced in others.

This requires the carrying out of a detailed needs assessment and surveys at the grassroots level to address the socio-economic and environmental problems. At first the city and then town after town pass annual budgets.

Not a single town, prior to the formulation of its budget, has effectively taken into account public feedback vis-a-vis development. Such data is critical to the decision-makers in the prioritization of projects since limited funds are available.

The modes/mechanisms incorporated to ensure public participation are not being effectively invoked. The citizen community boards, an important mechanism of ensuring meaningful and continued public participation, are conspicuous by their absence.

Thus, an effective forum for public mobilization has been lost. There is an urgent need to involve the common man more effectively in the decision-making process to lend much-needed credibility and sustainability to the ongoing process of devolution.

FARHAN ANWAR

Karachi

'Romancing Trotsky'

This refers to the reply of Mr Raza Naeem (June 25) to Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmed's letter (June 17). Mr Naeem has more faith in so-called hardline European Trotskyites than comrade Manzoor who dedicated all his adult life in the struggle for a socialist revolution.

It is a blatant lie to say that Trotskyites rejected the anti-imperialist struggles in China, Vietnam and elsewhere. The writings of Ted Grant in the 1940s and the 1990s are a proof of that. He welcomed the overthrow of capitalism and landlordism.

These revolutions were in fact a vindication of Trotsky's theory of "permanent revolution" as they skipped the stage of capitalism. However, they also gave a clear perspective of those revolutions.

What has been the fate of Vietnam, North Korea, China and Albania apart from others? The capitalist degeneration of these revolutions was due to the Stalinist theory of "Socialism in one country" as predicted by Marxists.

The slander that Trotsky dismissed the role of peasantry is an obsolete Stalinist fabrication. The role of any class in society is determined not by its numerical strength but by the social and economic role it plays in running society and the character of the revolution that impends.

Trotsky's position was very clear: he characterized the relationship of the classes in revolution as "dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry under the leadership of the proletariat".

This was the ideological basis on which the October Revolution was carried through under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky in 1917. Contrary to Mr Naeem's claim, the theory of "permanent revolution" is more relevant to the Third World than the advanced countries.

In his epic work "History of the Russian Revolution", Trotsky explains: "A backward country assimilates the material and intellectual conquests of the advanced countries. But this does not mean that it follows them slavishly, reproduces all stages of their past... although compelled to follow after the advanced countries, a backward country doesn't take things in same order.

The privilege of historical backwardness - and such a privilege exists - permits or rather compels the adoption of whatever is ready in advance of any specified date, skipping a whole series of intermediate stages.

Savages throw away their bows and arrows for rifles all at once, without travelling the road which lay between those two weapons of the past." Mr Naeem confesses to never have seen Lenin's monumental work "April Theses".

I will quote from Lenin's complete works published after the revolution (1917), which included a brief biographical sketch of all-important revolutionists. On Trotsky it says: Before the revolution of 1905 Trotsky advanced his own unique, profound and now especially celebrated theory of the permanent revolution, asserting that the bourgeoisie revolution of 1905 would pass over directly into a socialist revolution."

So much for Lenin's rejection. The Stalinists always quote Lenin in an opportunistic and empirical manner. They would quote Lenin from 1905 or 1915 but not from 1917 or 1922.

Lenin was a dialectician and his own theoretical understanding was subject to dialectical change. The Stalinists victimized Trotsky because he was an obstacle to the perks, privileges and luxuries of the Stalinist caste that took power through the political counter-revolution.

Yes, there were ideological differences between Lenin and Trotsky before 1917. But through an honest debate, and not fabrications and abusive slander, they resolved those differences and laid the basis of the Socialist victory.

The rise of Hitler and fascism in Germany was a direct result of the ultra left policies of the Stalinist hierarchy. They forced the German communist party to split from the SDP and hence pierced the unity of the proletariat.

Trotsky on other hand was advocating a united front to defeat fascism. During the Stalin- Hitler pact in August 1939, while Trotsky was in an agonizing exile, the Stalinists were partying with the fascists in the ballrooms of Berlin.

After assassinating Trotsky, Stalinists were feasting with imperialist leaders Churchill, Truman and Roosevelt in Yalta (1943) and Tehran (1945) where they capitulated to the imperialism by officially disbanding the Third International, handing over several countries in the grip of revolutions and committing a historical betrayal with the world proletariat.

To call Trotsky an agent of imperialism and fascism is not just absurd but nauseating for even the initial students of history. It was Trotsky who defined Fascism as "the distilled essence of capitalism".

The imperialists subjected Trotsky to such torments that he was called "a man on a planet without visa". His children, friends and comrades were massacred, yet Trotsky defended the planned economy in the Soviet Union when he wrote "In defence of October".

Lenin's last testament was locked up in the iron vaults of the Kremlin and its existence denied. Only in 1956 due to his own differences with Stalin, Khrushchev exposed Lenin's last testament.

The Stalinist zigzag policies were responsible for the bloody defeats of the revolutions in China (1924-25), Britain (1926), France (1936), India (1946), Spain (1936-37), Indonesia (1965), Greece (1945), Chile (1973) and the list goes on.

In Spain the Stalinists formed an alliance with the imperialists under popular frontism that led to the defeat of the revolution and paved the way for Franco's despotism.

QAMAR ZAMAN KAIRA

Member, National Assembly, Lalamusa

The rupee decline

Statements by the finance minister, the Sate Bank governor and other high officials show that the country's economy is improving, exports are increasing and the industrial sector is getting into high gear.

The construction of an international airport in Sialkot, the upcoming motorways, the new seaport at Gwadar appear to support what is conveyed through the media. However, almost every day the man on the street wakes up to a higher cost of living than the day before.

The rupee value is going down and down. Some relief has been given to the public through an increase in pays and pensions and a reduction in the telephone tariff, but all this stands already cancelled by the cost of fuel and oil products and a constant increase in the price of wheat, meat, fruit and vegetables.

The public is being informed through the media that 0.5 million tons of wheat is to be imported to meet possible shortfalls. On the other hand the price of wheat flour is constantly on the rise. In some areas short supply of wheat has also been causing trouble.

One wonders how a labourer or a clerk can make ends meet. The low rates of return on the national savings schemes have made senior citizens tighten their belts as the days go by. The dollar value that appeared to have stabilized is again showing signs of moving upward.

Is it not time the people at the helm of affairs appreciated the predicament of the common citizens? The improving of relations with India is surely heartening, but it does not help the common people live better lives. It is food that must be made cheap; all other things come later.

PRO BONO PUBLICO

Karachi

Transfer of power

After administering the oath of office to the new prime minister and his cabinet on June 30, the president said that history had been made by a smooth transfer of power for the first time in the country.

The fact is that there has been no transfer of power; the party in attendance is the same and all members of the previous cabinet, save the leader of the house, have also been retained.

What actually has taken place is that the country has been gifted with a new prime minister and also a prime minister-in-waiting. During the British Raj most maharajas and nawabs used to have ministers-in-waiting in their darbars, who were their eyes and ears. Perhaps history is repeating itself.

G. H. BUTT

Muzaffarabad

In-house changes

Recent meetings of ruling party parliamentarians and elected legislators' group with the president and press reports relating to the in-house change make one think that the computer mouse could be used in the near future to click one of the following options available on the greenish-brown LCD screen:

1. In-house change.

2. Dissolve assemblies.

3. Grant time.

4. Issue warnings.

5. Affirm democracy.

6. Skip all.

KHALID MUSTAFA

Islamabad

Market economy

US Commerce Secretary Don Evans is reported (Dawn June 24) to have urged China to adopt a more laissez-faire approach to speed its transition to a market economy, saying government interference is giving unfair advantages to Chinese businesses and leading to economic instability.

His main grievance is: many of China's policies, including currency practices, place American companies at a significant competitive disadvantage. Laissez-faire or market economy amounts to the law of the jungle - rather of the ocean where the big fish eat the smaller fish.

Governments are established to civilize the law of the jungle and ensure that the smaller fish survive in the ocean of business and trade within a country as well as in the world at large.

LATIF QURESHI

Lahore

Terrorism in Lahore

This is with reference to the killing of Muslim League (N) leader Pir Binyamin Rizvi in Lahore. It was a tragic incident which showed that terrorists were getting the better of the law-enforcement agencies. Those behind such attacks want to create misunderstanding and hatred among politicians and between the government and politicians.

If this persists, terrorism, sabotage and other heinous crimes will increase and spread all over the country and undermine national stability. The government and the people must take effective measures to save Pakistan.

HAFIZ SAIYED NOUMAN HASAN

Lahore

FPSC posts

I am directed to refer to the letter by Mr Muhammad Ali Zardari on the above topic (June 16) and to clarify that all FPSC's consolidated advertisements for recruitment to posts BPS-16 and above carry the following note: "The application forms will be supplied only on production of a treasury receipt of Rs200".

Mr Zardari failed to act upon the commission's instructions, as a result of which he could not obtain an application form in one visit.

KHAN MUHAMMAD AWAN

Assistant Director, Federal Public Service Commission, Islamabad