Politics comes to the fore

WITH the announcement of the election schedule, politics has become the main occupation of the people in the province. Those who were watching the developments in this regard until recently are now up and doing, working for this or that candidate. All talks and all activities are about political groups and parties, all of whom are almost prepared to take part in the polls.

Even those parties which were under pressure of some of their workers to abandon parliamentary politics and, instead, take recourse to revolutionary struggle to achieve political goals for the people have opted for election as a means to achieve those goals. For example, such a pressure group did exist in the Balochistan National Party, headed by former chief minister Sardar Akhtar Mengal, but only a few days back the party’s central executive decided to take part in the election, calling the parliamentary politics a form of struggle for realizing the rights of the people of smaller federating units. Thus the views of the pressure groups were set aside and the way paved for participation in the polls.

This was followed by hectic consultations among various parties leading to formation of alliances or to electoral understanding such as putting up joint candidates or making seat-to-seat adjustments.

Recently, a very important development took place when hundreds of elders and influential people of Makran decided collectively to join the BNP(M). It gave a big boost to the party in regrouping the elements of the defunct NAP of the 1970s under one political platform. It also meant a serious challenge to other parties in the upcoming polls.

For all practical purposes, the two mainstream political parties — the PPP and the PML (N) — have not fared well so far in mustering support from the people in this province. Until this day they have hardly been able to win a seat in an isolated constituency, though no one can predict the future. Moreover, the ground reality is that the overwhelming majority of old seat winners of the erstwhile ruling PML (N) has joined the PML (QA), leaving no significant person to throw a challenge to the more powerful rival candidates in any region of Balochistan.

There are two groups of poll contestants in Balochistan. The foremost is the group of nationalist parties, having the support of religious elements. The second is the Grand National Alliance which, at the moment, is leading the poll campaign because its leaders started manipulations long ago, winning over to their side all the individual seat winners in the pro-establishment camp in Balochistan.

The nationalists and their liberal allies are, on the other hand, badly disadvantaged because they were late in taking their cue from the government’s political message. That is, they were not sure whether an election would be held. This delayed the launching of their poll campaign.

However, in recent months certain parties were already locked, in one or the other way, in political struggle with the government. Thus they were in an advantageous position to mobilize support of the masses by giving frequent calls for strike against non-arrest of the killers of Aslam Gichki, Khan Mohammad Ghulamani and others, though the alleged murderers were already named in the FIRs.

The most significant point is that time is very short for poll campaigning in this vast province of Balochistan, which is 43 per cent of the total area of Pakistan. It is very difficult for candidates and political parties to reach the voters in such a short time.

Meanwhile, the government has been criticized for discouraging the leaders and candidates from reaching the people or from establishing contacts with them to explain their points of view. According to a leader, the government wants to give minimum or no time for electioneering.

Two unhappy birthdays!

TWO independence (birth) days, as unhappy as between India and Pakistan, on Aug 14 and 15, 2002, would be hard to imagine and harder to greet. On both sides of the heavily-mobilized divide, there had been an oppressive ambience of tight security and fear vitiating the very spirit of joy and liberation that an occasion like that must naturally generate.

Pakistan shifted the venue from the spacious boulevard facing the Parliament House, indoors: India tightened the security manifold at the usual venue — the Red Fort — set for the prime minister’s address to the nation. Even a ‘no-fly zone’ was imposed on the Indian capital, particularly for 24 hours to disrupt several domestic and international flights. Helicopters hovered over the Red Fort and around as Mr Vajpayee delivered his national address from behind his reinforced glass box.

Thus the populace — the man in the street — was all but debarred from the nation’s most momentous day. Democracy without demos on the Indian side empty streets and a thick curtain of security for the army chief (president/chief executive) on the other.

That was in and around the two national capitals. As for the provincial / state capitals and numerous other major cities, there did not appear to be much to write back home about.

The two leaders — Vajpayee of India and Musharraf of Pakistan — had little to wish each other well and still less to congratulate themselves for pushing each other down to the lowest threshold of tolerance and fellow-feeling.

Musharraf warned: ‘No one should think of any adventurism against our borders ... Pakistan would never be subdued by coercion....’

Vajpayee accused Pakistan of trying to get Jammu and Kashmir “through cross-border terrorism.” He would go on to challenge Musharraf’s right to preach democracy. “Those calling the forthcoming elections (in IHK) as a force should not give us lessons in democracy....”

More than his aggressive diction was Vajpayee’s tone and body language ill-fitting his naturally gentle demeanour and bearing. Even his selective TV image seemed almost to leap off the screen in a fit of frenzy. For the umpteenth time he reminded the world that Kashmir was an ‘integral part’ of India and a ‘shining symbol’ of its secularism.

What then is all the ado about? Should that be so, why accept its ‘disputed’ status at all, even as a temporising ploy? What then would be the rationale of ‘a dialogue’ — of yet another futile round of talks with Pakistan. Kashmir is India’s — in any case — bell, book and candle? Let Pakistan cry itself hoarse, the world endlessly hold forth and the Kashmiris bleed themselves white. All that would hardly matter to make Kashmir serve as ‘the symbol’ of India’s secularism (the one and the only one at that!)

Apart from the bitter and aggressive exchanges between the two chief executives, even a music-loving and music-playing scientist- turned-president, A. P. Abdul Kalam lent his voice to mix incompatibly with the political caterwauling. In a televised address, Kalam said: “I would like to reiterate that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India ... It’s an international issue. India is ready for bilateral talks once cross-border terrorism is brought to a halt...”

The corrupting influence of power is proverbial. In truth, however, the influence of politics is no less corrupting and disorientating. In spite of the overwhelmingly military orientation of President Kalam’s scientific achievement as the unquestioned architect of India’s nuclear arm, the political thrust of his utterances hurts.

While the irrepressible George Fernandes, the defence minister, to the best of my own knowledge, had been, somewhat inconspicuous from the Independence Day’s media cacophony, the newly-appointed foreign minister, Yashwant Sinha, more than made up for the warring eloquence of his cabinet colleague. Sinha would firmly and irrevocably reject ‘an immediate withdrawal’ of his troops from the border. In plain language, the current stand-off will stay in place and continue to put the peace of the subcontinent on a razor’s edge.

Without mincing words, Sinha went on to say: “India is ready to deal with Pakistan in a stern manner; we know how to protect our top leadership.” The later part of his statement can only be understood as an oblique reference to the attack on the Indian parliament on Dec 13 last and the failure of the Indian government to foresee and pre-empt it. What is not so easy to understand is the compulsion behind the statement so long after the event.

Sinha used the quaint and innovative term of ‘whimsical terrorism’ while blaming Pakistan for trying to sabotage the forthcoming ‘elections’ in occupied Kashmir under the shadow of the Indian bayonets. In a direct reference to Gen Musharraf’s Aug 14 (Independence Day) address, he said Pakistan, with the help of ‘hired outlaws’ (another innovative term for militants), wants to create unrest and spread terrorist activities during the elections in Kashmir.

This and a whole plethora of such accusations and counter- accusations from both sides of the fence on a day of shared rejoinder. Is that the way for two neighbours, as close as India and Pakistan, to wish each other a happy birthday? The question for the top leadership to put to themselves and answer is: Are we in our 55th year of independence behaving at all as two responsible, sovereign states or as two warring tribes?

Have we, really and truly, stepped out of our pre-partition communal mindset or degenerated into a Hindutva India and a jihadi Pakistan? These birthday pangs and pathology of war and confrontation can’t go on for ever.

It must stop, once for all. And the sooner it does the better for both and the entire region.

The writer is a retired brigadier.

Surviving with muddy water!: Social Themes

THE vision for decent and ample drinking water being available for all in this city being rather bleak if not altogether black, let us focus on public attitudes to the subject, to begin with. One has in mind individuals who do comment on, and question the efficacy of efforts that are being made to face the dire challenge that the water theme poses to the planners in the Sindh capital. The planners today, and the planners of tomorrow. What the planners of yesterday have done, or failed to do so, is another matter.

Focusing on individual responses to the current water shortage or the turbid unhygienic water that we have

been receiving generously makes it obvious for me to underline one person who comes to mind.

Almost every day, at lunch he has asked his colleagues about what kind of water they are receiving in their homes. One assumes that he is reading news reports that detailed the reasons for the water being dirty, muddy, and nauseating.

In his attitude there was evident a certain unhappiness and anger, and one would perceive that there was also an under-current of resignation and cynicism.

One presumes that like the rest of us he too is troubled by the thought of the water that we have been exposed to, and like the rest of us he too is equally helpless.

But perhaps being helpless is a relative matter in a sense. There is always the option of opting for mineral water or bottled water, even though there are organizations in the NGO sector that have, at times, pointed out that a very large number of the bottlers of mineral water are not providing safe mineral water.

But that is another issue; the point that I am stressing upon is that there is a mineral water option that the minority can rely upon in the context of turbid water being supplied to the city. Even if there is a shortage of water in the city, which is frequent, this minority can bank on mineral water.

This partly indicates the economics of water, which reminds one of the politics of water, or even the geopolitics of water. But that is another complex issue.

Keeping it simple and direct is to focus on the fact that according to Dawn of 21st August the “city continues to receive turbid water.” And its first paragraph is a tell-tale one. It reads thus “The incessant supply of muddy water to the city from the Indus source has become a major source of vomiting, nausea, and severe abdominal pain among the Karachiites, besides badly affecting the working of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board’s filter plant situated at COD hills and North East Karachi.”

Needless to recall in detail that the city is being given unsettled water by the Sindh irrigation department, from the Indus source via the Kalri Baghar Canal. From the look of things while the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board wants the irrigation department to stop providing water from this source the latter has its own reasons for sticking to its two months’ old decision.

Now the citizens too have their own reasons for not wanting to try and understand the reasons of why all this is happening. The citizen, generally speaking in this society, trapped in a variety of ugly contexts, and struggling to retain his sanity and his balance generally speaking, is in tears at this muddy water being given to him day in and day out.

I have heard citizens protest that the authorities have a variety of reasons for the water shortage, or the quality of water. There is sometimes put forth the argument that the population factor is causing all this shortage.

At times it is attributed to the resource constraint, caused by factors like poor pricing or low collection of water taxes, or to the distribution network. Or the uneven distribution of water in the city caused by vested interests, or the low level in the Hub dam and so on. There are causes and causes - and no one seems to have the answer apparently. Why?

Look back in time and look back in anger. Somehow while the city, and society generally speaking, has shown the way in which the affluent have prospered, and managed their lives so well, the common man has steadily found it difficult to keep himself going.

The basic things in life have become elusive and the search for them so utterly frustrating. To ask for water, clean, safe and daily is something like asking for the moon, says one disappointed senior citizen, who doesn’t see better days ahead in terms of water supply.

There are sections like Defence Housing Authority in the city that are hoping and planning to have plants to make desalination of sea water possible, based on the philosophy of user’s charges, that the World Bank advocates, and implements.

The residents of that part of the city are willing and able to pay for the costs. Assuming that happens one wonders at the kind of city, or the sort of society that we seek to have: where something like water and its availability will be a matter of being able to pay for it! Which means that there will be inequality here too!! Like the fact that while we are getting this awful water there are so many buyers for expensive new cars that the car manufacturers are unable to meet he demand.

One must note here that a three-day workshop hasbeen held in the city on the theme of “Water disinfection and action plan during emergencies.”

It was organized by the Karachi University’s Institute of Environmental Studies, the ministry of health and the WHO. A report on the workshop was boring. But to have read a report about the water Karachi gets from the KWSB, as being polluted with “normal faecal organisms,” is bound to make you sick in the stomach. So, stomach it dear citizen.