Protecting the vulnerable
IN his October 18 address to the nation — the second in a few days — President Pervez Musharraf explained why it had taken so long for the agencies of the government to reach the entire population affected by the earthquake of October 8. The areas inhabited by some of the people were so inhospitable that even helicopters could not reach them. He had ordered three army divisions to fan out in the area to locate the affected people and bring them the supplies they needed. The dead and the injured will have to be brought on the backs of mules or soldiers that were attempting to reach the affected people.
There were two aspects of his address that are worth noting. One is the graphic account of the physical environment that surrounds tens of thousands of people who were killed, injured, or left homeless by the earthquake. These people have been forced into these areas on account of the enormous increase in their number. In 1947, when Pakistan became independent and Kashmir became a problem, there were only one million people who lived on this side of what is now called the Line of Control. They now number 4.8 million with a density of 331 persons per sq. km. Population continues to increase at a relentless pace; it could reach 10 million in the next quarter of a century.
What has made these people extraordinarily vulnerable is the fact that the pressure of population has forced them to live in the areas where they can barely subsist. These areas are also hard to reach when natural disasters hit them.
The other important point about the president’s address was the promise to bring not only relief to the people hurt by the disaster but to rescue them from their current situation, provide them relief, re-house them, if need be relocate them, and economically rehabilitate them. These five “R’s” — relief, rescue, rehousing, relocation and rehabilitation — will then be the focus of the government’s attention for years to come. In the article today, I will examine these two aspects of the crisis: what makes some segments of the population more vulnerable to a sudden change in their environment and how should the state deal with vulnerability. In other words how to build the five R’s and the two V’s — the vulnerable and their vulnerability — into a strategy?
Notwithstanding all the analytical work done over the last many decades, there is still debate on how to handle the problem created by the presence of hundreds of millions of vulnerable people and vulnerable groups that live in many areas of the world. They live not only in the developing world but also in many parts of the developed world. The United States’ recent experience with Hurricane Katrina is a vivid reminder of the fact that there are many vulnerable communities even in the world’s richest country, if “rich” is defined in terms of the size of the economy or average income of the population.
Perhaps the most intense work on vulnerability was done by the British in India when they set up a series of royal commissions to study the periodic famines that took a heavy human toll in their Indian domain. The colonial government came to the conclusion that the best way of protecting the poor from nature’s ravages that visited frequently in the form of floods and droughts and affected food supply was to develop the areas which were less affected by weather. This led to the development of canal colonies in the virgin lands of Punjab which became the granary of British India.
The British also constructed an extensive network of roads and railways and developed the port of Karachi in order to ensure that supplies of Punjab’s grain reached in time the chronically food deficit areas in the eastern part of India. The British, in other words, focused on the supply side of the equation for dealing with natural disasters.
While this approach of increasing food supply to combat famine has little relevance for dealing with the havoc and distress caused by an earthquake, it did provoke a debate among academics that is of great significance for dealing with the crisis in Pakistan today. The Indian economist Amartya Sen was awarded the Nobel Prize for his findings that the repeated famines in Bengal were seldom caused by a sharp drop in food supply. They were usually the result of a significant decline in household incomes.
In the famines studied by Sen there was abundance of food supply; what were lacking were incomes to purchase the needed food. What make people really vulnerable are persistent poverty and a sharp fall in incomes during crises. In working for a strategy that would deal not only with providing immediate relief to those who have suffered, the government must also seek to improve their situation so that they are not hurt the next time an earthquake hits the area.
Since the focus of this article is on the “vulnerable” and “vulnerability”, I will start with a definition of these two terms. The two terms can be fully understood only when they are juxtaposed. Vulnerable are those who cannot sustain themselves without outside assistance. Vulnerability is a condition that is produced by a change in the environment surrounding the people or in their circumstances.
Change can come suddenly as in the case of natural disasters such as the tsunami in Southeast Asia in December 2005, or the Katrina hurricane in August 2005, or the earthquake in Pakistan in October 2005. Change can also be sudden when countries are hit by economic and financial crisis as was the case in the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Or change can take place slowly when families and their members grow increasingly vulnerable because of their growing size, prolonged sickness, or the progressive deterioration of the economic situation around them.
Vulnerable people, vulnerable families, vulnerable communities, even vulnerable countries come in many forms. Confining for the moment our attention only to people, empirical evidence suggests that populations in poor countries can be divided into four income groups. The top 10 per cent of the population has the means to protect itself against most causes of vulnerability. Below this group, about 50 per cent of the population — the middle and the lower middle classes — also have the means to deal with adversity by dipping into their savings. That notwithstanding, they may still need some support of the state.
Going down lower, about 20 per cent of the population is vulnerable given the state of the economy. This group may climb above the poverty line or drop below it given the state of the economy. As was seen in Asia, the boom years of 1972 to 1997 resulted in this group migrating above the poverty line only to quickly drop below it after the economic havoc caused by the financial crisis of 1997.
The last group is made up of the indigent poor, people destined to remain poor unless an enormous amount of state investment is made to improve their human capital, provide them opportunities to earn a good living, provide them with assets and protect them against unexpected changes in their situations brought about by natural disasters, epidemics, or changes in the economic and physical environment.
This division of the population into the rich, the middle classes, the poor subject to drastic changes in their incomes given their environment, and the very poor, of course, differs from country to country and from area to area within countries. Although there are no income distribution data available for Azad Kashmir and the Northern Areas, it is my guess that both the very poor, and the poor whose fortunes change dramatically with their circumstances probably account for three-fourths of the population.
The very low levels of incomes in these areas have made the people extremely vulnerable to any severe change in their environment. This is especially the case with earthquakes. For them an earthquake brings long-term deprivation since it destroys the few assets they have. While rescue and relief — two of the five Rs — are equally important for all income classes, relocation, rehousing and rehabilitation acquire great significance for the poor. A strategy for saving these people from future disasters must focus on improving their capacity to earn higher levels of incomes.
It is the three Rs that the government’s programme must work on. I have no idea how the government has arrived at a figure of $5 billion for reconstruction work which, according to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, could take 10 years to complete. This implies an expenditure of $500 million a year or $75 per capita of the population in Azad Kashmir, the Northern Areas, and NWFP directly affected by the earthquake. From my way reckoning the estimate of total amount to be spent is low and the period over which it will be deployed much too long. For a meaningful response to the tragedy, the amount will need to be at least 50 per cent higher and the period over which it should be spent no more than five years. This would increase expenditure per capita to $225, three times the envisaged amount.
Can Pakistan raise this amount of money? Can such a large amount — some $7.5 billion to be spent over a period of five years — be absorbed by the areas and the people under so much stress at this time? Answers to both questions are “yes” provided the raising of resources and their expenditure is done with intelligence and foresight. On the financial mobilization aspect of the strategy, the government should seriously consider floating bonds directed at overseas Pakistanis who are very willing to help at this time.
But bonds won’t cover the entire amount needed. President Musharraf announced in his speech that some $600 million in foreign exchange and a multiple of that amount in local currency have already reached his special fund. The International Monetary Fund has said that it is prepared to offer $325 million on concessional terms and without conditions for its use. The World Bank has indicated its willingness to provide an additional $100 million, also as concessionary credit. Other aid agencies and bilateral donors will also come in with significant amounts.
However, experiences with pledges made to other countries in the past suggest that these amounts don’t always become available unless the prospective recipient develops a well thought out programme for their use that would also improve the prospect for their absorption in the affected areas and by the affected people. This part of the response has to have a high priority. A programme aimed at the earthquake affected people must focus on the income generating side of the equation for the affected population. This is the time to plan to fundamentally change their fortunes by working simultaneously on education, skill development, constructing infrastructure, and introducing significant structural changes in the economy.
Where were the nazims?
THESE lines are not about myself but about (a) the defunct system of district administration, and (b) the initial response to the earthquake of October 8, 2005. I am merely a narrator with first hand experience of the former.
In February 1966 I was working as deputy commissioner-cum political agent of Loralai district in Balochistan. The district/agency was so vast that today’s Barkhan district was its remote tehsil, connected by a shingle road and about four-hours drive by jeep. The difficult communications had the inadequate support of a basic and primitive telephone system connecting only a few widely dispersed points in the district. The era of One Unit had pushed the seat of provincial government to Lahore.
One forenoon we received a feeble phone message about a severe earthquake in Barkhan tehsil. On reaching there in the afternoon I was shocked, scared and overawed by the magnitude of destruction. The stone-mud- wood-tin houses in the entire tehsil, and beyond, had been completely razed to the ground, a scenario similar to what we are seeing in Balakot today minus the high death toll. Immediate help from Lahore was inconceivable because of lack of communications. The commissioner in Quetta, Mr. Roedad Khan, was informed by wireless and he drove to the scene, which continued to be jolted by severe aftershocks for more than a week.
The important point is that the prevailing district administration system did not wait for assistance from Lahore, or elsewhere. Apart from animal driven carts, about half a dozen rickety vehicles of various government departments and local sardars brought the injured to the open space around the ill-equipped and damaged tehsil hospital, reinforced the next day with the medical staff from the rest of the district.
While waiting for more solid help from Lahore we decided to provide immediate financial assistance to the people (in anticipation of imminent sanction and release of relief funds) according to the scale and standard procedure prescribed by the government for natural calamities.
Anticipatory financial adventure could be risky for us, but was necessary to jumpstart the latent ingenuity and ample spirit of self-help of the depressed and bewildered people. But we had no money, as the Sunday holiday would not allow the district treasury to be opened.
Taking upon himself to sort out later with the government, the commissioner authorized me to open the treasury. By Sunday evening about six teams of pooled officers from various departments, notables of the district and the people from the concerned areas fanned out to distribute money to the sufferers. The amount given to each home, (depending on the family size, damage and predicament) was very meagre but demonstrably symbolized the state effort, sympathy and attention, thereby pre-empting public resentment.
This was nothing unusual or remarkable beyond a routine handling of a catastrophic tragedy by an established system. Similar steps, with local variations, were also taken in the adjoining district of Sibi. The district officer everywhere was a trained nucleus (within the framework of set guidelines) to initiate a process of putting the official emergency services in gear with full public support and participation.
But it was then. No more now. Because today’s Pakistan is the only country in the former British empire spread over a big global chunk to have demolished the district administration system at gun-point, in order to sustain and perpetuate an anti-people socio-political system of mullah-military-wadera collusion.
The earthquake of October 8, 2005, exposed the difference. The new head of the district administration, the nazim, was conspicuously missing from the screens of the national, or international television, in person and in spirit. The only exception was a Nazim’s expressing his inability to do anything till he received funds from the government.
Without debating who was in-charge of the district on October 8 (the old nazim, or the nazim elect) both of them should have stood up to face the challenge to prove their worth as elected leaders, (even if the DCO was holding the fort in the interim period). Just as the military government failed to air-drop men, equipment and supplies from the skies in the early stages, the nazim similarly failed to prove his presence on the ground. Both are load-bearing building blocks of the same system.
While the national TV channels appeared to be under pressure to boost the images of the army and the quantum of foreign aid as a certificate for the regime, the coverage by the foreign channels focused on the essentials of the prevailing system. In very few words, they, reporting from the devastated spots, told us, frankly but politely, what was happening and what was lacking.
They observed on the third day that the people were “very frustrated”, “very angry” and “felt let down by the government”. “The over-stretched army has come too late and has done too little”. When the relief goods arrived at the destroyed villages, there was “no coordination” on the fourth day. “Despite the presence of Pakistan military one does not know who is incharge”. These topical observations about the earthquake are in fact a running commentary on the capacity of our system to deliver. The deterioration in governance at all levels since devolution in 2002 need not be recounted here, but the system’s inability to handle an emergency is well illustrated as under.
(a) The hibernation or disappearance of the nazim (kingpin of the system) at the crucial hour after being centre-stage of all political activities for four years reveals a wheel without axle.
(b) The failure of the omnipotent and omniscient army and the National Security Council to respond in the early stages and coordinate later exposes the built-in structural faults of the system.
(c) The politically eclipsed track record of NAB and the brazen-faced use of corruption as state policy creates misgivings that the bulk of donations and foreign aid may be used as political bribe to the supporters of the system. (May be that will be the time for the nazims to re-emerge.)
(d) Many deaths of Pakistanis in Waziristan in America’s war against terror, and thousands of Pakistani deaths in the earthquake because of the commitment of our “out-stretched army” to that war shows the anti-people priorities of the system. Its top priority is to perpetuate itself with American support. After many other questionable priorities down the line, the “people” lie in the ever-sinking bottom. The high death toll in daily road/rail accidents, bomb blasts, criminal activity suicides, and natural calamities does not qualify as a priority.
We should not be surprised. In these very columns, many writers, including myself, have been opposing the whimsical destruction of the established unit of administration in the name of “devolution”. The system, however, was more eager for perpetuation than for good governance. It needed a robot to blindly serve its interests than a trained officer to enforce laws. We have not forgotten the innumerable political tricks and constitutional juggleries that ultimately carved out the nazim. He is there now, but the only emergency he can respond to is a threat to the system. Nothing else, including a killer earthquake, counts for him. His chips are programmed like this.
The people will go on paying a high price for this “reform”. In normal times, they will live with the misery of bad governance; and in emergencies they will die in thousands. With this “income”, the system intends to stay forever.
Email: mmufti@apollo.net.pk
Kosovo is back
FOR years the West used a convenient formula for keeping the troublesome Balkan province of Kosovo on a back burner: “standards before status.”
By this the United States and European governments meant that Kosovo should develop stable democratic political institutions under a United Nations administration before any decision was made on whether it should become an independent state or remain part of Serbia, from which it was liberated by a 1999 NATO military campaign.
The strategy proved to be a flop: The UN administration failed to rebuild Kosovo’s economy or create a capable judiciary and government, while a NATO-led peacekeeping force flinched from preventing the creeping partition of the province into areas controlled by the Albanian-majority population and minority Serbs. The Bush administration has consequently embraced a new tack, which is to deal with the hard question of Kosovo’s status.
— The Washington Post