Maintaining the growth momentum

REPORTS suggesting that the current fiscal year would end with a lower than targeted GDP growth rate of seven per cent are disturbing. The reason for this reversal is said to be significant declines witnessed in the output of cotton and sugarcane. The government believes that the better-than-expected rice crop and good minor crops, plus increased hydel power production by Wapda and better performance by the financial sector during the year will help it maintain the high growth momentum begun in 2004. Then, GDP growth crossed the six per cent mark for the first time in almost a decade and was accelerated further in the following year to over eight per cent. This means the government hopes that the growth for the year would still be nearer to seven per cent if not on target. This appears to be an overly optimistic view because even growth in large scale manufacturing (LSM), which had contributed significantly to the high growth rates of the previous two years, appears to have slowed down.

The LSM sector, which accounted for 70 per cent of total manufacturing output and 52 per cent of total output of the industrial sector in 2004-05 and was responsible for 27 per cent of the contribution of commodity producing sectors to overall GDP in that year, has fallen way behind the levels achieved in the last two years. During July-August in the previous two years, large-scale manufacturing grew by 28 per cent and a little over 13 per cent respectively but stagnated at 7.6 per cent during the same period in the current fiscal year. On the other hand, with inflation still biting into incomes, it is hardly likely that the financial sector would be able to perform profitably. Meanwhile, the trade gap is widening by the day and is projected unofficially to show a deficit of around nine billion dollars by year-end. In addition, the budget deficit is also expected to increase. This will certainly bring the rupee under pressure and further fuel inflation. This in turn will nibble at economic growth, making it even more difficult for the growth rate to cross even the six per cent mark.

One would agree with the government’s assessment that the earthquake was not likely to have any significant impact on the overall economy because the regions affected by the disaster were the least developed areas of Pakistan and had very little by way of economic assets or economic activity. It is also likely that the inflow of a huge amount of resources and at a fast pace in these regions for relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction may create enough economic activity to accelerate the overall GDP growth in the country. But then the associated inflationary pressures are likely to prove a handicap causing the growth rate to be adversely affected. One had expected that the upswing in the growth rates witnessed in previous two years would be sustained in the current year as well because of the claims of the government that macroeconomic stability achieved some three years ago was sustainable, that economic management had improved tremendously meanwhile and that the country was now entering the second phase of reforms after successfully completing the first phase. This is not happening. Therefore, one would like the government to take a closer and more analytical look at its fiscal and monetary policies, especially those which are fuelling inflation and causing the trade gap and consumer credit to increase.

Opposition to Kalabagh

WHILE not a single day passes without President Pervez Musharraf emphasizing the need for more dams, the voices against new water reservoirs are getting louder. On Tuesday in Quetta, while the president repeated his call for the construction of the Kalabagh dam, PPP chief Makhdoom Amin Fahim told a press conference in Karachi that the KBD was “a dead issue” because three constituent units of the federation had rejected it. The fiery speeches made on Tuesday in the National Assembly by PPP MNAs also highlighted in no uncertain terms what one of the two mainstream parties thinks about the dam. Mr Fahim is not only the head of the ARD, which is a grouping of 15 parties, his own party has always enjoyed a large following in Punjab. Thus opposition coming from Mr Fahim should be taken seriously, since his views mean that the anti-dam opinion is not confined to the smaller provinces. Also in Karachi, two days after the president’s consensus-seeking visit, seven “nationalist” parties of Sindh announced the formation of a new united front to strive for “the political, cultural, economic and geographical rights” of Sindh. Rhetoric aside, the Sindhi Qaumi Ittehad (SQI) is Kalabagh-specific. Headed by Sardar Mumtaz Ali Bhutto, the SQI leadership includes some respected Sindhi leaders, including Ibrahim Joyo. The Pakistan Oppressed Nations’ Movement, too, has come out categorically against the Kalabagh dam. The government’s own ally, the MQM, is also opposed to the project.

Notwithstanding the need for having more water storage capacity and producing more electricity, nothing should be done that could weaken the federal structure. The parties grouped under the SQI may not have a large vote bank, but they are quite capable of sustaining a long campaign. They have already announced a strike for Dec. 20, and it goes without saying that this will not be the last Kalabagh strike. From the president’s statements it appears that the government is determined to go ahead with the project. Given the opposition from the three provinces, it would be unwise to proceed in a hurry. Developing a consensus may take time, and often the task may appear frustrating, but there is no alternative to a national consensus on such a sensitive issue as the Kalabagh dam.

Sanitation in quake-hit areas

A STORY in this newspaper on Tuesday reporting on the deplorable conditions in a “disease-ridden tent camp” in Muzaffarabad quoted a German relief volunteer likening the place to hell. People are living in squalor, illnesses like diarrhoea and respiratory infections abound and lack of sanitation facilities shocked the international aid agencies which were alerted of the camp’s existence only a while ago. Since its discovery, health officials are doing whatever they can to deal with the conditions prevalent there but are concerned that lack of sanitation facilities poses a serious threat of an outbreak of infectious diseases. While conditions in other government or internationally manned camps may be better, this nonetheless highlights the need for the authorities to focus on hygiene-related issues and prioritize building of toilets in the affected areas. Because water supply networks were damaged by the earthquake, sanitation facilities have been virtually wiped out. There are reports from these areas of people relieving themselves close to rivers and even near their tents simply because they have no other option. As can be expected, women are the worst hit. Health officials warn that stagnant pools of water and untreated excreta are breeding grounds for diseases.

Since the focus has shifted to providing quake victims with temporary housing, more provision must be made for building proper toilet facilities that go beyond digging holes in the ground. The authorities will also need to spearhead a massive awareness campaign on health and hygiene, telling people of the dangers of using open places near rivers or their temporary homes as toilets. At the same time, it must ensure that those in charge of camps are following strict hygienic guidelines. It should also work with agencies that deal specifically with sanitation and explore methods that can best address this pressing need.

Where is Osama?

IT doesn’t surprise me that George Bush had a plan to bomb the Doha headquarters of the pesky Arabic news channel Al Jazeera back into the desert age. What shocks me is that he hasn’t sent Al Jazeera a thank you note after his re-election last year in November.

A victory that became comfortable after the results were in, obscures how close the contest was. For a couple of hours on polling day, the opinion pundits and television channels were preparing for a John Kerry presidency, and liberal gloating over the demise of Bush ended only around noon.

Democrats are now convinced that the critical factor that swung the election away from Kerry was the sudden and very mysterious appearance of an Osama bin Laden tape promising the usual death and destruction of America. It focused American minds wonderfully on all the potential horrors vital to the Bush cause; it was the kind of nightmare image that his most loyal ad gurus could not have paid enough money for. Where did the tape materialize? The usual route. Address of origin: Officially unknown. Address of destination: Al Jazeera. Impact: On all those little suburban homes in Ohio and Iowa that swung the vote away from war hero Kerry to war president Bush.

For many months before the election there was talk of a last- minute “October Surprise”, possibly a quiet gift from President Pervez Musharraf to his friend and mentor Bush. Many thought that this would be either the arrest or the death of Osama. It turned out to be far more sophisticated: a tape that kept both of them in business. As the British tabloid, Sun, might have screamed if reporting such a story: “It was de Jaz wot did it!”

The White House did not quite deny the Daily Mirror story that the bombing of Al Jazeera was discussed between Bush and Tony Blair in Washington. It merely dismissed the thought as “outlandish”. How far out of land do you have to go to be outlandish in a Bush conversation? Was the invasion of Iraq once outlandish? What is safe and credible and inlandish? That America doesn’t do torture? All those Abu Ghraib pictures must have been from Al Qaeda torture cells.

Actually, it doesn’t much matter what was discussed. During times of war stress, all manner of things are discussed. It is much more important to note what has been done rather than what has been discussed. The Bush White House has ensured more than one “accident” in Afghanistan and Iraq to bully and threaten Al Jazeera. To its credit, the channel has refused to let its brow be beaten.

Blair’s response was a verbal grimace that said “Can we change the subject?” Fair enough. I daresay that while Blair did nothing to stop Bush from invading Iraq he may have laid a restraining hand when Bush prepared to invade Al Jazeera.

The British response to the Al Jazeera problem might be far more subtle, and, therefore, successful. Al Jazeera is launching an English channel next year and is, at the moment, busy hiring a clutch of ex-BBC types, including a few who have lost their credibility along with their teeth. This strategy of implosion seems infinitely superior to the tactics of explosion. Mumble and waffle, the staple menu of this crowd, inside the studio could damage the channel far more than crash and bang from the sky.

All the experience and evidence to the contrary fails to shake the conviction of governments that they can censor all the news all the time. News has this fascinating ability to slip around a corner and reach its target. There will always be one channel or newspaper or Internet avenue that refuses to close its eyes. The motives of media may not even be idealistic. It may do this for nothing more, or indeed less, important than commercial success.

Better reporting means more viewers/readers; which means more revenue. Al Jazeera is in demand because it repeatedly brings you the stories that the occupation forces in Iraq want to hide. The day this stops, Al Jazeera will wither. Audiences are far more loyal to content than to brand. Brand helps, but is no substitute for content. If the English Jazeera takes a different editorial line, it will become as forgettable as any establishment channel.

The subtext of this story is the remarkable ability of Osama bin Laden to pop up where he wants and return to hibernation in some remote, or not, corner of the world that shall forever be Al Qaeda.

As we noted, his tape turned up just in time to influence the fate of George Bush last year. How did that tape travel from wherever Osama is holed up to the offices of Al Jazeera in Doha? On a flying carpet? Was it carried by invisible genii from the Arabian Nights? Did it travel hand to hand from the mountains of the western Himalayas to the waters of the Arabian Sea? Whose were those hands? Was it posted by ordinary mail? Did it come by DHL? Who was the cameraman who shot the interview and edited it in a studio? Or does Osama live in a palace with multi-media facilities? Does no one in the Pakistan government, or on the FBI staff in Pakistan and Afghanistan, know anything, or want to know anything? How come these questions never get asked, let alone get answered?

America went to war against Afghanistan four years ago to find Osama bin Laden because it was convinced that Osama had masterminded 9/11. If the Taliban had handed over Osama, who was in their protection, and which they admitted, the case for war against Taliban-Afghanistan would have weakened considerably if not disappeared altogether.

Three years before 9/11, in 1998, Nawaz Sharif, the then prime minister of Pakistan, told Bill Clinton that Osama bin Laden was on dialysis, and it was only a matter of time before he went the way of all flesh. It’s been a long time, particularly for one with such weakened flesh.

Dialysis can keep you going for decades, but what it does do is make you very vulnerable as well. I am not talking only about physical vulnerability. It is very difficult to be on dialysis and hide, when the world’s eyes are trained on you. Dialysis reduces mobility. It demands constant attention to medical apparatus, and presumably competent doctors.

Does Osama run such a brilliant, foolproof operation that there are no leaks despite such huge vulnerabilities? Can he survive, with such basic needs, on a lonely mountaintop? Or is he ensconced in some urban jungle? Since there are no urban jungles in Afghanistan (Kabul is at best an urban corpse), could be in an urban jungle in Pakistan? Is Karachi a good place to look for him? We heard a few days ago one of his deputies saying that he was alive and leading the holy war. If he is alive, why hasn’t he been arrested?

There is something going on that does not quite add up. Al Jazeera has broken any number of stories. Why doesn’t it break the biggest story of all: where is Osama bin Laden?

The writer is editor-in-chief of Asian Age, New Delhi.

Climate talks

THE Montreal climate talks promised very little when they opened two weeks ago but, unlike almost every other international meeting of the past decade, they seem to have achieved a lot.

Consider: the much-maligned Kyoto treaty is safe and well beyond 2012, despite the best efforts of the wreckers; rapidly-developing countries such as China and India now have the assurances they need that they will not be penalised for growing their economies, despite their genuine fears; and rich countries have agreed to implement deeper emission cuts, something that was very much in the balance before Montreal.

This Kyoto deal not only clocked up what may be a record 40 international agreements, it set up future negotiations on legally binding targets and set in motion a wider review of the entire regime involving all countries. No wonder environment secretary Margaret Beckett - ironically returning from the snows of Montreal through the plume of Britain’s largest petrol fire in a decade - was jubilant. Not only did the British and EU negotiators achieve what they set out to do, they stood up to the US and saw off the wrecking tactics of Russia, Saudi Arabia and others.

But the shaming of the US in Montreal was as much to do with world opinion as with the tactics of governments or green groups. When the American negotiators walked out in an attempt to collapse negotiations, the international reaction was swift and united. The US may be thick skinned when it comes to global negotiations but even dinosaurs have their weak spots.

America’s isolation from the world community was seen to be unacceptable from California to Cornwall, from New York to Nairobi. When the former president Bill Clinton then stood up on prime-time TV to say that the US economy would be hurt if the administration did not change its stance - and that the world’s greatest emitter of greenhouse gases could easily meet and surpass the Kyoto targets in a way that would strengthen its economy — Washington was close to panic.

The negotiators were sent back in and from then on, a deal was always probable. This US administration may never sign up to Kyoto and its targets and timetables, but it is still, just, in the fold. Bringing it to the climate table will be the challenge of the next decade. But something else may have taken place in Montreal. There is now no longer any serious doubt in international circles that climate change is real, accelerating and caused by human activities. It has taken 25 years of hard science and serious debate to get to this point. Contrarians will, rightly, question how much of the greenhouse effect is due to natural causes but the world community is, for once, more or less united.

Moreover, all governments, rich and poor, have committed themselves to rethinking how they use energy.

— The Guardian, London