Wider aspects of the gas pipeline

PARADOXICALLY, there is a positive dimension to the tensions being generated by the proposed seven-billion-dollar gas pipeline that will run from Iran to India via Pakistan. The American opposition to the project seems unlikely to have a deterring effect on the parties involved. Indeed, a stronger possibility is greater determination on their part to go ahead with it. This is what the Iranians are hoping for as has been stated by their deputy oil minister who was in India last week for negotiations with New Delhi. The US, which believes that Iran is seeking nuclear arms, has been trying to jeopardize this project by putting pressure on India and Pakistan. Surprisingly, in September India had voted for a resolution asking the IAEA to refer Iran to the UN Security Council. It now seems to be taking a more balanced perspective on Iran and the IPI gas pipeline continues to be on the cards.

Apart from the economic significance of this project for the three countries, it has wider implications for a regional grouping in South and Central Asia. There are two other gas projects that are on the anvil that involve Islamabad and would have a profound impact on regional cooperation. The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline and the Qatar-Pakistan gas pipeline would make Balochistan the hub of gas transmission activities and thus draw the neighbouring countries — Pakistan, India, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Qatar — into a common network. This should have a bonding effect on the countries of South and Central Asia, especially when the Gwadar port becomes fully operational, providing an opening to the sea for Afghanistan, western China and Central Asian states. This will promote economic interdependence among these states that is so essential to draw them together and facilitate cooperation among them.

All economic ties require a political underpinning. It is encouraging that this is being created in South Asia. The Saarc summit in Dhaka in November admitted Afghanistan as a full member to the association while China was accepted as an observer. With the improvement in India-Pakistan relations that has followed in the wake of the composite dialogue and the strengthening of economic ties, the political framework for cooperation on a regional basis should be strengthened. Although it may not be formalized for some time, the seeds for another regional grouping in Asia will have been sown. It may ultimately link up with any of the other regional organizations in the area, there being a number of them in the vicinity — the 10-member ECO, the six-member Shanghai Cooperation Organization and, of course, the eight-member Saarc.

The regional grouping is of great significance in the international politics of today. It is not only important to facilitate economic cooperation, trade and investment. It also gives political strength to countries in an age when the trend is towards states joining hands to form larger alliances. The European Union is a classical example of how even small states can acquire importance in world affairs by virtue of their affiliations with other states in the EU that is now counted as a force to be reckoned with. Given the independent relations that the prospective members of the new grouping have with Russia and China, they can hope to be in a position to resist American pressures. This trend could usher in an age of regionalism in South and Central Asia which is to be welcomed for its stabilizing effect on peace and security in the region.

SBP quarterly report

THE State Bank of Pakistan’s report for the first quarter of 2005-06 has reinforced concerns about certain macroeconomic indications of the country’s economy. It has said that while inflation is slowing down to the government’s estimated target of eight per cent, it is still too high and needs to be curtailed, even at the cost of some economic growth possibilities in the short-term. Perhaps more worrying is the sharp rise in the country’s trade deficit which rose sharply to 2.65 per cent of GDP during July-Oct 2005, compared to 1.16 per cent for the same period last year. In absolute terms, the trade deficit so far has doubled compared to 2004-05. While exports grew at a robust 14 per cent, they were more than offset by a sharp rise of 34 per cent in imports.

Part of the reason for the rise is increasing oil prices, but even non-oil imports rose by 48.8 per cent with machinery alone rising by 62.2 per cent. This may benefit the economy in the longer term in terms of increased capacity but in the short run the high trade deficit may well lead to further inflationary and exchange rate pressures. In fact, the SBP admits that it intervened in the exchange market to keep the rupee stable despite higher imports. While items like oil, machinery and raw materials are necessary for industrial production, the government should keep a close watch on the share of consumer durables in imports, especially automobiles whose import has dramatically risen following a cut in import duties. The CBR should also heed the SBP’s caveat that while the revenue target has been met, it was helped in large part by a sharp rise in import taxes facilitated by increased imports. Hence, the need for the CBR to widen the tax net and enforce tax compliance should not be lost sight of. As for inflation, the SBP’s estimate of eight per cent comes with the assumption that oil prices will remain unchanged for the rest of the fiscal year, which may prove unrealistic. Either way, the government needs to keep inflation under control if it wants real incomes to rise.

Off to a good start

REITERATING its commitment to cleansing the Punjab cities of excessive smoke-emitting vehicles, the provincial government, on the eve of the New Year, announced a plan to impose a ban on the plying of two-stroke-engine rickshaws on selected roads in Lahore. Side by side, the provision of only CNG-fitted buses for the city also claims priority. The gradual ban on petrol-fuelled autorickshaws — on The Mall and in the Badami Bagh area to start with — will become a comprehensive process in the city by January 2007. Two manufacturing companies have already brought CNG-fitted rickshaws in the market, and the Bank of Punjab is making their lease available to rickshaw drivers on very lenient terms. This is the right way of going about controlling the appalling rise in air pollution in Lahore. One must also endorse the priority selection of the Badami Bagh area as a two-stroke rickshaw-free zone because it is adjacent to the historical Lahore Fort, where excessive smoke emissions and vibrations caused by noise pollution have considerably damaged the tile work and wall paintings dating back to the Mughal period. The Punjab government plans to extend the ban on two-stroke vehicles to cover the entire province by 2010.

There is an urgent need for the other provinces to follow the lead of Punjab in controlling air pollution levels in their big cities. One says this because Karachi, Hyderabad, Quetta and Peshawar are among the worst polluted cities in the country. Pakistan has done very little to control environmental pollution even compared with the neighbouring countries facing similar problems. Regulating and ultimately controlling excessive smoke-emitting vehicles is doable, and it will go a long away in improving the air quality in our urban centres. This should be aimed at on a countrywide basis without wasting any more time.

Putting aside ideological hang-ups

THE genie of obscurantism, of the confused ideological variety, is out of the bottle again. At least that was the impression created by a host of speakers, among them Dr Javid Iqbal, Justice Nasim Hassan Shah and Mr Majid Nizami, at a seminar held to mark the Quaid’s birth anniversary in Lahore last week. Dr Iqbal declared amidst much fanfare that Mr Jinnah wanted an Islamic republic and not a secular, democratic Pakistan.

A lawyer by training and a former high court judge, Dr Iqbal knows only too well how to argue his case when he chooses to build one, and this was exactly what he did on that particular occasion, receiving nods of approval from the section of the audience he had set out to please. He went on to say that there was no rationale for Pakistan if a secular polity was Jinnah’s ideal; he could have found that in India. Furthermore, he then went on to negate the existence of secularism as a basis of any existing democratic set-up in the world.

The old argument of the West practising double standards, in the Middle East, vis-a-vis Muslims at large, in Europe, with regard to the Turkey-EU debate, then ensued. The obvious lack of connection between what kind of polity Mr Jinnah wanted for Pakistan and what has been happening in the world 58 years thence was all too evident, but the point was lost on the audience, in this obscurantist approach to political analysis done by the learned judge. Meanwhile, the other self-styled ideologues present on the occasion gloated over having won a new convert to their skewed view of history.

It is this kind of flimsy treatment of the past, present and future, all in one go, that has gone into the making of the confusion that continues to shroud Pakistan as a nation-state. Attempts are made day in and day out to invent a canonized sanction as to the ideological basis of this country where none exists; if we can’t find such a binding injunction in the Quran and the Sunnah, the Quaid and Allama Iqbal are supplemented for rescue. When will we grow up? you may ask.

This mindset was carefully nurtured and brought to fruition under Gen Zia’s dark years of obscurantism. This was the time when obsession with carving out a new Islamic identity for the state, which had hitherto been the single-minded focus of the extreme right-wing parties that had originally opposed the creation of Pakistan, occupied the centre stage. The grand plan, first and foremost, entailed the distortion of Jinnah’s ideals. So much so that even the Quaid’s motto of ‘unity, faith, discipline’ was revamped as ‘faith, unity, discipline’ to seek a sanction for distortion of history as a new state policy.

The protagonists of military dictators then were the same people as they are now, with the exception of a few who are no more among us. Having gone into hibernation as Gen Musharraf, in his ‘enlightened moderation’, took charge, the ideologues are now back with a vengeance. They are perhaps encouraged by the state of free-fall that this country has been suspended in since 9/11, not knowing on which side it will finally land, and by the renewal of our friendship with Washington preoccupying the officialdom.

The truth is that it was the US that backed Zia’s Islamization drive back then as the Soviets walked into Afghanistan, and mounting hostility of the Islamists towards godless communists was seen as a natural proxy of the greenback empire. Today, when that full-blown monster has taken on America itself in the form of global terrorism, the unfinished act needs to be cleaned up. True, the West has always had double standards, but how should that explain the policy shift in the stance of Pakistan as a state? More awkward still, why should the Quaid and the Allama be invoked to justify our own ideological somersaults?

The answer perhaps lies in the near-total intellectual bankruptcy and in the dishonesty practised by some members of our so-called intelligentsia. No wonder, the ideologues are crying foul over the planned revision of the primary-school syllabus that Gen Zia had injected with a nauseating overdose of obscurantist material in the name of religion. It is misplaced emphasis on such empty ideological rhetoric and brainwashing that continues to divert our attention from the real issues plaguing our polity and society.

For argument’s sake, one can forget democracy, for that, too, is a bad word among the echelons of the military, many of whose cadres see it as an unholy offshoot of secularism and in sharp contrast with their perceived role as defenders of faith. But where is social justice and rule of law that should have been offered by the all-mighty civil-military establishment as a compensation for not espousing global democratic values as the basis of the state? Is there no one left among us, a nation of teeming millions, who is capable of some original thinking? One is loath to admit the absence of a thinker with a heart. Is it not the gradual degeneration of society, fed on lies, cooked-up historical myths and fantasies for the future that, over the years, has brought us to this sorry pass?

So what do you do? You run the state on an ad-hoc basis to suit the exigencies of a given individual or a coterie at the helm. This sporadic, piecemeal approach to nation building via reinventing the political wheel every few years has done more harm to society than good. Today our institutions lie shattered, and those few that have withstood the vagaries of six very long decades have been distorted beyond recognition. The last thing we need are pundits from the past holding forth on national days, who have done little besides furthering the agenda of successive establishments — the junta-led, the mullah-military alliance or those figure-heads by compromised political mavericks passing for elected leaders.

The many interpretations of, and tirades over, what Mr Jinnah wanted for Pakistan have made the entire scheme schismatic and irrelevant today, especially given the current socio-economic realities and the challenges posed by globalization. It is safe to say, and there is a wide-ranging agreement over the fact, that the Quaid did not want to see this country to take the road it has taken since independence. Also, there is no disagreement over the fact that he wanted a society and a polity free of all discrimination, whether on the basis of religion, caste, creed or gender. Pakistan, then, was perceived as a land of equal opportunity for all its citizens to pursue their dreams without being subjugated by military dictators, “priests with a divine mission” or self-styled ideologues.

Much less was this country to be ruled by tyranny of a particular majority, for that was exactly what was feared by Muslims of India in a united subcontinent. It was certainly not perceived to be a land that would serve the interests of one federating unit to the detriment of all others and, above all, of the nation state itself. Even the late Chaudhry Rehmat Ali, that controversial figure who coined the term Pakistan but later reportedly dissociated himself from the very ideal of a separate Muslim state, and who conveniently left out the ‘B’ for Bengalis in the name of the country when they constituted a majority in the new state, would not have held one province’s perceived interests supreme, over and above national interest.

The self-styled ideologues’ silence over the looming national crisis, whether it is the Kalabagh dam controversy, the situation in Balochistan or the absence of an equitable water and financial resource-sharing formula among the provinces, is indeed a studied silence. Instead of deliberating on the issues at hand in a meaningful way they have again buried their little heads in the sands of history by rekindling unnecessary controversies as to whether the Quaid wanted this country to be an Islamic republic or a secular democracy. Does it make any difference what name you give to an evolving system of governance as long as it promotes a sense of fair play and justice — among individuals, among the federating units and among the public and the state that Jinnah left for you as your homeland?

In the absence of any meaningful ideas coming from the intelligentsia on shaping an action plan, the only way forward is to espouse globally accepted and recognized democratic ideals, howsoever lacking in some respects these may appear to be in some of the leading or emerging democracies in the world. Let’s face it, there has not been a model of an Islamic democracy in recent history that can be adopted to give us a working, sustainable polity today. The fabled ideal of the Madina state could not last beyond 30 years of the Khilafat-i-Rashda. It was outdone by those wishing to build empires and establish royal lineages. It cannot be a practical model today, for what followed it subsequently are all but skeletons in our cupboards of history, which, in turn, have left a gap between the Madina state and the idea of a modern Muslim polity today.

With all their preoccupation with the so-called Pakistan ideology, of which they insist a hitherto elusive Islamic polity is an integral component, both the self-styled ideologues and the religious orthodoxy have failed to give us even a blueprint of an Islamic democracy. The latter have busied themselves with either throwing a spanner in the works of a running democracy based on a global model or with sectarian warfare in the country.

Let all these remain the multiple protagonists’ failures and not those of Pakistan’s as a modern state, which must shape its destiny in accordance with accepted democratic and civil society norms. All pygmies out there must also do the Quaid a favour by sparing him the insult of a re-interpretation; the man’s genius eluded them whilst he lived, it eludes them all the more today.