Unspent funds

THE disturbingly slow pace of utilization of the federal Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) budget in the first six months of the current fiscal year as recorded in a recent analysis by the Planning Commission once again highlights the marked failure of the government to make use of the funds available. This is not the first time that the utilization pace has been so slow. Every year over the last six years has seen official claims of massive increases in development allocations at the time of the presentation of the annual budgets — only to be revised downwards at the time of the release of annual Economic Surveys and again at the time of the presentation of the next year’s budget. The process of allocation and subsequent downward revision is also reflected in the State Bank of Pakistan’s annual reports each year. So by the time the actual expenditures are toted up for a couple of years, only a small proportion of the overall allocation for development for the year in question is found to have been spent, upsetting all growth targets, especially those for poverty alleviation, employment generation and the like.

This government, like all its predecessors, has been tall on promises and very short on delivery despite the fact that unlike previous governments, this one has never faced in the last three years resource constraints of the kind that the others were confronted with. If a government fails to ensure full utilization of the budgeted allocations for development in spite of the availability of sufficient funds for the purpose, it may be either because it is pursuing wrong priorities or its system of governance is out of step with all the so-called reforms it claims to have introduced especially on the economic management front over the last five years — or that it is being let down by the bureaucracy. The president and the prime minister never let an opportunity pass without reiterating their commitment to poverty alleviation. But if in the first six months less than six per cent of the annual budgetary allocations for labour and manpower, women’s development, local government and rural development, which impact directly on the poorer sections of society, were spent then there must be something seriously wrong with the planning and execution of development projects meant for the uplift of the poor and economic progress generally.

The widening gap between promises of economic progress that the official economic managers keep selling to the people and the ground realities that confront the teeming millions creates bitterness and frustration among the people. The government seems to have developed a blind faith in a system of market economy, the private sector and the theory of trickle down. In such a system stock exchanges boom and real estate prices sky-rocket, making the rich richer and the poor poorer without adding anything to the overall progress and affluence of the nation and its assets. In order to introduce needed distributive justice in this tilt towards the market and provide a human face to the private sector-led growth, the government must give proper weightage to public sector development programmes with due emphasis on close monitoring at an appropriate level.

Violent weekend

TWO incidents — one in Balochistan and the other in the NWFP — over the weekend show the fragile state of law and order in the country. Both also reflect the bystander’s role of the law enforcement and intelligence agencies because they seem unable to adequately respond to the situation, especially in terms of prevention of such acts. The incident at a resort near Quetta happened after over a dozen armed men managed to overpower and take hostage levies personnel before singling out three men from a group of provincial government employees who had gone there for a picnic. According to some reports, the attackers separated the picnic party group based on their provincial affiliation, after which they sprayed bullets on three who had stood aside. The main objective of such a gruesome act would be to send a message to all non-Baloch that they risk their lives living in Balochistan. The other act, that of the blowing up of a police van by a remote control device in Dera Ismail Khan, with eight, including six law-enforcement personnel, dead, will also serve only the purpose of those who want to terrorize the people.

While both incidents may have their connections to the on-going strife between militants and security forces in Balochistan and parts of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, what is clear is that the government has failed to prevent such attacks from happening. D. I. Khan may be some distance from North and South Waziristan and while a motive has as yet to be established, it is possible that there may be a link between the government’s operations against militants there. Also, given that a full-fledged battle took place between the security forces and alleged Al Qaeda activists in nearby Kohat some time back, the government should have strengthened security measures in the settled areas of the NWFP as well. It should also examine the role of the many intelligence agencies that are there, especially since the device that blew up the police van was planted on a roadside. As for the Balochistan incident, those behind it must be tracked down and given exemplary punishment for killing innocent people.

Mohammad Ali bows out

WITH the passing of Mohammad Ali, Pakistani cinema is poorer by another star from its fading galaxy. Trained as a radio broadcaster by pioneers like the late Z.A. Bokhari, Ali rose to occupy the throne of the silver screen and reigned supreme for a quarter of a century. However, when mediocrity began to set in in the early 1980s, Ali bowed out with grace, never to return. Together, with his superstar wife Zeba, the couple set up the Ali-Zeb Foundation, supporting thousands of ailing children. In social and literary circles, Ali was equally known for his poignant recitations of poetry, especially of the marsiya. Among the literati, he was friends with the late Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Josh Malihabadi, Sufi Tabassum, Habib Jalib and Qateel Shifai, besides many living poets. Ali had a well-stocked library and a reading room which doubled as a literary rendezvous. Besides serving as an adviser on cultural affairs under the Sharif government, Ali had also led the Indo-Pakistan artistes’ coalition for the release of the 1971 prisoners of war.

Lahore is known for honouring its stars in many ways; the local press did so by bringing out special editions to sing of the departed hero. The city government, too, has named roads after Noor Jehan and Riaz Shahid. What could be a better way to honour the legendary hero than by renaming after him the road in Gulberg where ‘AliZeb’, the residence of filmdom’s longest-reigning romantic duo, stands?

THE space in a needle’s eye is sufficient for two friends, but the whole world is scarcely big enough to hold two enemies.
—Solomon ibn Gabirol

TO be able to use leisure intelligently will be the last product of an intelligent civilization.
—Bertrand Russell

Terrorist attack on Varanasi

IF you want to hear the Indian story, listen to the sound of silence once the roar of the explosion has ebbed away into time. India’s weakness is institutional.

We have not found the means, although doubtless there is the will, to prevent terrorist action of the most brutal sort, in the cavernous heart of our most vaunted cities, whether it is aimed at shoppers in a public bazaar in Delhi on the eve of Diwali or worshippers at the Sankatmochan temple in Varanasi.

India’s strength is the reaction. One is referring to the reaction of the people, for the reaction of the authorities is almost perfunctory: a lot of initial bustle, and then the hope that yet another tragedy will disappear, unwept, into the misery of dusty files. There is anger in the popular reaction, for only the supine do not get angry. But this anger does not degenerate into hysteria.

The terrorist has two objectives. The first is immediate: he seeks to leave pools of blood on the streets. The second is strategic and perhaps more important: he seeks to lace the lines, the thin lines that separate communities, with poison. The Indian people know that communal peace is the best answer to vicious terrorism, and the only way to frustrate the strategic design.

A self-proclaimed separatist group from Kashmir has claimed responsibility for the terrorism in Varanasi. The simple response is that the future of Kashmir cannot be determined by injecting fear in Varanasi. Those who think they can weaken the resolve of India do not understand the depth of India. This depth is not just geographical and demographic; India also has great reserves of psychological depth. That is what both Hindus and Muslims of Varanasi displayed when they were tested.

The test is becoming more difficult of course. There has been what might be called a fundamental change in the level of provocation. There is nothing new about Hindu-Muslim tension. Where there is a relationship, whether individual or collective, there will be both amity and the occasional spot of tension. Islam came to India through merchants and traders from the earliest days of the new faith, as it did later to Southeast Asia, and Muslim communities appeared not only along the coast of Gujarat and Kerala but also in the interior cities of the north. Since then Hindus and Muslims have interacted commercially, socially — and politically.

The first Arab-Muslim armies appeared in Sindh in 711, the same year that the western momentum took Arab armies into Spain. But while Spain fell comparatively easily, the expansion of what might be called political space froze in the deserts of Sindh. The Thakur principalities of Rajasthan, Punjab and Afghanistan maintained their power for another four centuries until Prithviraj was defeated in the second battle of Tarain (Prithviraj won the first battle of Tarain).

The story of kings is different from the narratives of people. The communal riot in its present manifestation is, by and large, a phenomenon of post-feudal India. Its causes form a pattern from the trivial to the significant, but are familiar enough to suggest that it is more often fomented rather than natural. What is undoubtedly true is that politics has been a principal agent provocateur, including the politics of democracy.

But whatever the cause, popular conflict very rarely extended to attacks on places of worship or deities: there was a sense that the sacred should be kept above conflict. This is not completely true, but it is largely correct. But the violence of terrorism is significantly different: it is aimed as much against the sacred as it is against the people. It does not require a degree in nuclear physics to appreciate that the Sankatmochan temple in Varanasi was selected in order to incite Hindu anger against Muslims, and inspire perhaps a Gujarat-style reaction. The variance is another clue in the argument that this attack has been planned by un-Indian if not non-Indian elements.

What the people preserve, so often the government manages to squander. Let me note a second institutional weakness: the remarkable tendency of governments to sound triumphalist long before any real victory is evident on the nearest horizon. The trumpets are always out to herald a mirage. In Delhi a mirage is neither a desert phenomenon nor a fighter plane; it is a working philosophy, a way of life.

For a few weeks now it has been commonplace to hear, including from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, that Indian Muslims have rejected violence thanks to the therapeutic virtues of Indian democracy. As a proposition it has the merit of not only being virtuous but also broadly accurate. But what is largely true should not be misconstrued as being wholly true. There is also the danger that someone with an agenda might want to prove the opposite. But it seemed that this proposition was not put into circulation accidentally, or only because it was true.

President George Bush’s entourage joined this catechism in preparation of their leader’s visit to India. While this was of course a just and justified tribute to India, it was also part of the wider discourse to sell the future of Iraq as a democracy and thereby to rationalise the occupation of Iraq. President Bush is searching for democracy these days in Iraq, rather than weapons of mass destruction. Ironically, democracy in Iraq is beginning to look more and more like a weapon of mass destruction. Be that as it may, Varanasi brings the agenda back to India, and its unsolved problems.

India is a nuclear power straining to become an economic giant with seriously solid military muscle, and with the proven capability of reaching its ambitions within a believable timeframe. It has a growing right to a place on the high table of world affairs, and the world, now led by the United States, is taking this claim seriously. But India also faces a grave danger, one that could sabotage its dreams.

This danger is internal, not external. It is a problem of governance, not of the people. It is the danger of an institutional ego that sends the government’s head into the heady superstructure of nuclear clouds, and, through an opposite of the gravitational pull, lifts its feet high above the harsh realities on the ground. The ground is swarming with cancerous problems. Varanasi is only an instance: security is so porous that terrorists who operate out of Kashmir can disdainfully slip into Varanasi and set off blasts that kill and maim hundreds. The real tragedy is that the perpetrators will never be found. The police has now become accustomed to alibi punishments: a few scapegoats to be sacrificed for public consumption in the hope that immediate passions are assuaged.

There is a parallel network of violence operating in India. No one really knows if Naxalites, spread across the breadth of the country, have linked up with separatists in Kashmir and Assam or not. All of them certainly have a common purpose, which is the destabilisation of government and governance.

Poverty feeds violence, and subsistence-level poverty is still the fate of four hundred million Indians. Communal anger is always hovering as a menace over stability, its noxious fumes wafted by despair. This too is shrouded in silence, but it is a different kind of silence. The story of India can be heard in both kinds of silence.

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

Shock, awe and humility

THREE years ago, Iraqis were “shocked and awed” by the power of the US military. Today, Americans are shocked and awed by its limits. If the “cakewalks” of the 1980s and 1990s — Grenada, the Gulf War, Kosovo — restored America’s belief in its omnipotence, so badly shaken in Vietnam, the occupation of Iraq has been a humbling letdown.

With a mere 38 per cent of the public still thinking that the war is going well, and more than 2,300 US troops dead, it’s become fashionable for the war’s initial supporters to have second thoughts. We opposed the decision to go to war. But we will resist the temptation to be fashionable and will take this opportunity to at least concede that the Bush administration’s actions were rooted in a strain of American idealism most often identified with Woodrow Wilson.

The decision to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime was a Wilsonian attempt to preserve the notion of collective security; even more idealistically, it was an attempt to create an oasis of American-style democracy and prosperity that would alter the complexion of the entire region.

So much for the vision. The reality has been — to use a term from another unpopular war — a quagmire. Bush’s messianic idealism was never justified, and in any event the administration’s flawed execution would have undermined his purpose. The list of gaffes is by now distressingly familiar: the flawed intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, the lack of sufficient troops, the tainted contracting process and so on.

To be fair, Washington has persevered in its quest to create a representative democracy in Iraq. But American surprise at the unfolding Sunni-Shia schism, and our lack of preparedness to deal with the early dismantlement of the Iraqi military, have made the world’s reigning superpower look, once again, oddly naive.

And though it pledges to “stay the course” in Iraq, the Bush administration has long since fled the battlefield of ideas. It embarrassingly resorts only to Orwellian talk of a “war on terror” instead of addressing real issues, and its claims of relentless success are not to be taken seriously.
—Los Angeles Times