Cement price hike

CEMENT prices have risen in Karachi and other parts of Sindh by five to ten rupees a 50kg bag of different brands, possibly because of doubling of exports encouraged by duty drawback. The sudden surge in prices, so frequently witnessed, has come at a time of slackening local construction activities as a result of recent rains. This price hike is on top of an increase of 15 to 18 rupees per bag prior to the federal budget. The erratic price behaviour has led to serious charges of cartelisation in cement industry. The Monopoly Control Authority (MCA) has appointed a committee to look into the abrupt price fluctuations during March this year and also issued a public notice on April 7 to elicit views of all stakeholders. As the MCA happens to be a toothless body in the absence of an updated competition law, the response of the stakeholders was said to be disappointing. No doubt, the government has intervened in times of strong protests from consumers to stabilise prices on an ad-hoc basis. But these measures have failed to check the manipulation of prices or market abuse. Generally, the government has failed to discharge its obligation as required in case of market failure. It is also not willing to reduce the central excise duty on cement which is Rs750 per cent per tonne.

While the increase in exports and in domestic demand is leading to further expansion of the country's installed cement production capacity financed by corporate savings — a very positive development — both the consumers and the government are getting a raw deal from the industry. A study by the Large Taxpayers Unit (LTU) Lahore, of 17 companies estimates that cement business under-reported its income by Rs7.6 billion in 2004-05. In fiscal year 2007 the cement companies also showed a sharp decline in profits in spite of the reduction in the cost of production of 26 out of 29 factories which have switched over to coal from costly furnace oil. The CBR is said to be analysing data to determine the actual income tax potential. The industry has made significant contribution to economic development but it needs to be more conscious of its social responsibility towards the consumers and the state. Any hike in the cement prices adversely affects the construction industry which is not only labour-intensive but provides business to scores of other allied industries.

Cement is a key input in construction and the success of this year's budgeted public infrastructure development programme and house-building for all income groups will depend on a stable supply of the commodity at affordable prices. Sudden and frequent spurts in prices, coupled with a high inflation, may also discourage foreign investment in major housing-cum-commercial complexes planned in major cities. Any slump in the housing sector can only lead to a slowdown in the economy that would impact adversely on all industries that are prospering in a situation of high economic growth. This includes the cement industry which should not sacrifice its long- term interests for short-term gains. As price stability is strongly linked to economic growth, the government needs to manage inflationary pressures more effectively. The competition law and the setting up of a competition commission, that will replace the archaic Monopoly Control Authority needs to be promulgated immediately to check cartelisation in the cement industry.

Reviving the film industry

DOES the screening of the Indian film Awarapan in Karachi on Friday, along with the anticipated and soon to be released Pakistani movie Khuda ke liye, mark the revival of the local cinema? One can only hope because the release last year of two Indian films, Taj Mahal and Mughal-e-Azam, did not generate the audience interest that cinema owners had hoped. That may have had more to do with the quality of films rather than with the peoples’ desire to go to the cinema. The decline of Pakistani films is largely responsible for keeping audiences away as well as ensuring that the demand for pirated DVDs of Indian films remains high. Those who stand for allowing Indian movies to be screened here consist of cinema owners — who have been the worst affected by the decline in the number of viewers — as well as established producers and distributors. They argue that screening Indian films will benefit and not threaten the local cinema industry. Apart from saving cinema houses from closing, the film industry can get the boost it needs if joint productions between the two countries are encouraged. Indian films are not very superior in terms of story content for they still follow the formulaic pattern but they are far better made, the quality of camera work and editing, not to mention films made abroad, all enhance the final product. This is what Pakistani films need: good stories that are conceived imaginatively.

There is no shortage of talent in Pakistan, especially with more people venturing into various aspects of film-making given the demand for it in the television industry. What is, however, lacking is government support. This can change if the government first recognises that the cinema industry is an economically viable one that can generate revenue and create job opportunities. It can, for example, make concessions on importing technical equipment that will help producers make good films. This will boost investor confidence and banks may be more willing to advance loans to film-makers. Steps like these can go a long way in reviving an industry that wants the opportunity to entertain people long deprived of avenues of recreation.

Makli tombs in danger

THE state of neglect of historical monuments in the country extends to even those sites that are internationally protected, such as the Makli necropolis in Thatta. Containing the remains of kings, queens and Sufi saints among others, the hundreds of thousands of centuries’ old tombs in Makli span several dynasties and are a testimony to the richness of Sindhi heritage. That today they are being vandalised and allowed to decay shows just how lax and unconcerned the archaeological authorities are to the decrepit state of one of the largest graveyards in the world. As pointed out in this paper some time ago, Makli’s charm is vanishing. There is little to encourage tourists to visit the site. Basic facilities such as toilets and clean water are missing while many visitors are unable to satisfy their curiosity as some of the mausoleums are locked.

It is unfortunate that the value of monuments such as those at Makli is not fully recognised. By allowing them to crumble, we are depriving ourselves of a cultural heritage of which many in other countries would have been justly proud. As the world modernises, links with the past become tenuous and it becomes all the more important to preserve those relics of ancient glory that can help foster national pride and so inculcate a sense of nationhood. In a people as divided as us, this is all the more important. The authorities should wake up to this truth and recognise that preserving heritage can have an effect that is beyond mere aesthetics as it is instrumental in creating values that can contribute to strengthening national consciousness about a past that is to be shared by all. This can only be done if the government takes more interest in properly maintaining historical sites and penalising those who vandalise them.

Can Blair reinvent himself?

ONE must not be harsh: it is not true that liars do not have a conscience. Why else would Tony Blair edge, at the cautious pace that public life demands, towards the Roman Catholic Church? He dropped in on Pope Benedict XV in Rome on his farewell free ride around the world, and British media was full of stories about his proposed conversion to Catholicism.

Why would Blair want to become a Catholic except to confess? This practice has a unique advantage. Its details can never reach the front pages of the “feral” British newspapers. The Father Confessor shares details of the guilt only with God.

Such a privilege is not available in the many schools and sects of the Protestant dispensation, a revolutionary theological movement inspired by a German reformer in the early 16th century, Martin Luther, because, in his view (with much evidence to back him) the papacy had become dissolute.

There were many venal sins that individual popes were prey to, but Luther was angered most by the degeneration in the system of “indulgences” by which a sinner could, literally, pay his way out of sin. Money to the church purchased forgiveness. The key to heaven lay in the treasury of the Vatican.

Protestants seek a solution. Catholics can get an absolution. True, matters are not quite so simple, for the Roman church has long ended such deviations. Blair can’t sell the mortgage of his homes in London, and send a cheque to the Vatican appropriate to the dimensions of his lies on Iraq.

But he is not turning into a Catholic to find out how many angels can dance on the head of a needle. Somewhere in his conscience there must be a thirst for redemption. The guilt of young lives sentenced to war must be heavy. It is entirely in character, therefore, that he is trying to re-launch himself as a missionary, with Palestine as his mission.

There is some confusion about the precise profile of the mission. His few remaining friends are suggesting that Blair has been appointed some sort of high plenipotentiary who will bring peace to the Middle East with the same skills that he displayed to bring amity in Ireland. But Blair’s boss, George Bush, has put in a corrective.

State Department officials clarified that his only responsibility is “shoring up” Palestinian institutions, and not trying to negotiate a peace deal, or “final status”, between Israel and the Palestinians. This latter job is for the Big Boys. And for a Big Girl. The State Department said that Condoleezza Rice would handle the serious bit herself, because, as she and Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have said, the United States is the only country Israel trusts as broker. Blair is a “true friend of Israel” agrees Olmert, but Britain is not the United States.

Blair’s mandate is really not much more than to ensure there is enough money for the Ramallah municipality to clear the garbage, and wheedle out all the Palestinian cash that Israel has withheld on one excuse or the other.

Blair’s parish is not even the whole of Palestine. He deals only with the part under the control of Mahmoud Abbas. Hamas and Gaza are out of his bounds. As presently defined, Blair has even less responsibility than once entrusted to the former World Bank President, Jim Wolfensohn, by the Quartet (America, European Union, Russia and the United Nations). Wolfensohn was told to get on with the economics of Palestine but to keep out of politics.

Blair, to state it simply, is no longer one of the Big Boys. He may or may not get a salary in his new mission, although he will certainly get a plane. I do hope, however, they don’t send the bill for the costs of the plane to Mahmoud Abbas. Nothing is impossible in the worldview of accountants.

Wolfensohn, whose sincerity and stature were beyond question, failed because the economics of Palestine is inextricably linked to its internal and external politics. Assuming Blair can manage more elbow room than a World Bank official, can he do any better at a moment of severe crisis?

What can Blair do as part-time envoy over the next one year that he could not do during 10 years as full-time prime minister?

What can anyone do during an American election year, when balance is held hostage to election sensitivities? This process used to last less than a year. It has now extended to almost two years. New ideas do not get an airing during the missile wars of election debates. The risk of a missile becoming a boomerang is too high.

Blair’s mandate is limited to the patch controlled by Mahmoud Abbas. But the difficult part of the story is Hamas and the support it commands, not Abbas. Or is it the new strategy that Blair can mollycoddle Abbas while Israel goes to war with Hamas? It would be an easier war for Israel than Lebanon last year. Unlike hilly Lebanon, Gaza is flat, and Hamas is not Hezbollah.

Can Blair, perceived by most Muslims as part of the problem, reinvent himself as part of the solution? Blair represents a past that must be swept out of the way if a new route map is to be found. His successor, the new prime minister of Britain, Gordon Brown, understands this. He has appointed David Miliband, a critic of the Iraq war and of Blair’s foreign policy, as his foreign secretary.

Jack Straw led the campaign to make Brown prime minister but did not get his old job back because Straw was too closely identified with the war. Even before being sworn in, Brown said, “I would like to see all security and intelligence analysis independent of the political process and I have asked the cabinet secretary to do that.”

This was as sharp across the Blair face as it was possible for a colleague to deliver. It was candid admission that Blair had manipulated intelligence (a charge Blair has assiduously denied) to build his case for the Iraq war.

A last question: was giving Salman Rushdie a title the best career launch for a job as middleman in the Middle East? Or even for a role as do-gooder for Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestine?

But there is some good news for Blair. His famed and accomplished ability to lie with smouldering conviction should stand him in very good stead in his new mission. Who wants the truth in the Middle East? No one. The truth would upset too many governments. It might even uproot some of them.

Blair now accepts that Iraq is a “disaster”. In his farewell remarks, he expressed his sympathy for the British troops who had sacrificed so much in his cause. He wished both his friends and his foes well as he said goodbye, but could not hide his long-suppressed hatred for the “feral” media (in a category beyond either friendship or enmity) which had been instrumental in aborting his term to a mere 10 years. But at no point during his long goodbye did Blair apologise for Iraq.

Being Blair means never having to say sorry. Except, possibly, in the solitude of a confession in a Roman Catholic church some time soon.

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

An immigration basic

IN the US, comprehensive immigration reform may lie dormant for a long while after its failure in the Senate. But plenty of related issues deserve attention on their own. One of them is how this country treats those who violate American immigration laws, particularly the treatment given at immigrant detention centres.

The Justice Department, the Immigration and Naturalisation Service, the American Bar Association and other groups negotiated a set of detention standards that were adopted in 2000. The rules call for hygienic living conditions, access to legal materials and counsel, and appropriate medical care.

Recently, critics have argued that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the successor to the Immigration and Naturalisation Service, and related federal authorities are failing to meet those standards.

Evidence they cite includes a study of five immigration detention facilities released by the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general earlier this year. Auditors found rodent and bug infestations, out-of-date law libraries, limited access to legal aid services, irregular medical care, under-cooked chicken and filthy food trays.

The American Civil Liberties Union, meanwhile, has been tracking deaths at detention centres, and it and other advocates claim to have documented cases of blatant medical neglect. In one instance, a detainee's groin cancer spread after his petitions for treatment were denied. ICE told the New York Times last month that 62 inmates died in its custody from 2004 to 2006.

Immigration officials have maintained that problems uncovered by the inspector-general at the five facilities are not pervasive in the system's 300-plus detention centres. Officials also dispute details of some of the cases the ACLU and others are investigating.

And they point out that nearly a million detainees passed through the system from 2004 to 2006; inevitably, they say, some were seriously ill or injured.

But since ICE inspectors failed to catch many of the problems found by the inspector general at the five facilities, the agency's claims about the rest of the system aren't reassuring.

––Los Angeles Times