‘Vision 2030’
THE absence of democratic institutions is only one of the many misfortunes of Pakistan; equally serious have been the fundamental mistakes made in the country’s socio-economic development. A review of the economic policies since independence is beyond the scope of this piece. But certain aspects of the kind of economic planning we have had deserve to be noted because of their profound negative impact on Pakistan’s political and economic systems. The middle class has, no doubt, expanded both in size and in terms of its ratio to the population since 1947, but it has not expanded fast enough for two reasons: one, large feudal landholdings were not abolished and, two, the increase in the literacy rate has been painfully slow while the population has grown rapidly. There were two major land-reform attempts — first during the Ayub regime and later under the Bhutto government. But the implementation of both was half-hearted, and the powerful feudal lobby — which controlled the levers of governmental and legislative powers — managed to evade the reform laws’ operation. This had several consequences, one of them being the perpetuation of the wretched economic condition of the landless peasant class, which depended for its survival on the feudal lords. The building of new dams, barrages and canals following the Indus Waters Treaty brought more areas under cultivation, but the new lands went to the already rich feudals or to the new class of civil and military bureaucrats, who managed to get the canal-fed lands at cheap rates. Thus, while the landed aristocracy further strengthened its position, the pauperised landless peasant had only two choices: either to accept the bondage he has been living under for generations or to migrate to the cities to earn a living.
The urban conditions in Pakistan today stem from the absence of an equitable agricultural sector. Industrialisation began in earnest during the Ayub rule, but instead of being evenly spread it was confined to certain families. While the rural poor flocked to the cities to provide manpower for industry, the scant civic and utility services in the urban areas came under further pressure, leading to tensions and unrest. These factors, plus a low literacy growth rate, combined to inhibit the growth of a vibrant middle class which could have a stake in democracy, rule of law and the creation of an egalitarian society, with the rights of all citizens, irrespective of religion, ethnicity and gender, safeguarded. The ‘Vision 2030’ document seeks to undo these injustices and aims at transforming Pakistan into “a well-ordered and inclusive society, where imbalances created by the continuation of an ancient order are resolved and national wealth is shared equitably”.
These are laudable aims contained in a document which President Pervez Musharraf is likely to release to the media for a national debate. There have been such ‘visions’ before, too, and they have ranged from the utopia of Bhutto’s Islamic socialism to Ziaul Haq’s Islamic ‘system’. The end result is the kind of society we have today — a society characterised by the widening gap between the haves and have-nots, the rising wave of violence, especially the one backed by religious fanaticism, and the preponderant role which the military and the clerics have come to acquire in politics. ‘Vision 2030’ will stand a chance of success and acceptability by the people of Pakistan only if it is implemented by governments which are democratic in character and motive.
PNSC building ablaze again
TWO massive fires six months apart were bound to send the rumour mills buzzing. Indeed, the chairman of the Karachi Port Trust himself does not discount the possibility of foul play. The fact that both incidents took place on a Sunday — when the human toll would be minimal — only fuels speculation that the PNSC building in Karachi may have been deliberately set ablaze, possibly to destroy documentary evidence. Another conspiracy theory has it that the structurally weakened building will now have to be demolished and rebuilt, resulting in plum contracts for favoured parties and, perhaps, greater commercialisation of a prime site. That said, judgment must be withheld until the full facts of the matter are known. The inferno on February 18 was attributed to an electrical short circuit — somewhat casually, it has to be said — but there is no clue yet as to what caused the latest fire. The wait for the truth could be long, though, in a country where the assassination of a prime minister, in October 1951, remains a mystery to this day.
What is clear beyond doubt, however, is that the city’s fire department is in bad shape and largely incapable, despite the induction of new snorkels, of controlling conflagrations in high-rise buildings. At the same time, the response time to Sunday’s blaze is said to be poor. Many fire tenders in Karachi are no longer in working order and the department also lacks the staff required to cater to a city of nearly 15 million. The firefighting capabilities of KPT, which administers the PNSC building and much of the land in the port area, are also well below par. These potentially fatal shortcomings must be overcome on an emergency basis. There is also a need to develop forensic capacity so that the precise cause of major fires can be identified. In the meantime, there is no reason why foreign experts cannot be brought in to assist the local authorities in high-profile cases. The lack of emergency exits is another major problem. If the PNSC building had gone up in flames on a working day, the death toll could have been staggering.
Rising crime in Punjab
THE increase in the budget to fight crime in Punjab has clearly not produced results. A report on Sunday revealed that during 2005-06, the government spent Rs40bn to fight crime in Punjab but during this period the crime rate increased by seven per cent. This means that either more funds are required or those fighting crime have failed to utilise those funds in an effective manner. That needs to be investigated and a new strategy adopted to address the deteriorating law and order situation in the province. Figures for the rest of the country show that the government spent four billion rupees to fight crime in the NWFP and Balochistan and Rs10.906bn in Sindh. It will be interesting to see how effectively these funds were utilised but given that there has been no significant drop in the crime rate in either of these provinces, it is safe to assume that increased funding has not done much to improve the law and order situation. A report in January this year, for example, showed that crime in Lahore had increased by 85 per cent between 2001 and 2006. How then should it be tackled?
Perhaps the government needs to change track on how and where the funds are spent. For example, the amount spent on police training (Rs327mn) seems on the low side especially since it is police officers who essentially fight crime and should be better trained to do their jobs. Funds can be redirected and spent in places which will make it easier to fight crime — the police often complain of not having equipment needed to investigate crimes. The government should first figure out where funds are more urgently needed and also ascertain what types of crime are high (cellphone theft in Karachi, for example). It can then devise strategies to deal with these problems.
India’s shaky coalition
WHAT is human about nature? Bystanders enjoy conflict more than resolution. Partisans may prefer peace, but an audience can be persuaded to pay good money to watch gladiators. Which street in the world ever stopped to applaud a serene couple strolling by, hand in hand? But let a husband and wife begin screaming at each other and a crowd will collect instantly.
Let the couple be marginally familiar and a posse of journalists will arrive to turn them into minor celebrities. Such is the law of inhuman nature.
A divorce, therefore, will always get much more coverage than a marriage. Good news has only limited rights over airtime and newsprint. A marriage gets decent attention only at the time of nuptials. You might recall for instance the photographs flooded with smiles when the present United Progressive Alliance government was joined together in functional matrimony a little more than a thousand days ago. Such pictures aren’t news after 24 hours.
But a divorce can make news every day. There are so many issues to deal with. Who keeps the house after the split? That is a tough one since the house would never have been stable without the willing consent of both parties. The bickering can get intense over the most trivial detail, and each bicker feeds further demand from an insatiable media.
Accusations get hurled across that nasty wrestling pit called a television studio. Mud sticks. Everyone has heard of some happy marriage, for such things are still possible. Whoever heard of a happy divorce? Now that divorce proceedings have begun between the Congress and the Left, the best thing to do would be to make a quick and clean break. The House — the Lok Sabha of course — is now unstable. The partnership has become untenable.
The one thing that the Congress and the Left will not fight about is custody of the child. In three years, the Manmohan Singh government has produced just one child, the Indo-US nuclear deal. The Left has made it clear that it has serious doubts about the circumstances of its arrival. This government was elected because a majority of Indian voters rejected the fatuous claim that India was shining. That was a moment tailor-made for a new economic agenda that shifted the focus from wealth creation to wealth distribution.
Instead, this government of World Bank economists insisted that wealth creation was, in a very fundamental sense, incompatible with wealth distribution. It stuck doggedly to a crumbs policy. If it ensured a feast for the rich, there would always be enough crumbs for the poor. This, in essence, is the trickle-down theory advocated by the highest in the land, and applauded by all those given a free ticket to the table.
One could sense that elections were around the corner when the prime minister rediscovered the poor during his speech on the 60th Independence Day. In Indian democracy, the poor get homilies, while the rich get policies. If Dr Manmohan Singh had fought for and staked his government’s survival on an anti-poverty programme, no one would have dared to bring his government down. He would have won an election on his record, for the poor vote.
How poor is India? Some startling statistics have just been released by a forgotten wing of Dr Singh’s own administration, the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector. Around 80 per cent of India’s working population is in this sector. Nearly 80 per cent of this group earns less than 20 rupees a day and 85 per cent of this sub group is trapped in debt.
By that usual sleight of hand we have drawn an arbitrary line to define poverty: Rs12 a day constitutes the poverty line. This encourages the illusion that 77 per cent of India is now above the poverty line. It isn’t that much above in any case. Nor is this poverty line index-linked to inflation. Twelve rupees a day buys much less today than it did three years ago. The traditional poverty groups remain where they were: 88 per cent of Scheduled Tribes and Castes, 80 per cent of “Other Backward Classes” and 85 per cent of Muslims belong to the “poor and vulnerable” class.
If these statistics are lies the government should disown them, sack the author of the report, and produce alternative figures that indicate a different scenario. Dr Manmohan Singh cannot hide from facts by taking shelter behind silence.
Instead of concentrating on poverty, Dr Singh concentrated on George Bush. Heads of government who have invested in Bush at the expense of their national interest are on a losing streak this year. Tony Blair has disappeared into insignificance so quickly that his decade in office already seems like a mirage. Any good he might have done for his country has been lost in that colossal and unthinking blunder called Iraq. John Howard, the other great Bush ally, is heading for defeat in this year’s Australian elections.
Dr Singh always misunderstood the nature of the debate on the nuclear deal. That political faultline has now extended to the parties in his alliance, who did not have much to do with the decision but surrendered (unlike the Left) their independent judgment in order to hang on to office. Lalu Yadav, Sharad Pawar and M. Karunanidhi will be answerable to voters for a decision that they rubber-stamped without examining the consequences.
For some reason that one has been unable to fathom, Dr Singh once called protests against the Bush visit to India “communal”. If he thought that only Muslims were suspicious of his eagerness to accept any terms imposed by the Bush administration then I presume he has changed his views now. Any investment on such a scale, in both financial and strategic terms, cannot be pushed through by merely the will of a government. It has to be sifted through the process of national debate, particularly in parliament.
If the American legislature has the right to interfere in decision-making, and impose qualifications, why not the Indian legislature? Is the Indian MP less patriotic than the American senator, or indeed more ignorant? The logic of democracy travels in only one direction: the popular will. The prime minister pushed the pace by presenting his allies with a timetable that they were unable to accept.
There has also been a serious misunderstanding about the nature of government. India’s ambassador to Washington, an extremely capable diplomat, Ronen Sen, says that he has been privately assured that Washington will not react excessively if India uses the option to test. Alas, nations last longer than individuals. The life of this deal is estimated at around 40 years. Ronen Sen will not be ambassador that long. Bush will not be president after January 2009. What matters is the law of the land and the written record.
The law of America, by which every president is bound, is called the Hyde Act. It will prevail when a Democrat takes the White House from the Republicans. India’s national interest cannot be compromised on the strength of a private assurance. It is astonishing that a senior diplomat should make such a statement, when American negotiators and spokesmen have insisted that the law of their land will determine the course of their actions in any dispute. It is astounding that a government should accept this as some form of guarantee.
No marriage ever survived because of prolonged divorce proceedings. The time has come to go to a higher court than even the Indian parliament — to the people of India.
The writer is editor-in-chief of The Asian Age based in New Delhi
Prince William’s politburo
A FAVOURITE tactic in despotic regimes is to create toothless, ineffectual human rights commissions that are really fig leafs designed to cover for the regimes’ abuses. If such a commission happens to overstep its narrow brief by actually advocating human rights and making criticisms, the regime is generally quick to neuter it. Now it seems that Prince William County’s board of supervisors is taking its cues from just such cynical regimes.
That’s the impression given by a remarkable letter sent by Corey A. Stewart (R-At Large), chairman of the board, to the county’s human rights commission in the wake of the board’s vote last month to crack down on illegal immigrants by intensifying police enforcement and denying them some county services. Quite reasonably, the human rights commission formed a panel that began hearings on what the possible effect of the resolution might be, not just on undocumented immigrants but, given the risk of racial profiling, on Hispanics generally. The panel’s intent was to issue a cautionary report that would point out potential risks to human rights and that might guide the policy’s implementation.
Fair enough, right? Wrong. Never mind that the human rights commission had reached no conclusions, written no report and made no public comments. The very idea that it might do so — and specifically, that it might be critical — appeared to inflame Mr Stewart and his fellow county supervisors. Writing for the board, he warned the commission that if it had any criticisms, it should keep them to itself.
“It is not the role of Board-appointed citizen advisory groups to critique the Board’s policies after those policies have been adopted,” he cautioned haughtily. Rather than second-guessing the board, he suggested, it would be more helpful if the commission would assist in selling its anti-illegal-immigrant resolution to the public.
So much for freedom of speech, open debate and any notion that the commission might do its job aggressively.
By imagining that the county’s human rights watchdogs perform a public relations function for policymakers, Mr Stewart and the board betray their disdain for the commission’s work.
— The Washington Post