Growing internet use but slow results
AN improved infrastructure, lower costs and a vast array of productivity and consumption possibilities have transformed internet usage in the country. In the Information Economy Report 2017, released this week by the UN Conference on Trade and Development, it has been estimated that 16m Pakistanis went online for the first time between 2012 and 2015, nearly 50pc of the internet usage base in the country at the end of that period. That is unsurprising, perhaps even an underestimation: the advent of 3G, 4G and higher-speed internet in the country is attracting millions of new users as smartphones in particular proliferate. Clearly, there is potential for even faster growth. A recent report in this newspaper examined CPEC-related plans for a revamped communications network in Pakistan, fibre optic connectivity with China and a new submarine landing station in Gwadar.
Growing internet usage, however, is not necessarily translating into greater gains for the country in the global digital economy. Part of the problem is a policymaking logjam. The UNCTAD report notes: “In Pakistan, in 2015 the government constituted a high-level working group to develop a Strategic E-Commerce Policy Framework for the country. The group, which has the full support of the prime minister, is led by the commerce ministry, and comprises officials also from the ministries of information technology and finance, the State Bank of Pakistan and the Pakistan Software Export Board.” Laudable as that initiative may be, the results have yet to be seen — a bureaucratic morass from which few gains are ever realised. Progress on rationalising costs and tax structures, creating genuine, stable incentives for businesses, and promoting digital financial services is slow. The problem is especially acute in the fast-moving digital economy. The global advent of the ‘internet of things’, cloud computing, big data and 3D printing, for example, has already occurred while Pakistan is yet to implement global digital payment standards such as PayPal, though there are suggestions that it may finally be implemented.
There are also concerns about the government’s ability to treat internet-based companies fairly in a system where arbitrary decisions can be taken. The possibility of banning websites at a moment’s notice, without due process or advance notice, undermines the potential of e-commerce and stable rules that allow for the deepening of the digital economy. More generally, the Freedom on the Net 2016 report by Freedom House highlighted a danger of perpetuating existing socioeconomic imbalances in the country with rural and less-well-off areas left behind the more lucrative urban markets in the race towards digitisation. As ever, the potential for a transformative change in the economy exists, but only if smarter, business- and people-friendly policies are introduced.
US gun laws
IF there is one piece of news that emerges at regular intervals from the US, it is about gun violence.
It is a sobering thought then that the carnage at an outdoor country music festival on Sunday in Las Vegas may not have been so shocking but for the huge number of casualties. Otherwise, it would have been just another one of the six mass shootings — defined as those with at least four casualties — that occurred in the US this past week alone.
But in what turned out to be the deadliest such incident in modern US history, at least 58 people died and over 500 were injured when Stephen Paddock, from his vantage point on the 32nd floor of a nearby hotel, unloaded his weapons into the crowd below. The firing only ended with Paddock’s suicide, just as police stormed the hotel suite where he was holed up.
There they discovered an arsenal of 23 assault rifles, of which a dozen were fitted with a device that enables semi-automatics to discharge rapid fire rounds like automatics.
While Paddock’s motives may be unclear thus far, the incident has revived the debate in the US about its lax gun laws that allow unstable and violent individuals access to deadly weapons, often with terrible consequences.
Between 2001 and 2010, there were over 400,000 gun deaths in the US, of which more than 153,000 were homicides. The solution, although not black-and-white, points towards strengthening regulations on the purchase of firearms, a position that a majority of Americans support.
However, efforts to bring about even common-sense restrictions fail repeatedly because they come up against one of the most powerful interest groups in the country: the National Rifle Association.
With its enormous resources that it pours into the election campaigns of many politicians, the NRA exerts an outsize influence over Congress. Therefore, when demands are made for gun legislation to be tightened, usually in the aftermath of a mass murder, most lawmakers obfuscate the issue with tropes about the constitutionally protected right to bear arms or the fallacious argument that it is people, not guns, that kill.
Significantly, even when mass murderers are driven by extremist motives, the response centres around the politics of religious extremism and its international dimensions while the clear and present danger is neatly sidestepped. The stonewalling on gun laws is as much, if not more, about politics.
‘Disappeared’ Turks
ALREADY indifferent to the vanishing of its own citizens, the government now appears least concerned as the same ‘magic’ is applied to foreigners residing in this country. Late last month in Lahore, the mysterious disappearance of a Turkish family, whose head had worked for the Pak-Turk schools here, triggered a wave of fear across the country. An element of greater dread was added when sometime later reports came in from Khairpur about an alleged kidnapping attempt of the Turkish family of another man said to be working with the same organisation. The gravity of the situation has to some extent been captured by a petition moved in the Sindh High Court. Acting upon it, the court on Tuesday restrained the government from deporting Turkish teachers working with the schools — a fate many fear could befall them after the Lahore incident in which Mesut Kacmaz, a well-known senior executive working with the Pak-Turk system, went missing along with his wife and their two daughters.
The Kacmaz family had been residing in Pakistan by virtue of having acquired refugee certificates from the UNHCR. Their disappearance is a reminder of how security agencies in the country — and indeed in other parts of the world — often swoop down on suspects and whisk them away. It is difficult not to link their case to the aborted coup in Turkey last year for which the well-known cleric Fethullah Gulen was held responsible by Ankara. The events in Turkey led to Islamabad asking the staff of the Pak-Turk schools to leave Pakistan, and perhaps to warnings that their participation in political activities could annoy the PML-N government’s friends in Turkey. If that was a step which spurred calls for fair treatment and transparency, the latest disappearance of the Turkish family and accounts of the alleged hounding of Pak-Turk schools could result in harsh criticism of the government here — and deservedly so. Transparency is sorely missing. The authorities here must rectify the situation.
Source: Editorials
Published in Dawn, October 5th, 2017