Shutting parliament out
Monday, 20 Apr, 2009
FOURTEEN months, 1,841 incidents of terrorism, 1,395 lives lost. The number of inquiry reports presented in the National Assembly? Zero. Democracy, the politicians seem to forget, isn’t about form over substance. When there isn’t a National Assembly or its composition is jiggered to please a strongman, the politicians are rightly up in arms. But once a relatively freely elected and representative National Assembly is in place, the government of the day seems to regard its mere existence as enough for the democratic project. It is not. Particularly when it comes to militancy and its roots — about which there is still a disastrous lack of consensus — the government must do everything it can to involve parliament.
What can parliament do? At the counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency level, it can assess what has gone wrong in the state’s response and what to do about it. The nearly 2,000 incidents of terrorism have occurred across the length and breadth of the country. What happens in southern Punjab is connected to what occurs in Swat which is connected to what happens in Fata which may, perhaps sooner than some realise, be connected to a surge of terrorism in Karachi. At the tactical level, the fight against militancy in Pakistan’s cities, for example, will no doubt have to largely be fought by the provincial governments. But the National Assembly has an important role to play, too. Consider the fact that even when the police do capture militants and their leaders, successful prosecutions are rare. This happens for many reasons: the police investigations are conducted unprofessionally, the prosecutors rely on tainted evidence and witnesses, the law needs to be updated, etc. Where more resources are needed by the provinces, parliament can look into the matter and devise a national response. Where the legal side needs to be revamped, parliament can enact the necessary laws. But if the National Assembly isn’t seized of the matter of terrorism generally, if even the details of terrorist acts are not laid before it, it can hardly be expected to develop a response, let alone a credible, coherent one.
No doubt last October a special joint session of parliament was convened on the security crisis and a special parliamentary committee on national security was formed to develop a strategy to counter militancy and terrorism, a strategy which has now been presented before parliament. But absent a consensus on what is the threat from militancy, policy recommendations will inevitably be what they are: weak and desultory. Put the facts and figures and reports before parliament. Let the people’s representatives see for themselves how often the evidence points towards the Baitullah Mehsuds and the Lashkar-i-Jhangvis and how often towards the Indians or Americans. Empower parliament with information before expecting it to reach the right conclusions.
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Environment in education
Monday, 20 Apr, 2009
‘CATCH ’em early’, so goes a famous dictum that could not be truer when it comes to teaching children about subjects that touch on matters of life and death. Thus awareness of environmental concerns and of the need to preserve the ecological balance can facilitate society’s efforts to promote public health by fighting pollution and environmental degradation. It is an encouraging sign that environmentalists and educationists are now recognising the importance of this approach. In Islamabad, the federal minister for environment promised to include environment studies in the school curricula as part of the government’s efforts to motivate the youth to become involved in a national effort to address environmental concerns. There was also the report of a school principal from Multan who spoke of the need to include environment studies in the school and college syllabi.
Now that this recognition is gaining strength, one hopes that it will be translated into action soon. The environment minister assured his audience that a new syllabus was under preparation and courses on the environment would be incorporated in it soon. However, it is a sad thought that given the pace at which things move in the education ministry it may take several years for the changes to prove effective. Meanwhile, serious damage would have already been inflicted on the environment. Why can’t a beginning be made right away — say on Earth Day next week — by getting all teachers to play a role in promoting a healthy environment in the course of their teaching?
While designing a course on environmental studies for different levels would be time-consuming, environmental issues can be informally integrated with all other subjects. A highly motivated teacher who is conscious of environmental concerns can inculcate in children an interest in the preservation of nature more effectively than the best of textbooks. This would also create an interdisciplinary understanding of the environment. After all, environmental concerns are multi-sectoral and knowledge about them cannot be imparted by ignoring other subjects. Some educational institutions in the private sector have been introducing their students to this important issue by adopting a practical approach. Their children have been participating in tree plantation campaigns, cleaning the beaches and learning about turtles from the WWF. GCSE courses now offer environmental management as a subject. This indicates the changing priorities of academia abroad. The sooner we catch up the better as it would only be in our own interest to do so.
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Salary raise for police
Monday, 20 Apr, 2009
WHAT motivates people to work well? Part of the answer is: remuneration — and they must be paid well if performance is expected. After all, it is those who are not distracted by financial worries who can focus their minds on the task ahead and put their energies to work. Going by this logic, the salary raise that was announced for police in Punjab the other day makes sense. In recent years, the cost of living has increased phenomenally and government salaries have hardly kept pace. In fact, the police have had it worse than many other government workers. Their pay scales and remunerations have lagged far behind their counterparts in other departments. Even within the police force there have been disparities with some like the national highways and motorways police drawing bigger salaries than those whose job is to maintain law and order and secure people’s properties and lives — at the risk of their own.
All said the raise comes at a time when the performance of the Punjab police has perhaps been at its worst. The provincial police force seems to have failed in all three of its core functions: providing people protection against crime, maintaining law and order and securing VIPs. Street crime is on the rise, the general law and order situation in the province is abysmal and the attack on the Sri Lankan team last month proved that even VIPs are vulnerable if their security is left to the Punjab police. Coming at such a time, the massive salary raise almost appears to reward inefficiency.
A better way of giving the police salaries compatible with those of other government servants and in line with the economic realities would have been to tag the raise with structural and institutional reforms in the police force. The so-called thana culture that persists stubbornly and the fact that the police are hardly answerable to any political authority below the chief minister are the two main hurdles in the way of improving police performance. Keeping them as they are and allowing their salaries to double in one go is, in fact, to throw good money after the bad.
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OTHER VOICES - North American Press A clean water act
Monday, 20 Apr, 2009
A clean water act
CLEAN water policy is in a terrible muddle, and the country has the Supreme Court to thank for it. The 1972 Clean Water Act was written to protect all the waters and wetlands of the United States. Two unfortunate Supreme Court decisions narrowed its scope, weakened its safeguards and thoroughly confused the federal agencies responsible for enforcing it.
...The remedy lies in a Senate bill called the Clean Water Restoration Act.... The good news is that Lisa Jackson, President Obama’s new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, cares about clean water issues....
... An internal EPA report furnished to Congress last year revealed that the agency had dropped or delayed more than 400 cases involving suspected violations of the law.... The reason in every instance was that regulators did not know whether the streams and wetlands in question were covered by the law.
Until the two Supreme Court rulings, the Clean Water Act had been broadly interpreted by courts and by federal regulators to shield all the waters of the United States.... The Supreme Court, however, exploiting ambiguities in the law, effectively decreed that only navigable, permanent water bodies deserve protection.
... The Clean Water Restoration Act would establish, once and for all, that federal protections apply to all waters, as Congress intended in 1972.... — (April 17)
Job of newspapers
THREE newspapers are being honoured ... for a kind of journalism that is acutely endangered. The Taylor Family Award for Fairness in Newspapers ... honours traditional newspaper values of balance, accuracy and transparency that are too often lost in all the talk about broken business models and online competition.
... It took thousands of documents and hundreds of interviews for The Charlotte Observer, winner of the award, to uncover horrifying patterns of worker abuse at a North Carolina poultry processing plant....
The Columbus Dispatch spent six months analysing whether proposed legislation targeting illegal immigrants would be right for Ohio. Forgoing easy ‘balance’ by quoting advocates on either side of an emotional issue, the paper’s team delved into databases to trace immigration’s actual effect on jobs, education, crime and healthcare....
.... Quality journalism — the type that verifies claims, shines its light into every corner and demands attribution — is expensive. A blogger with a slingshot can hit a few targets, but can’t easily take on entrenched institutions. In 2002, the Globe exposed the cover-up of child sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Boston — an effort that cost the paper on the order of $1m.
... It isn’t news that The Boston Globe is facing an existential crisis. But journalism of the sort only great newspapers provide is essential to every person in a democracy. We don’t yet know all the answers to this crisis. But we know the stakes. — (April 16)