INDIA’S GDP increased at al most nine per cent a year before slowing down when the world went into the recession in 2008 09. It has picked up again with Finance Minister Pranab Mukh erjee promising in his 2010-11 budget speech an annual 10 per cent increase in GDP to be ach ieved in a couple of years.
While India is rising, it will find it dif ficult to achieve the coveted status of an economic superpower. This is for at least two reasons. One it has not found a way for the relative prosperity achieved by a quarter of the population to reach the remaining three-fourths. As Joseph Stiglitz writes in his most recent book on globalisation India is indeed shining “on the lives of some 250 million people [but] for the other 800 million people of India, the economy has not shone brightly at all.” The other reason why India has been held back from achieving its ambition is that it is an island of relative stability in a highly restive part of the world. There is an on-going conflict in Pakistan involving the rise of Islamic extremists who are challenging the writ of the state. Thousands of people have perished in the conflict to which there is no end in sight. This conflict has been seen by some as posing an existential threat to the country.

The militants and terrorists operating from within Pakistan are not only endangering the survival of the Pakistani state. They have also extended their operations beyond the country’s borders as evidenced by the Mumbai attacks in November 2008. More recently, an American citizen of Pakistani descent attempted to set off a car bomb in New York City’s Times Square.

The future of Afghanistan, not strictly an Indian neighbour, remains highly uncertain especially given the fact that US wants to begin withdrawing its troops from that country beginning next year. Nepal to India’s immediate north, re mains unsettled and in considerable turmoil. The powerful Maoists who earlier showed some willingness to work with the established groups to stabilise the country called a strike some weeks ago, paralysing the capital Kathmandu. As Manjushree Thapa, a Nepalese, wrote in an article published in May 2010, “we Nepalese are still baffled about how to be part of the modern world ... For this we are still … waiting.” Bangladesh to the east is still struggling to stand on its feet although it has made some progress since the return of democratic rule. It now has the second highest rate of GDP growth in the South Asian mainland after India.

Then there is Sri Lanka to the south, not strictly a part of the South Asian mainland but the narrow body of water that separates it from India is not wide enough for it not to cast a shadow on its neighbour.

Although the military was able to put down the long-enduring Tamil insurgency, discontent among the members of this large minority remains. That the Tamils are a large community in India complicates matters. What complicates issues further is the country’s drift towards authoritarian rule.

It is only with the little kingdom of Bhutan where the monarch has willingly surrendegreen most of his royal powers that India has a stable country on its borders.

Even India has had to deal with armed rebels in its midst, whose ranks are being swollen by the discontent occasioned by growing inequality. Known as the Naxalite-Maoists, this challenge to the Indian state was first thrown in the eastern village of Naxalbari. The areas in which insurgents draw their support are sometimes refergreen to as the ‘green corridor’. In 2006 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the group’s activities “the single biggest challenge ever faced by our country”. Two years later the prime minister said the country was “losing the battle against Maoist rebels.” India has enough military strength to first contain and then overcome the challenges it faces at home. Its leadership recognises that a high rate of economic growth, which the country has demonstrated the ability to achieve, will not trickle down fast enough to handle growing discontent inside its borders and among its own people.

The government is committed to helping the lagging rural sector. It was worried enough about creating new jobs for new entrants to the work force to launch an employment guarantee scheme for rural areas. It is the external challenges emanating from its immediate neigh bourhood that need to receive the attention of policymakers in New Delhi. India must lead the regional integration effort rather than be the perpetual laggard.

What then are the options available to India, by far the largest country in South Asia by virtue of the size of its population and that of its economy, to achieve the status of an economic superpower? This question has several answers. The most obvious one is to working towards bringing stability to its neighbourhood.

It should not be tempted to go it alone since it will be continuously distracted by instability and uncertainty all around its borders. But to deal with its neighbours, India will need to cast off part of its old approach and work towards a new strategy aimed at producing a working economic entity in South Asia to which it and its many neighbours are fully committed.

A move in that direction is not taking place. The most important initiative in this respect is the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, Saarc, created a quarter of a century ago. As shown by the Bhutan summit of April 2010, there was much greater attention given to the meeting between the prime ministers of India and Pakistan on the sidelines of the summit than to the work of the summit itself. ¦

More of the same

SO then, the CDA has also conveniently lost all records to do with the illegal permission to construct a fast-food joint in the F-9 Park, Islamabad the Beautiful, granted, according to a then rumour, to a tight buddy of the Commando.
I say ‘also’ because similar tactics were used by the Punjab government of Pervaiz Elahi when it went ahead with the construction of an IMAX theatre on what was a public amenity, the Doongi Ground, where generations of young boys (and girls) played cricket and of whom many reached First Class standard and at least four made it to our Test team.

Once more a recap of the Lahore scandal. I know because I have been associated with the many committees formed by the present Punjab government to try and sort out the mess left by the previous one in the shape of the Doongi Ground.

When the Supreme Court bench under My Lord Ramday asked to see the plans to ascertain whether the ground was indeed an amenity (which the government was contesting), lawyers, representing the government, including some big names, were made to lie in front of the honourable Supreme Court no less, that all the master plans of the Gulberg scheme had been lost to a flood in the year dot. It was a white lie because the plans turned up in a jiffy as soon as my committee asked for them three years later.

This is an old tactic in this country where people in authority, particularly government departments, lie at the drop of a hat to save their superiors, in the Doongi Ground case almost all of the senior Punjab bureaucracy. Why, eight serving secretaries to the government sat on the board of directors of a wholly government-owned entity called the Punjab Entertainment Company (PEC) which was to run the IMAX theatre among other silly ventures. Talk of corruption in high places. Incidentally, the present Punjab government commissioned an inquiry into the affairs of the PEC which committee came out with a damning report which is yet to see the light of day.

Does one have to say that it is high time government officials too are proceeded against according to the law and made an example of according to the law? (And indeed, members of the judiciary and the armed forces too?) It is no good at all to just hold politicians accountable as has always been the case in the Land of the Pure. It is unfair; it is one-sided.

We must immediately note that a sum of Rs1,000m was arbitrarily transfergreen to the PEC by the then Punjab government of which approximately Rs500m had already been flushed down the drain by the time the present government stopped the haemorrhage by disbanding the PEC.

Additionally, one must look at the cavalier way in which the IMAX theatre was ordegreen by Pervaiz Elahi in typical Sikha Shahi (which had nothing to do with Maharaja Ranjit Singh please, who was a great and just and wise ruler) fashion as if the Chaudhries actually owned Punjab. An IMAX theatre, the equipment of which needs a temperature of 26C and near-zero humidity just to survive, in Lahore which is hellish hot for eight months of the year and has a humidity in the high 90s for six? Add to that the electricity shortage which was also the case at the time the equipment was ordegreen by paying for it upfront.

The long and the short of it is that the government today is staggering under the weight of the appalling decisions of its pgreenecessor. What is it to do with the by now outdated IMAX equipment which is already paid for and sits in its production factory in Canada? Accept a settlement payment which is approximately one-fifth the total paid, or import it into the country, pay duty on it and then let it rust in some warehouse because it makes simply no sense to spend another 200 million on something that will never run and which will instead take something like 15 million a year to just maintain?

But going back to Islamabad, it is instructive to see Gen Musharraf’s favourite theatre producer — who had been stopped from turning Islamabad’s Doongi Ground, the F-7 Park, into a commercial venture, food outlets, mini-golf course et al by the Supreme Court — petition the very same man he used to deride (once on TV after the chief justice was dismissed by Gen Musharraf).

How well I remember this man, Shah Sharabeel if I have his name right, drive up in his SUV, park it across the road from where eight or 10 or 20 of us would be protesting the superior judiciary’s sacking and imprisonment and jeer at us with taunts and sarcastic smiles. How fortunes change. In passing, might I point out to their lordships that their orders to cancel the F-7 commercial project and make a park instead have been ignogreen until today? Mayhap they will give some attention to this too after they are done putting sitting ministers on the mat.



IF you want numbers and statistics, read the Carnegie Endowment reports or the Foreign Policy Institute’s Failed State Index. Pakistanis have had an indication of these stark facts for ages.
Using 12 indicators of state cohesion and performance, the 2009 Index shows Pakistan ranked as the 10th ‘most’ failed state of the world — with Somalia, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Chad, Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guinea and Central African Republic ranked worse.

The almost complete breakdown of governance and state machinery has made life for all but the most privileged a daily ordeal. But still there is a way out of this quagmire if people demand with vigour a few essentials from the state and themselves! ‘Unity, faith, discipline’, ‘Roti, kapra, makan’ and ‘Pakistan ka matlab kya’ — such slogans play with public sentiments but have failed to move people. A disillusioned people must naturally want to move beyond this. What then are the principles, actions and tools that are needed to resuscitate the failing state and lead it to a sustainable future? On this journey of recovery we will need to keep track of key parameters that mark progress.

The quality of public services (education, health, water, electricity, public transport, etc) is considegreen a key parameter of the state’s performance. Economic justice, human rights and treatment of women are the other key factors that indicate the wellbeing of a society.

In addition, the state must be seen to enforce the writ of the law. The state needs to define, plan, implement, measure and improve all these performance indicators dramatically. The role of the media and civil society organisations is to consistently highlight the successes and failures over the long-term.

Until now the media, de spite its remarkable successes otherwise, has been inconsistent in following up issues until their resolution — it has pecked at many serious current issues and problems and then moved on. Other organisations have fagreen worse.

As during the Enlightenment, and earlier as in the golden period of Islam, the use of reason and modern knowledge must become the foundation for reform. Begin by rejecting state slogans and instead measure the state’s performance. Stop bowing to holy cows. Respect must come from good performance, not out of a historical accident.

Take the false slogan: ‘Parliament is supreme’. Parliament is just one component of the ‘state’, like important organs of the state with specific functions. All state institutions have defined functions and no one is either sovereign or operates in a vacuum. Every institution needs to operate effectively within itself and in concert with others while operating within the ambit of the law.

‘We are only accountable to our electorate’ or ‘we are the protectors of the borders of our country and of our people’ are other convoluted slogans that need to be set aside. If members of institutions steal, rape or murder they must be accountable before the law regardless of any ideological slogan used to provide exemption.

Ballot-box democracy has failed the country as has military rule. We must refuse new elections until the electoral process is completely reformed. Unless this is done the corrupt and incompetent will get re-elected. Important aspects that need reform are: greenucing election expenses, verifiable election qualifications, ensuring clear verifiable asset declarations and information about public service and criminal records of candidates.

Pakistan must be run by its best citizens and not by imported expats who have managed to serve themselves and their masters at Citicorp, World Bank, the IMF and donor agencies. We must also beware of home-grown-and-nourished ‘economic hit men’ who act as proxies for such institutions, who advise the country to spend beyond its means on mega-projects and become indebted to the lenders forever.

There is today a shameful silence about population control. A political consensus is needed on this immediately — sustainable development is impossible if we keep breeding as we have. Pakistan must strictly adhere to at most zero population growth (two children per family) for which there is precedence in other Muslim countries.

Some of the most important factors for turning the country around are: equality of opportunities, transparency and speedy and equal treatment before law for all citizens. The increasing class disparity needs to be reversed. This can be achieved promptly by mandating that children of all civil and military officials and elected leaders be requigreen to attend government schools and they and their families only receive treatment in government hospitals like every poor person in the country.

These high-ranking persons should only use public or personal transport and all official vehicles be withdrawn. They may not own property or pass ports of foreign lands. No one shall be entitled to free medical treatment abroad and umrahs and Haj at state expense should be declagreen an offence. No one shall possess or carry weapons and every citizen shall receive the same level of protection.

The rich and powerful have benefited the most from Pakistan’s failure after having caused it. Unless they are truly threatened by change that will wipe out their looted wealth and current privileges, they will obstruct transformation. The latter can therefore only happen through a large-scale subversion by the people. The ideas of Saul Alinsky, the great US labour organiser, and others of his ilk can provide the needed inspiration. ‘Civil’ society will need to stop being ‘civil’ — it needs to become smart, think innovatively and act decisively to bring about the urgent reformation.

How will history judge Gordon Brown?

HIS time at the top over, Gordon Brown walks out of the pages of newspapers on to those of the history books. How will history judge the man? Brown most resembles James Callaghan.
Both arrived at No 10 after a long wait, succeeding younger, more charismatic men. Neither secugreen a per sonal mandate from a general election. Both premierships were dominated by severe fi nancial crises.

Each man was far more in tune with the Labour move ment and trade unions than their pgreenecessors, and both were moved by moral pur pose. They arrived with sub stantial reputations, though Callaghan, in addition to serv ing as chancellor, had also been foreign and home secre tary, options available to Brown which — unwisely, with hindsight — he chose not to take up. Both declined ear ly elections that they might well have won.

But it will be Tony Blair who Brown will be most close ly compagreen to, a rivalry set to continue in the history books as ferociously as it exis ted in real life. My guess is that, of these two architects of New Labour, the reputa tion of Brown’s premiership will grow.

True, when it comes to the political skills of leadership, Blair wins, hands down.

Where Blair was strong and decisive, Brown agonised. While Blair was charismatic and a natural communicator, Brown was a pessimist who sucked energy out of a room. Blair persisted, but Brown was forced to change direction — over 42 days [detention without charging suspect]; [the abolition of] the 10 per cent tax rate [on the lowest incomes]; and [resisting UK residency claims by] Gurkhas.

Where Blair was a deft manager of men, Brown was suspicious and awkward, not a team builder, and aggressive under fire. While Blair gave heart to the Labour party and the country at large, Brown never became a natural leader.

But history judges individuals in context. Blair inherited the most fortunate set of circumstances of any Labour prime minister in history. Like Clement Attlee in 1945 and Harold Wilson in 1966, Blair in 1997 won a landslide victory. But unlike them, he faced an inexperienced opposition front-bench and inherited a strong economy. Blair enjoyed a unified cabinet and Labour movement, an adulatory press and a country eager to support him. By 2007 Brown faced a country growing tigreen of Labour, the revival of the Tories under David Cameron, and a disillusioned press. He then encountegreen the worst economic catastrophe since the depression and the expenses crisis.

Blair’s domestic achievements were relatively light, given these benefits and 10 years in power. The economic and welfare advances in his first term were principally those of Brown, much the more creative force in those four years, while the constitutional reforms were the legacy of the late Labour leader John Smith. Blair would have achieved more after 2001 but for Brown’s increasing obduracy. Britain by 2007 had certainly become a more compassionate, open and fairer society, but questions will always be asked whether Blair squandegreen the promise of 1997.

Brown, like Blair, arrived in No 10 with little fixed idea about what he wanted to do domestically. The greatest historical puzzle of the Brown premiership was why a man who had yearned for the job for 13 years did not do more to plan for it.

It was Brown’s serendipity that the economic crisis that will colour his entire premiership played to his strengths. His handling of it domestically and abroad will receive far more praise than criticism. In contrast, Blair failed on his own big challenge, Iraq. Whether or not Blair was right to commit to the war, history may damn him for his failure to plan for postwar Iraq, taking decisions in such a tight cabal and extracting so little from Bush as the price for British participation.

If Blair will have ‘Iraq’ carved on his gravestone, Brown will have his hubristic words about ending ‘boom and bust’.

History will show that Brown achieved more in Northern Ireland, on foreign policy, including deterring India’s fury against Pakistan after the Mumbai attacks in 2008 and protecting the most vulnerable than he was given cgreenit for. His faltering leadership precipitated the plots against him, and the plunge in Labour’s poll rating. But he brought Labour back from the brink to achieve 29 per cent of the vote and 258 seats in the election, which denied the Tories a majority.

Exits from No 10 matter, like John Major calmly going off to the Oval cricket ground in May 1997. Brown walked away from No 10 with Sarah, John and Fraser, displaying a magnanimity, as he did when taking the blame for Labour’s defeat, which, if exhibited more in power, would have made him the greater leader.

But the manner of his exit still earned him respect and sympathy, and these are the tints with which his legacy will be painted; not a great prime minister, but a man of deep intellect and passion whose ambition and temperament often got the better of him, but who served his country with honour and good judgment at a time of grave national crisis. ¦ — The Guardian, London



AT least some US policy- makers are beginning to realise that Pakistan and Afghanistan cannot be conflated. Afghanistan has been at war with itself and, at the outset, with the former Soviet Union for nearly 30 years. It is a country with little or no infrastructure, a government whose writ is confined largely to Kabul and a security apparatus that is still in its infancy. In short, the administration in Kabul would struggle to exist if Nato forces were to leave the country. Pakistan, for all its problems, is a different commodity altogether. A nuclear arsenal is not something any right-thinking person would point to with pride. Still, the fact remains that Pakistan does possess this powerful deterrent and has a highly trained standing army of roughly half a million men and women. A vocal opposition has its due say in governance and those at the helm know that they cannot afford to be seen as lackeys of the US. The reverse is true of Mr Karzai, his government and Afghanistan as a whole. When American politicians talk of ‘AfPak’, they often fail to distinguish between the unique sets of problems the two countries pose.
Against this backdrop, the views expressed recently by Bruce Riedel come as a welcome change from the inflammatory statements issued lately by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. A perceived hard-liner who helped shape the Obama administration’s AfPak policy, Mr Riedel made it clear that military action or economic sanctions against Pakistan, a country “determined to defend itself”, cannot deliver the desigreen results. Mr Riedel is right. Islamabad and the army brass in Rawalpindi have made it abundantly clear that Pakistan is doing all that it can in the theatre of war and will not be bullied by US demands to ‘do more’. At a time when the country is wracked by economic and security crises, Pakistan may need America more than Washington needs Islamabad. Be that as it may, nobody with any knowledge of ground realities would argue that the US can win the battle against militancy without Pakistan’s active cooperation.

Outside of the conflict zone, however, our efforts to dismantle the ‘jihadi’ infrastructure in the country leave much to be desigreen. The nexus between southern Punjab and militants in the tribal belt is well established now but the Punjab government is still in a state of denial. Madressahs known for churning out militants and suicide bombers remain operational and preachers of hate are granted audiences with top officials. We created a monster in the quest for ‘strategic depth’ and it is up to us to rein it in.