September 06, 2016
Future or failure?
We seem to have once again wriggled our way out of incurring any financial penalties for the failure to start off the Iran-Pakistan Gas Pipeline Project. The perennial impasse over the project, which was recommended in the early 2000s, continues to make no sense at all. According the agreement, Pakistan is to pay Iran $1 million a day for failing to lay down its 781 kilometre share of the pipeline by the start of 2015. This means Pakistan owes Iran at least $605 million for its failure to fulfil the terms of the agreement. The only good news is that Iran does not seem keen on actually charging Pakistan the said amount and is showing considerable patience to allow the pipeline to come to fruition. The pipeline is now scheduled to be completed by the end of 2017, by which time the penalty owed by Pakistan will have come close to the actual cost of the pipeline.
The sanctions against Iran have been cited as the reason for the delay in building the pipeline, but those sanctions were in place when the pipeline agreement was being signed. It was a risk Pakistan was willing to take on. If anything, the situation has only gotten better after the slow lifting of the UN sanctions on it. Pakistan, however, appears forever caught in the cycle of renegotiating the terms of the pipeline with Iran. Now, our officials are attempting to change the date of the penalty clause to sometime in the year 2018. The IP Pipeline Project is vital for Pakistan’s future as the country remains energy-deficient. With Pakistan’s gas reserves depleting fast, the constant delays over the pipeline with Iran make no sense. Renegotiating the gas rate with Iran by dangling the spectre of another potential project, Tapi, may not work because Iran by then may no longer feel as ‘benevolent’ as it is right now. We must complete our end of the pipeline so that it can start bringing much-needed gas to Pakistan. Iran’s own failure to complete its side of the pipeline may partly explain its willingness to renegotiate terms, but this cannot be an agreement that remains on paper. Pakistan needs what Iran is offering and the project should not become a costly failure for us.
ODI rankings
The breakneck speed at which cricket has evolved was evident as Pakistan, freshly minted as the number one team in the world in the traditional Test format, was thrashed 4-1 in the ODI series and remains rooted at ninth in the world rankings. We are last among all established cricketing nations in the ranking and even below minnows Bangladesh. As things stand, Pakistan will not get automatic entry into the 2018 World Cup and will have to battle the likes of Ireland, UAE and Zimbabwe in a playoff. Should we not show drastic improvement by then, failing to make it to the World Cup is not inconceivable. The biggest problem Pakistan cricket faces is its archaic approach to batting. We still cling on to the tactics which won us the 1992 World Cup: to start slowly and keep wickets in hand to hit out at the end. The problem with that, as England showed in smashing a world record 444 against us, is that the rest of the world goes hell for leather from ball one and never stops. Our average scores of 250 have little chance of being successfully defended in an age of flat batting pitches, fielding restrictions and short boundaries.
Captain Azhar Ali may have consistently scored runs but did so at far too slow a pace to help us reach winning scores. His position as skipper, and indeed his place in the team, may be under doubt. England greatly benefited from all their bowlers being more than capable batsmen while we persist with specialist bowlers and have few all-rounders. Our fielding is, as always, a shambles. But we should resist blaming the players for our ODI woes. The fault lies in a dysfunctional system which has done nothing to identify the specialists needed for this very specialised form of the game. Back home, we have yet again changed around the domestic structure and added a new domestic T20 tournament which reduced the total number of teams and ensured the monopoly Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi have over the sport would be maintained. We may want to consider not just specialist players but specialist coaches too for the shorter formats of the game and an emphasis on qualities such as bowling at the death and clearing the ropes, which are not as necessary in Test matches. As justifiably proud as we are at being top of the pile in Tests, we need to ensure the stigma of being bottom of the heap in ODIs is soon removed.
Poverty report
The Sustainable Development Policy Institute has published a timely report titled ‘Geography of Poverty in Pakistan’, which looks at national, provincial and district level trends from 2008 to 2013. The report not only highlights the districts where poverty is high but also tracks the changes in poverty levels in individual districts over a five-year period. At the provincial level, it is not surprising that the highest levels of poverty are found in Balochistan (63 percent) – followed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (39 percent), Sindh (37.5 percent) and Punjab (24 percent) respectively. But the report notes that focusing on the poorest provinces alone will not do as the largest number of poor people is in Punjab.
Rural-urban disparity too remains high and is at its worst in Sindh. This immediately suggests an area of focus for the Sindh government to focus on with its poverty reduction programmes. The report contains another alarming detail. The entire population of the two districts of Kohlu and Kohistan – in Balochistan and KP, respectively – lives below the poverty level. These districts are joined by almost two dozen others, which have over 72 percent of their populations living in poverty. It takes no genius to suggest that there is a need for the government to develop poverty reduction plans for the most impoverished districts in the country. The task is most difficult in Balochistan with 23 of its districts living in extreme poverty. There will certainly need to be national-level coordination on this issue. While the report does offer a lot in terms of data, it does seem to underestimate urban poverty. This is probably an outcome of the baseline indicators used. Perhaps, more research on urban poverty will help the picture become even more clear.