As far as the ground realities are concerned, I know one thing for sure that the revival of magistracy is inevitable for the smooth running of district administration. Judicial officers are neither trained nor inclined to handle the quotidian tasks of law and order.

Have you ever seen a Sessions judge, checking the hoarders & busting the machinations of terrorists?

It has happened in the past. It is happening once again now. No sooner the drought fades away, the files will be back on the shelf. The concern, the tragedy and the lessons that one heard repeatedly will soon be forgotten.

Drought meanwhile is fast sinking in despite the monsoon aberrations. India’s vulnerability to slip into a serious drought even with a slight delay in monsoon rains has grown over the years. Such has been the excessive groundwater withdrawal over the years, as a result of the emphasis on intensive farming that Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan will not have any water left underground for irrigation by 2025.

The alarm bells had been ringing for long. For instance, in Punjab, where groundwater withdrawal has always exceeded its natural replenishment, every year 45 per cent more underground water is being mined. Punjab, which provides nearly 50 per cent of the country’s food surplus, is paying a price for ensuring the nation’s food security.

What is not known or little understood is that Punjab is fast moving towards desertification, a process that is entirely man-made. For several years it was known that of the 138 development blocks in Punjab, 108 have been categorised as ‘dark zones’ meaning 98 per cent underground water level there is exploited. Six of the 12 districts in the state have recorded groundwater utilisation rate of 100 per cent. In western Uttar Pradesh, which is also part of the country’s food bowl, water guzzling sugarcane has pushed the groundwater level to an all-time low.

The increased emphasis on water harvesting notwithstanding, the reduced availability of water is emerging as a major social and economic crisis. In addition, the cropping pattern has to be evolved keeping in mind the water availability. At present, more the water requirement for hybrid crop varieties more is its cultivation in the water-scarce regions. This is scandalous and unless the cropping pattern is rectified no measures to protect and preserve water resources will be effective.

For several years now, drought and prolonged dry spell had continued to afflict the inhospitable and harsh environs of the dryland regions, constituting nearly 65 per cent of the country’s cultivable lands. Despite the monsoons being ‘normal’, failure of rains in certain pockets and the continuing dry spell had simply gone unreported. With traditional forms of water storage and harvesting having vanished, rural irrigation being completely taken over by inefficient government machinery, available ground water was left to be exploited indiscriminately.

Water shortage, in any case, was always expected to emerge as the major environmental crisis for India in the new millennium. NASA’s recent projections based on the tracking done by twin GRACE satellites show that 54 cubic kilometres of groundwater is lost every year in the Indo-Gangetic plains. Still worse, the depletion rate is 70 per cent faster in this decade than what was estimated for the 1990s. The depletion is primarily due to irrigation, but the additional pressure of urbanisation and reckless industrialisation has added on to water woes.

And yet, the fascination of the planners for costly projects has not diminished. They have continued to overlook simple and effective methods like a series of small water storage tanks, recharging of village wells, whose water percolates into the ground, replenishes the underground reservoir for drinking and irrigation purposes. These water bodies are the only way to drought-proof the country. No wonder, amidst the depressing and agonising scenario, a number of oasis still dot the scorched landscape.

In several parts of the country, innovative farmers have found an ingenious way to fight drought. What the planners failed to visualise by way of drought management for over a century, villagers have demonstrated it successfully. The story of Kanchanpur village in Siddhi district of Madhya Pradesh, which hasn’t faced the brunt of recurring dry spells for the past six years, is a lesson that India needs to imbibe. Three dug wells and three ponds using the NREGA force has completely upturned the village’s dreaded past. With agriculture becoming economically viable, reports of reverse migration have poured in.

But then, traditional water harvesting and rain water collection practices do not find favour with the policymakers and planners for the simple reason that these time-tested technologies do not need much investment and budget allocations. At the same time, a serious drought enables the affected state government to cry for more central relief funds.

On its part, the government has already constituted a group of ministers (GoM) and also set up a National Crisis Management Committee to tackle the critical situation. Not realising that if only these ministers and secretaries had the wisdom to understand the complexities of a drought and the trauma of the human suffering that it leaves behind, the country would have by now successfully evolved a drought-proofing mechanism. It is essentially because of the political apathy and the criminal (mis)handling of the drought situations by the bureaucracy and the agricultural scientists that drought has become a recurring phenomenon.

Much of the problem could be resolved if the cropping pattern is linked to water availability. At present, drylands have increasingly come under the hybrid crop varieties. While the crop yields from the hybrid varieties was surely high, the flip side of these varieties — these varieties are water guzzlers — was very conveniently ignored. I don’t understand the reason why should semi-arid Rajasthan for instance be growing water guzzling sugarcane. Similarly, how can policy makers justify the cultivation of mentha, requiring 1.25 lakh litres of water to produce a kg of oil, in the drylands of Bundelkhand?

In fact, all kinds of hybrid crop varieties that require a much higher doses of water — whether it is of rice, sorghum, maize, cotton, bajra, and vegetables are promoted in the dryland regions. In addition, agricultural scientists have misled the farmers by saying that the dryland regions were hungry for chemical fertilisers. This has played havoc with the drylands turning the lands not only further unproductive but also barren. The water table plummeted, the impact of deficient rainfall became more pronounced forcing farmers to abandon agriculture and migrate. As if this was not enough, Bt cotton requiring more water than hybrid cotton, was knowingly promoted so as to allow the seed industry to make profits. Unless we redraw the cropping pattern or the crop map of India, recurring droughts will continue to play havoc. This has to be followed with a drought-proofing strategy and action plan that is prepared in consultation with the faming communities, and the local NGOs.

In short, there has been no sincere effort to minimise the dreadful impact of the drought. Recurring drought has emerged as a blessing in disguise for the politicians, planners and now the industry — literally making hay while the scorching sun continues to shine.

The food prices going up because of massive hoarding, black market and speculation by the trade. I don't know why the government takes refuge behind the economic parlance of markets driven by sentiments and in this case the delayed monsoon was the sentiment that the markets exploited. This is completely a flawed assumption, a euphemism that economists use to justify speculation and hoarding.

Take the case of pulses. Prices of arhar dal have hit the roof. Prices of other pulses too have sky rocketed. And the impression we carry is that there was a shortfall in production, and of course many would link the fall in production with the delayed monsoons. Compared to 2008, the market prices of pulses have increased by 52 per cent in Chennai to 89 per cent in Delhi. Such a stupendous rise in prices of pulses would automatically be a reflection of the slump in production.

No, it is not true. There was hardly any difference in the production of pulses. In 2008, pulses production was 14.76 million tonnes. In 2009, it fell to 14.66 million tonnes, a drop of 0.1 million tonnes. In other words, production of pulses had remained almost static. The other argument is that demand has outstripped its production. Some economists have projected the demand to be around 17 million tonnes. Interestingly, it gives an impression that suddenly in 2009 people had started consuming more of pulses.

The trade has been holding up the supplies, wanting to exploit the sentiment. And the government has been simply turning a blind eye. It is only after three months that the government has finally woken up to the real threat. In just a few days of a crackdown against hoarders throughout the state, Madhya Pradesh for instance has been able to recover sugar worth Rs10,000 crores. Raids have been widespread, and are still continuing.

Some years back, an ambitious programme to bring nearly 65 million hectares of the cultivable land through a series of “watersheds” in the next 25 years was launched. Sadly, no lessons have been learnt. Not even once have we questioned whether the existing “watershed” management system is what the country needs or is it time to look for indigenously time-tested technologies.

The watershed model that continues to be propagated has actually turned into an industry. No one has ever questioned the efficacy of an alien water harvesting technology wherein the ‘vested’ interests of the district administration, the NGOs, and contractors clearly dominates. The “ridge to valley” system is drawn from a country which receives rainfall intermittently throughout the year. In India, the entire rainfall comes in 100 hours in the three months of the monsoon season. No wonder, while India feels happy in adopting an American model of water harvesting, many US universities are promoting traditional water harvesting structures from India. The Texas A&M University for instance promotes Tamil Nadu’s traditional water harvesting system.

PARDON the Pakistani news media going gaga over Washington’s plans to beef up, extraordinarily, its diplomatic presence in Pakistan. The plans are staggering and stupendous, for want of more descriptive adjectives. But they are, for the record, just geared to Washington’s diplomatic stake in Pakistan, lest the Pakistanis, routinely clobbered in the ‘civilised western world’ for their outbursts of emotions over supposedly petty little things.

‘The Americans are coming, and coming big,’ according to media pundits in Pakistan. And none should blame them for going over the top because the figures being bandied about are, to say the very least, flabbergasting.

What’s on the drawing boards in Washington and Islamabad are the blue prints for vastly increasing the number of American personnel manning one of the most important diplomatic presence in the 21st century for the Americans in Pakistan. Apparently, Washington feels that its battery of 750 men and women stocking the American Embassy in Islamabad is far too inadequate to cope with the job on their hands. They need to be given a big injection to inflate their muscles. The magic potion said to be brewing would add at least another thousand people on what’s being described as a ‘war footing.’ That would take US diplomatic presence in Islamabad way above the current largest American diplomatic mission in

Beijing, China; the number there stands at a paltry 1450.

The US Congress agrees with the mandarins at the State Department and has allocated 940 million dollars for the embassy in Islamabad and a number of American consulates, particularly those in Karachi and Peshawar. The fortress-like new consulate on Karachi’s Arabian Sea is spread over six acres of prime land, given to them at a throw-away price, of course. What are friends for, after all, and the Americans, don’t forget, have powerful friends in very high places in Pakistan.

(Meanwhile, US ambassador Anne Patterson, reacting to media reports, has said that the number of Marines in the new embassy would be less than 20. They would be accommodated in a bomb-proof facility. At present the embassy has 250 regular staff, 200 visiting American staff and 1,000 local personnel. Another 500 would be added in next three years.)

The government of Pakistan is obviously chipping into these plans with a magnanimity that our ruling elite is so well-known for, as far as their overseas ‘friends’ are concerned. They may be tight-fisted and niggardly to their own people but for minders and mentors from the world beyond Pakistan, sky is the limit.

Little wonder, therefore, that a huge parcel of 18 acres of prime land in Islamabad’s exclusive diplomatic enclave has been ‘sold’ to the American Embassy for just one billion rupees, a fraction of its market worth. What is 18 acres between friends; peanuts when you think of how magnanimously Pervez Musharraf presented the whole of Pakistan to his American mentors over just a phone call from Colin Powell. It was a friendly transaction between two soldiers.

So the fortress in Islamabad, when built, will dwarf the mini-fortress of Karachi. It will be a city in its own right, a typical American enclave on Pakistan’s soil, with its own residential colony for the staff and all the requisite paraphernalia of entertainment and security to convey the American sense in spades to its denizens.

But wait. The Pakistani pundits have nothing to grudge the Americans their plans to replicate their America on a little patch of Pakistan. What worries them is what’s at the core of these huge plans of expansion, and what kind of people are coming in droves to Karachi, Islamabad and Peshawar with the obvious intent to cover all the bases in Pakistan.

Pakistan can’t seem to get rid of its perennial problem of being hyphenated with this or that of its neighbours in Washington’s esteem. It was India until not too long ago when American relations with India were taken to another, high, pedestal, with Pakistan left in a limbo to search its own station in American evaluation.

For a moment Pakistan thought it had jettisoned, for good, its hyphenated syndrome. But that feeling didn’t last long. The US is immersed deep into its Afghan adventure and Pakistan is back in its role of a key, front-line, ally. Hence Pakistan can’t be separated from Afghanistan; hence it must play out to the hilt its role of a soldier in a forward trench whose mission is to pull Washington’s chestnut out of the Afghan fire.

It doesn’t matter how Pakistan got involved in the Bush war on terror, or how Musharraf succumbed to the pressure. The ground reality, no matter how tart or unpalatable to a lot of Pakistanis, is that Pakistan is up to its eyeballs into America’s war and must pay the price of the follies of its rulers, past and present.

The US drew a seminal lesson from its involvement in World War II and that’s that America can best be protected, if not insulated from the outside world, by drawing its lines of defence in far off lands, in places wherever a threat to US security or its quest for global dominance may occur and must be pre-empted with maximum force.

The American wars in Korea and Vietnam were triggered by this policy of offence-being-the-best-defence. George W. Bush, an ardent practitioner of Pax Americana couldn’t be more articulate than coining the shibboleth of ‘taking the war to the enemy.’ The invasion of Afghanistan, on the heels of 9/11 was justified on this premise, besides being a prop to Bush’s dream of an imperial America holding the world in its thrall.

Barack Obama may be poles-apart from Bush on so many other things but shares his perception of fighting the enemy on its terrain. Add to it his own vision of winning the war in Afghanistan at any cost. So no price is too high once you commit yourself to achieving a goal; and Obama has his heart set on ferreting out victory of any sort in Afghanistan after having lost the one in Iraq.

But wars can’t be won cheap. They require elaborate logistics. Pakistan has become a cockpit of conflict and chaos spawned by its involvement in the Afghan imbroglio. So Pakistan must be primed to deliver according to Washington’s expectations. Logistics must be so arranged as to deal with Pakistan’s chaotic and turbulent scenario according to Washington’s master-plan for the area.

The logistics involve the building of fortresses bristling with hi-tech gadgetry that keeps the troublesome Pakistanis, or the Pakistani Taliban and their ilk, at a safe distance. That’s an essential tool of 21st century imperialistic reach. In the olden days of imperialism they used to occupy whole countries and convert them into colonies. Technological sophistication and advancement has offered better alternatives, dispensing with the archaic practice of outright colonies to intimidate the locals. Hence the logic and imperative for modern-day fortresses like the ones springing up from one end of Pakistan to another.

Those who have followed the American adventure in Iraq know what havoc mercenary American defence contractors wreaked there. Blackwater was a principal mercenary outfit to which the State Department outsourced its obligations in Iraq. Its gung-ho mercenaries raped and murdered Iraqis at will to such an extent that even the supine government of Noori Al-Maliki was forced to impel Washington to pull Blackwater’s notorious murderers out of Iraq.

The same Blackwater is now getting ready to replicate its Iraqi tactics in Pakistan and some of its operatives are already believed to be in action in Peshawar and its environs. The word has gone out that the Americans are keen to buy Peshawar’s lone 5-star hotel in order to accommodate the likes of Blackwater in luxury for special operations within Pakistan and beyond, in Afghanistan, of course.

The State Department has obviously drawn no lessons from its skewed Iraqi operations and seems willing to retry them in Pakistan. One shudders to think of the fallout of a lethal confrontation between the rogues of Blackwater, running berserk across the troubled North West Frontier Region just as they did in Iraq, and the trigger-happy Pakistani Taliban to whom these provocative aliens would be like red rag to an enraged bull.

The US is a global power charged with a self-anointed mission to fight wherever necessary to keep the terrorists away from its shores. Its history of such messianic adventures not only justifies war by any means but also sanctifies its actions. The question troubling the Pakistani minds is why should their rulers be so blind to this deadly game being played out on the Pakistani turf?

DESPITE the Supreme Court’s July 31, 2009 verdict declaring the proclamation of emergency by the then president and army chief Pervez Musharraf unconstitutional, the Pakistan Peoples Party-led coalition government is reluctant to institute high treason proceedings against the retired general. This is hardly surprising if seen in the context of the PPP’s relationship with the establishment and the text of Article 6 of the constitution, which deals with high treason.

Contrary to the popular belief and the party’s own profession, the PPP is no longer an anti-establishment outfit. Like other mainstream political parties, the PPP politics aims at securing or preserving power. It may be Pakistan’s single largest political party. It may have a nationwide appeal. In a proper democratic dispensation, such characteristics are all that a political party needs to get power. However, this hardly applies to a cosmetic democracy like Pakistan. If the past is any guide, the quest for securing or preserving political power in Pakistan is doomed to end up in failure without a nod from the establishment — the power behind the throne. The PPP’s own experience bears out this unpleasant and hard fact.

Probably none knows this better than the top leadership of the PPP, and that too by personal experience. In 1988 general elections, the PPP, despite all odds, had emerged as the single largest party and the only one which won seats from all the four provinces. But that was not enough for the party to form the government. The PPP had to reach a compromise with the establishment — that it would support the then acting president Ghulam Ishaq Khan in presidential elections which were due a couple of months later — before its chairperson Ms Benazir Bhutto was appointed prime minister.

The decision to support Ghulam Ishaq Khan must have been a very hard one for PPP leadership, because he was an establishment icon with which the party had been at loggerheads during the past decade. But then that was the price the PPP had to pay to enter into the corridors of power. The party leadership preferred power to principles and paid the price soon. In August 1990, when the PPP government headed by Benazir Bhutto was four months short of its second anniversary, the establishment felt that as the baby was trying to stand on its own feet, it was high time to strike its head. Through presidential orders, parliament and the prime minister were dismissed. That was the end of the second PPP and the first Benazir Bhutto government.

In 1993, Nawaz Sharif, the erstwhile blue-eyed boy of the establishment, fell out with his mentors and had to pay the price in the form of his dismissal. Nawaz Sharif’s fall from grace once again forced the establishment to court friendship of the PPP, which itself was desperately trying to get back in the saddle. Elections were held, which the PPP won. The election of the PPP’s own stalwart Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari as president couple of months later strengthened the party’s position and the government seemed to be well set to complete its five-year term, which had never happened in Pakistan before. But that proved an illusion. In reality, the establishment was as strong as ever before. And when it decided to strike, President Leghari dismissed his leader’s government.

Since November 6, 1996, when the PPP government was sacked until its victory in February 2008 elections couple of months after the assassination of Ms Bhutto, the party remained in opposition. Ms Bhutto herself remained in exile for eight years and returned home only in October 2007 after striking a deal with the establishment in the shape of the National Reconciliation Ordinance (NRO) giving amnesty to the top party leadership from corruption charges. To the good fortune of the PPP present leadership, Mr Musharraf was weakened by the lawyers’ movement and desperately needed the support of a popular political party. A deal with Mr Nawaz Sharif, whom he had ousted from power in October 1999, was out of the question for the military ruler. Hence, Ms Bhutto’s PPP was the only choice. The deal with the establishment was a clever move on the part of the PPP leadership. The party knew well that notwithstanding all its powers and clout, the establishment needed strong political support to get things moving. Whether there is a military regime or a civilian government, the establishment needs to have a political constituency. That explains why every military government in Pakistan cultivates relations with some political forces and tries to cobble together a political arrangement to further its interest. This also explains why military governments do not live up to their promises of an across-the-board accountability. The very people who have to be made accountable for their acts of omission and commission are needed to provide political support to the regime.

Moreover, the views and policies, particularly those pertaining to foreign policy, of Mr Musharraf and the PPP converged in many respects. Both were pro-West, especially pro US, and had a liberal outlook. With war against religious extremism at the top of its foreign policy agenda, the least the US wanted was a conservative government in Pakistan. When the PPP negotiated the deal with the establishment, it wanted two things in the main: One, fair elections.

Two, permission to the PPP leadership to take part in the political process without let or hindrance, which included withdrawal of cases against them. The establishment accepted both demands. Why and by whom Ms Bhutto was killed is still a mystery despite the fact that her party is in power for last sixteen months. May be on the part of the establishment, the deal was with the PPP and not Ms Bhutto per se.

The PPP won the February 2008 elections and formed the government. But courtesy the seventeenth amendment, effective powers are vested in the office of the president. By that time Mr Musharraf had been so much discredited that his erstwhile supporters agreed that he may be shown the door. The needful was done. However, that was done on certain conditions. The foremost being that the retired army chief would not be tried for his unconstitutional acts. If the PPP leadership breaches the pact, it may also be shown the door.

The foregoing makes it clear why the PPP has linked the trial of Mr Musharraf on high treason charges to a unanimous resolution of parliament despite the fact that constitutionally (Article 6 of the constitution) and legally (High Treason Punishment Act, 1973) this is not required. There cannot be unanimity when there is a single dissent and it is inconceivable that in the entire parliament there is not a single voice opposing the trial of Mr Musharraf. Both President Zardari and Prime Minister Gillani know this and so does the opposition leader Mr Nawaz Sharif. For the latter, however, it is the most convenient political stick to beat the PPP government with.

It does not mean that the PPP is against Musharrf’s trial. There is no love between them. But the party does not want to bell the cat. May be it wants the judiciary, which it was forced to restore a few months back, to do so and come into conflict with the establishment.

Coming to Article 6, it consists of three clauses or paras. Clause (1) states: “Any person who abrogates or attempts or conspires to abrogate, subverts or attempts or conspires to subvert the Constitution by use of force or show of force or by other unconstitutional means shall be guilty of high treason.” Clause (2) expands the definition of high treason by stating that “Any person aiding or abetting the acts mentioned in Clause (1) shall likewise be guilty of high treason.” Clause (3) enjoins upon parliament to make a law to provide for punishment of a person found guilty of high treason. Accordingly, the High Treason (Punishment) Act, 1973 provides that high treason is punishable with death penalty or life imprisonment.

Thus when high treason proceedings are instituted against Mr Musharraf, it is almost certain that those who abetted him, which definitely would be a fairly long list, in his unconstitutional acts would also find themselves in the dock. The trial of one person may turn out to be that of an entire institution.

THE education policy 2009, recently finalised by the government but not announced yet, includes a whole chapter on Islamic education. It stipulates that the vision for Islamic education in the National Curriculum is the “transformation of society on Islamic and human values” and, as mandated in the Constitution of Pakistan, “ all steps will be taken to enable Muslims of Pakistan, individually and collectively, to order their lives in accordance with the fundamental principles and basic concepts of Islam, and to provide facilities whereby they may be enabled to understand the meaning of life according to the Holy Quran and Sunnah.”

If the ‘transformation’ of society is intended then it is highly unlikely to happen, keeping in view the way Islamic teaching is done in our schools. Rote-learning and endless reproduction of the content in every class from class 3 onwards in our schools have made the subject something that the students have to unwillingly live with throughout their stay in school and college. In fact, the new policy’s Islamiyat curriculum is so extensive that covering it might consume half the school day.

If the government wants to achieve its objectives then it must take a long, hard look at the way it has to be imparted. Firstly, the syllabus content should not be repetitive but a new aspect or theme introduced in each class. Secondly, lessons must be interactive and interesting with the inclusion of a simple research activity (find out) as part of the lesson planning. Thirdly, the principles and beliefs must be internalised so that they are applied in real life. For example, in namaz, the concept of ‘saffein bandhna’ is obligatory so its practical aspect is that in order to expedite organisation of a particular activity making a queue is a must.

Unfortunately, we often see our educated elite breaking queues while the common man is seen standing in long queues outside banks to pay utility bills. The injustice is apparent in not just this but most societal concerns and this is not what Islam teaches. The whole process of formulating a religious curriculum is a highly skilled procedure which must cater to ‘human values’ as expressed in the new policy document.

This entails that religious tolerance, communal harmony and respect (adab) is inculcated at all levels in the syllabus. Discrimination of minorities is not part of Islamic teachings and they must be accorded equal rights and opportunities in an Islamic state and the new policy gives credence to this fact. The underlying crucial factor is that in religious matters we are dealing with young, susceptible and vulnerable minds. It is a delicate balance to achieve so that it does not turn into indoctrination and religious bias.

So how do we place Islamiyat in its right perspective in the curriculum? The science of theology has been perfected into a discipline in the West and Comparative Religions is a relevant subject. Furthermore, Islamic religion is taught in the same mode there at master’s and doctoral level where critique is essential to the thought process.

But we as a nation should not be looking that way either. Islamic teachings have been researched and perfected in our own Islamic Universities like the Al-Azhar University at Cairo, Jamia Millia and Nadvat-ul-Islam in India and the universities in Medina, Morocco, Malaysia and Indonesia. Moreover, expatriate Muslim communities in North America and Europe have innovated and created curriculum for Muslim students at pre-school, primary, elementary and high school levels which are part of mainstream secular schooling there.

In Pakistan, religious teaching has not been standardised or accredited in a form that can inform teaching of religion at the basic and secondary level. What is usually done is that the syllabus content is decided upon for each class, a textbook produced and the teacher is just equipped to deliver the course content in time for the examination. At home, it is essential to learn by heart small surahs and the Quranic duas (supplication) from childhood and this is mostly done with the help of visiting teachers (Maulvis) in affluent homes or at the mosque by children from lower and middle income groups. Moreover, in the same pattern the entire Quran is taught as recitation in Arabic.

This encompasses the fact that a child can read the Quran in Arabic with the correct pronunciation and intonations. By the time a child enters formal schooling, he/she is already familiar with reading of the Quran in Arabic, has memorised the short surahs and is familiar with some rituals like saying ‘namaz’ and the communal activity of fasting in the month of Ramazan.

The two festivals of Eid and Friday prayers are visible manifestations for students since childhood. However, in today’s fast paced society the role of mothers and grandparents in initiating the child into the religion and ‘adab’ is rapidly dying out and this is where the school can pick up the teaching of the religion as per the educational policy directive.

The new education policy document states that : “Apart from infusing Islamic and religious teachings in the curriculum wherever appropriate, Islamiyat is being taught as a compulsory core subject from Early Childhood Education to Higher Secondary School levels extending up to graduation in all general and professional institutions so as to create a tolerant and peace loving society with vision of finding solutions to the real life problems through the teachings of the Holy Quran and Sunnah. To further augment Islamic teachings, Advanced Islamic Studies has also been introduced at Grades IX-X and XI-XII as an elective subject.”

In terms of reference, the course stipulated for Islamiyat is not very different from the previous policies and continues on the same pattern. However, it goes further by introducing advanced Islamic studies at Grades 9, 10, 11 and 12. Again, in terms of reference, the topics emanate from and are the core of Islamic teachings.

However, it has been experienced in the past that the teaching and learning of the subject in Pakistani classrooms has become so mechanical that children just learn by rote, take the examination as a subject that has to be passed and then they are done with it. Rarely is the subject taken up later for its value, interest and ‘transformatory’ aspect at an advanced level. If it is at all taken up, the motive is to achieve a grade easily.

Another important factor is the teacher. Educational Policy 2009 has recognised and addressed this gap in previous policies. The policy states that well qualified teachers shall be appointed for the teaching of Islamiyat and Arabic. The pre-service and in-service teachers shall be trained at teacher training institutes.

Previously, Islamiyat teachers had no qualifications to take up religious teaching. It was seen that those who could not be accommodated as teachers for any other subjects were usually asked to teach Islamiyat. Such disdain reflects that Islamiyat was neither a key subject nor one that merited much care or importance in the curriculum.

The new policy says ‘Well qualified teachers shall be appointed for the teaching of Islamiyat.” But what will be the criteria for such teachers? Will they be our rote learnt M.As and B.As or especially trained teachers in the delicate and sensitive art of teaching religion?

The policy states that “Islamic teachings will be part of the curriculum of Teacher Training Institutes”. If the entire Quran is studied in translation to understand its meaning and application, then it might be worth it. But if the “Islamic teachings” are another syllabus of isolated surahs and hadith which the prospective teachers have already studied at M.A, B.A and B.Ed, the ‘transformation’ is not going to take place. The nobility, honesty of purpose and educating for the national good that a teacher must demonstrate will be sorely lacking again.

The Quaid-i-Azam in most of his speeches refers to the principles and guidance from the Quran on which the Pakistani nation should rest its polity and national character. His first speech to the Constituent Assembly in 1947 listed four evils that Pakistanis must guard against — bribery, corruption, nepotism and black-marketing.

For sixty two years, it is these four evils that have impeded the progress and well-being of the nation. The educational policy’s vision is to transform the nation through the same Islamic principles that the Quaid spoke of. In its present form, the policy’s aims are doomed to failure if the curriculum for Islamiyat is to have the same content and delivered in the same fashion as before.

PUBLIC-private partnership (PPP) has often been offered as a device to accelerate economic growth of the country. Recently, a ‘consortium of friends’ have emphasised that this strategy should be given due consideration in the national policy of Pakistan. There are serious issues involved in this kind of recommendation, however, which are being consistently ignored.

What are the criteria which should be used to justify PPPs in the country? It is a difficult question to answer. Sectors in the economy can perhaps be identified to fulfil the objective to have more and better infrastructure, services and energy projects. How realistic can such a projects be and how to make sure that they are in the best public interest, and are being formulated to achieve the objectives at reasonable cost? The November 2007 document titled Pakistan: Policy on public-private partnerships, and a draft report on fiscal management of infrastructure PPPs are not of much help in this regard.

In fact lot of ambiguity surrounds PPPs, both in theory and practice. Theory may be easier to define: to identify the factors which clearly indicate that additional capacity by supplementing of scarce public resources can be achieved at minimum cost. To support this contention, however, reliable data are not easily available from the existing projects which have been pursued, especially in the developed countries. Whatever information is available, it seems to give at best a mixed signal.

In England, for example, there are more critics than supporters of PPPs. According to many of them, the policies seem to have enriched a few at the cost of the majority. Some in the literature have even called this partnership ‘public fraud and false accounting’ apparently referring to the monopolistic nature of many infrastructure projects.

In developing and emerging economies, there is scant empirical information about PPP development projects, because they seem to be works ‘in progress.’ In India, for example, the infrastructure sector is receiving attention, but on water supply/sanitation and energy sectors a clear conflict with public interest is emphasised. In education, it is underlined that having primary schools for those who can afford them and the public schools for the rest would not be a good policy for the health of society.

When Pakistan was established, the industrial structure in the country consisted of a few small scale enterprises, and some notable public goods including a port, railways, canals, bridges, and Grand Trunk Road as colonial legacy. In the formative period, bureaucracy played an important role in promoting industrial and financial development corporations. These corporations played an important role in the evolution of industrial structure in Pakistan. A pattern of cooperation between the government and the private sector did develop but decision-making remained firmly in the hands of bureaucracy. In the sixties, with industrial growth and the rise of the robber barons, the place of public sector enterprise was not properly defined.

In recent years, there has been a clear focus on differentiating public policy from public enterprise, and that public policy must encompass distinct criteria for activities in both sectors. When Mr Shaukat Aziz, for example, during the Musharraf regime declared that government’s business was to formulate policies, not run enterprises, the discussion in the media which ensued following his statement clearly indicated that people favoured the idea of difference between public goods and private enterprise. It has also been noted that It would not be in the public interest if the private entrepreneur is looking for shelter from risk aversion. Nor would it serve

public enterprise has a distinct role to play as a competitor in the market. Of course, public goods do not include the industries which were nationalised during Z.A. Bhutto’s rule.

It may be said that no industrial activity can reach a sustainable level of production unless it is certain that its innovations and product improvements are not in danger of cheap imitations. By the same token, cartelisation must not be permitted. Historically, Pakistan has developed a tradition of family-operated business, often with overlapping boundaries between business and political activity. The rules about conflict of interest are so broadly defined that the people who hold responsible positions as leaders, ministers, or even provincial governors do neither divest their investments for the period of their active government service, nor take an arm’s length position from their business interests. There is therefore a potential for serious conflict of interest. These are challenges to any model of PPPs. There is general agreement in the country, however, that regulatory mechanism on these and other related matters is very ineffective in the country.

By definition, the main objective of private entrepreneur is to maximise his returns by taking risk. To fulfil his objective, he would necessarily offer services which did not contradict with his goals. Many family-dominated enterprises, on the other hand, seem to make an attempt to accomplish the former, without necessarily being inclined to fulfil the latter. Even the risk-taking enterprise would restrict his activities to balance his costs and benefits. If post office is under a private operation, focusing on large cities and ignoring “unproductive’ areas in small towns and villages would be a rational policy for it. Similarly, there are issues related to health, universal primary school education, railways, security, defence, which underline the fact that costs and benefits cannot all be determined in the private domain. One could draw a conclusion from these observations that state-owned business has a role to play in safeguarding national interest, and that the same criterion could be used to encourage competitor of public enterprise with private business in defined areas.

The problem is that public enterprises have been treated by all governments in the country as happy hunting grounds for favourites. The result has been a combination of corruption and incompetence visible in many activities. These limitations plus over-staffing, under-investment, and political interference present a discoursing picture.

The obvious solution to these problems is to improve governance in the country, to strengthen public accountability through an effective parliament and an independent judiciary. What areas then can one identify for ‘safe’ public-private partnership where the objectives of both parties would converge? It would not be in the public interest, if the private entrepreneur is looking for shelter from risk aversion. Nor would it serve public interest if the state-owned business would opt to serve only what the ‘market can bear’. The primary schools must be made available even in remote villages, for example, as the universality of the system would tend to equalise costs and benefits. No such framework can be instituted through private enterprise. It is the universality of the system as a whole which would not permit partnership with private enterprise.

The IFIs (IMF, World Bank, etc.) never tire of giving ex cathedra advice to the developing countries about miracles of PPPs, in the spirit of ‘free’ market theology, concerning the areas such as infrastructure, education, water and sanitation, and health. There is no doubt that Pakistan has a dismal record in all these sectors. There are no policies to determine social limits to growth available in the country, for example. There are vast richistans funnelling scarce resources for the lifestyle of the rich while the poor cannot afford even clean water. To cope with social deficiency, how would any model of PPP make it possible for a true partnership between companies and the state to accomplish this agenda is debatable. It would in fact be privatisation repackaged as PPP.

Let us refer to health care again for illustration. Would contracting out the primary health centres, and developing demand-led financing, as suggested by the IFIs and having the government focus only on improving regulatory and enabling framework allow for a true partnership? Should health of the people or focusing on returns on invested funds be the main objective? Who will determine the questions about access, about equity? The debate that is currently raging in the US about the modest Obama health reform tells us that it is a battle of ideology, plain and simple, and people be damned.

Pakistan has the necessary capacity to produce resources to be able to provide plenty more of public goods than it does at present. The government has to exercise courage and conviction to improve its tax base, and to economise on its profligate spending. That is where the main solution lies, not in begging for ‘give us more, give us more’ engaged by Mr Zardari in his foreign junkets.

ALMOST scrupulously avoided, central to the on-going debate on the violation of the Article 6 of the Pakistani constitution is the critical question: who enacted the Oct. 12 coup? Although Gen Musharraf was the prime beneficiary, he was airborne at the time, and hence could not possibly be in touch with the ground forces at the GHQ.

Obviously, he couldn’t have ordered the two trucks and a jeep packed with army personnel to roll down the Constitution Avenue all the way from the GHQ, to occupy the PTV station. This means that it was done either by the GHQ or by the Core Commander at Pindi in consultation with the top commanders.

But, then, why did either of them resort to this drastic exercise? This necessarily calls for a flash back — a flash back to the doings of Nawaz Sharif’s heavy-mandated regime during the previous thirty-two months. Interestingly, that regime had already claimed the scalps of the heads of three institutions — the Judiciary (in November 1997), the Presidency (in December 1997), and the Armed Forces (in October 1998) — and had got loyalists installed in the first two. That in itself was a remarkable achievement of the civilian regime but it also, obviously, made the Army, which regarded its autonomy sacrosanct, wary of the regimes’ next move.

Initially, despite Karamat’s forced resignation, barely three months before he was due to retire, the relations between the government and the military were on an even keel, indeed cordial. Ziauddin had pointed out in his “Dateline Islamabad” column (November 15, 1999) how Musharraf perceived his relationship with the Sharif regime as a “partnership” between “the massive mandate [of the civilian government] and the military”. At the same time, the Army Chief made it clear, time and again, that “it would neither serve the personal interests of civilian leaders nor could it be pushed around”, as Hasan-Askari Rizvi, an authority on civil-military relations, notes in his Military, State and Society in Pakistan (2003).

Despite the government’s political and economic mismanagement, Rizvi says, the military would have continued to play ball but for the Sharif government’s increasing violation, since the Karamat ouster, of “the well-known norm of civil-military relations which emphasised respect for the military’s autonomy and civilian non-interference in internal organisational matters and service affairs”. The top brass obviously resented Sharif’s mounting interference “with promotion and the transfer of senior officers, including the posting of Corps Commanders,” and the cultivation of certain officers “by playing on Punjab ethnicity”. This burgeoning hostility came to be compounded all the more by the government’s targeting of the Army Chief, Pervez Musharraf, for trenchant criticism for having allegedly launched the Kargil operations without the PM’s prior approval, although it has transpired since then that all stakeholders were on board (see Shuja Nawaz, Crossed Swords).

The Army, obviously alarmed over the bleak prospect of a replay of the Karamat episode, felt that it would seriously erode the Army’s autonomy and corporate entity, and hence had already decided to resist such a move, if resorted to. Subsequently, in mid-September, when Musharraf confronted Nawaz Sharif with hard evidence to get him replaced with a “loyal” general, Sharif, as a decoy, agreed to Musharraf being appointed as Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, as an additional charge, until the expiry of his term as COAS in October 2001.

A month later, when Musharraf was on an official visit to Sri Lanka, however, Sharif thought it opportune to put his original plans through. After a one-day hurried visit to the UAE on October 11, presumably to keep the MI in the dark, he tried to strike fast and hard. On October 12, the Director-General, ISI, was promoted, installed as Army Chief, and the state radio and television were ordered to broadcast the change of Army Command, and the TV to show the new Army Chief being decorated with the insignia of a full general and calling on the PM.

The newly appointed Army Chief was junior to several top commanders, nor did he command the confidence of the senior commanders. Earlier, in the afternoon of October 12, when the Principal Staff Officers at the GHQ and the Corps Commander, Rawalpindi, got wind of the impending change, they had asked the government to suspend the order until the Army Chief’s return later that evening — but to no avail.

Thus, the television coverage proved to be the last straw, provoking the Army to move troops to Islamabad, take over the television station, cordon off the PM’s residence and demand an immediate withdrawal of his orders. Upon his refusal, they arrested Nawaz Sharif and the newly appointed Army Chief. Before the PTV takeover, however, the government had (allegedly?) ordered the Karachi airport closed and the plane carrying Musharraf back home to land at an airport outside Pakistan, and later at Nawabshah. And, as noted earlier, all this happened when Musharraf was airborne and incommunicado.

Against this background the GHQ’s move to take over the PTV at Islamabad and house-arrest Nawaz Sharif may be put down as an institutional response to the Sharif regimes’ move to downgrade the Army, indeed the institution itself, twice within a brief spell of one year, and to brazenly violate the established norms of civil-military relations in Pakistan. From another perspective, the Nawaz regime, by rolling the heads of three institutions within a year, had prepared the country psychologically for a change-over.

Meantime, the other political forces were pro-active, and Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, the “Baba-i-Jamhuriyet” as he was claimed then and later, had clobbered together a motley crowd of almost of all the political forces minus Nawaz Sharif’s PML into a GNA, with a one point agenda: “get Nawaz Sharif out”.

Not only had the opposition embarked on political mobilisation and street agitation. In tandem, several opposition leaders had also made direct or indirect appeals to the Army to get the Sharif government out. This obviously must have emboldened the GHQ to act on its own as it had happened previously in the case of Ayub, Yaha and Zia. No wonder, Benazir Bhutto contended in her article, “The Nawaz conviction” (Dawn, April 19, 2000) that “the popular discontent [in October 1999] gave the military the popular support needed to overthrow the Nawaz regime”. As Dawn had put it succinctly in its editorial (of August 5), “we have had military dictators because the polity has accepted, if not welcomed, them”.

Actually, after the coup, the GNA met in a gala celebration to welcome Nawaz Sharif’s exit. The media whom the Sharif regime had assaulted and penalised during its tenure was soft on its exit while the liberal NGOs and circles heaved a sigh of relief at the indirect thwarting of Sharif’s rash attempt to instal himself as “Amirul Momineen” after the impending March 2000 Senate elections which would provide him with a majority in the Senate to get the Fifteenth Amendment (“Shariah Bill”) passed into law.

That means almost all the political forces except for the dislodged PML had impliedly, if not directly, backed the coup. Some time later, the Supreme Court not only validated the military takeover but also gave the Musharraf regime a breathing space of three years as well as the authority to amend the constitution marginally within the four corners of the established principles on which the constitution was based. These developments meant that all the political forces minus the PML and the judiciary were complicit about the military takeover, sooner or later.

Now the question is whether there could have been a November 3, 2007 without an October 12, 1999. Obviously not. And what about their respective impact? The impact theory was enunciated by Qazi Faez Isa, the newly appointed Chief Justice of Balochistan. This he did in the Reality Show, “Enter the PM”, on DawnNews, masterminded by Hameed Haroon in February 2008. When Shafqat Jamote referred to the PML activists’ storming of the Supreme Court in November 1997, Faez countered him by saying that that attack didn’t matter much since it didn’t spawn any radical (adverse?) consequences.

And if the impact theory is accepted in order to evaluate the gravity or significance of an event, what was the impact that these two events — October 12 and November 3 — had had, long-term and short terms. October 12 dislodged the ‘heavy mandated’ regime, dismissed the prime minister and the chief ministers, dissolved the NA, the Senate and the Provincial Assemblies, replaced the governors, introduced a new PCO, and changed a host of other things, top to bottom.

In contrast, the November 3 emergency spanned only a few misdemeanours: a new PCO requiring the judges to take a fresh oath, sacking and quarantine of a large number of “rebellious” judges, and imposition of certain press restrictions, especially on the electronic media, being the most important and provocative. Almost everything else remained intact — except for Musharraf shedding his second skin, the uniform, getting the newly constituted Supreme Court to lift the ban on the notification of the presidential results, allegedly meeting Benazir Bhutto on the night of November 27 (which some electronic channels reported) for getting her concurrence to himself being sworn in for a second term and getting himself sworn in for a second term on November 28, announcing the date of the next elections and getting a caretaker government sworn in under the Senate Chairman, Mohammad Mian Soomro, one of the PPP’s nominees for the assignment. (Remember, we are only juxtaposing and comparing the two episodes and by no chance validating or condoning the emergency.)

In view of the above, what is needed more is to go after the “culprits” of the October 12 coup. More so, because there would have been no November 3 without an October 12, the mother of all subsequent developments till the February 2008 elections. Since October 12 was enacted by the army as an institution, how could one possibly prosecute those manning the GHQ during Musharraf’s absence? In the loop will also obviously come all those forces, parties and institutions that were or became complicit to October 12 before, on or after that watershed date. One could, therefore, easily understand the uneasiness felt by the Zardari-Gilani regime to the demand for the trial of the perpetrator(s) of the November 3 emergency. It is all too obvious that PML-N’s insistence on it is primarily designed to score points, and push the PPP government, which had given assurances of safe passage to Musharraf, into a tight corner. However, even if the trial is confined to this event all those who were complicit to it either at the time or after will come within the loop.

Now the crucial question is: Is it politic to break open Pandora’s Box at this hour, engulfed as Pakistan is with serious concerns about security, sectarianism, law and order and economic downslide? Or should we bury the past and move ahead to tackle the problems galore that loom so large on the horizon?

All said and done, the issue of military takeovers, as the aforementioned editorial emphasised, “goes beyond legal niceties and constitutional safeguards. Until this country — the people, the politicians, the ‘establishment’, the media, civil society and the army — internalise the values of a constitutional democracy, democracy in this country will always be vulnerable to those promising quick-fix solutions and ‘clean’ politics”. As the above narrative indicates, none of these stakeholders had internalised the values of a constitutional democracy at the time of Sharif’s exit, and that’s why October 12 came to be enacted with impunity.

The writer, an HEC Distinguished National Professor, has recently edited Unesco’s History of Humanity, vol. VI, and edited In quest of Jinnah (2007), the only oral history on Pakistan’s founding father.

THE US intervention in Vietnam began with large-scale economic and military assistance to France. When the French were defeated in 1954, the United States poured military and economic assistance as well as advisers to help South Vietnam in ‘nation building.’ After a decade, South Vietnam was on the verge of being defeated by the North Vietnamese communists.

In order to save it, the US intervened directly and unleashed a ferocious aerial bombardment campaign while putting hundreds of thousand of boots on the ground to contain the spread of North Vietnamese influence. Then, in January 1968, the North Vietnamese stunned the United States by launching an all out offensive on major South Vietnamese cities. Although the North Vietnamese were eventually beaten back with enormous losses the psychological and political impact on the US was enormous.

The US fell back on its nation building strategy re-labelling it ‘Vietnamisation’. In the meanwhile diplomacy between North Vietnam and the United States commenced with the objective of providing the latter with extrication. The United States was prepared to withdraw provided the North Vietnamese granted a decent interval of a few years to the stooges in Saigon.

The ominous historical parallels notwithstanding, the present leaders of the western alliance have declared it to be their policy to bring about the Afghanisation of the conflict in Afghanistan. This in itself reflects a realisation that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won within a timeframe that is politically and psychologically acceptable to the public opinion in the West. It also indicates disillusionment with the Karzai regime and the total lack of enlightened self-interest on part of the Afghan elite. In fighting against Al Qaeda and the Taliban the western alliance operates under numerous handicaps.

First, time is definitely on the side of insurgents. The West committed itself to waging an open-ended counter-insurgency exercise on what is classical guerilla warfare-friendly geography. The nation building exercise lacked integrity, leadership and understanding of local circumstances. Nearly eight years after the intervention began Afghanistan remains a failed state that notionally presides over a predatory, warlord-infested, narco-society.

Second, while the western alliance is facing a manpower shortage, the insurgents have demonstrated a remarkable regenerative capacity. The enormous logistical exercise needed to maintain western troops and civilian personnel at a First World standard of living in Afghanistan is itself feeding the insurgency. Transporters and contractors hired to supply the war effort bribe the insurgents even as the drugs boom furnishes additional sources of income. The alliance simply does not have the stomach to physically patrol and garrison the major communications arteries as that would lead to casualties.

This brings one to the third and most important point. Al Qaeda and its affiliates are resolved to win regardless of the cost. The western alliance is ridiculously casualty-sensitive, is putting out peace feelers and openly trying to negotiate with the moderate Taliban. An intelligent and cynical insurgent leadership may well realise that giving the West a lull in the fighting so that they can pull out claiming Afghanisation to be a success might be an option worth considering. Or it could simply wait and see the results of the troop increases before making any diplomatic move.

Even as Americans continue to blame Pakistan for the insurgency in Afghanistan, the fact remains that the only notable successes against Al Qaeda and the Taliban have been achieved by the Pakistani armed forces. Public opinion in Pakistan, once sympathetic to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, has swung dramatically around. By helping to defuse the crisis generated by the government’s foot dragging on the restoration of the judiciary and by effectively taking on the religious fundamentalists in Swat, the present army chief has succeeded in restoring the moral ascendancy of the armed forces. The contrast between the bombastic and ill-considered posturing of the politicians and their relentless mishandling of nearly all national issues and the quiet though grim determination of the military leadership is truly remarkable.

While these are no mean achievements the medium term and long term outlook remains bleak. Part of the problem is that the Pakistani leadership’s will to prosecute a conflict against radical Islamists has peaked at a time when the West’s political will to remain in Afghanistan is hemorrhaging away. In the event the West does withdraw its forces, the pre-existing ethnic, sectarian, political, and socio-economic fault lines in Afghanistan are likely to pull that country back into the vortex. It will also mean that regional players will become more active in supporting X, Y or Z factions thus aggravating the conflict and making it harder for a victor to emerge.

Pakistan’s options in this scenario will be limited. Pakistan needs a relatively stable and peaceful Afghanistan more than any other regional player. While Pakistan may want a friendly regime in Kabul, it could live with reciprocal benevolent neutrality. Such an arrangement, however, could only work if the Afghans don’t get too cosy with the Indians.

Pakistan may well have to consider raising an additional 100,000-200,000 strong military force to garrison and protect its border with Afghanistan. This military force would be charged, in effect, with maintaining the Durand Line.

The writer is a faculty member of the Quaid-i-Azam University, Department of History, Islamabad.

THERE couldn’t be a more inhibiting time than what’s going on in Pakistan currently to observe the sanctity of this, 61st, anniversary of the demise of its founder.

It’s not only chaos of gargantuan proportions stalking the land the Quaid carved out, virtually single-handedly. Much worse is the ghastly shadows of penury and want extending from one end of the country to the other. Millions of Pakistanis scrambling like haunted preys for basics of life taken for granted in organized countries of the world is a mind-boggling spectacle. These are scenes one had viscerally come to associate with dirt poor countries of Africa. But they are happening in a country that boasts of nuclear power and is a key ally of the only super-power of the present-day world.

Why should the Pakistani people be starved of sugar or wheat flour or electricity is something that defies common sense for a country as fertile and well-endowed, in natural resources, as ours. But what really takes one’s goat is the utter disdain and contempt Pakistan’s ruling elite have been showing for their own people by failing to tackle these mundane problems at their source.

Just look at the shenanigans of our rulers in Islamabad. They seem to inhabit a planet of their own where the only thing that matters to them is to muddle through the crises tearing down the country by behaving like ostriches. Even that may have been acceptable behaviour from a bunch of inane and unenlightened rulers who have not a clue of what is afflicting the Quaid’s Pakistan and how to tackle the enormous challenges bedevilling it.

But these pathetic, mumbling and bumbling, rulers and their pack of scowling minions, are rubbing salt into the bleeding wounds of the people of Pakistan by riveting their limited attention, instead, on the frivolous game of one-upmanship with their rivals. Pakistan is on fire and the ship of state is lurching at the mercy of howling winds. But our helmsmen, or whatever title they would like to be known by, are rowing it smack into the middle of a maelstrom.

Islamabad presents a sickening spectacle of mud-slinging and muck-raking with the politicos and ex-generals and other khakis of myriad denominations indulging in a free-for-all to their hearts’ content. This is quite reminiscent of the Spanish fun-seekers letting enraged bulls running after screaming spectators in mud-filled streets of unremarkable towns. Claims and counter-claims, accusations and counter-accusations are flying around like muck kicked up by ferocious bulls chasing their preys.

What has triggered this melee of madness is a very legitimate demand of the people of Pakistan—as recently manifested in a public opinion poll by Gallup, Pakistan — to put Pervez Musharraf in the dock for his repeated desecration of the Constitution of Pakistan.

And that’s where this anniversary of the Quaid’s death becomes so much more relevant and inspiring for the people of Pakistan.

The Quaid wasn’t only a barrister of law of impeccable credentials and proven acumen; his persona was also informed and defined by an absolute regard for constitutionalism and rule of law. He fought the case of Pakistan against the finest legal brains of Imperial Britain and won it because he could bring to his aid his unflagging regard and respect for the supremacy of the law of the land. Even his worst detractors and critics couldn’t find a chink in his legal armour and had to grudgingly concede that the brilliance of his mind as a jurist

shone bright in tandem with his unwavering respect for the rule of law. The colonial rulers could never find a reason to put him in jail — as they did the Congress leadership for good reason — because he never broke their law, although he didn’t accept its legitimacy.

And what the Quaid bequeathed to his nation was a legacy anchored in the rule of law in the land he fought for and won at the cost of his life blood. The Pakistan he envisioned, and admonished his people to work for, was a state where only one set of laws would govern all — the rulers as well as the people.

However, our incumbent rulers and their dishonest allies don’t want Musharraf to be hauled up in a court of law because that would, in their twisted and convoluted logic, open up a Pandora’s box. But they should be asked why not?

Pakistan has become a lawless country not merely because we have the Taliban operating freely in parts of the land. It has become lawless because our rulers and leaders have consistently held the law of the land in their contempt. They have behaved like a law unto themselves, treating the constitution of Pakistan like scraps of paper that belong only to the dustbin. We have become a nation that has been covering up the grossest violations of its own laws by the power barons claiming to rule in the name of the people. We have become collectors of so many skeletons that our drawers are now creaking under their weight. It’s about time we opened these burgeoning closets; and if that releases some ghosts and demons, so be it.

But the scared chickens in Islamabad, otherwise spouting to be the standard bearers of the Quaid’s Pakistan, don’t want his dream of a Pakistan ruled by supremacy of the law to become a reality. They don’t want Musharraf, the most persistent violator of Pakistan’s constitution, to be tried because they think that would set a bad precedent. Zardari is hobbled by the thought of demons of NRO unleashed in the event of a Musharraf trial and causing them a lot of inconvenience.

Zardari’s hands are being strengthened, once again, by MQM, which had come to Musharraf’s rescue before, in May, 2007, and seems more than happy to recast itself in the role of the stoutest defender of a law-breaker. MQM’s holier-than-the-pope posturing and shadow-boxing on behalf of their erstwhile mentor lends credence to the oft-spouted allegations about this outfit’s provenance in military intelligence. The noxious and cavalier advocacy of the devil by MQM stalwarts also melds with another recent revelation that Musharraf used to visit its Karachi Markaz as a military officer long before he rose to its pinnacle of power.

But MQM chiefhas lately come up with the most bizarre defence of Musharraf by articulating his weird ‘vision’ that if Musharraf were to be tried for treason under Article 6 of the Pakistani Constitution then at least 200,000 people of Pakistan should also be tried for similar culpability. Where did he learn his arcane arithmetic? Or has he completely lost his marbles?

The butt of this Zardari-MQM alliance is none other than Nawaz Sharif, who remains steadfast, at least to date, in his demand that Musharraf be tried for breaking the law of the land, not once but habitually; the most brazen, of course, being the emergency the dictator had imposed on November 3, 2007.

In order, obviously, to pile maximum pressure on Nawaz Sharif to relent in his campaign to take Musharraf to task, his harried nemeses have come up with the trump card of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Musharraf’s desperate dash to Riyadh at the peak of the month of Ramazan — when the Saudi ruling family doesn’t, normally, entertain foreign guests — underlined the urgency he and his PPP-MQM cohorts attached to invoking the Saudi monarch’s intercession with Nawaz to stop him in his tracks.

That Nawaz Sharif is beholden to the Saudis is a well-known fact. But what’s not so clear is why should the Saudis be so keen, once again, to cast themselves in the role of a referee — a role they have played a number of times before — between contentious and quarrelling Pakistani elite?

The answer to this riddle is the elephant in the room.

Washington may have ditched the liability that Musharraf had become, because of his nefarious antics and unbridled lust for power, but it isn’t prepared to disown his successor. Zardari is rendering Washington the same yeoman’s service Musharraf did for so many years; and he is doing it without asking any inconvenient questions. So the Obama administration, knowing so well how intricately Zardari’s fate is tied with Musharraf’s, doesn’t want its apple cart to be upset by a trial of law-breaker Musharraf. King Abdullah couldn’t have said no to Washington, Ramazan or no Ramazan, to lean on Nawaz to pull back. It remains to be seen if Nawaz has the gumption to say no to his Saudi mentors and benefactors.

But when the chips are down it isn’t Nawaz at the table of this very high-stakes poker game. It’s the people of Pakistan. And at stake is their debt to the founder of their nation. They must be playing the roulette to protect his legacy, a bequest soiled by successive rulers. It’s their biggest challenge, to date, to retrieve the Quaid’s legacy from the grubby hands of robber-barons who have turned Jinnah’s splendid dream into a nightmare.

THE recent spate of "disclosures" about how the ISI distributed money among certain politicians and media persons two decades ago is the current favourite in ‘twice told tales’ shows on almost all TV channels. One can recall the extensive coverage done by the media of the Yunus Habib/Mehran Bank scandal a few years later. So, why the encore? The answer lies in the establishment’s need to wean the viewers off the depressing political debates marked by demands for Musharraf’s treason trial, growing overt and covert US military presence in the country, uneasy political alliances and possible repeal of NRO.

The Zardari government has completed a year — a year of stagnation and inertia, useless power plays and idle showmanship. While the economic situation deteriorated, poverty and unemployment became rife, law and order saw a total breakdown, the NWFP and Balochistan suffered an insurgency and the country's sovereignty was daily being violated by drone attacks.

Ironically it was the issue of the restoration of the judges that proved to be a turning point for the government. It ran the lawyers and the political parties which backed them in circles till it itself ran out of patience. However, as the history of Pakistan is replete with similar precedents, one or both the parties appealed to the powers that be. Not before long, the State Department stepped in and Gen Kayani intervened and played a lead role to end the crisis. The judges were restored but President Zardari had to retreat and the myth of his infallibility as a leader stood shattered.

At this juncture the contradictions within the PPP came to the fore and the monopolisation of decision-making by Zardari was met with resentment in the rank and file. However, as things stand today the prime minister, not the president, has been reduced to a ceremonial figure and the cabinet to a rubber stamp, parliament has become a debating club. The people had waited for long and wanted an end to lawlessness, unemployment, corruption and rising prices. However, this was not to be. As every student of history knows, American policy has always been to put their money on more than one horse in a race. Initially their attitude towards Nawaz Sharif was not so enthusiastic but the success of the Long March for the restoration of the judges threw a new light on him.

From a gullible simpleton he was transformed into a resolute leader, capable of decisive action when the need arises. The Long March also demonstrated his mass support in a convincing manner. Equally keen were all Americans who mattered and visited the country regularly to meet him. This was bound to give rise to grave misgivings in certain quarters. President Zardari responded by adopting a lower profile at home and trying to make friends in far off places, whatever the cost.

However, there should be no illusions about why the Mehran Gate Scandal has been revived at this stage. While it shows how the establishment interferes in the democratic process in the country, it also makes it amply clear how skilfully it changes the script of TV talk shows from treason trials to private greed of popular politicians. Yet, there is no denying the fact that there is no alternative to solving the real political, economic and social problems the people are confronted with today. For the current lot of politicians, whether in power or not, the only way to win a political battle is by gaining the support of the masses by their concrete actions to defend national independence, solve their basic problems and promote a democratic culture.

We are a nation of escapists. We spend 24/7 whining and complaining about the problems we are confronted with. But when issues are discussed openly and on a national level, everyone feels perturbed. The establishment, unless it suits its interests, raises the bogey of national security and those in danger of being exposed cry foul, and the people in general prefer easy answers rather than noisy acrimonious debates.

So, whenever a serious discussion on the national scale takes place, the establishment and all the culprits of past misdeeds, who are likely to be exposed in the process, warn of dangers of national disintegration, civil disorder and the apocalypse itself. This is meant to prevent a national consensus on the rights and wrongs in our national life. History does not provide nations with time out for discussion on their past deeds and misdeeds. So if we are to stop moving around in circles, repeating the same mistakes again and again, we must not resort to inventing excuses and avoiding difficult and unpleasant tasks but squarely face the task before us. Without clearing the Augean stables of our national life we cannot but live in vain pursuit of the ideal of a just and democratic society in Pakistan.

The most important thing is to determine the objective of this discussion. Why is this necessary? Because, those responsible for past misdeeds are resourceful enough to turn any constructive debate into sordid mudslinging and create a situation of confrontation between the political forces, thereby extricating themselves from an unpleasant situation. This has been the modus operandi during the last sixty years.

But the fact remains it is high time we looked into the root cause of our national malaise objectively. Our inquiry must cover the whole period from 1947 to the present day and not just the formation of IJI in 1988 and Mehran Gate Scandal in 1990 [disclosed in 1994]. Secondly, the media must refrain from sensationalising facts and allowing personal bias to influence the outcomes.

A great philosopher has said: “Those who do not learn from past mistakes are condemned to repeat them”.