[B]30.06.2013[/B][B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Scientific sightseeing [/SIZE]
Italian scientists and Pakistani experts are busy upgrading weather station and studying glaciers’ behaviour at Deosai
By Aoun Sahi
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On June 14, 2013, Deosai, the second highest plateau in the world situated some 30 kilometre off Skardu city in the south, was the destination of three Italian scientists, expert on environment related issues, an Italian science journalist, an official of EVK2CNR (an Italian organisation expert on high altitude researches) and some Pakistani journalists and officials of the organisation. A group of Pakistani and Italian scientists and technicians would upgrade the 20-year-old Wapda weather station at Deosai to a climate station while a second group led by an Italian scientist would try to verify presence of permafrost — thermal state of a material that stays below 0°C for two or more years.

The expedition was part of Social, Economic and Environment Development (SEED), a five-year project (2010-2014) worth Rs 1.01 billion financed by Pakistan Italian Debt for Development SWAP Agreement for the Central Karakoram National Park (CKNP) region implemented by EVK2CNR and Karakoram International University (KIU).

The project, according to SEED project director Raffaele Del Cima, is aimed at an interactive development of CNKP region through the implementation and management of national park and the improvement of local social development. “The project area lies between 2500-8000 metre high while its core area lies above 3500 metre. The SEED project aims to catalyze an integrated social, economic and environment development in the area. The environment related activities at Deosai are part of larger efforts to monitor atmospheric composition in the region,” he tells TNS.

The teams of scientists and journalists were supposed to stay at Deosai for three nights followed by a one-day ‘Journalism Workshop under the shadow of K2’ at Skardu city. Everybody was excited to be a part of the expedition. Weather was pleasant, but it turned cooler as the caravan reached Deosai top later in the afternoon. “The idea to bring journalists along with scientists is to provide them an opportunity to have first-hand information about the experiments and build a liaison between journalists and scientists to make it easy for them to communicate,” says Munir Ahmed, consultant communication of SEED project.

The scientific activities needed clear weather conditions but snow started falling at Deosai in the evening of June 14 and kept falling for the next three days at regular interval which made it almost impossible for permafrost verification. The team also faced problems in installing the prototype of remote climate observatory station, a compact device prepared by scientists and researchers of EVK2CNR after years of research and study. The small device with several censors and with little power consumption would analyse air quality in terms of dust, particles, black carbon characteristic of air and ozone characteristic of air.

“With collaboration of WAPDA and Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD), we are expanding the station, adding to it some air quality investigations,” Gian Pietro Verza, head of the team installing prototype of compact climate station at Deosai, tells TNS.

The compact device would help analyse pollutant transportation of remote areas because the air of Deosai is very clean. “We want to carry out a scientific study and a performance test of our machine. We would push our machine to maximum sensitivity. It is just a 30-kg device and can be put in a small suitcase to transport anywhere in the world through international flights. It is powered by a very strong battery. Our collaboration with WAPDA and PMD for the checking and maintenance of the machine is very important,” says Pietro.

“The data would not only be available to our scientists, but also for international scientist committees because the station will trace international movement of air masses and pollutants,” he says, standing by the machine under heavy snow at Deosai plateau.

Zeshan Kiyani, a scientist working with WAPDA, tells TNS that the authority has 20 high altitude weather stations, including Deosai, with multiple sensors. “Their main purpose is to help forecast inflows in Mangla and Tarbela dams. We use them to forecast water inflows for 10 days and for seasons as well. Our censors update their data online every hour but this compact station once installed would be able to update data every two minutes,” he says, adding it is Wapda’s first collaboration with EVK2CNR. “The climate station would help us analyse air. In the future, we also plan to use it to study the behaviour of glaciers as well.”

EVK2CNR, which specialises in high altitude research, introduced to PMD the first high altitude weather station when it installed an automatic weather station at Urdukas in 2004.

Riaz ul Hassan, country head of EVK2CNR, says that his organisation has long-lasting collaboration with PMD spanning over nine years. “This is mostly in Baltoro where we have installed three automatic weather stations working properly at Konkardia, Urdukas and Askole. The last station we installed was at Konkordia in 2011 which is the highest weather station in Pakistan. These weather stations have sensors which analyse atmospheric pressure, humidity, precipitation, air temperature, wind speed and direction and global solar radiations. These stations also help us study the behaviour of Baltoro glacier. We have been observing some changes in the glacier, but it would take some time to come up with some scientific report on the glacier,” he tells TNS, adding that the data is downloaded from these three stations twice a year and is shared with PMD and EVK2CNR. “Our staff visits these stations every three months to check whether they are working properly. The compact device at Deosai would be a great addition to the EVK2CNR efforts to study climate of the area.”

Riaz says for the past 20 years, EVK2CNR has been supporting Gilgit-Baltistan with scienti?c expertise, through community development, improvement of the tourism sector and environment, conservation of cultural heritage and facilitation of small businesses in collaboration with many partner organisations and departments from Italy, Pakistan and Gilgit-Baltistan.

“To study and conserve the environment of the area along with these weather stations, we have been doing several other activities under the SEED project. We collect solid waste from Baltoro glacier and base camps of K2, Konkordia and G2 mountains and dump it properly. We have installed an insulator at Askole to burn plastic, paper and fabric etc with zero emission. So far, we have collected and dumped between 30-35 thousand kg of solid waste. We have also installed mobile toilets at Baltoro and base camps of different peaks. We have planted so far more than 40,000 plants in Askole and its surrounding. We have also completed several drinking water schemes in the project area,” says Riaz.

On June 18, a workshop for journalists from Islamabad and Gilgit-Baltistan was arranged. The best part of it was presentation of Italian science journalist Jacopo Pasotti on ‘how to write scientific reportage on mountains’ and ‘tips for documentary reporting on wilderness’ by Stefano Ardito, an Italian documentary maker. The next destination of the Italian scientists and journalists was Baltoro glacier where they would do research on glacier behaviour and the climate of the area.

[B]30.06.2013[/B][B][CENTER] [SIZE="5"]Permafrost in Pakistan[/SIZE]

Renato Colucci, an Italian geologist who has done his PhD in Environmental Science with speciality in permafrost and general cryosphere and works at national research council in Italy managing weather networks, was at Deosai to study permafrost.
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“Permafrost covers 25 per cent surface of the land and is defined as thermal state of a material-soil, rock etc that remain at or below 0°C for two or more consecutive years,” he tells TNS. “Pakistan is a very interesting area and there are some studies which indicates presence of permafrost in Pakistan.” According to Colucci, no thermal data or data related to ice content within permafrost are available for Pakistan. “It is very important to study permafrost. It is directly connected to climate change and water management of the area. In permafrost very often you have water stored in the ground but this water, unlike glacier, is not visible. It helps you understand water potential of the area,” he says. They made a satellite survey of the area with radiometer response and found some areas interesting at Deosai as far as presence of permafrost is concerned.

His first and final aim is to verify the presence of permafrost that would start next step in future like measuring the temperature of permafrost which is the best way to know how this permafrost can develop. “We can also drill some bore to study it in more details. We are using geo-electricity technique. It measures the resistivity of terrain and it is simple to see if it is ice or soil in permafrost condition because resistivity of ice is higher than soil. It is a long process and needs clear weather.”

He says that if permafrost thaws and the ice in it melts in terrains like Deosai with lot of organic material, it could free methane and CO2. “In this kind of terrain, high percentage of methane is stored and blocked by ice or permafrost conditions of soil. So, its thawing would release high quality of methane in air which would directly or indirectly hit ozone layer,” he says.

According to him permafrost also occurs in rocks. “When you have rocks in permafrost conditions, the water that goes in the cracks of these rocks freezes and water expands by 9 per cent when it freezes. If the rocks stay in permafrost condition, this ice help rocks to stay together firmly as it works as glue but if permafrost thaws in rocks it results in landslides. It can cause huge landslides.”

Though he is not an expert on Pakistani mountains, he thinks that many of the huge landslides, including Atta Abad landslide in the recent past, is the result of permafrost thawing. “We also have examples in Europe where big mountain fell because of permafrost thawing. It makes it even more important to study permafrost in Pakistan because in mountain areas permafrost is directly linked to lives and livelihood of the residents.”

[B]30.06.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Problematic identity [/SIZE]
The issue of identity engulfing every one among the
Pakistani diaspora is riddled with ambiguity
By Tahir Kamran
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The Pakistani diaspora, particularly in the United Kingdom, has a peculiar relationship which is usually articulated in an ambivalent manner. People from different socio-economic backgrounds have a different take on the way Pakistan is being governed and social as well as civic issues are addressed.

Across the social spectrum, however, they subject Pakistan to fierce scrutiny in juxtaposition to the developed countries of the West. Providing that scrutiny with any sort of context is none of their concern. The colonial heritage, and the post-colonial hegemony of the developed nations over the third world countries which does not allow those hapless countries to wade out of the economic dependency of which they have been victims since the conclusion of the second World war, are not factors in their perception of the dismal state that these countries are in right now.

Smugness oozes out of either successful professionals or businessmen. This in spite of the fact that they encounter problems of integration and discrimination. Yet they are not ruffled, quite justifiably, because of the problems galore in Pakistan — from law and order to power outages. Thus, living in UK is not at all a bad bargain.

The majority of the women-folk coming from the same professional background have turned religious, holding gatherings where they read the Quran and try to make sense of its content. Thus, the collective orientation among them is religious, which also helps them in resolving the vexed question of their identity. The issue of identity engulfing every one among the diaspora is riddled with ambiguity. The cobwebs of ambiguity regarding identity reflect very explicitly in second- and third-generation youngsters. Thus those among the British-Pakistani youth, for example, who are sensitized to the issue of identity, tend to take extremist (religious) positions. Many of them are profoundly influenced by religious groups like Hizb-ut-Tahrir.

Equipped with good education and the gift of the gab, they argue virulently against the West and the whole system that it subscribes to.

I met many such youngsters at the Young Leaders Conference, held at Oxford University in February, in which Pakistani students studying in British Universities assembled to debate various issues confronted by the Pakistani State. The strongest of the opinions voiced at that conference was from students born and bred in England with English as their first language, instructed at good universities, who espoused unequivocally the Islamic code of life as a panacea for the ills which beset Pakistan. They even did not bother to go into the nitty-gritty of what the promulgation of Shariah in Pakistan would entail.

Impervious to problems like sectarian disharmony that has split the Muslim world into antithetical categories, the non-viability of Khilafat as an alternative to the nation-state system, which they castigated as ‘Western’ thus contrary to Islam, made it extremely hard for the one presiding over the proceedings to draw any consensus from the deliberations. The unqualified support they lent to the narrative of Jihad was yet another example of their ill feeling for their adopted country.

Such a mindset among the youth has reached dangerous proportions. Clash of civilization may be a flawed notion for many academics but it has very profound resonance among the educated youth here in England and obviously things are not very different in other countries like the US and Canada.

Lower-middle strata of the people from Pakistani origin, engaged in small businesses or in odd jobs like taxi driving etc, also take religion as their foremost identity marker. Consequently, the institution of mosque has become extremely important. Even the British electoral candidates think it worthwhile to go to the mosques for canvassing during the elections. Such a situation gives extraordinary leverage to the people who control ‘mosque’ of the area.

In Cambridge, certain shopkeepers make it a point to not let go of the control over the mosque, which legitimates them as the social and political leaders of the community. Thus, from the position that they acquire as the managers of the mosque, they successfully conclude favourable bargains with city/county councils.

Among the Pakistani diaspora community, only a miniscule percentage of the people has no qualms integrating into the social and cultural milieu of their adopted country. Most of them come from educated professional class. Their concern for the country of their origin is absolutely minimal. Their brown skin, however, impedes that process of integration.

The fact remains that the white colour is one of the prerequisites for anyone aspiring to be a part of the Western civilization and culture. Though the Western literati rules out Christianity as an essential ingredient of their civilization and enunciate the current stage as post-religious, the social ethos that they hold very dear emanates from that religion. That is a fact which can hardly be overlooked.

[B]30.06.2013 [/B][B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Creation of new provinces[/SIZE]
The issue of new provinces seems to have died down. Perhaps, the issue has not gained critical mass yet amongst the masses
By Ahmad Nazir Warraich[/CENTER][/B]

Pakistan, under the premiership of Yousaf Raza Gillani, seemed on the verge of experimenting with the creation of new federating unit(s). The former prime minister, in particular, and the PPP in general, raised the issue to national prominence. They made the narrative so strong that it seemed impossible for any political party vying for national political space to oppose such an idea. All parties in one way or the other supported it, albeit some reluctantly, and some lukewarmly, but all had to come out in favour of creation of new province(s). The stage seemed set for the creation of new province(s), and the question seemed to be not of ‘if’ but ‘when’ and ‘how many’ new provinces would be created.

However, as happens with these things, once the debate starts, it takes a life of its own. What started off with the creation of just one province for the Seraiki-speaking people developed into a demand for other provinces as well — Hazara in KPK and restoration of the old Bahawalpur state as a separate province. On the other end of the spectrum, there was wall chalking reported in Karachi asking for a new province, although the MQM officially maintained the posture of ‘one Sindh’, but some feared that the reason for the MQM’s vociferous support for new provinces is in the hope that starting the process might eventually lead to Karachi becoming a province. Some Pushtuns of Balochistan asserted their own right of either a separate province or merger with KPK, and some even asked for a separate province for Fata. Province making was declared to be the unfinished part of the 18th Amendment and there was talk of completing the work started by the 18th Amendment through the creation of more provinces.

However, six months before the elections the wind behind the demand seemed to have suddenly died down. As the elections approached the pre-election debate was dominated by issues of governance, electricity, jobs, health, education, corruption, terrorism, etc. This pushed the province creation narrative into the background. The campaign trail seemed to have missed the province issue altogether.

The question is what happened to the demand, and why did it die down as the elections neared, rather than ratcheting up in momentum, as might have been expected. One reason for this could be that the PPP which had been the main champion of the cause, downgraded it as the elections approached. The issue which had been articulated so vociferously and often by the PPP leadership was simply not taken to its logical end. The absence of a viable election campaign by the PPP meant that it was unable to make this an election issue. Therefore, surprisingly for many, the party lost in South Punjab rather than being able to cash in on it.

The PPP failed to deliver almost on all service related issues, although, admittedly, it did some very good work with regard to the constitutional amendments dealing with redistribution of power within the Federation and its units, and within the constitutional office holders. However, this did not have any impact on the common man’s life. This lead to a general disenchantment with the PPP and, therefore, the agenda being championed by it also suffered and the chief champions of the cause were not voted into power. Misgovernance was so serious, economic and energy crisis so critical that the electorate had nothing else to think about.

The individuals who had supported the movement could not keep up the momentum until elections and did not have a platform on which to raise the issue. The contest in the south of Punjab was between the PML-N and the PTI. And both these parties were not in the forefront of this demand. The PML-N was perceived to be a reluctant supporter of the cause, and the PTI was considered lukewarm at best. Though Imran Khan, a Lahorite but basically a Seraiki speaker from Mianwali, never made it a main issue, the PTI took the stand that provinces may be created on administrative issues. But as Mianwali is not as a whole in favour of a Seraiki province, therefore may be the PTI was also not a main supporter of the idea.

Another reason could be, perhaps, that the issue has not gained critical mass yet amongst the masses. This is not the main issue for them. Maybe this is just the articulation of the aspirations of the middle class.

The other main demand was from Hazara, where Mian Nawaz Sharif did make an electoral promise to create a Hazara province. Here the vote was divided between the PTI and the PML-N. It remains to be seen how Mian Nawaz Sharif takes his promise forward, although it is not likely to see fruition, as the provincial assembly is not in their control and without its consensus no new province can be created. People in Hazara also say that even a ‘patwari’ is posted from Pushto-speaking part of the province, and their linkage with Peshawar is through Punjab, and no road has been built to connect them to the provincial capital.

However, this does not mean that the demand is not there or is not genuine. The regions of South Punjab and Hazara have their grievances, which need to be and must be addressed. One reason for the dissatisfaction is the tendency to centralise things in the provincial capitals, be it Lahore, Quetta, Karachi or Peshawar. The provincial governments are reluctant to devolve power to the district and sub-district level — the tier where most of the service delivery issues are dealt with. True democracy is based on a vibrant local government, which is ensured under Article 140-A in Pakistan. If the governance, decision-making and accountability is not devolved to district level then the people would always feel as if they have no say in the governance of their affairs.

There is a need to realise that people rightly want to have a say in the governance of their affairs, as is expected in any representative form of government. There are two ways of doing this. First, in the shorter term, devolution should be fully and immediately implemented in its true form. Had it already been implemented, the issue may not have been raised to this level in the first place. Second, in the longer term, the issue of creation of new provinces should be dealt with in a structured and thorough manner with proper deliberation and seriousness, ensuring full national consensus and with least amount of acrimony within the units. This is a major issue which warrants a serious approach and should not be taken as merely an ‘electioneering slogan’.

[I]The writer is a Lahore-based lawyer and political analyst[/I]

[B]07.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]The continuing conundrum[/SIZE]
The complex social and political
makeup of Balochistan has hardly been given credence by policy
makers, and hence a skewed approach has always been the hallmark of every Baloch policy
By Yaqoob Khan Bangash[/CENTER][/B]

In 1934, the Foreign Secretary of India decided to understand the constitution of Kalat State, which formed two-thirds of what is now the Balochistan province of Pakistan. After studying the topic for months, Weightman came to the conclusion that he was ‘confused’ and that the makeup of Kalat ‘seemed to defy any definition and was fated to arise controversy among those who attempted one...’ Almost eighty years to that minute, the successor to the British in that part of the world is as confused and as troubled by the province as the British were. Successive governments in Pakistan have tried to solve the Balochistan ‘problem’ but have been unable to do so.

The last government launched a special initiative in November 2009, the Aghaz-e-Haqooq-e-Balochistan package, aimed at rehabilitating the province politically and economically. Broadly, this package included giving royalties owed to the province since 1951, filling in the 5.4 per cent quota already granted to Balochistan in federal jobs, release of political prisoners, and further constitutional devolution. Subsequently the 18th Constitutional Amendment gave further powers to the provinces in 2010, including Balochistan, meaning that there was no longer a concurrent list of subjects for federal legislation and that the provinces now got the bulk of federally collected taxes. Rooted in history: Akbar Bugti with Quaid-e-Azam.

Under the 7th National Finance Commission Award, also enacted under the previous government, Balochistan’s percentage share was nearly doubled to 9.09%. The Balochistan package was very well received and rather quickly implemented, so much so that by November 2011, the then prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani, was boasting that nearly 80 per cent of the package had already been implemented — in advance of the deadline.

The package also received a pat in the back by the recent caretaker government under the retired Justice from Balochistan, Hazar Khan Khoso, who presided over several meetings which monitored the good progress of the package. However, even with all these developments, President Zardari noted in a recent interview that he was ‘disappointed’ that the Baloch had not seized the moment and done enough for themselves.

So why is that despite so many constitutional, political and economic reforms, Balochistan still remains a conundrum? Why do so many ‘reform’ packages fail to lure the Baloch into the main stream of Pakistan? What is there that the government (be it the establishment, the political parties, or others) fail to grasp about the region?

One thing which is quite patent is that all policy makers, whether today or in the past, have consistently failed to understand the complicated nature of the province. The complex social and political makeup of the province has hardly been given credence by policy makers, and hence a skewed approach has always been the hallmark of every Balochistan policy. It is only after the peculiar social and political setup of Balochistan is understood that a concrete policy can be developed towards the province.

Secondly, there have scarcely been any attempts to address the historical roots of Baloch uneasiness and resistance towards Pakistan. The accession of Kalat to Pakistan in March 1948 is still mired in controversy and many a Baloch resistance narratives begin from that contested accession. Ignoring the history of the Baloch issue, therefore, prevents policy makers from really understanding the root cause of the unrest and insurgency. Yet to find a solution to Baloch insurgency.

First, therefore, we need to understand the social structure of Balochistan. A lot of development planning is conducted in Balochistan as if a large part of the province were settled area. In fact only a small proportion of the province is settled and of that an even smaller percentage is urban. A significant percentage of the population of Balochistan is nomadic (mainly Brahuis) and the rest are peasant cultivators. In both cases, the tribe is the main centre of authority, politically and economically.

In the Baloch and Brahui tribal structure, unlike that of the Pakhtuns, the office of the tribal chief reigns supreme. According to anthropologist Pehrson, for the Marri tribe for example, ‘The sardar is the central and unifying leader who, by his existence, creates the Marri tribe and who for formal purposes is regarded as the font of all legitimate power in the tribe.’ Therefore, the Baloch and Brahui society is extremely hierarchical, which gives great leverage to the tribal chief, who in effect orders the lives of the tribesmen.

Further describing this kind of authority, theorist Kapferer argues that in hierarchical societies, individuals and groups are seen to be incorporated within and determined by holistic principles. In those societies political (not religious) authority is the encompassing, unifying force which subsumes, orders, and makes whole, otherwise weak or destructive individuals and groups (quoted in Titus and Swidler).

Policy makers also need to understand the significance of nomadism in Baloch life and society. Even though the number of Baloch and Brahui who actually live the nomadic life might have declined in recent years, the ideal ‘Baloch’ lifestyle still remains deeply rooted in nomadism.

Anthropologist Spooner noted just a couple of decades ago that nomadism ‘is still thought of as the genuine Baloch life, which embodies the authentic Baloch virtues of honesty, loyalty, faith, hospitality, asylum for refugees, and so on’. Most of Baloch folklore, traditional songs, and cultural heritage is still centered around the nomadic lifestyle.

Interpreting Irons, anthropologists Titus and Swidler also maintain that nomadism ‘can be a political-military adaptation by weaker groups that have been marginalized or sought to avoid domination by more powerful settled groups, or conversely, nomads can themselves be the dominant political force in society.’ Surveying the history of the Baloch, with the state of Kalat always between empires, be it the Mughal, Safavid or Durrani, the nomadic lifestyle not only served a political purpose but also kept close social and political cohesion in the tribes.

We also need to understand the circumstances under which Balochistan (mainly the erstwhile state of Kalat) became a part of Pakistan. Without a clear grasp of the accession saga, one cannot really comprehend the roots of the current Baloch insurgency or event general Baloch malaise towards Pakistan.

In 1947, the parts of what is now called Balochistan which became a part of Pakistan were the Chagai district, Zhob agency and the Marri and Bugti areas. These were collectively called ‘British Balochistan’ and were under the charge of a chief commissioner. The rest of the current province was composed of the state of Kalat together with its feudatories of Kharan and Lasbela.

In 1947, Kalat was ruled by Mir Ahmed Yar Khan, who, since his accession in 1933, had been striving to achieve greater autonomy and independence for Kalat. However, the control of Ahmed Yar Khan over the state was not so simple as Kalat State was administered once like a feudal, federal and confederal state with tribal sardars wielding different levels of authority in different areas. The Political Department’s Col. Keyes’ description came close but even that explanation baffled officials. Col. Keyes had noted: ‘…Kalat is a multiple federal state and not a simple confederacy. In the niabats, both in Sarawan and Jhalawan and in Kachhi, the Khan was an autocratic ruler…while in the tribal territory he is head of a confederacy but even so holds a position higher than that of primus inter pares…’ This complication meant that any decision of the Khan could be easily challenged by other sardars and that sovereignty did not completely lay with the Khan, but was multilayered.

My forthcoming book deals with this topic in greater detail, but in brief, Kalat state wanted to remain independent (just like Kashmir, Travancore and Hyderabad), but ended up becoming a part of Pakistan after eight-month long negotiations, a threat of attack from Pakistan, and after a rumour that it had applied for accession to India.

However, considering the complex nature of the polity in the region, the accession document signed by the ruler, Ahmed Yar Khan, was almost immediately repudiated by large sections of the population. The Khan’s own younger brother, Prince Karim, raised the banner of revolt and led a band of about 500 men to the mountains of Afghanistan from where they waged small incursions into Balochistan till they were finally apprehended in July 1948.

Both Prince Karim, and Ghous Bakhsh Bizinjo, the leader of the Kalat State National Party and the leader of the House of Commons in Kalat State, decried the accession and claimed that the Khan had out stepped his authority as the leader of a confederacy and signed away the state without agreement of the various stakeholders.

Bizinjo, while addressing the lower house of the Kalat parliament in December 1947 on the question of accession, poignantly raised a critical question. He noted: ‘We have a distinct civilization. We have a separate culture like that of Iran and Afghanistan. We are Muslims but it is not necessary that by virtue of our being Muslims we should lose our freedom and merge with others. If the mere fact that we are Muslims requires us to join Pakistan then Afghanistan and Iran, both Muslim countries, should also amalgamate with Pakistan…We are ready to have friendship with that country on the basis of sovereign equality but by no means [are we] ready to merge with Pakistan…We can survive without Pakistan.’ Since then the banner of revolt has been raised in almost every decade, in 1958, 1963-7, 1973-7, and now since late 2005.

So how does the above help us, and especially the policy maker?

The above précis on the social structure of the Baloch and Brahui and the historical context of the insurgency primarily show that this is not an easy problem which can be dealt with by throwing money at it, as has happened several times in the past. The problems Balochistan faces are deep and complicated and will take more than a ‘package’ to address.

First, Pakistani policy needs to be formulated keeping in mind the social structure of the Baloch and Brahui society. So either the tribal leader needs to be completely onboard, or needs to be completely removed from his strong tribal role. Any midway role, hallmark of Pakistani government policy to date, will simply not work and will, in effect, exacerbate the problem as seen in the case of Nawab Akbar Bugti who was variously a Baloch nationalist and a government servant several times. So the long term choice for the government of Pakistan is to either perpetuate the current social framework in Balochistan or intervene decisively to alter it. The results of either policy are self-evident.

Secondly, the legacy of the challenged accession needs to be addressed honestly and openly. Historically, Pakistan has refused to revisit the question of accession and Baloch insurgents have repeatedly started their narrative from it. Therefore, unless this historical cause of Baloch unrest is addressed the issue will remain unresolved.

Quite obviously, open ended talks and an end to aggression on both sides is the simplest way forward. The talks might result in Balochistan settling for a more autonomous federal arrangement with Pakistan, but if this is the price of keeping Balochistan in the federation and the people there in peace, then it is not a high price to pay. After all the linguistic groups in Belgium keep getting more and more autonomy and still remain in one country, and the same is the case in Canada.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has made a very wise move in not forming a PML-N led government in Balochistan. Allowing a non-tribal head as chief minister and a Pashtun as governor will give them a chance to run their own affairs. However, what he must be careful about is whether the choice of the first non-tribal elder as chief minister is going to be simply window dressing or is it going to lead to some positive changes in the centuries old social organisation of the province.

Also, important to note will be how the new provincial and federal governments are going to deal with the young band of insurgents who have given up on the state of Pakistan. Bringing them to the negotiating table will involve clearly accepting the wrongs of the past (including the contested accession) and a complete and real end to military operations against them.

Balochistan is a very complicated region which is now increasingly an area of international interest. Several countries have strategic interest in the area, especially the United States, the United Kingdom, Afghanistan, Iran, India, China and the UAE, and especially now since the Chinese are developing the Gwadar deep sea port, which could potentially host the Chinese navy thereby threatening both the commercial hegemony of the Gulf states and the military presence of the United States and its allies in the Arabian sea.

More so than the rest of Pakistan, Balochistan is at a crossroads, and therefore informed yet courageous decisions need to be taken by all sides if we are to see a peaceful solution of the problem for the betterment of all.

[I]The writer is the Chairperson of the Department of History, Forman Christian College, and tweets at @BangashYK[/I]

[B]07.07.2013 [/B][B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Corrupt to the core [/SIZE]
Corruption has become widespread and a major barrier to Pakistan’s growth and progress
By Alauddin Masood
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Taking cognizance of widespread corruption, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has directed the federal hierarchy to cancel contracts of corrupt officials and take concrete measure to eliminate corruption in government offices. In a letter, the PM told the federal ministers and secretaries that since the menace of corruption is a hurdle in the way of serving the masses, so removal of this hurdle is the government’s top priority. He said: “The governance cannot be improved unless corruption, nepotism, inefficiency and conflict of interest are tackled upfront.” All upright and enlightened citizens would lend support to Nawaz Sharif in his endeavours to wipe out corruption from the country.

There cannot be two opinions about the fact that the scourge of corruption has become endemic. On June 28, 2013, while hearing a case pertaining to the utilisation of Rs42 billion in excess of the Prime Minister’s budgeted discretionary funds by Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry had remarked: “Where ever we touch, springs of corruption sprout.” Money was provided to those who were to contest election and they even devoured the pension funds of the poor people, he added. Attorney General Munir A. Malik informed the court that Raja Ashraf had violated the Planning Commission’s rules and regulations by releasing unbudgeted development funds.

A sampling of some more mega cases of corruption recently carried by The News has been reproduced below to enable the readers to assess its dimension and various forms. Reportedly, more trouble awaits Raja Ashraf who lifted the ban on cutting of trees in Gilgit-Baltistan, on his last day in office, causing a loss of eight billion rupees to the national exchequer and irreparable damage to the environment.

CJP Iftikhar Chaudhry has taken notice of corruption cases of more than Rs40 billion in the Employees Old Age Benefit Institute during the last three years. Meanwhile, a new enquiry report has revealed that the amount of national money looted through stock manipulation, illegal issuance of CNG licences and massive gas theft has crossed the threshold of Rs100 billion.

In an apparent move to hide corruption involving billions of rupees and to protect thousands of ghost schools throughout the country, head of Basic Education Community Schools has forewarned his staff about raids by third party validation teams, hired by the federal government to detect ghost schools, which number in thousands.

There was corruption from the office of the Patwari up to the top offices but no system could be established to bring an end to the menace, stated Peshawar High Court Chief Justice Dost Muhammad Khan on June 29, 2013. “There must be a constitutional body that could keep a check on corruption by everyone, including the president and premier,” he stressed.

Corruption is a bane, which afflicts all societies. It is neither so benign in underdeveloped world nor it is so rare in advanced countries. However, it is perceived to be more widespread in third world countries, particularly in states where official business is conducted under the cover of secrecy and officials enjoy wide discretionary powers.

The history of corruption is, however, as old as the history of human civilization. It was a serious problem even in the Biblical and classical times, and was found in most periods of history. In his will, Alexander the Great advised that his hands be kept out of his coffin so that the people could see that he was going empty-handed from the world. This has many lessons for the wise, but an overwhelming majority, it seems, in their pursuit of wealth forget that they have also to leave their earthly abode empty handed.

However, history is replete with benign rulers who could control corrupt practices. For example, vices like hoarding, adulteration, manipulating prices etcetera did not exist during Alauddin Khilji’s rule. Deterrent punishment, coupled with an efficient system of monitoring and creating awareness about severe punishment, refrained people from indulging in these vices not only during the Khilji rule but for about 150 years thereafter although the punishment was actually awarded to only three persons during Khilji’s rule.

As regards Pakistan, the country inherited corruption from the colonial rule, impelling Quaid-e-Azam to describe it as “one of the biggest curses from which India is suffering,” and exhorting legislators, in his maiden address to Pakistan’s constituent assembly on August 11, 1947, to put it down with an iron hand. But, like a cancerous wound, the vice of corruption has been constantly rising in this country over the last decades, in particular following the 1958 events. It has now become widespread and a major barrier to Pakistan’s growth and progress.

In addition to financial corruption, other major forms of corruption practiced here include: misuse of authority, grant of liberal perks to the elite and top bureaucracy, nepotism, favouritism, bending rules to favour cronies, deviation from standard norms and procedures, attempts at thwarting the process of law and justice in cases affecting the oligarchs, extending patronage to crony businessmen indulging in malpractices and, above all, misuse of discretionary powers.

In the past also, the authorities have been taking steps to curb corruption. The transformation of Special Police Establishment into Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in the mid-1970s, and the establishment of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) in the 1990s bear testimony to the existence of the problem and the government’s half-hearted endeavours to root it out. But, the vice of corruption continued to spread and it has now reached a stage where one could not get even his legitimate jobs done without paying “facilitation charges” — a refined name for bribe money.

The growth of government activity and regulations in the modern state increases the opportunities and the temptations for corruption. Improvements in education need not lead to the elimination of corruption but to its perpetuation in new and sophisticated forms. One of the perceived pre-requisites of good governance is transparency in administration and, in fact, in public life as a whole.

If the governance is conducted openly, the government can afford transparency in most of its activities. It is now universally agreed that the more the transparency the less the corruption.

On the other hand, corruption inhibits good governance. It undermines economic development, stunts growth, fuels poverty and creates political instability. No nation can develop to its full capacity or realise its full potential in any field if its social system is plagued by corruption and inefficiency. Corruption not only causes a severe drain on the national economy, it also acts as a major disincentive to foreign investment.

Generous allocation of vehicles to state minions, starting from 1970s, introduced another element of corruption. In most of the developed countries, prime ministers and cabinet ministers are allocated only one limousine each for official use strictly. Though this has been the norm in Pakistan prior to 1970, now sky seems to be the limit for some holders of public offices who retain several dozen of official vehicles in their fleet.

When Ch Muhammad Ali was prime minister his wife used to cook food herself. The number of domestic employees available to his successors in office is more than two hundred. President Ayub Khan felt quite comfortable travelling by PIA’s commercial flights. Now, there are more than 14 planes for the exclusive use of the President, Prime Minister, Governors and Chief Ministers, who enjoy rides in these aircrafts without any distinction of official or private use. Furthermore, there is no mechanism to combat corruption at top levels. Muhammad Khan Junejo (1985-88) stands tall amongst the PMs for having sacked four cabinet ministers on charges of corruption.

Cognizant of the ill-effects of corruption, a majority of top leaders, on assumption of public offices, vowed to eradicate the scourge. Even despot General Pervez Musharraf had expressed his determination to eradicate corruption by addressing its causes and not just the symptoms. But, NAB’s founding Chairman Lt. General Syed Muhammad Amjad was given a new assignment when he decided to investigate six major defence deals. Amjad’s close circles reportedly claimed that he had enough documentary evidence to launch probe against at least 20 retired senior officials, including three former chiefs of army staff, two naval chiefs and an air force chief in purchase of tanks, submarines, naval mine hunters, mirage fighters and jeeps. The message was loud and clear that the army ruler was there to conduct accountability of civilians and that the forces should never be held accountable for anything.

Following terrorist attack on Frenchmen, in 2002, in Karachi, foreign media carried reports suggesting that the contract for construction of Agosta submarines in Pakistan involved payment of $60 million in commission to Pakistan’s four top naval officers. French newspaper Le Monde (May 11, 2002), an unofficial mouthpiece for the French Socialist Party, claimed that part of the “bribe payment” went to the brother and spouse of the then prime minister. Contrary to the former prime minister’s relatives, the daily noted, Admiral Mansurul Haq decided, in February, 2001, to reimburse $6.2 million to Pakistan. But, Admiral Haq was not the top man in the Navy at the time the transaction took place. The names of other three top naval officers, who allegedly received commission in the award of contract for Agosta submarines, have not been made public so far.

The masses have “herds” instinct — they follow leaders. Darvaish scholar Shaqiq Bulkhi tried to convey this to Abbaside Caliph Haroon-ur Rashid, saying that a ruler was like a spring of water and state officials like water channels flowing out from that spring. If water in the spring (main source) was not sweet how could it be sweet in the canals? If the water in the spring was sweet then it could not be brackish in canals.

In other words, if top leaders observe merit, honesty, austerity, etcetera, and refrain from corruption and corrupt practices these virtues would automatically trickle down and the masses would adopt them willingly, believing these to be the traits of great people.

[I]The writer is a freelance columnist based at Islamabad. [email]alauddinmasood@gmail.com[/email]
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[B]07.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Our money, their banks [/SIZE]
Instead of begging for bailout packages from donors, the government should bring back billions of untaxed dollars lying abroad
By Huzaima Bukhari & Dr. Ikramul Haq[/CENTER][/B]

Senate’s Standing Committee on Finance, in its non-binding recommendations sent to the National Assembly on June 21, 2013, specifically suggested exchange of information with Swiss government to unearth untaxed accounts of Pakistanis. It is common knowledge that no tax is paid by Pakistani residents on such accounts — though, under the law, they are bound to declare both Pakistan and foreign source income (total world income) and then claim exemption or credit on the doubly taxed income, if available.

The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has been seeking permission of the finance minister to negotiate new agreement with Switzerland for this purpose, but has failed to obtain it till today — a summary sent to Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh never got a response and now a fresh one is moved to Ishaq Dar.

A news published in The Times of India of June 21, 2013, says that “when it comes to money in Swiss banks, Pakistan has a slight edge over India with total funds amounting to 1,441 million Swiss francs [Rs1.52 trillion] held there by Pakistani individuals and entities. However, this was the lowest level for such funds ever since Switzerland’s Central Bank began compiling this data in 2002 and was less than half of the record high amount of over 3 billion Swiss francs [Rs4.18 trillion] recorded in 2005. The previous record low of 1.95 billion Swiss francs [Rs2.06 trillion] was seen in the year 2010. In their local currency, the total funds held by individuals and entities from Pakistan in Swiss banks stood at over Rs1.5 trillion as on December 31, 2012”.

It was further revealed in the report that this marked a decline of nearly 32 per cent from 2,119 million Swiss francs (Rs2.32 trillion) at the end of 2011. The issue of alleged stashing of black money in Swiss banks has been a matter of intense debate in Pakistan, as there have been reports of some top former government leaders having kept their money in banks in the European country due to their hugely popular ‘safe-haven’ status. However, a higher amount than Indian entities, assumes significance because Pakistan is a much smaller country in terms of population and area. Still, the quantum of money held by Swiss banks for their Pakistani clients was about 1.5 per cent higher than the equivalent figure for Indians at 1,421 million Swiss francs at the end of 2012, the latest data compiled by Swiss National Bank (SNB) shows.

The report is shocking — confirming that our tax evaders have larger funds than Indians in Switzerland alone. If we add Dubai and other such centres where the rich and mighty have been shifting billions, the figure would be horrendously large — many times what is lying in Switzerland. It is not a matter of a few billions — the amount is at least ten times the collection of FBR. On the one hand, the government is begging before the IMF for further loan and imposing regressive taxes on the poor and on the other, there is no political will to tax the accounts held in Switzerland and elsewhere by our tax cheats [Of assets disclosures and transparency, The News, December 12, 2011].

While the government has rejected the recommendation of Senate to seek assistance of foreign governments in taxing accounts of Pakistanis with them as done by India and other countries, the Finance Act 2013 passed by the National Assembly on June 27, 2013 has given powers to the FBR to access all bank accounts within Pakistan. Such powers have been held by the Senate Finance Committee as “too intrusive, against privacy of individuals and is prone to abuse and misuse.”

The Senate committee is of the view that “since the FBR is itself susceptible to corruption, as stated by Chief Justice of Pakistan, it will likely lead to loss of confidence of Pakistani people in their own banks, almost similar loss of confidence is suffered due to seizure of foreign currency accounts after the 1998 nuclear tests.”

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar did not accept the recommendation of Senate to withdraw changes in the Income Tax Law giving powers to the FBR to access information of account holders held with local banks. He says the information will be confined to Chairman and members of the FBR and not to be shared with staff. If it will not be shared with the field staff, then what could be the purpose of having such powers? Apparently, the only purpose then would be to blackmail political opponents or big fish. It will certainly lead to more flight of capital.

It is strange that the government wants complete access over local account holders but is not ready to get similar information for accounts lying outside which are depriving the national exchequer of billions of rupees in taxes. All responsible governments in the world have, in recent years, shown commitment to retrieve looted money or funds kept by their citizens in tax havens. But in Pakistan, the PPP-led government, during its five-year tenure (2008-2013), acted as the main stumbling block to any such move. Now the PML-N government has also shown unwillingness to tax trillions kept by Pakistanis abroad — these were not offered for tax and their sources are obviously dubious.

The issue of tax avoidance by keeping accounts in tax havens has become a highly charged political issue in the world. Across much of Europe, rich northern countries are increasingly fed up with demands for bailout money from heavily indebted countries like Greece. A key demand of a recent bailout deal announced for Cyprus was that the nation drastically shrinks its role as a financial center and, many in Germany suspect, a haven for money laundering. In Pakistan’s case, we are begging for bailout from the IMF while billions of untaxed dollars are lying abroad. We should bring them back by taking tough measures after giving option of whitening them at the rate of 15-25 per cent voluntarily. If it works we would need no further loans from the IMF or local banks.

People in Pakistan ask why they should file tax returns when their president, prime minister, ministers, governors and elected representatives pay no or meagre taxes. President Zardari, before his election on September 6, 2008, got $60 million unfrozen in Switzerland, and now his case is barred by time. He did not bother to tell the nation how much tax was paid on this collossal money and why it was lying abroad. Before taking the oath of president’s office, he did not declare his assets and liabilities with evidence of payment of taxes where due. The same stands true for all the leading politicians, including Mian Nawaz Sharif and Shahbaz Sharif.

We have written time and again in these columns that tax culture in Pakistan will never take roots unless tax and asset declarations of all the mighty segments of society — politicians, high-ranking military and civilian officials, judges and all public office holders — are made public. There should be a public campaign that absentee landlords, most of whom are members of the parliament, should reveal their tax declarations.

All the judges, high-ranking public servants, including serving and retired generals, should also be required, under the law, to make public their assets and tax declarations on annual basis. Any person who is a tax delinquent should be debarred from contesting elections. All kinds of exemptions and concessions provided under various tax codes should be withdrawn.

[I]The writers, tax lawyers, are members Adjunct Faculty at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)
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[B]07.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Vicious circle[/SIZE]
Paying huge circular debt to end energy
crisis is a major step, but where is the money coming from?
By Shahzada Irfan Ahmed[/CENTER][/B]

Nothing was more unexpected than the announcement made by Finance Minister Ishaq Dar to do away with circular debt worth Rs503 billion in 60 days. He made this statement during the budget speech leaving many to wonder about the source of funding required to settle this huge amount. Another concern was why the government was bearing this burden when it could do with partial clearance of this debt in phases.

Weeks down the road, an amount of Rs322 has been cleared and the federal government is working on clearance of the remaining amount within a month or so. The payment was made after getting an approval from the Economic Coordination Committee and making the recipient Independent Power Producers (IPPs) agree to certain terms.

The payment formula is that the IPPs and others like PSO will be paid 60 per cent cash and the remaining 40 per cent through issuance of bonds. To ensure the circular debt does not build up at same pace, some preconditions were introduced and the recipients asked to agree to these terms.

These terms included optimal utilisation of available capacity by IPPs, commitment from four IPPs for conversion to coal within a stipulated time, reduction in IPPs’ interest rate on receivables by two per cent and increase in IPPs’ credit period from 30-45 days to 60 days.

The question that arises here is that if the solution was so simple and the funding readily available, why did not the outgoing government go for these options? Besides, what is the exact source of the funds required to clear this circular debt and what will be the financial cost the government is going to bear on this account? Are there any long term measures as well to check future build-up of circular debt.

The finance minister was asked such questions a couple of times but he did not come out with an exact answer, especially on the source of funds generation. He, however, vehemently denied any plans to print currency notes without matching reserves to pay off circular debt.

He has also said the Rs40 billion they are planning to save by cuts in government expenses may be used for this purpose. The frozen secret funds of different departments and the discretionary funds of the prime minister were also hinted at as the financial resources which the government could exploit to settle circular debt.

Leading economist, former finance minister and deputy chairman Planning Commission, Dr Hafeez Pasha, has an answer to this riddle. He tells TNS the government has borrowed from the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) by selling treasury bills to it at the rate of 10 per cent per annum. The federal government always has the option to sell treasury bonds to SBP and commercial banks to raise money whereas provinces can take overdrafts up to a certain limit to meet financial needs, he adds.

Pasha says unfortunately the SBP has started hiding information lately, a proof of which is that it has updated loan figures up to June 21, 2013. The said amount was borrowed after this date and the details of this amount should have been there, he adds.

Pasha refers to budget 2013-14 and shares it with TNS that the federal government has mentioned its plans in the “Current Investments” section of this document. It states the government would settle circular debt worth Rs326 billion in revised 2012-13 budget and Rs168.8 billion in 2013-14 budget.

On the burden under repayment of the borrowed amount, he says the government can either pay back the amount or get it rolled over for another year on the payment of 10 per cent. Putting it simply, the financial cost of using Rs 500billion for a year would be Rs 50billion. The SBP would have no issue with extension of loan period on receiving the interest amount, he adds.

Apart from payment in cash, the government is going to issue bonds to Oil and Gas Development Company (OGDC), Pakistan Petroleum Ltd (PPL) and Pakistan State Oil (PSO) etc. In the second phase, the federal government may go for adjustment of a major part of the remaining circular debt against receivables pending with the organisations seeking clearance of their dues.

Energy expert and advisor at Sustainable Policy Development Institute (SDPI) Islamabad, Arshad Abbasi, has serious reservations against payment of circular debt without technical audit of IPPs. He says these IPPs are themselves responsible for the building of circular debt caused due to huge difference between cost and sale price. Explaining his point, he says ideally the efficiency rate of an IPP should be around 50 to 60 per cent but in Pakistan IPPs are working at an efficiency rate as low as 20 per cent.

This, he says, means the same amount of fuel is required to produce 50 to 60 units at an efficient plant and 20 units at an inefficient one. “It’s a strange thing that different IPPs quote different per unit rates in their invoices and the government pays them off without questioning them.”

His point is that the differential in production and selling price has increased more due to this efficiency than anything else including power theft and government subsidies. The cost of generation will have to be brought down by switching to cheaper fuel as well as making IPPs bear the cost of their inefficiency.

Abbasi doubts it was on the pressure of some IPP owners close to the Nawaz government that this huge amount was cleared without delay.

[B]07.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Hard cash [/SIZE]
The cash-strapped government has got another IMF bailout package to avoid a potential financial default
By Mazhar Khan Jadoon
[/CENTER][/B]
Pakistan has once again approached the International Monetary Fund with a refurbished begging bowl to wriggle out of the economic mess at home. Breaking the begging bowl, economic sovereignty and self-reliance are pleasing slogans before every election, but once into the business of running a government with empty coffers, the bitter reality of loans and bailout packages take charge.

“The government of Pakistan and International Monetary Fund have reached an agreement for a three-year programme of at least 5.3 billion dollars under an extended fund facility,” said Finance Minister Ishaq Dar after concluding the deal on July 4, 2013.

“This is a Pakistan-designed programme. It includes bringing the fiscal deficit to a more sustainable level,” Jeffrey Franks, the regional adviser to the Fund on Pakistan, told reporters speaking alongside the Pakistani finance minister. The IMF expects Pakistan to reach a budget deficit target of six per cent of gross domestic product as part of its bailout loan programme, said Franks.

Dar said there was no option but request the loan to save Pakistan from defaulting. “We have not carried the begging bowl in our hands nor are we getting a grant, Pakistan is a member of the IMF,” Dar said.

Despite Dar’s rhetoric that the government has negotiated on its own term, Pakistan has conceded to all the IMF’s conditions to stave off a potential financial default. International donors like IMF always link bailout packages with certain reforms that they think can overhaul the broken economy. Generally, all the governments in Pakistan — dictators and civilians alike — conveniently push the proposed reforms under the carpet once they get the money. Besides, the lenders also make it sure that they will get back their money and keep the recipients from committing any default.

The country’s economic team, led by the finance minister, had held weeks-long tough deliberation with the IMF delegation to sort out details of the programme. The Pakistani financial managers were desperate to win over the IMF team at all costs because agreement with the Fund means more easy money coming their way. In addition to the $5.3billion IMF package, Pakistan will likely get a $5.6bn loan from the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank as well as countries like Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom. The total volume of the loan that Pakistan hopes to bag will be around $11bn — an amount that can resuscitate the dying economy if utilised properly.

The IMF wants the government to reduce the fiscal deficit over three years. The target has been left for Islamabad to decide if it wants to do it through widening the tax net, reduction in expenditures or withdrawal of subsidies and tax exemptions.

Retiring huge circular debt to contain energy crisis was a gigantic task and the urgency to strike a deal with the IMF also highlights the crunch at Pakistan’s foreign reserves — central bank has only about $6.25 billion left in reserves, enough to cover less than six weeks of imports. The IMF loan at this moment seems to be a life-saving dose for Pakistan’s economy.

Why does every government go to the IMF for bailout packages in the first place? “Generally, when the incompetent government fails to formulate appropriate monetary and fiscal policies to run its economic activities and cannot control its balance of payments and balance of trade, then such financial crises emerge,” says economist Dr Asmatullah Khan. “Such countries are always facing shortages of finances. Consequently, they approach the IMF to cope with their deficit financing.”

People generally are not comfortable with their elected representatives doing the IMF bidding at their cost. Are the IMF conditions to end subsidies and impose more taxes justified? “Yes, these conditions are very legitimate. The government should have done all these reforms on its own,” says Dr Ishrat Hussain, former governor of State Bank of Pakistan, while talking to TNS.

Dr Ishrat Hussain thinks the government has no other option at the moment, but to get the IMF bailout. “The government needs to put its house in order if the rulers want to avoid the donors’ dictations and pressures. Economic self-reliance is only possible if the government widens its tax base, tax the rich and mighty landlords and introduce tax reforms.”

However, Dr Khan’s viewpoint sounds more popular, but unrealistic at the same time as far as more taxes are concerned. According to him the 2013 budget has already made living worse by further increasing the miseries of the poor people and salaried class. “Therefore, elimination of subsidies and imposing more taxes is never justified and will definitely initiate political turmoil and, perhaps, it is the utmost agenda of the IMF to destabilise Pakistan further.” Dr Khan substantiates his arguments, saying, “Taxes are imposed but at reciprocal basis. People are facilitated in terms of better and cheap health services, free education, peace and security and provision of basic needs. Do we have all these facilities available to the common people? If not, then how the government will justify its action of imposing more taxes in such grim circumstances.”

What alternatives the governments have, if there is no loan? Dr Hussain says the government should narrow down its fiscal deficit by scaling down different subsidies that cost the kitty billions of rupees. “Tax reforms and prudent fiscal policies can help the government achieve economic stability without foreign help.”

Dr Khan seconds Dr Hussain, saying, “We do not need bailout packages if only the looted money is recovered and landlords, industrialists and business class are justifiably taxed.” He says there are countries which are surviving without loans. “Iran is developing its economy despite economic sanctions. Devotion, sincerity, honesty and fair planning are the only remedy to bail this country out of all such difficulties.”

“Programme or no programme, we shall not impose further taxes. We have rejected the IMF’s proposal for imposition of more taxes,” Ishaq Dar told the parliamentarians recently, and went on to confirm that if the lender did not accept the PML-N’s economic roadmap, a contingency plan-B was ready to shore up foreign exchange reserves and improve revenue collection by reducing tax theft and widening the tax base.

Financial experts believe tax exemptions are one of the problems hitting the economy hard, suggesting that such exemptions through Statutory Regulatory Orders (SROs) should be done away with. Unconvinced by the fiscal and economic projections and the expected outcomes, the IMF mission also wants a reduction in development spending (which was increased 50 per cent under the PML-N’s first federal budget) and more taxes to limit the fiscal deficit, according to media reports.

“Pakistan is an agricultural country and is quite rich in natural resources and cheap labour. Almost the whole country is replete with every kind of deposits of minerals and valuable resources. But poor governance, weak planning, open corruption, lack of research and outflow of capital from the country have made the country financially paralysed,” says Dr Asmatullah Khan. “Smuggling and lack of economic emancipation are other obstacles in the way of self-reliance. Return of the looted money and recovery of the national wealth from the corrupt mafia could be another step towards economic sovereignty.”

[B]07.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Being civilised
[/SIZE]Proper investment in healthcare and education will help us create a ‘critical mass’ which will usher Pakistan into a new era, commensurate with the demands of the 21st century
By Tahir Kamran[/CENTER][/B]

“For any nation the measure of being civilized is the investment and care that it extends to its dispossessed and vulnerable, thus the United Kingdom is ranked among the top civilized nations in the world,” claimed Dr Rizwan Hassan, Anesthetist Consultant from Cambridge, while referring to the care and compassion given to autistic children by the state through the National Health Service.

Dr Hassan is a big advocate of ‘integrated care’ and vehemently argues in favour of the age-old adage “prevention is better than cure”. He is very good at drawing comparison between the healthcare system in Pakistan and the UK, to which he emigrated a quarter of a century ago. Any improvement in the dismal state of healthcare in Pakistan, he lamented, does not figure anywhere among the priorities of the ruling elite. Thus, fundamental human rights like education and healthcare are denied to the citizens by either privatising healthcare and education or neglecting them altogether.

Ironically, the Pakistani ruling elite exhibits a nonchalance that reeks of an utter ruthlessness towards education and healthcare because it does not have any stake in institutions intended to cater to the needs of the general citizenry. It now sounds more like a cliché to state that their kids go abroad for education and if anyone of them falls sick, he/she is whisked off to the developed world for medical treatment. Insouciance in redressing medical ‘vulnerability’ is reflected in the absence of any concrete plan or policy of the government. All said and done, the state, being represented solely by the elite, has absolved itself of the responsibility of providing these essential amenities to the people.

The vulnerable, to whom Dr Hassan referred, are children with some deformity. However, ‘vulnerability’ ostensibly has myriad forms, multiple manifestations but more often than not, its context is social. In the welfare-state system, an elaborate system of social welfare is devised, whereby education and healthcare assume the top slot in the list of priorities of the government. Dr. Hassan emphasized the primacy of ‘hygiene’ that holds importance in any practicable health policy. The availability of clean water, exercising quality control over edible items, eradicating the causes spawning toxic gases which are injurious to health and inculcating social awareness among the populace about cleanliness, serve as anchoring features for the movement to create a hygienic environment.

Along with these social factors, scientific techniques of childcare and immunisation programmes, such as administering preventive shots to kids, are equally important. Mercifully, Pakistan has made some headway in that direction but still a lot more is needed. In order to ensure prevention, the field of community medicine, Dr Hassan asserted, is very vital in the present day discourse on health. Community medicine is concerned with the health of the members of a community, municipality, or region.

The emphasis in that branch of medicine is on the early diagnosis of disease and, more importantly, the recognition of environmental and occupational hazards to good health, and the prevention of disease in the community. Thus, the issue of health is embedded in the social ethos of any community. The realisation of its importance is vital for the prevention of physical vulnerability in Pakistan.

In light of Dr Hassan’s prognosis, one feels the need of a radical shift in the health policy in Pakistan. In order to catch up with the systems of healthcare available in the developed world, the policy of focusing entirely on hospitals and the provision and manufacture of drugs needs to be subjected to a drastic review, adopting the approach of ‘integrated care’. Some equilibrium must be struck between the prevention and the cure through medical treatment at hospitals. ‘Health inequality’ is another hazard, which requires the attention of those sitting at the helm. An undertaking is required to provide equitable health facilities to all citizens.

The sharp divide between rural and urban, rich and poor, needs to be bridged. Better incentives for young doctors that induce them to go to distant villages and serve for a stipulated period of time should be introduced. It should be made obligatory not only for doctors, but also for teachers to serve in ‘hard areas’.

The focus should be shifted from populist measures, which may secure an election victory but don’t ameliorate the lot of the general citizenry, to people’s welfare. Initiatives such as the raising of awareness among the populace about ‘hygiene’ and instructing them about social factors causing ailments may not yield immediate results, but they will bring enduring benefits to the general masses of Pakistan.

We must be mindful of the fact that only healthcare and education will help us create a ‘critical mass’ which will usher us into a new era, commensurate with the demands of the 21st century. Research in social history reveals that modern nations are forged through education and healthcare. Thus optimum energy and resources must be invested in these areas.

[B]07.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Dictatorship strikes back[/SIZE]
Morsi’s failures aside, there ought to be no room for
military takeovers and plots against nascent democracies like Egypt
By Dr Syed Hussain Shaheed Soherwordi[/CENTER][/B]

The world has become an insecure place due to threats, instability and revolution-series emerging from the Middle East. Outside powers, in the past, remained eager to promote their interests but their policies intensified crises. They are using old thinking to solve new problems. They are trapped in a suffocating straitjacket. This encourages domestic un-elected forces to play with the popular choice, called democracy.

An episode of this is what happened recently in Egypt. A “revolution” to overthrow a democratically elected government, elected a year ago, by the national army is as far from simple as it is possible to get. Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, has been ousted from office just over a year into his presidency. Morsi was elected Egypt’s president in June 2012 after a campaign focused on appealing to the broadest possible audience. But he became increasingly authoritarian and forced through a conservative agenda during his year in power. Egypt today is ruled by an interim government backed by the military.

Ex-president Morsi appears to have been responsible for his shortsightedness and apolitical schemes. Elected by 52 per cent majority in general elections, Morsi failed to keep the nation united. He also failed to tackle national economy which was already in a shambles.

As we know that a substantial and strong secular minority resides in Egypt, there was no improvement in the security environment and his government was perceived to have been pursuing an Islamist agenda to the exclusion of all others. Among the causes for people’s displeasure over his rule are lack of security, rising food prices, long fuel lines, and frequent electricity cuts during the scorching Egyptian summer. Over and above, Morsi lacked charisma and oratorical skills, and at the same time he hadn’t been able to back his orders with a stick in the same way that Mubarak and his predecessor, Anwar Sadat, did in the past.

Although the country’s deficit had fallen and tourism revenue had slightly improved over the past year, the effects were not being felt by the people on the street. This all lashed back.

Keeping Morsi’s list of failures, one feels that Egypt is still passing through revolutions. First it was against Hosni Mubarak, which successfully culminated in its achievements and can be termed “revolutionary moment”. Then it was against the military establishment which resulted in the rise of the voice of the people and Muhammad Morsi rose to the occasion. This can be termed as “change moment”. Later, it was the constitution. With demonstrations and huge protests, the constitution had been approved with controversies. The yes votes outpaced the no votes by a larger margin.

According to official results, votes for constitution were 10,693,911 (63.8 per cent) and against were 6,061,101 (36.2 per cent) whereas the total turnout stood at 32.2 per cent. However, it resulted in division of the nation. The “constitutional moment” was missed. A joint constitution could have built a consensus among political forces, liberal-secular and Islamist. On the contrary, it divided the entire movement and sowed seeds for the future political compartmentalisation. It was such political division that resulted in President Morsi’s ouster from power.

Had this happened before? Take the case of South Africa. South Africa’s post-Apartheid constitution was developed through a lengthy process of negotiation, public consultation, and consensual decision-making. It was nicknamed as the “birth certificate” of a new nation.

Former President Mohamed Morsi was justified in completing the transition phase in the shortest possible time. However, deliberations on constitution-making process, educating citizens about the text of the document on which they were asked to vote was more important than completing the transition phase.

Iraq in 2005 also had a divisive constitution-making process. But even in Iraq there was both a greater pretense of openness and consultation and a greater reality of negotiation than in Egypt. Hence, an opportunity to form a consensus-constitution was missed. No lessons were learnt from South Africa or for that matter Iraq. Thus, democracy was robbed in shape of removing a popularly-elected government with a majority of 53 per cent people’s support.

However, this is a fact that for the first time in the history of Egypt, a government came into existence by fulfilling all the prerequisites of a democratic process — a free and fair election. But the irony of fate is that it succumbed to minority pressure resulting in dictatorship. Further to that, forcing the Muslim Brotherhood to the sidelines is not the way forward rather this will further lash back. Muslim Brotherhood is a very strong party in Egypt with a strong street power. If they are not in the future government, Egypt will remain in turmoil for the next years till Brotherhood is accommodated.

Middle East is passing through a testing time. Only a regional political architecture can calm the Middle East and that cannot be achieved without active participation by democratically elected governments and the Western support to such democracies. Sitting like silent spectators and watching military takeover like in Egypt would keep Middle East in abysmal depth. Bringing countries like Egypt out of isolation and back into global mainstream — which means encouraging them to moderate policies, cheering democracy, and denouncing military takeover — are the absolute prerequisites of peace in the region. Unconditional support for them is no more productive than unconditional opposition to dictatorship or rise of dictatorship or even path to dictatorship.

We, as global partners, are accustomed to seeing the Middle East as a ticking time bomb. Images and words scare us: Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood, Hizbullah, al Qaeda, oppressed women, revolutionary guards, religious fundamentalists, Sheikhdoms, Islamic conservatism, anti-Americanism, patriarchal society and oil-fueled corruption.

Despite turmoil and bad omens associated with the greater Middle East, there are positive options as well. One of the positive options is to support the growing and nascent democracies like Egypt and discourage military takeovers.

[I]The author teaches at the Department of International Relations, University of Peshawar [email]syedshaheed@hotmail.co.uk[/email]
[/I]

[B]07.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Historical follies [/SIZE]
Whether Pakistan is ready or not, a new historical perspective is likely to emerge soon after Nato forces withdraw from Afghanistan
By Helal Pasha
[/CENTER][/B]
William Dalrymple, in his recent essay “A Deadly Triangle” published at the Brookings Institute, claimed, “The hostility between India and Pakistan lies at the heart of the current conflict in Afghanistan.” In his essay, he further claimed that the hostilities around the partition are the true source of the problems between Pakistan and Afghanistan. A review of the history brings out a different context to the assertion, as he is way off the mark in sourcing it to 1947.

The current Pak-Afghan relations are just a perpetuation of historical clashes that surfaced from the battles that Raja Ranjit Singh’s armies fought in the famous Battle of Jamrud in 1837. Afghanistan, at the same time, was under attack from the Persian forces supported by Russian advisors on its western borders around Herat. Then the great game started. In December 1838, the East India Company managed to take Quetta from Bolan Pass and attacked Afghanistan to forestall the alleged Russian advance into Afghanistan. The roots of the dispute emerged in 1837, rather than 1947.

While Afghanistan lost its second capital Peshawar and the most productive farmlands to the Sikh armies, the British destroyed Afghanistan’s sovereignty in many ways and left Afghanistan as a weak state for the rest of the British rule in India. The departure of Nato forces will bring
fundamental changes in the region.

The military doctrine that guided the British invasion stated, “in order to ensure the welfare of India, the British must have a trustworthy ally on India’s western frontier.” Dalrymple has conveniently assigned exactly the same words to the famous “Strategic Depth” doctrine of the Pakistan Army developed after the Afghanistan civil war in 1980s.

Dalrymple’s thesis is not an exercise in futility; there is some merit to it, just stretched out too far to fit the storyline. The state of Pakistan is essentially the inheritor of the three domains — East India Company, the British Raj, and the Punjab of Raja Ranjit Singh — and their problems in this area played a major role in Pak-Afghan relations since 1947.

In Washington, DC, where the attention span is usually short, the article presents another historical revision of 1947 partition in a precise order, excelling in tidiness. Still, the US admin or intellectuals that supported the US invasion in 2001 hardly cared about the history of Afghanistan after the tragic events in September 2001.

The US might be interested in some contextual answers to resolve a historical anomaly; the departure of the Nato forces will fundamentally alter the relations in the region. Whether Pakistan is ready or not, a new historical perspective will emerge soon.

Pakistan and Afghanistan do not see eye to eye on different issues. There is major bitterness in Afghanistan over the role Pakistan played, especially under the army rule, in the 80s, 90s, and later in 2000s. Pakistan wants a permanent solution to territorial disputes over the Durand Line. Over the years, Pakistan has been insensitive in its handling of the situation or its responses have often been construed as maleficently, diminishing the Afghan sovereignty.

Pakistan has not learned from many setbacks including the menace of domestic terrorism of various sectarian or political groups. Over the last several years, Pakistan, humiliated by events like the one in Abbotabad, has not changed its course. The falling perception of Pakistan around the world has not deterred Pakistan from following a problematic approach since 1980s.

Fata has been in a state of semi-war for the last 30 years. Especially, the last 10 years of intense war and drones in the region have contributed to the collapse of the traditional cultural, tribal, and familial relations. The tribal areas lack any infrastructure for remedies. Residents have abandoned their fields. The increasing numbers of jobless youth provide perfect environments for the Taliban recruitment.

The Taliban make a religious pitch; provide opportunities to youth to assert power and strength on the streets, and promise financial rewards to strapped parents, brothers, and sisters to recruit suicide bombers. In a collapsing social structure, militants’ numbers swell up fast.

The continued insurgency in Fata, now extended to parts of KPK, creates conditions that would allow some groups to strengthen their positions for future unification of the Pushtoon-speaking areas. With KPK and Fata joining in, the chances of economic viability of any such area would increase manifold. Many interested parties can easily manipulate the Taliban like groups in Fata. The most likely manipulators could be the Afghan Taliban and some foreign groups. They encourage insurgency in Pakistan to loosen the state structure by spreading lawlessness. With the anarchy spreading to the settled areas, the state would lose the apparatus to maintain the physical integrity of the country.

The way Pakistan operated during the last decade or so has diminished people’s confidence in the state. People see Pakistan state behaving erratically under one influence or another. Rationalising and leveling with people is key to garner support. Similarly, the prolonged dispute over an already accepted international border with Afghanistan is not in Pakistan’s interest. Better relations with India and Afghanistan are prerequisite for economic success of Pakistan.

People of Pakistan, exhausted by unnecessary disputes on the borders and constant domestic violence in the cities, look for better handling from the new government.

[B]14.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]New politics and emerging challenges[/SIZE]
If rulers and politicians want to prevent chaos in Egypt they would have to adopt politics that is informed, proactive and transparent
By Zubair Murshed[/CENTER][/B]

Only after a year into presidency, the government of Egypt’s first elected president Mohamed Morsi has been brought down by a popular uprising and the use of military power. In the last two years, other Arab countries including Egypt have gone through a transition, popularly referred to as the ‘Arab Spring’. Current Egyptian uprising and the Arab Spring offer valuable lessons about the changing context of politics and the need to adopt a new kind of politics to respond to the emerging challenges.

The factors that drove Egyptian uprising, leading to the fall of Morsi include: i) an increasingly youthful population, ii) a strong urbanised/educated middle class, iii) the revolution of electronic and social media, iv) poor management of economy, v) an exclusionary and domineering politics, vi) and religious engineering of a liberalised population.

The Egyptian population is growingly young, where those between 18-29 years of age form 25 per cent of the population. Indeed a much younger lot of boys and girls have been at the forefront both in 2011 and during current uprising. In short, those between the ages of 12-35 are roughly half of the total population. A large percentage of this youth is educated and urbanised, thus more aware about its rights and duties of the leaders.

In the aftermath of 2011 revolution, the expectations of Egyptians soared to unprecedented levels; including the desire for jobs, dignity, justice and participation. Since people came out of a 60-year dictatorial rule, they now wanted their demands to be fulfilled very swiftly. They were not willing to wait any longer. They had zero tolerance for old style non-responsive and dictatorial politics. The people had started mass protests against the rule of military council before the presidential elections of 2012, which forced the generals to relinquish power.

In this background, Mohamed Morsi took power in June 2012. When he became president, Egyptian economy was in bad shape. Hosni Mubarak had built the Egyptian economy around agriculture, remittances, American aid and most importantly tourism. The tourism sector provided jobs to about 30 per cent of employed Egyptians. It contributed about 12 per cent of the GDP.

The events of 2011 revolution, continued mass protests against military rule, worsening security situation, and uprisings in other Arab countries, harmed tourism most severely leading to increased unemployment and poverty. The country has lost 95 per cent of its tourism income in the past two years.

Coming from an intellectually de-capacitated Muslim Brotherhood, President Morsi lacked a vision and agenda for economic revitalisation. He also failed to build a strong economic team. Both the President and Prime Minister were trained as engineers, thus lacked an understanding of modern economy and the working of global economic system. Therefore, President’s camp failed to draw-up an economic plan for a post revolution Egypt. The failure to revitalise the economy greatly added to the woes of an already impatient and impoverished population.

As if that wasn’t enough to offend his detractors, President Morsi adopted a ‘domineering, confrontational and exclusionary’ style of politics. Instead of formulating a consensus based first-ever democratic constitution, he bulldozed the drafting and approval of constitution with the help of Islamists, while completely excluding the liberals, Christians and women from the process.

At the institutional level, Morsi picked up confrontation with the judiciary on the dissolving of constituent assembly and suspension of constitution. He went on to snub the military by retiring senior generals. He removed various governors of the old era, many of whom belonged to a military background, and brought in sympathisers of his Muslim Brotherhood.

Lastly, the president became a conduit for social engineering on behalf of his party, to introduce Islamisation in line with the Brotherhood brand. This was reflected in the constitution, the appointment of an Islamist as Culture Minister, the removal of prominent officials of cultural institutions, the appointment of a governor with links to terrorism against tourists, the increased marginalisation of Christians and the emergence of social vigilantes.

A population that is young, urbanised, educated, unemployed, aspirant of participation, and broadly liberal in its outlook, took offence to what the newly elected President offered. The electronic and social media served as educator and connector to bring a frustrated people together to challenge the authority of a strong-headed President. The members of “Tamard/Rebel” movement widely relied upon the use of social media to mobilise masses all over the country for June 30 demonstrations against Morsi.

On June 30, the aspirations of a mass uprising coalesced with the interests of a subdued but powerful military led to the ouster of an ineffective but stubborn president.

Many of these elements were also the drivers behind the unleashing of events of Arab Spring in 2011; especially the youth bulge, an aspirant urban/middle class, the electronic and social media, and an exclusionary and non-responsive politics.

The changing demography, social mobility, and technological developments indicate that youth, urbanisation/education and electronic/social media would drive the social, political and economic changes in future, not only in Arab States, but in many other countries of Asia, Africa and South America, where societies are going through rapid transformation in these three aspects of life.

This change, if not managed well, could lead to sudden social crises, reversing economic gains and causing political turmoil. Another factor that is already at play and will become more influential is the climate change and its implications in the form of increased disasters, water and food shortages, environmental losses and disease/epidemics.

If rulers and politicians want to prevent chaotic political transformations, social conflicts and economic devastations, they need to adopt a new politics. This new politics would revolve around 4 key elements;

Informed: The new politics has to be an informed politics. The current generation of politicians in many countries is living in their own ivory towers, being completely aloof from the societies they rule. They make decisions based upon whims and wishes.

The politicians of future can’t remain ignorant of trends and processes in their societies, if they want to avoid the fate of Qadafi, Gilani, Mubarak, Morsi, Abdallah Saleh and Asad. Their policies will need to be informed by robust analysis of social, economic, technological, environmental and political trends and processes at home and abroad. In the absence of such analysis, their policies will face the risk of being irrelevant at best or counterproductive at worst.

Intelligent: The new politics is not for the dumb and naïve. It requires politicians who can understand the complex challenges of modern society, identify smart solutions, and apply them swiftly. The new politics needs politicians who don’t cherish the luxuries of public office, but enjoy the pleasures of public service. The age of parochial, archaic and egoistic politics is over.

Proactive: The new politics needs leadership which is not reactive like the current rulers in many countries, but one that is proactive, a leadership that thinks before the challenges become crises, a leadership that implements plans before the catastrophe strikes and a leadership that doesn’t look the other way, while society suffers.

Inclusive: The new politics has to be inclusive. It will be non-sectarian and non-partisan as far as rights and needs of people are concerned; be they women, religious and ethnic minorities or other identity groups. The new politics will be compromising when it comes to dealing with political dissent and institutional mandates. It will not dominate but accommodate. It will not fight, but partner. It will not excel in institutional rivalries rather it will rely upon mutual complementarities to better serve the needs of people.

Transparent: The new politics has to be transparent, when it comes to the spending of public funds. It will keep the constituency informed of government income, the spending and where it has been spent. The new politics will build trust with its citizenry by showing that the public money is spent in a fair, judicious and apolitical manner for the benefit of electorate, not for the luxuries of ruling elite.

In conclusion, the lessons of Arab Spring urge for a strategic shift in traditional politics. The challenges current societies face are enormous, while the grace period available for corrective action is limited.

If leaders and politicians don’t change quickly and if a new breed of politicians who understands new politics doesn’t emerge, many more countries may face devastating social uprisings and political crises within the next few years, like the countries of Arab region have faced since 2011.

[I]The writer is a social critic and development professional. He has been working in the international development institutions since 1998. He has worked in South and South East Asia regions earlier, while currently he is based in Cairo. cairo0673@ gmail.com
[/I]
[I]Disclaimer: The author works for United Nations Development Programme. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author’s and do not represent the position of the UNDP.
[/I]

[B]14.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Great expectations[/SIZE]
The people of Pakistan will feel the difference only if the PML-N’s ambitious deals with China go beyond the paper stage
By Alauddin Masood[/CENTER][/B]

Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif’s five-day visit to China has paved the way for several projects in energy, transport and infrastructure sectors, setting the stage for “an era of Pakistan-China glorious friendship and cooperation,” as stated by Nawaz Sharif while talking to 50 prominent Chinese investors, in Shanghai, on July 6. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met Chinese President Xi Jinping on July 4 and the prime minister of the host country, Li Keqiang, on July 5.

A joint statement issued in Beijing on July 5 reaffirmed China’s commitment to continue extending its full support to Pakistan in the latter’s efforts to uphold its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity while respecting the development path chosen by the people of Pakistan according to their national priority. On the same day, Pakistan and China also signed eight documents of economic cooperation in various areas for furthering the existing strong economic and technical relations between the two countries.

The first pact pertained to a long-term project “Pakistan-China Economic Corridor,” envisaging to link Gwadar deep seaport with Kashgar in Xinjiang (China) by road and rail at an anticipated cost of $18 billion. Reflective of the far-sightedness and vision of the leadership of the two countries, the 2,000-kilometre long economic corridor has the potential to open new vistas for the economic development in the region.

The other agreements related to the laying of optic fibre for setting-up communication link between Pakistan and China; infrastructure development in Gawadar; Lahore-Karachi Motorway and plan to run a fast train between Peshawar and Karachi. Officials from both the countries also signed two MoUs, one pertaining to training courses in textile, flood relief and disaster management besides provision of equipment for eradication of polio; and the other relating to cooperation and exchanges between the PML-N and China’s Ruling Communist Party. Another MoU pertained to cooperation between Pakistan’s Institute of Strategic Studies and China Institute of Contemporary Studies.

On this occasion, the provincial government of Punjab signed an MoU with the Chinese Public Sector Construction Company for launching metro bus service and underground bus service, under public-private-partnership, in Lahore, Multan, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi and Gujranwala.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif expressed his desire to start work on these projects on fast track basis. To constantly monitor implementation of these agreements and MoUs, he has formed a task force under Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal. Quoting Ahsan Iqbal, PTV has reported that most of these projects would start benefitting the masses within one to two years’ time.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has expressed his resolve to complete feasibility of Lahore-Karachi expressway in three months and complete the actual work on this project in 2½ years, thus sending a signal that he means business and would like to complete even long-term projects setting new records of their completion.

The previous government had also signed scores of agreements during President Asif Ali Zardari’s eight official visits to China, but those could never go beyond the paper stage. Given seriousness of the PML-N leadership, one can expect tangible results this time. However, the taste of the pie is in its eating and the people of Pakistan will feel the difference only when they actually start reaping benefits from these projects.

One of the significant features of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s China visit was that both the prime ministers held meetings within a span of less than two months, which illustrates the close fraternity among the leadership of the two countries.

Following the May general elections, Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang was the first leader to visit Pakistan, while Nawaz Sharif also chose China for his maiden overseas visit after becoming Pakistan’s prime minister. Restoring confidence of the Chinese entrepreneurs in Pakistan as a lucrative destination for investment has been the main thrust of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s China visit.

[B]Diaoyutai:
[/B]
In Beijing, Pakistan delegation was lodged at the Diaoyutai State Guest House. Spread over an area of 400,000 square meters and built over 825 years ago, Diaoyutai is a former imperial garden and dwelling place in the suburbs of Beijing. In the late 1950s, it was converted into a State Guest House for heads of states/governments, social luminaries and other distinguished guests from abroad. As an officer accompanying Senate delegations, the scribe had a chance to stay at Diaoyutai Guest House twice — first in November 1986 when Chairman Ghulam Ishaq Khan led a Senate delegation to China and second in November 1996 when Deputy Chairman Mir Abdul Jabbar visited China at the head of a Senate delegation. On both occasions, the Senate delegation found Diaoyutai to be a living monument of grandeur and harmony in garden architecture, presenting an enchanting view.

Spring water from distant western hills flows around pavilions and villas of the Diaoyutai Guest House through groves and under stone bridges, linking the former imperial place with 14 new villas built in 1959. Each of these villas is different in style from the others, but all of them are exquisitely arranged, tastefully furnished and adorned with art treasures of different periods. Each room, hall, pavilion or terrace differs from the others, yet together they form an integral whole, giving expression to a unique style in the traditional garden architecture of China.

[B]Shanghai:
[/B]
From Beijing, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif went to Shanghai, which is China’s largest city and a symbol of its economic boom. Although an ancient city, Shanghai first emerged on the world map as a big centre for the textile industry in the early 16th century. By mid-19th century, it developed into a prosperous port and today the Shanghai seaport has around 100 berths, including about 50 deepwater berths for 40,000 tonners.

Sound policies, congenial climate, ideal location and easy access to the city by land, air and sea routes have turned the metropolis into a leading industrial and commercial centre. Economic muscles enable Shanghai to play an important role in shaping the events in the country. Proclamation regarding the founding of the Chinese Communist Party was made in this city. Again, the First National Congress of the Community Party was held here.

The total area of Shanghai is 6,185.75 square kilometres, of which 340 kilometres is urban. The extraordinary success of organisations working in the urban areas has been instrumental in motivating the rural areas residents to set up small and medium factories and raise their income and living standards. As a result, many rural areas of Shanghai have changed into suburban areas.

[B]Rising China:
[/B]
China’s continuous rapid rise is leading analysts to conclude that in the coming decades Beijing’s moment to lead the world seemed imminent. Focusing on peace and development, China’s leaders are pursuing a policy to bring China at par with the developed world on a fast track basis. Now, China is the world’s second largest economy after the USA.

In 2010, China’s nominal GDP stood at US$499 trillion and per capita income at $3,263 against a GDP of $18 billion and per capita income of $50 in 1949; while some 400 million people have come out of the poverty trap during the last 30 years. According to China’s official statistics, the country’s poverty rate had fallen from 53 per cent in 1981 to just 2.5 per cent in 2005. In the past 30 years, China’s trade has registered more than a hundred fold rise, increasing from $20.6 billion to about $2.6 trillion. Thirty-two years ago, foreign direct investment in China was virtually non-existent. In 2008, it grew to $92.4 billion, ranking China at the first place among developing nations.

China has invested over 1.90 trillion dollars in the US Treasury Bonds to enable the world’s leading economy to tide over her economic problems. China has also remained throughout conscious about the development of the third world countries as well and, in the past 30 years, it has invested over $150 billion in 170 countries and regions across the globe.

As the US prepares to end its combat role in Afghanistan, China is set to establish itself as a credible power on the Hindukush. China has invested over three billion dollars in Afghanistan. Like Pakistan, most of the South Asian countries, including Nepal and Bangladesh, count much on a rising China for regional stability, development and growth.

[B]Sino-Pak ties promote peace:
[/B]
In South Asia, Pakistan-China friendly relations have proved to be a major source of peace and stability. Sino-Pakistan friendship goes back to the ancient times. However, it acquired new dimensions after the establishment of diplomatic relations between Pakistan and China 62 years ago; and since then Pakistan-China friendship has been continuously growing and gaining in strength.

In addition to energy, communication, telecommunication and agriculture, Pakistan and China have been cooperating in many other fields. Gwadar deep seaport is a milestone project which has been completed after Karakoram Highway, Heavy Mechanical Complex Taxilla and Chashma Nuclear Power Project.

Both the countries are engaged in the joint production of Thunderstorm fighter aircrafts; and, recently, Pakistan has acquired F22P Frigates from China. Earlier, China provided a few submarines to Pakistan. China also provided assistance to Pakistan in the aftermath of the earthquake in 2005, Attabad Lake disaster, rehabilitation of Swat and Malakand IDPs as well as those affected by 2010 and 2011 floods.

The government and people of both Pakistan and China wish their traditionally strong bonds of friendship to strengthen further in future, especially in trade, development, defence and economic domains. Against $6.8 billion in 2008, the bilateral trade between Pakistan and China has reached $12 billion, and efforts are on to take it to $15 billion by 2015.

[I]The writer is a freelance columnist based at Islamabad and a retired Director General (PR)/Joint Secretary of the Senate of Pakistan. [email]alauddinmasood@gmail.com[/email][/I]

[B]14.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Growing labour force[/SIZE]
The first ever provincial employment trends report launched in Pakistan last month broadly evaluates the labour market situation in Punjab
By Aoun Sahi[/CENTER][/B]

International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Labour Market Information and Resource Center (LMI and RC) of Labour and Human Resource Department of Punjab launched the first ever provincial employment trends report in Pakistan last month under the title of ‘Punjab Employment Trends 2013’, providing a broad assessment of the labour market situation in Punjab.

The study was carried out by the ILO project entitled “Empowering Vulnerable Groups through Education, Employment and Training (EET)” as part of its research work in the area of skills, needs assessment and development. “The major objective of this project is to support socio-economic development through investment in education, skills, entrepreneurship and legal empowerment for attaining decent work agenda in Pakistan. This project is part of the ILO’s contribution to the One-UN Programme,” says ILO Country Director Francesco d’ Ovidio.

According to findings of the study, the unemployment rate increased marginally, both in the population aged 10 years and above as well as 15 years and over, during the period 2007-08 to 2010-11. “Three key areas require attention from relevant stakeholders; youth employment, gender gaps in employment and adult training. I reassure ILO’s commitment to provide technical assistance to achieve shared goal of decent work for all,” he says.

The total population of the province of Punjab, according to Labour Force Survey, in 2008 was 90.63 million, which had increased to 97.58 million by 2011, showing an average annual growth of 2.6 per cent during the period 2007-11.

In terms of the urban-rural divide, majority of the population in 2011 resided in rural areas of the province: i.e. nearly 66 million (68 per cent). During the period 2007-11, the annual population growth rate in urban areas was higher (3.04 per cent) than that in the rural areas (2.33 per cent). Only 9.46 million females were in the labour force compared to 24.9 million males in 2010-11 though the average annual growth rate of the female labour force (8.8 per cent) was much higher than that of the male labour force (2.5 per cent) during 2007 to 2011.

The report reveals that the economically active population or labour force in the province is 34.36 million in 2010-11, up from 30.67 million in 2007-08, showing an annual average growth of 4 per cent during the three-year period. The change in the age structure of the labour force due to the ongoing demographic transition in the country has resulted in a “youth bulge” and majority of them are not only uneducated but have little or no vocational and life skills.

According to the research report, the Labour Force Participation Rate (LFPR) of both the 10+ and 15+ populations in Punjab was found above the national average for Pakistan whereas female participation rates (26.7 per cent) are less than half the male participation rates (69.7 per cent). The review highlights the fact that the rural labour force forms the backbone of the provincial labour market, accounting for over 70 per cent of the economically active population in Punjab.

“In line with the overall trends for Pakistan, there exist large gender gaps in labour force participation, although these gender gaps are less pronounced than those observed for the other provinces,” the study reads, showing that the high and growing share of self-employed in employment is an important characteristic of the provincial labour market, pointing to a deterioration in the productive work dimension of decent work.

Situation of child labour in the province has come up as one of the major areas of concern in labour market. The study reveals that in 2010-11, 12.6 per cent of the children aged 10-14 years were part of the labour force in Punjab, down from 12.8 per cent in 2007-08. “In terms of the absolute number of children aged 10-14 years engaged in work, it is seen that in 2010-11, around 1.3 million children were employed in the province, with 0.740 million (56.4 per cent) being male and 1.14 million (87 per cent) being employed in the rural areas.”

The analysis of these employed children by employment status reveals that close to 68 per cent are contributing to family workers at the provincial level and 73 per cent in rural areas, while 78 per cent of employed female children fall within this category. The majority of these children have never been to school: three fifths of them have less than one year of formal education.

LMI and RC was established in 2011 in the Labour and Human Resource Department of Punjab for collecting and analysing available labour market data; promoting research through sharing of information; identifying future market trends and market knowledge of related fields; providing infrastructure and facilities for research promotion and dissemination of user-friendly information to the public.

The resource centre has been mandated with preparing an annual employment trends report on the lines produced earlier by the federal government. “We do not have technical expertise on the issue, so we requested the ILO to provide us expertise as well training to run this newly established resource center. The ILO responded to our request in no time and provided one-month training to 15-member staff of the centre,” Daud Abdullah, project director LMI and RC unit, Department of Labour Punjab tells TNS.

“This report presents a preliminary analysis of the labour market situation in the province of Punjab, using the framework of the Key Indicators of the Labour Market. The review has covered the labour market developments in the province during the period 2007-08 and 2010-11, with the end period coinciding with the passage of the 18th Amendment, under which labour policy formulation and administration has been devolved to the provincial governments. The report will thus serve as a baseline for future labour market analyses of Punjab. We have been planning to expand the report to district level in future,” he says.

There are 18 Key Indicators of the Labour Market (KILM) to conduct such studies but as it was first of its kind, the ILO and Punjab Labour Department studied only 10 indicators — labour force participation rate, employment-to-population ratio, status in employment, employment by sector, employment by occupation, hours of work, employment in the informal economy, unemployment and youth unemployment. “These ten indicators have been selected from the internationally adopted set of 18 KILMs in view of the capacity constraints of the newly-established LMI and RC as well as some data limitations. We study these indicators on the basis of gender and rural-urban divide,” says Dr Lubna Shehnaz, the author of the study.

“It is prepared from the analysis of data of Labour Force Survey of Federal Bureau of Statistics,” she says, adding the indicators analysed in the report provide a snapshot of the various aspects of decent work in the province. “However, it is important to point out that these indicators do not comprehensively cover all six aspects of decent work and there is a need to supplement this with a more in-depth investigation of the decent work dimensions of security at work and dignity at work,” she says.

The study has recommended the Labour Market Information and Analysis (LMIA) infrastructure in the province needs to be further developed and strengthened so that timely and up-to-date labour market analysis can feed the policy formulation process. “In order to properly assess employment patterns and shares and their evolution over time, it is recommended that a provincial GDP series be developed, so that the contribution of each sector to the provincial economy can be estimated,” it reads.

The report has also recommended a labour force survey at district level, so that the labour market situation within the different regions of the province can be properly assessed and relevant sub-provincial programmes and strategies can be designed. Policies for promoting employment generation in the province should focus on improving the productivity of the agricultural workforce, through strengthened extension services and higher outlays on agricultural research and development.

“The livestock sub-sector, in particular, can support higher levels of employment creation through its backward and forward linkages along the production supply chain. In the urban sector, the productivity of household enterprises can be raised by the provision of business support services including developing market linkages, credit facilities and the design and implementation of relevant technical, education and vocational training programmes,” it recommends.

[B]14.07.2013 [/B][B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Medical ethics in this age[/SIZE]
What exactly is the code of conduct for doctors who make a living off the misfortunes of others?
By Syed Mansoor Hussain[/CENTER][/B]

Whenever young doctors went on strike in the Punjab, suddenly people especially in the press, the government and the courts realised that doctors were ‘messiahs’ and needed to behave like that. And that they should put aside any idea of personal gain and concentrate on the good of the people under their care. Something called the ‘Hippocratic’ oath was rediscovered and a few writers even got confused between Hippocrates and Socrates.

First I would like to dispel all the hype surrounding the Hippocratic Oath. Hippocrates lived more than a couple of millennia ago and medicine has sort of progressed considerably since then. Also, I was never made to take any oath when I graduated from medical college and nor were any of my contemporaries a few years ahead and behind me. And as far as ‘oaths’ are concerned, our leaders in government as well as the armed forces do take an oath of office which I must sadly confess is almost always disregarded in its entirety.

But that does not mean the doctors or physicians do not or should not abide by a code of ethics. As a matter of fact all ‘professionals’ are subject to ethical considerations, some enforced under law and others intrinsic to their professional activities. Architects and builders are expected to build ‘structures’ that are safe and don’t collapse every time there is a rainstorm or an earthquake. Manufacturers are expected to build machines (cars for instance) that perform as they are supposed to. The list goes on. However doctors make a living off the misfortunes of others. An incompetent doctor-physician can cost you money and your personal well being and even your life all at one go.

So then what should medical ethics be in modern times? I will divide this into four different categories that often overlap but should be considered separately for the sake of emphasis.

The first part of medical ethics is the need to provide medical treatment that is appropriate for the problem that a patient has at the time he or she seeks help. This assumes one very basic fact that the doctor is not only able to correctly ‘diagnose’ the problem but is also fully aware of the best treatment for that condition. That is one of the most important part of medical ethics.

Physicians must keep up with the latest developments through what is called ‘continuing medical education’ (CME). And not only should they be up to date on such matters, but even more importantly they must realise when a patient’s condition and its treatment is beyond their personal professional capabilities and are willing to seek help from physicians with more appropriate levels of expertise.

In the US, this concept of CME is enforced by state licensing authorities as well as specialty boards that certify experts. Almost every state requires that physicians must go through many hours of CME of an appropriate quality before applying for license renewal. Specialty boards have more stringent requirements, for instance the board that oversees cardiac surgery expects its diplomates to provide yearly information of the surgical work done and of CME courses taken. And an examination has to be passed every ten years to keep board certification current.

All this is in sharp contradistinction to what happens in Pakistan where CME is not a requirement for license recertification by the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC). And once a post-graduate diploma like the Fellowship of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Pakistan (FCPS-CPSP) has been obtained, it is a lifetime qualification. Clearly the PMDC as well as the CPSP must institute CME as a basic requirement for recertification and lifetime qualifications by the CPSP must be phased out to assure physician re-education.

The second part of medical ethics pertains to the ‘business of medicine’. Doctors are people too, they have families they need to take care of, they want to live reasonably well and most importantly they are a part of the society around them and as such cannot exist in a vacuum. Here I do not wish to go on a diatribe about what goes on in Pakistan, but I will make a couple of points. First, doctors often spend more than a decade in medical college and post-graduate training to get to the point where they can practice medicine. During these years they literally ‘live hand to mouth’ but once they are in practice they expect to recoup some of the ‘lost income’. It is, in my opinion, entirely ethical for doctors to generate an adequate income from the practice of medicine.

It is often said in the US that ‘in the business of medicine, the best business is good medicine’. It is obvious that if a doctor provides ‘good’ medical care, if the patient is satisfied and gets better then the doctor should receive adequate recompense for his or her efforts. The operative word in this context is ‘good’ and that runs into the previous segment where I discussed the need for doctors to be aware of what the best diagnostic and treatment options are and that the doctors do not treat the patients beyond their personal professional capabilities just to generate more income.

The third important aspect of medical ethics is the need to take care of patients that are unable to pay for the care they receive. This is a tricky problem. Some of our best equipped and staffed hospitals are in the private sector. Physicians working in these hospitals can focus on well-to-do patients that can afford ‘full payment’ for their services. But even in such hospitals there can be patients that turn up and are able to pay for initial care but if they require more complex care, they may not have the wherewithal to pay for that. Here medical ethics, in my opinion, demands that once a patient is under your care, as a physician you must provide the best care possible irrespective of a patient’s capacity to pay for it. It is important to iterate that other than the example given above, providing ‘free’ care for patients is not an obligation but a moral choice.

Finally, there is what is called ‘the bedside manner’. As doctors, we deal with sick people. Patients are worried not only about getting better but often about even being alive for much longer. They worry about the cost of treatment and if they do not make it, about what will happen to their families after they are gone. And that is the ultimate requirement of medical ethics.

As physicians, we must also be able to provide emotional support and help to patients and their families through a difficult time. Frankly as a physician, that of all other ‘services’ I have provided over the years, it has been the most satisfying.

[I]The writer is former professor and Chairman Department of Cardiac Surgery, KEMU/Mayo Hospital, Lahore: [email]smhmbbs70@yahoo.com[/email][/I]

[B]14.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Ambassadors of hope[/SIZE]
Education is the most effective instrument of converting disparate social/ethnic groups into a nation
By Tahir Kamran[/CENTER][/B]

One commendable initiative of the Punjab government is the setting up of an endowment fund worth Rs10 billion to sponsor the education of students who have secured top positions, at various levels, at the top universities of the world. The Punjab government also organises an annual visit for such students to the world’s best universities to give them much-needed exposure to the conditions and atmosphere of these reputed educational institutions.

This year, such students were scheduled to undertake an enlightening sojourn to Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow and Edinburgh before proceeding to Sweden and Germany. In a bid to acquaint them with the ethos peculiar to the University of Cambridge, a delegation of 36 students came on a day-long visit. They were accompanied by the Vice-Chancellor of GC University Lahore, Prof Khaleeq-ur-Rehman, flanked by a couple of young officers from the Chief Minister’s Secretariat. Prof Rehman, an extremely polite and modest gentleman with a penchant for scientific research, appeared to be the ideal choice to supervise the GC University, which is still undergoing the difficulties of transition. It was indeed a pleasure interacting with him.

The pleasure of meeting Prof Rehman, however, soon gave way to rapture to see such bright youngsters attired in green jackets, adorned with crescent and star. Not at all overawed by the inspiring ambience that oozes from Cambridge University, they appeared to be ambassadors of hope in the days of despair currently afflicting Pakistan. Obviously, hope is to despair what an antidote is to a poison. Thus the moments spent with them were refreshing to say the least.

Later, they had marathon sessions at Trinity College with different tutors who briefed them about the criterion and method of becoming enrolled at the university. That must have given them a good sense of how this university operates and recruits students. It, however, raises a question whether it will be wise to send Pakistani students at undergraduate level, knowing the perils of exposing tender-aged boys and girls to the razzle-dazzle of the western world. These are formative years, when one readily absorbs cultural influences which are at times out of synch with one’s own social norms. Its upshot in most cases is the cultural dislocation that leads to crises of ‘self’ and ‘identity’.

Education fundamentally is the most effective instrument of converting disparate social/ethnic groups into a nation. Even instruction in science subjects does have a socio-cultural context. More often than not the people qualified in different disciplines from reputable universities, on return to their native countries, not only fail to help in resolving problems but end up compounding them. Pakistani economists educated and settled abroad provide testimony to that fact.

The instruction that they usually get in the top universities does not correspond to the base realities obtaining in the country of their origin. Consequently, the exercise often ends up in catastrophe. These reservations notwithstanding, the writer does not want to take an extreme position on that issue. Needless to emphasise, however, is the fact that education is the only panacea for the problems besetting us, and the state must assume the responsibility to make it mandatory for all. In order to do this, the education system and institutions of higher education have to be drastically reformed. It will be instructive to study the Chinese model whereby large number of students are coming to the USA and Europe for higher education, while, at the same time, the state is spending huge sums on restructuring its own universities.

Thus, while not contesting in entirety the policy of sending young bright students abroad for better education, it is prescribed that the educational institutions in Pakistan are to be improved both in terms of human as well as material resources. Instead of handing the responsibility of education over to the private sector, the state must come forward as a competitor vis a vis private entrepreneurs who are investing in education.

Primarily, it is the state’s duty to arrange for the education of all its citizens. Since the stakes of private investors are quite high, they should be allowed to exist and flourish, but the state must not wash its hands of public sector institutions. With some effort and a clear sense of direction, their level can be raised so that they can compete with private institutions. Such healthy competition will do us a world of good the way it did in 1950s and 1960s. The widely held cliché of handing all such institutions which are not yielding profit over to the private managers has not led us anywhere.

Education and health services have become money-making enterprises and thus access to them has become extremely expensive with a very strong class dimension. Class difference is likely to accentuate if the private sector is not kept on a tight leash.

With the de facto demise of the liberal-left in Pakistan, class conflict will be articulated through religious extremism and sectarian antagonism. Therefore, in the prevailing circumstance, the role of the state-owned educational institutions has acquired an extraordinary salience. With the reformed curriculum, with an emphasis on germinating critical thinking among the students, the Frankenstein of religious fundamentalism can be reined in. The only way to change, in the sociological parlance of Emile Durkheim, the ‘conflictual society’ of Pakistan into ‘consensual society’ is through education, regulated by the state.

If the private sector is given a free hand in areas where the state should take the lead, then the hold of the rich is perpetuated and the poor or the dispossessed become incarcerated in the cul de sac of impoverishment for good. Put differently, the whole exercise of imparting education, as it exists, instead of facilitating social integration and upward mobility, as renowned French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu asserts it should be, becomes instead a mechanism of social division, and becomes anathema to its original purpose.

The ability to critically analyse social realities and the complexities of their manifestation is starkly missing in our educational milieu. Proper cognition of the social realities is a sine qua non for any profound analysis, for which teaching becomes extremely vital. To inculcate this much-needed skill, teachers must be properly equipped with the techniques of critical evaluation of the situation at hand.

It will, therefore, be far more beneficial if teachers are sent abroad for training courses which may in turn transform them into invaluable human resource. A restructuring of the facilities and rewards provided for teachers is essential to make the role of teachers more attractive to our bright and committed citizens.

[B]14.07.2013 [/B][B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Powerless plans[/SIZE]
Though KP government speaks of imposing an energy emergency to meet the dreadful energy imbroglio, there is no worthwhile allocation and emergency plan for the sector
By Tahir Ali
[/CENTER][/B]
The PTI-led Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government intends to launch an Energy Emergency Programme under which several power generation projects will be initiated this fiscal year in collaboration with local private parties and foreign companies.

“The government would initiate small hydel power generation schemes through Islamic banking programme of the Khyber Bank and the private sector would be invited for joint investment through the system,” said Sirajul Haq, KP’s Finance Minister.

The PTI chief, Imran Khan, also recently said that after completion of new projects in five years, KP would meet its own power needs as well as supply power to other provinces. Rs1.5 billion of the total local ADP of Rs83 billion, Rs3 billion from the Hydel Development Fund (HDF) and another 0.8 billion of the foreign ADP component of Rs35 billion will be used for the 28 energy projects — 16 ongoing and 12 new ones.

He said four hydro-power projects of 457MW capacity await approval by the federal government. “We request the federal government that these and other power projects to be launched in future should be accorded swift approval. It should invest money in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to exploit its known hydel power generation potential instead of opting for costly and controversial Bhasha Dam and Kalabagh Dam projects,” he said.

KP would construct 200MW gas powered thermal power station in southern districts where there are plentiful oil and gas reserves.

“KP would establish a 10MW solar power station which will be completed in record 18 months. A feasibility study for another 50MW solar plant will also be prepared soon. Over 100 remote villages, not part of the national grid, will be provided power through solar energy. The Civil Secretariat in Peshawar will be converted to solar power under the green secretariat initiative. Rs100 million have been allocated for conversion of street lights to solar power,” said Haq. “Under a special initiative for import/manufacturing of solar panels and promotion of allied technologies, Rs 300 million will be provided to Bank of Khyber for easy loans to entrepreneurs.”

Besides, a pilot 10MW project wind power station would also be initiated. Again, to increase power generation and dispose of the waste of big cities, construction of 2MW biomass power station is also under consideration. A model Jetropha Farm will be established to assess the energy generation capacity of bio-diesel in the province.

For energy conservation and efficiency, an energy task force would be established in collaboration with Peshawar Electric Supply Company at a cost of Rs10 million for improving transmission and distribution system.

Under a loan agreement with Asian Development Bank for hydel power generation in KP, two hydro power schemes of 20MW are being constructed at Machai and Ranolia which will begin production by next year.

The Pakhtunkhwa Hydel Development Organisation (PHYDO), according to the budget whitepaper, has conducted pre-feasibility studies of 10 sites in KP. Under the action plan 2011-25, PHYDO has started work on the six hydel projects of 238MW capacity. KP has also signed two MOUs for construction of two hydro power plants of 665MW and 496MW capacities at Kohistan under public private partnership which will cost $3 billion.

The 18MW Pehure hydel power plant is ready but there is a deadlock on its power purchase agreement. A plan is under consideration in the relevant forum to provide its electricity on subsidised rates to industrialists.

Though KP speaks of imposing an energy emergency to meet the dreadful energy imbroglio, there is no big/worthwhile allocation and emergency plan with any fixed time-limit for the sector. Similar allocations and promises were made and projects were initiated in the past even though there was no talk of energy emergency.

While energy and power sector account for only 1.9 per cent of total ADP of Rs118 billion, roads have been allocated over Rs15 billion and account for over 13 per cent of the total ADP. The energy sector has been allocated Rs1.5 billion in local ADP.

The allocation of Rs0.82billion in foreign component of ADP is also negligible as last year’s allocation of Rs0.69billion was 3 per cent of the foreign ADP of Rs23 billion while this year it is just 2 per cent. In 2011, energy sector got Rs0.86 billion or 5 per cent in this area.

While the PTI’s election manifesto promises to end loadshedding, gas/oil, solar and wind-run energy generation projects are some of the options open to it. But these require billions. Does KP have the resources and will to be able to attract foreign investment and public private partnership for installing these schemes? It remains to be seen.

KP accounts for 50,000MW hydro power potential. German experts say 44000MW could be had if three dams are built on Chitral River alone. There are at least 12 sites on the river-upper-Swat in Dargai alone which can produce over 1MW power each very easily.

“The PTI government can tap this potential. Pakistan is deficient by 4000MW. All we need is 13,000 turbines of 300 kilowatts each. An entrepreneur in Mardan has installed 1500 such plants in Pakistan and Afghanistan. We should help such entrepreneurs,” Karachi-based engineer Syed Nayyar Iqbal Raza said.

KP also has one billion barrel of oil and four trillion cubic feet of gas reserves. Investment in these sectors can solve the energy problem once and for all.

Around 2.9 million MW solar energy could be produced in Pakistan. But high capital cost, lack of private sector’s interest and banks’ reluctance to offer loans for investment in solar energy have hindered its growth. Incentives such as tax holidays, grants for conversion to solar energy, risk coverage and competitive tariff for solar energy may change the tide.

Financing these projects should not be a problem. KP’s Hydel Development Fund (HDF) has over Rs28 billion which could be utilised for the purpose. KP would also receive Rs25 billion as net hydel profit arrears this fiscal. Besides spending this amount, the government should also seek foreign loans and grants.

Opened in 1992, the HDF could have been worth over Rs100 billion had the province deposited and invested the Rs85 billion it received in last four years as NHP arrears. But only a meagre amount was deposited in the HDF or utilised for hydropower projects.

Public sector entities prepare attractive plans on paper but for financial and capacity constraints and security problems for the foreigners, their impact has been little.

According to annual strategy review of the comprehensive development strategy and the economic growth strategy — two long term development strategy papers prepared by KP — public sector financing for hydropower sector has not been materialised.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan was recently informed that licences had been issued to a number of leaseholders for small hydro power schemes worth 30,000MW, but they are yet to build their infrastructure.

Sub-clause 2 of Article 157 of Pakistan’s Constitution empowers the provinces to construct power projects, levy taxes on, and fix tariff, for electricity, construct distribution and transmission lines. But provinces, reneging on their rights, have left the matter to the federal entities.

KP contributes around 3500MW of electricity to the national grid. Its total power requirement stands at 2700MW, but it receives around 1800MW. The result is acute loadshedding throughout the province, making lives miserable and businesses sluggish.

The federal government recently approved five energy projects worth Rs1.3 trillion which would add up 3500MW to national grid in other areas but KP deserves more attention for its vast cheaper hydro power potential.

[B]14.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]The Abbottabad heist![/SIZE]
Like many other potentates that the US created and strengthened in many parts of the world and then cut them to size or had them removed, the time had come to deal with the Pakistan army, which as an institution has taken the role of a potentate
By Helal Pasha
[/CENTER][/B]
Wars never end smoothly. Peace, that follows takes years to stabilise. The only war the US was able to end smoothly was when choppers airlifted stranded Americans from the US embassy rooftop.

After the death of Osama, many have wondered whether the war in Afghanistan is approaching an end. It might or might not be but, in both instances, the US has to ensure that the war ends or continues on the US terms and not on some other country or group’s terms.

Pakistan, being the most interested party in the neighborhood, is also the most impacted country. With ambitious Generals leading Pakistan’s aggressive defense strategy, it is natural that the US and Pakistan’s strategic interests in the region would have a collision. Many astute observers had predicted it, but no one could calculate the path it would take. The events in the last couple of years have now made it clear that the US had decided the course it would take awhile back, to neuter the Pak army and its aggressive designs on its western borders.

Since the Second World War, the US had not had such a shrewd but predictable adversary in the regions it operated militarily. The last military adversary the US took head on was China when its forces clashed with the Chinese in Korea in the early 50s. The Chinese army in the 1950s was a ragtag army with no nuclear support or even a reliable supply of ammunition.

The Pakistan army is different. It has considerable support in Pakistan population, has a credible weapon in its possession, and potentially threatening in the rugged mountains of Fata and Afghanistan. The US cannot pulverize the Pakistan army by bombing campaigns like in Iraq twice and in Libya. It is true that the US can threaten Islamabad. However, the US cannot afford to have a trapped enemy with an ability to inflict massive destruction.

So what should the US do?

The US embarked on a path it had never traversed before. The US clearly saw its most trusted ally the Pakistan army, also as its significant adversary. The US created the army and took it to where it is now in strength by providing monetary and armament support. Like many other potentates that the US created and strengthened in many parts of the world and then cut them to size or had them removed, the time had come to deal with the Pakistan army, which as an institution has taken the role of a potentate.

The US did not reach this conclusion in a hurry or made the decision after a few policy setbacks it suffered in the area. At first, the US decided to back an ersatz civilian setup and pressured the army to share power with the civilians. That arrangement did not last long and sabotaged by a barrage of suicide bombing in many parts of Pakistan and the neighbouring countries. The US intention in helping a civilian setup was to have some degree of internal debate between Pakistani civilians and military brass on issues that particularly related to Afghan war.

The Generals quickly put down any policy disagreement by neutralising the civilian partners that did not have enough credentials to put up a fight after the murder of Pakistan’s principal political voice Benazir Bhutto.

The US then decided to backup two Generals it believed would follow the US lead in the area. That too did not work, and the two Generals did not have the ability to climb above the rhetoric, the Pakistan army itself created by using its crude political allies and the media in Pakistan.

The internal debate within the US establishment on how to deal with the Pakistan army sharply differed. Many factions disagreed with each other on the US approach. The US military thought it could work with the Pakistan military. The civilians in the US establishment did not agree with that and had pursued a policy of confrontation with the Pakistan army.

There were many instances when the disagreements within the US policy makers were so sharp and acute that some analysts believed, and often rightly so, that the US had a two-track policy in Pakistan. These divisions in the US further fortified the belief in the Pakistani military establishment that it can indefinitely rely on internal differences in the US administration and to strengthen its strategic position in the area. The Pakistan army intensified its jockeying to gain a measure of partnership with the US after the Afghan war ends.

The Pakistan army’s approach did not sit well and resulted in a well thought out plan to target the army as well as lift the US civilian administration’s dwindling national security credentials. The US was aware of Osama’s presence in Pakistan, and it was a matter of when and how to take him out of his residence surrounded by Pakistan Army’s presence.

As the Abbottabad Commission report disclosed, the innocuous deep slumber the US SEALS encountered in Pakistan that night, was not unplanned. The promises made and accepted with great reluctance perhaps were that Pakistan security apparatus would not be humiliated in the media.

Could it be that the whole plan with elaborate promises was sold to the Pakistan army when the former ISI chief visited the US a month before the Abbottabad heist? The US military top representative also visited Pakistan to give assurances followed up by the US special AfPak envoy Marc Grossman. During all that time, the harsh and vocal criticism of Pakistan in the US media continued. That perhaps was the cover used to convince Pakistan to accept the Abbottabad raid.

The US president stayed above the fray, but the US civilian security agencies took a leading role in discrediting Pakistan or rather the Pakistan army. The US military establishment has only meekly suggested that, “No firm evidence of Pakistani complicity.”

The Abbottabad commission report says otherwise.

The evidence is not firm, but it is there…

[B]14.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Generations apart[/SIZE]
With the launch of 4th generation computing devices, supporting environments such as broadband and 3G become imperative
By Shahzada Irfan Ahmed
[/CENTER][/B]
Technology has an amazing ability to turn dreams into reality. Something which one thinks is unachievable today may become a routine matter tomorrow and not even get noticed by the populace benefiting directly from it.

The human desires, ambitions and goals are endless which keep scientists working on projects and come out with inventions and discoveries. There is no end point and the desire to improve quality of human life remains insatiable.

Computing is one such field which has developed at a fast pace and changed the very lifestyle of human beings. The mobile and handheld devices, touch enabled equipment, laptops etc have become part and parcel of one’s life. Connected to each other in ever-shrinking global village through internet, people cannot even think about living in a world deprived of these blessings.

Those who have communicated with relatives, friends and business partners through ordinary postal mail or highly priced trunk phone calls know how much technology has helped them. Those born in this age and time have obviously taken all these magical technologies for granted.

So, what lies in the future? Is there anything more to come and do we need further advancement in technologies which have made our life so easy?

Yes, is the answer that this scribe got from world’s leading names in the Information Technology (IT) sector including Intel which has recently launched its range of products powered by 4th generation processors codenamed Haswell in Karachi on June 25, 2013. Unlike in the past, the global launch is followed with national level launch throughout Pakistan within a couple of weeks.

This means a lot for Pakistanis who have the same exposure and access to these devices as enjoyed by consumers based in the US or any other part of the world. The days when it took technologies and products ages to get transferred to this part of the world are over.

A question that arises here is whether the IT infrastructure in Pakistan is developed enough to help people make best use of these new devices. If not, then why would people habitual of using low-cost and second hand computers smuggled or imported from foreign destinations be ready to spend their money on these devices.

Let us discuss the advantages of using 4th generation computing devices and analyse how they stand to further change the lifestyle of the people familiar with IT and internet connectivity.

The latest processor would serve as the foundation for computing in two-in-one devices, which work as a computer as well as a tablet. Now it would be possible for users to give input through external devices or through touch interface to the same computer. The Haswell based systems will wake up around eight times faster, and allow users to edit and share High Definition (HD) videos about 20 times faster than a similar four-year-old computer. These devices will offer over 9 to 12 hours of active use battery life or 10 to 13 days of standby on a single charge.

The users will have large screen desktop PCs that can detach from their docks and become portable tablets if the need arises. With standby times of up to 13 days and video playback of above 9 hours, these screens will be able to stay away from the desk for long.

Another value addition is that these devices will be controlled by voice and gesture at the same time. There will be no need to remember passwords for email accounts, social media websites etc as face recognition and biometric scans will be conducted by these machines themselves.

Intel Country Manager Naveed Siraj sees a prosperous local market 4th generation computing devices in Pakistan and hopes for an early upgradation of existing IT infrastructure. “Who else than us can benefit more from devices with working battery life of 9 to 12 hours and CPU energy consumption as low as 6 watts?” he questions.

Naveed also shares it with TNS that the desktop PC has been reinvented with the help of this advancement in technology. These desktops PCs have CPUs inside the LCDs and they can be detached from keyboards and used as tablets with touch interface. The same LCD can be used to read newspaper in broadsheet format, play chess and other games, to access websites on recipes and what not.

He says there is a dire need to drastically increase the broadband access which is hovering around 2.3 per cent and auction 3G license to improve the quality of internet service. Broadband, as defined by the country’s broadband policy, is an “always on internet connection with a minimum download speed of 128 kbps connectivity.”

A member of the Internet Service Providers’ Association of Pakistan (ISPAK) tells TNS that the excessive surveillance of cyber space, exorbitant taxes on mobile services and usage and high rates of broadband spectrum offered to ISPs have discouraged investment in the sector.

He urges the government to give maximum relaxations to the IT and telecom sectors. “When basic internet and broadband access will increase the government revenues will automatically increase.” In the absence of enabling environments, the use of these magical 4th generation computing devices will remain limited in Pakistan, he fears.

[B]21.07.2013[/B][B][CENTER] [SIZE="5"]Right to know versus right to ‘no’[/SIZE]
The growing debate on the extent of ‘national interest’ and ‘right to know’ reflects the impact and consequences of the Snowden case
By Adnan Rehmat[/CENTER][/B]

Edward Snowden has come to be as well-known on the planet as Julian Assange. And perhaps loved with as much passion and loathed with equal intensity as him. Both have many things in common — they are hated and hunted by powerful governments and eulogized as heroes for the new information age by the public and rights activists. Both are on the run from current laws and exist in a fuzzy legal state where their citizenships and passports have been revoked and suspended, and effectively they are citizens of no country, perhaps the only two humans on the planet with this peculiar status.

Both Snowden and Assange find themselves in the middle of a battle royale of global proportions that is pitching traditional state structures that are used to hiding and manipulating information against a changing world order where the ubiquity of information and its sources and tools are making the old way of doing things redundant. They represent a cause celebre that would be glorious if it weren’t for the sobering fact that they are considered traitors under existing laws. And since they are both wanted by the United States, where the state subscribes to capital punishment, they technically face the death sentence if convicted. Luckily even the mighty US is unable to get its hands on either, for now, despite long passages of time.

Snowden’s is a newer case than Assange’s who, unsurprisingly, has mobilised his WikiLeaks organisation to deploy resources both legal and financial to extend protection to his fellow champion of transparency and accountability. However, both have become heroes for two different aspects of the whistleblowing. While Assange is famous for disclosing massive amounts of classified documents mostly related to US diplomacy including damning private conversations of government officials, with the help of whistleblowers within the government, Snowden is now known for unveiling military data related to the extent of American surveillance of the world, including its own allies, that he himself had direct access to. While Assange is an Australian with a journalism background, Snowden worked for the US government as a contractor.

Privacy or Access?

The Snowden case couldn’t be more simpler and simultaneously more complex: he is caught up in the long history of tension between the constitutionally guaranteed rights of American citizens and government actions that abridge those rights in the name of national security. Fundamentally, do citizens have total privacy or can government claim margins to spy on those it suspects? What exactly did Snowden do to earn the wrath of his government?

Among other specifics, he divulged, through a British journalist working for Guardian newspaper, the existence and functions of several classified US surveillance programmes and their scope, including notably the ‘PRISM’ programme, the ‘NSA [National Security Agency] call database’ and the ‘Boundless Informant.’ Additionally, he also revealed details of ‘Tempora,’ a British black-ops surveillance programme run by the NSA’s UK partner GCHQ.

The consequences were of epic proportions. US Director of Intelligence James Clapper, the NSA and Department of Justice together launched a criminal investigation into Snowden’s actions charging him with treason under the Espionage Act, theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified intelligence to an unauthorised person. This makes Snowden only the 10th person charged under the 100-year espionage law. The law was seldom used before Barack Obama became president. His administration has now used it seven times.

The US military blocked access to parts of the Guardian website related to government surveillance programmes for thousands of defense personnel across the country, and to the entire Guardian website for personnel stationed in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and South Asia. Speaker US House of Representative John Boehner and Senators Diane Feinstein and Bill Nelson called Snowden a traitor, and several senators and representatives joined them in calling for his arrest and prosecution.

British Foreign Minister William Hague admitted that UK was also spying and collaborating with NSA. UK Department of Defense issued a confidential compulsory notice to British media asking for restraint in running further stories related to surveillance leaks. European governments reacted angrily, with German and French leaders Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande branding the spying as ‘unacceptable’ and insisting the NSA stop immediately while EU Justice Commissioner sent US an official list of questions and demanded an explanation.

Security or liberty?

The reaction from non-government sources was also intense. “This wholesale invasion of Americans’ and foreign citizens’ privacy does not contribute to our security; it puts in danger the very liberties we’re trying to protect,” Daniel Ellsberg, who was himself charged four decades ago with espionage, among other crimes, for leaking the Pentagon Papers, the government study that cast a deeply negative light on the Vietnam War.

After Chairman of the US Foreign Relations Panel Robert Menendez warned Ecuador that offering Snowden asylum “would severely jeopardize” preferential trade access the US provides to Ecuador, the Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa responded by abdicating US trade benefits, saying his country would offer the US “economic aid of $23 million annually, similar to what we received with the trade benefits, with the intention of providing you education about human rights.” He also criticised the US media for centering its focus on Snowden and countries supporting him, instead of focusing on the global and domestic privacy issues implicated in the leaked documents.

The presidents of Uruguay, Argentina, Venezuela and Suriname joined Correa and Evo Morales after the Bolivian president’s plane was forced to land in Austria, after Spain, France, Italy and Portugal refused it entry into their airspace during a return flight from Moscow suspecting that Snowden was being transported aboard for asylum. The presidents, joined by a representative from Brazil, met in Bolivia to discuss the incident and denounced the US. Presidents Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua offered Snowden asylum after the meeting.

Obama himself was pointedly critical asserting that the Snowden leaks harmed US security and made it easier for America’s enemies “like stateless al-Qaeda terrorist operators” to avoid the never-blinking eye of Washington surveillance. Defending his administration’s information gathering and tough approach in handling leaks and whistle-blowing, he said: “You can’t have 100 per cent security and also then have 100 per cent privacy and zero inconvenience. We’re going to have to make some choices as a society.”

However, others such as former CIA and NSA chief General Michael Hayden welcomed the debate about the balance between privacy and security that the leaks have provoked. “I am convinced the more the people know exactly what it is we are doing in this balance between privacy and security, the more they know the more comfortable they will feel.”

True lies or false truths?

Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul offered tentative support for Snowden, saying they were reserving judgment on Snowden until more information about the surveillance programmes and about Snowden’s motives were known. Paul said, “I do think when history looks at this, they are going to contrast the behaviour of James Clapper, our National Intelligence Director, with Edward Snowden. Mr Clapper lied in Congress in defiance of the law, in the name of security. Mr Snowden told the truth in the name of privacy.”

Former US president Jimmy Carter said: “He has obviously violated the laws of America, for which he’s responsible, but I think the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far. I think that the secrecy that has been surrounding this invasion of privacy has been excessive, so I think that the bringing of it to the public notice has probably been, in the long term, beneficial.”

Public polls showed greater public support against current laws that promote secrecy and invasion of privacy. A European opinion poll carried out by Emnid in end June revealed that 50 per cent of Germans consider Snowden a hero, while 35 per cent would hide him in their homes. An American poll by Quinnipiac University found that 55 per cent of voters regard Snowden as a ‘whistleblower’ compared to 35 per cent who consider him to be a traitor. A plurality, 54 per cent of those surveyed also said government anti-terrorism efforts have gone too far in restricting civil liberties. Three years ago, a similar survey found 63 per cent saying anti-terrorism activities didn’t go far enough.

“The massive swing in public opinion about civil liberties and governmental anti-terrorism efforts, and the public view that Edward Snowden is more whistleblower than traitor, are the public reaction and apparent shock at the extent to which the government has gone in trying to prevent future terrorist incidents,” said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

Free speech or freeze speech?

On its face, the Obama administration seems an unlikely one to step up use of the Espionage Act against leakers and whistle-blowers. He is a liberal Democrat and former constitutional law professor who pledged to make government more open, points out Steven Hurst, a journalist. “Obama’s use of the law has cast a chill on free speech and freedom of the press,” says Kathleen McClellan, a lawyer at the Government Accountability Project, which represents two of the seven people charged with espionage. “If we continue down this road, the public is only going to be able to hear what the government wants the public to hear because any source that is not approved at the highest levels will now fear giving information to reporters,” she said.

Grant Silver of the University of Denver notes the Obama administration leaks information that benefits the White House while cracking down on those who give out information that casts it in an unfavourable light. “When you’re granting access to certain people and you’re giving them anonymous stories and anonymous scoops, the official story becomes the only story,” he says.

Pakistan cannot remain immune to the consequences of the Assange and Snowden cases. Already the Supreme Court of Pakistan has ruled that there cannot be secrets in government and even spending from ‘secret funds’ should be accountable and made public.

Only days ago the sensational Abbottabad Commission Report was leaked that exposes actual security and military capacities and the fatal nature of the civil-military imbalance. While no ‘Snowden’ of this leaked report has emerged in Pakistan, the growing debate on the extent of ‘national interest’ and ‘right to know’ in the country reflects the impact and consequences of the Snowden case.

[B]21.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]No big deal[/SIZE]
Right connections and wheeling dealing can earn one billions in a society where corruption and kickbacks are a norm
By Alauddin Masood[/CENTER][/B]

In a country where scams keep surfacing every other day, if the nation and the country have not reaped due benefits from the privatisation process one should not be surprised. Just take the case of the KESC. Since privatisation of this company, stories about undue and illegal favours to the KESC’s new management have been making rounds time and again.

The KESC was privatised to Al-Jumayia Group (Al-Jomiah), in November, 2005, with 71.5 per cent share holdings. Later, the Ministry of Water and Power declared the Al-Jumayia Group a defaulter but, finally, it ended up extending the company’s new management a bailout package of Rs70 billion. Don’t be surprised! Such things keep happening in the Land of the Pure. (Even the Eitisalat has yet to pay $800 million despite PTCL’s privatisation over a decade ago) Of course, you have the right to know how it happened.

On former prime minister’s orders, the accord with the KESC was changed in 2008 so as to extend more incentives to the management of the privatised company. The Cabinet Division made these startling revelations before a committee of the Senate of Pakistan on July 9, 2013. To change the accord with the KESC, a summary was presented in ECC. But, this step was against the rules and regulations, “And more importantly the then Prime Minister, Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, himself chaired that particular ECC meeting,” Cabinet Division officials told the Senate’s Sub-Committee on Water and Power. (Traditionally, the finance minister presides over the ECC meetings. Why did the prime minister go out of his way to preside over the ECC meeting is anybody’s guess?)

Furthermore, the ECC decision was not got ratified from the Cabinet of Ministers, which was mandatory. Even the decision to supply 650 MW of electricity to the KESC from the Pepco’s system was illegal because it did not have the approval of the Council of Common Interests. Above all, according to the top officials of the Ministry of Water and Power, necessary legislation to protect the amendments in the accord with the KESC did not take place, therefore, the changed accord has no value or worth.

A company with 17,000 employees, the KESC was given to Al-Jumayia Group, in November, 2005. At that time, the KESC owed Rs56 billion to the Pepco (WAPDA) in electricity arrears. Meanwhile, UAE-based Abraaj Group got interested in the KESC and it acquired the company’s full management control without owning a single share or clearing even the outstanding Pepco dues.

How did something that sounds incredible happen? Abraaj/KESC management itself revealed that in a 28-page document, in October 2008, in response to a set of questions sent to it by Group Editor of The News, Shaheen Sehbai. According to Abraaj/KESC’s version: “At no time has any personal relationship played a part in Abraaj’s involvement in the KESC....Abraaj spent six months doing due diligence of this deal and no favours were sought by Abraaj during the course of its negotiations with the Government of Pakistan (GoP) and none were granted outside the normal course of commercial discussions aimed at reviving the KESC for the benefit of all stakeholders.”

The KESC’s management tried to give an impression that the relationship of Farrukh Abbas, who was then Chief Executive Officer of Abraaj Capital (Pak), did not influence its involvement in the KESC affairs. Farrukh Abbas is a relative of President Asif Ali Zardari though not directly, but “through marriage”.

At that time, Abraaj Group/KESC’s marketing and communication head, Qashif Effendi, was also related to the Zardari family. The KESC’s Chief Financial Officer, Jalil Tareen, was a distant cousin and a good friend of the then Prime Minister’s Adviser on Finance, Shaukat Tareen. However, according to Abraaj/KESC management, Jalil Tareen was “hired entirely on his own merits as he happened to have a superb track record as a highly seasoned UK-qualified chartered accountant and senior manager.”

The six-month period spent by Abraaj “doing due diligence of this deal” resulted in Abraaj Group’s taking over KESC’s full control (without transfer of shares taking place in the transaction) in a highly complicated manner. However, as per October 2008 written statement of the group, “Abraaj will subscribe for new shares in KES Group (Al-Jumayia Group), the holding company that owned 71.5 per cent of the KESC at that time. As a result of this subscription for new shares, Abraaj will end up owning 50 per cent of the issued share capital of KES Power, and therefore will indirectly own 35.75 per cent of the KESC. All of the capital (i.e. funds) used for the purchase of KES Power Shares will remain in KES Power and will then be injected into the KESC.”

In its October 2008 written reply, Abraaj/KESC has, however, confirmed the following special favours given to it ever since Abraaj started the due diligence process to acquire the KESC. While Abraaj has already taken over the KESC and started running the show, the document says:

“Management control of the KESC will transfer fully to Abraaj once the transaction has been completed. The Consortium agreement has been signed between Abraaj and KES Power (Al-Jumayia Group, the previous owners) and there are a number of conditions precedents that need to be satisfied before the subscription of shares can take place.

“KES Power and the Government of Pakistan, as the existing shareholders of the KESC, requested that Abraaj make its new management team available to the company prior to transaction completion.”

The new senior management team was appointed and empowered by the existing Board of Directors, including the government, through circulation without any formal board meeting.

“Abraaj’s entry into the KESC will occur once the GoP approves a waiver to the Sales-Purchase agreement signed between the Privatisation Commission and KES Power in November 2005. The GoP has to approve the transaction and sale of new shares by KES Power to Abraaj by November 28, 2008 after which the shares would be available for transfer to Abraaj.”

Although Abraaj has yet to acquire the shares, GoP has already approved a petition awarding “Disco Status” to the KESC, which means buying Wapda electricity at 25 to 30 per cent of the current rates. This concession was denied to all previous managements of the KESC, yet Abraaj was so influential that “following consultations with the GoP, and after filing a detailed petition with NEPRA, Abraaj and the KESC were able to convince the Government and NEPRA that this discriminatory treatment must be reversed and the KESC must be treated on par with all other Discos (distribution companies) in the country. NEPRA issued a determination in this regard following full consultations and hearings.” This decision saved the KESC Rs30 billion it owed to Pepco and in future it got electricity cheaper from WAPDA.

Abraaj/KESC 28-page document admitted: “Without active involvement from Abraaj and the new management team, many of these issues would have remained unresolved.” For example, GoP has already settled the dispute of pending payments between the KESC and Wapda/Pepco on the KESC’s terms. A major achievement as the issue has been lingering since 2004. In addition, Abraaj and GoP have agreed on amendments in the Implementation Agreement originally signed between the KESC and the government when the KESC was privatised to Al-Jomaih Group in November 2005. According to Abraaj, these amendments will “bring the agreement up to date and clarify the support which the government will provide (to KESC under Abraaj).”

These decisions/agreements have been possible because Abraaj’s top managers were so smart and competent that within days and weeks they moved the mountains and forced the bureaucratic machinery to move in their favour at top speed. However, Abbas and his team of 40 executives was content to get monthly salary tabs, ranging from Rs 1 million at the lowest level to Rs 5 million for the chief executive, plus the perks, for these extra-ordinary services to the stakeholders!

According to KESC insiders, the total bill of Abbas and his 40 executives was the same US$8 million, which was paid to M/s Siemens for operation and maintenance contract by Al-Jomaih Group. Siemens was an operations company with engineers and equipment, while these 40 executives were managers with a few engineers and no equipment. But, these professional managers had an edge — right connections and the knack for getting things done!

However, in a press release carried by a section of the media on July 16 — eight days after the Senate Committee’s meeting and the disclosure — the KESC spin doctors have tried to rebut the grant of any bailout package to it. According to the KESC, “the government had not paid any bailout package or any direct amount to the KESC to fund its operations since September 2008 when the current management took over charge of the company. On the contrary, at present, the federal and provincial governments owed huge arrears of Rs78 billion to the power utility.” The KESC reiterated its stance that ‘the government paid only the Tariff Differential Claim that was passed on to the electricity consumers on the government’s own demand.’

Past events prove the efficacy of transparency for peaceful rule in the 21stcentury. The authorities, therefore, need to explain to the tax-payers the rationale for owning by the government the debts/liabilities amounting to Rs70 billion owed by a company privatised as early as 2005. Furthermore, they need to apprise tax-payers of the need/rationale for amendments in the original Implementation Agreement that was signed between GoP and Al-Jomiah Group when the KESC was privatised in November 2005.

In addition, the authorities need to tell whether it is the first instance when the government has given a bailout package of Rs70 billion to a privatised company or it has been a normal practice with GoP to own liabilities of companies even after their privatisation. In case the government is obliged to subsidise the operations of privatised companies, then one needs to re-visit the privatisation policy, aimed at removing such discrepancies.

[I]The writer is a freelance columnist based at [email]Islamabad.alauddinmasood@gmail.com[/email][/I]

[B]21.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Public parasites[/SIZE]
The country cannot progress and survive unless the government dismantles elitist structures that feed on public money
By Huzaima Bukhari & Dr. Ikramul Haq[/CENTER][/B]

Judges of higher judiciary, military and civil hierarchy and parliamentarians feel that they are underpaid, thus, economically deprived! Frequently, the parliamentarians pass laws for their own benefits extending more emoluments and fringe benefits! President keeps on enhancing benefits of judges.

No doubt, economic deprivation prevails for the majority of low-paid employees, but the top-notches give them only peanuts — in retaliation they resort to corrupt practices in the name of “necessity”. This is in a nutshell our nizam-e-hakumat (system of governance). It is a strange form of polity where the privilege classes want more and more share in taxpayers’ money in the form of free plots and perquisites.

The total amount spent on military establishment — not for defence needs but for the luxuries of the generals and other high-ranking officers — is not less than Rs125 billion. The cost of running the offices of president, governors, prime minister, ministers, advisers (supported by huge staff) in a year is between Rs130-145 billion — 60 per cent of it is extending a host of fringe benefits. The entertainment budget alone of the Prime Minister’s House and the President’s House is Rs170 million and Rs195 million respectively. One minister costs around Rs60 million per year; whereas we spend Rs144 per Pakistani per year for health; and Rs145 per Pakistani per year for education!

Former prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gillani, while speaking to a grand gathering of senior bureaucrats in Lahore, asked the Pay and Pension Commission, notified on April 2009, to come up with concrete suggestions for “a reasonable pay and pension package for the government employees”. The so-called party of the people, established by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in its 5-year rule did not bother to establish any commission to assess the unbearable incidence of taxes and cost of basic services to the ordinary citizens and how to give them relief. But Zardari et al were very concerned to give pay raises and benefits to the judges of Supreme Court and High Courts, military and civil bureaucrats. These institutions have failed to deliver but enjoy unfettered powers.

The high-ranking officials have dual nationalities and enormous hidden assets — kept mostly outside but also within the country in the names of others (benami). No doubt all the public servants have legitimate right to get reasonable pay and security of job — the State must fulfill its duty of good pay master. But in turn, they should be the public servants in real sense of the word and not the Gora sahibs.

We beg money from all and sundry and then provide luxuries to elites. It is shameful and deplorable. No growth has been achieved even after borrowing billion of dollars. People are dying of hunger — majority is living in miserable conditions — and our privileged public servants (sic), public office holders, generals and judges are not ready to give away their perks and benefits. In a democratic setup they should get ‘Consolidated Pay Package’ and pay tax on it like others do.

Way back in 1964, a book titled ‘Your most Disobedient Servant’ was published by a civil servant in a transport service of the UK. It revealed the losses and irregularities in the use or misuse of official transports — it eventually paved the way for ‘Consolidated Pay Package’ that monetized pay, perks, privileges of those serving in state organisations. It reduced the corruption a great deal. Civil society and social media in Pakistan must take up this issue forcefully.

According to a press report, “in the locality sprawling over an area of 1,514 kanals of Mozang, Lahore, the largest house in the area, over 52 kanals, is the designated house for the Lahore High Court Chief Justice. The Commissioner’s House is the second largest house covering 26 kanals. The Chief Secretary’s House covers 12 kanals and the Chief Minister’s House covers 5 kanals. These are painful facts.

The beneficiaries of these huge residences, constructed from taxpayers’ money or borrowed funds, claim to be public servants or the custodian of law. They give public sermons about rule of law and great democratic movement launched by the ordinary citizens that restored them, but feel no compulsion for living like them. Repeatedly they quote from Islamic “golden age” of administration. But seldom have they mentioned that in pre-monarchical Islamic period, the rulers used to take minimum possible amounts — only for their essential needs — from Baitul Maal (national exchequer).

Millions are spent every year for the renovation, alteration and landscaping of Lahore’s GORs to facilitate the civil, police and judiciary high-ups living there. The renovation of Punjab House in Islamabad, Karachi, Murree and Rawalpindi has been part of five successive budgets of Khadim-i-Aala’s. This is the story of good governance in the Punjab where the Chief Minister prefers to be called Khadim-i-Aala (Chief Servant)!

The situation in other provinces and the federal government is no different — rather it is worse. Huge sums are spent (rather wasted) for providing privileges to the high-ranking government officials and politicians. The same situation prevails in the military establishment. The style of living of our generals is unmatched in the world. In the post-colonial period they became not only political masters but also the main beneficiaries of country’s major resources.

While the government servants blame politicians for plundering and wasting the money, they allege that bureaucracy is the root cause of all the ills. They claim that a secretary of government costs at least Rs500,000 per month to national exchequer with lot of facilities and perquisites in kind. If rent-free accommodation given to him in Islamabad alone is evaluated on market basis, the benefit is not less worth Rs250,000 per month. In addition, he exercises unfettered powers and defy the orders of elected members of parliament and even sometime of ministers. These facts call for immediate right-sizing — closing down of all the unnecessary departments, divisions, sub-divisions and allied paraphernalia [see list in ‘Capital Suggestions’, The News, January 04, 2009]. The list is long and astonishing.

At Constitution Avenue, Islamabad, one can count 30 useless government establishments that are doing nothing but have imposing buildings and huge staff. The same is true everywhere — in all parts of the country one finds government offices, overstaffed, wasting money and time and making the lives of the citizens difficult.

Living in sprawling bungalows with army of servants, the rulers, mighty bureaucrats, judges and generals are least pushed to bother how the common man is living (or dying) — even totally indifferent towards their own fellow low-paid employees. The civil-military structure in Pakistan is class-oriented and against the basic precepts of democracy. They make policies while sitting in the air-conditioned rooms for poverty alleviation and what not.

Since independence, State of Pakistan is either directly run or controlled by a strong civil-military complex. It has proved to be crueler than colonial masters — in terms of oppression, denying the people their fundamental rights and being highly inefficient and corrupt. Political elite, playing in the hands of civil-military complex, has also shown strong indignation towards pro-people decentralised governance.

Our governance model — under civil or military rules alike — has proved to be even worse than many developing countries where decentralisation has brought benefits for the people at gross root level. Our rulers have failed to empower the masses by implementing the command of Constitution — Article 140A says: “Each Province shall, by law, establish a local government system and devolve political, administrative and financial responsibility and authority to the elected representatives of the local governments.”

The immediate actions should include right-sizing of huge government machinery and monetising of all the fringe benefits and perquisites in kind given to the employees [see detailed recommendations by Dr Ishrat Hussain, Shahid Kardar, Nadeem ul Haque and many others]. Democratisation and decentralisation necessarily requires complete reform of our civil service and military establishment as well as accountability of public office holders.

The State must withdraw from all its employees and public office holders all facilities like houses, cars, servants, telephones etc. All perquisites given in kind should be monetised. Let the government servants — especially the senior bureaucrats — live with the ordinary citizens of Pakistan and not in GORs or other posh (isolated) colonies. It will give them real insight how the policies should be made and what are the real problems of the ordinary folk.

The government must give ‘Consolidated Pay Package’ to its employees — there should be no free plots, free club memberships, fringe benefits and perquisites in kind. This will be the starting point of change in society — beginning of the democratisation of governance.

It is the Constitutional duty of the State to treat all the citizens equally and provide them the facilities of education, health and transportation. Since all the money is spent on the luxuries of the elites, the State has persistently failed to fulfill its main responsibility. If we want to survive and progress, we will have to dismantle elitist structures.

[I]The writers, tax lawyers, are members of visiting faculty of Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)[/I]

[B]21.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]National education and crisis of identity[/SIZE]
Only a well thought out and actually implemented plan of national education, not seeped in either Western or Arab traditions, is critical if we are
to survive as a nation
By Yaqoob Khan Bangash
[/CENTER][/B]
It might come as a surprise to many in Pakistan today, but most countries try to establish a ‘national education’ system for their people (not simply ideological). Here by ‘national’ I mean, something which is grounded in the history, culture, and needs of the country — a tool by which not only a person can become an ‘educated’ and ‘literate’ human being, but also someone who is ‘grounded’ and contributes to the development of his/her country.

In the erstwhile British Empire in India, education was an important subject and several government commissions deliberated the provision and content of education. Two early pronouncements set the stage for British policy on education in India. The first was Macaulay’s minute in 1835, in which he dismissed Oriental learning and claimed that ‘a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia,’ and the other was the Wood Dispatch of 1854, after Sir Charles Wood, the President of the Board of Control of the East India Company, which while supporting a Westernisation of education, allowed for the vernacular to be taught at the primary level, and gave a little credence to local resources.

This ‘Westernisation’ of education perturbed many people in India and several people attempted to ‘nationalise’ it (interestingly enough Sir Syed Ahmed Khan was one of the fiercest proponents of Westernised education). There were several such thinkers, but I will just mention a few here (primarily those never mentioned in Pakistan), to give an indication of what they were aiming at.

The first pioneer I want to mention is the Nobel Laureate Sir Rabindranath Tagore, who set up a school — Patha Bhavna, at Shantiniketan in Bengal in 1901. Tagore was not an educationist, but realised that contemporary education was lacking in important aspects. He noted once: ‘Education is a permanent part of the adventure of life...it is not like a painful hospital treatment for curing them (students) of the congenial malady of their ignorance, but is a function of the health, the natural expression of their mind’s vitality.’

Lamenting the prevailing notion of education, Tagore further noted: ‘The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence. But we find that this education of sympathy is not only systematically ignored in schools, but it is severely repressed… Thus the greatest of educations for which we came prepared is neglected, and we are made to lose our world to find a bagful of information instead.’ Therefore the Shantiniketan experience was a pioneering one where students lived, learnt and did manual labour at the same place, all the while becoming aware of themselves, their culture, and how to engage with the wider world. Tagore was perhaps prescient in realising that the world will become, what we now call, a ‘global village’ and so prepared his students to be at once aware of their own environment and be comfortable with the rest of the world.

Ms Annie Besant, who set up the Home Rule League (of which Jinnah was an avowed member), also elucidated her views on national education in India. She noted: ‘Nothing can more swiftly emasculate national life, nothing can more surely weaken national character, than allowing the education of the young to be controlled by foreign influences, to be dominated by foreign ideals.’ Therefore she called for a ‘nationalistion’ of education in India, so that a more coherent ‘Indian nation’ might be nurtured.

Criticising British control of education, she stated that this new kind of education must be controlled, shaped and carried out by Indians. She noted: ‘It must hold up Indian ideals of devotion, wisdom and morality, and must be permeated by the Indian religious spirit…’ She also argued that a national education must be seeped into traditions of patriotism, not as a spirit of competition or jingoism, but by being aware and proud of one’s own ideals. ‘British ideals are good for Britain, but it is Indian ideals which are good for India,’ is how the great Punjabi nationalist Lala Lajpat Rai (and himself an education pioneer) understood Ms Besant.

Another nationalist scheme was the famous ‘Wardha scheme’ of 1937-8 by the Congress, much riled by the Muslim League and still by our Pakistan Studies textbooks. While our textbooks seldom go into the details of what the scheme actually entailed, it would suffice to mention here the fact that its planning committee was actually chaired by Dr Zakir Hussain — a Muslim and the then Principal of Jamia Millia Islamia in Delhi.

The scheme, the brainchild of Gandhi, highlighted several initiatives including the centrality of vocational education, teaching in the mother tongue, etc, but it also gave a ‘national’ perspective to this style of education. The committee noted that those ‘who undertake this new educational venture should clearly realise the ideal of citizenship inherent in it.’ This experiment was ‘necessary to secure the minimum of education for the intelligent exercise of the rights and duties of citizens’ which would produce citizens who were able to ‘repay (the nation) in the form of some useful service what he owes to it as a member of an organised civilised community.’

The ultimate aim of this scheme was to ‘inculcate the love of the motherland, reverence for its past, and a belief in its future destiny as the home of a united cooperative society based on love, truth, and justice’ but without ‘arrogant and exclusive nationalism.’ This system was immediately blasted by the Muslim League as trying to undermine Muslim life and culture (interestingly, the League claimed that most Muslims in India speak Urdu as their mother tongue, and hence don’t want to be educated in the ‘vernaculars’), but the Muslim League’s real failure was in not developing its own coherent scheme of education.

With the creation of Pakistan, the question of the ‘type of education’ again came up. I have dealt with the ideological underpinnings of our educational policy in an article here earlier, but now I want to focus on the development of the idea of ‘national education’ in Pakistan.

Within a few months of the establishment of Pakistan, an all Pakistan Education Conference was organised in Karachi to set the direction of the future education policy in the country. The founder of the country addressed the gathering and emphasised the importance of their task. Jinnah noted: ‘... the importance of education and the type of education cannot be over-emphasised ... there is no doubt that the future of our State will and must greatly depend upon the type of education we give to our children, and the way in which we bring them up as future citizens of Pakistan…’ Therefore, education in Pakistan were to have some sort of a ‘national’ focus which would enable the ‘bringing up’ of students as ‘citizens’ of Pakistan. What was to be the scope, content and layout of such an education was the real problem, and still today we are unable to completely grasp this important issue.

In the realm of education policy, the report of the Pakistan Commission on National Education 1959, remains a hallmark. After the 1947 conference, there was a national plan for educational development but not only did it fail to achieve its desired results, literacy in the country actually fell as a result! Thereafter, except for general outlines in the five year plans, the 1959 Commission was the first comprehensive study of education policy in Pakistan. And what that report said was extremely revealing and still bears relevance and importance.

The Commission was set up by Ayub Khan in December 1958 (interesting how a lot of such initiatives are only taken in this autocratic regime), and submitted its report in August 1959. Since the Commission was primarily composed of academics, it not only focused on practical recommendations (like improvements in curriculum, infrastructure, separate development of primary, secondary and higher education, etc), it also theorised on the real ‘purpose’ of this education — the subject of this article.

Therefore, in the introductory part of the report the Commission stated that its purpose was to ‘…think beyond the walls of our schools and universities and beyond the offices of our educational administrators to the society of which education is a part and to the future of this society which it should help shape….the educational system of a nation should be consonant with the country’s self-image…’ Without quoting them, here the Commission clearly echoed the aspirations of the thinkers mentioned above, I believe.

So what did the Commission think we need to do to achieve this? I shall only note a few things here.

First, they noted, the people should ‘revise their concept of Government and their relationship to it.’ The members of the Commission lamented the fact that everywhere people depended on the government for everything: ‘If they wanted a school, they petitioned government to build one. When the streets were dirty, they expected the government to clean them up,’ and so on. So first the Commission insisted that people must understand that the government ‘is but an instrument through which they give direction and substance to their own aspirations.’ Self reliance and private initiative were the bedrock of a change in education, they argued. Hence, they also asserted that people should not expect education to be a ‘free good,’ either.

Secondly, the Commission blasted our long held ‘attitudes’. It said: ‘We have lingered upon this question of attitudes because we believe them to be at the very crux of our difficulties….Each analysis of past failures, each problem that has been discussed, and each solution that has been proposed turns ultimately upon the attitude of some segment of our society. We have become convinced that all our educational problems and, in fact, all of our national problems are inseparably entwined in a web of attitudes and values that are inappropriate to an independent people and incompatible with progress and national development. The attitudes of a people are not readily changed, but they can be changed.’ Here they really hit the nail on why there was no ‘real’ change in the education, nay any, policy. If a society is unable to modify its long held attitudes then certainly no development can take place.

Thirdly, the Commission finally argued for a ‘nationalisation’ of education. It said: ‘none of our educational reforms will achieve the desired results unless they lead to the inculcation of personal and national values based on a deep concern for the welfare of Pakistan. A citizen must have a deep and abiding love for his country. This is conceived not as a vague sentimental feeling, but as a genuine appreciation of the spirit of Pakistan. It is characterized by a pride in the nation’s past, an enthusiasm for its present, a firm confidence in its future, and a conviction that every citizen has a basic responsibility to contribute, what he can, to the growth and strength of the nation.’

It is here that the Commission pointed out that ultimately this change in education should create a ‘citizen’ who is not only well-versed in their own environment (i.e., country), but also able to contribute to its well-being, and if I might add, also become a responsible world citizen.

This creation of a good ‘citizen’ is the real difference between living as a ‘subject’ in a colonial regime, and living as a free ‘citizen’ in an independent one — and this is the journey we have yet to complete. The Commission also made several other points, which I cannot go into due to space constraints, but even the three points noted above are still relevant for us today.

We, as country, still do not want a real change, depend too much on the government to actually do it, and most of our educational initiatives are unable to create a ‘citizen’. Just notice that we consider the best educated person in Pakistan who has either done O’ and A levels, or has a foreign degree, and most of our students are simply disgusted by the teaching of ‘Pakistan Studies,’ a course which was theoretically supposed to inculcate a sense of good citizenship. We have also confused the ideals of ‘national education’ and ‘citizenship’ with ideological indoctrination. As I have mentioned in an earlier article, the near obsession with ‘Islamic ideology’ at the inception of the country (and of course later), has led to a very narrow definition of the ‘nation’ and its ideals, and has largely created bigoted individuals rather than inclusive citizens.

Pakistan has a major crisis of national cohesion and national identity, and such fissures are not simply going to go away. A well thought out and actually implemented plan of ‘national education,’ (not seeped in either Western or Arab traditions, but in our own, and not ideological indoctrination either), is critical if we are to survive as a nation.

[I]The writer is the Chairperson of the Department of History, Forman Christian College, and tweets at @BangashYK. He can be contacted at: [email]yaqoob.bangash@gmail.com[/email]
[/I]

[B]21.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Fatal decline[/SIZE]
With every change of government, a new set of politicians rise to prominence with old slogan of giving birth to a new Pakistan, but…..
By Dr Syed Hussain Shaheed Soherwordi[/CENTER][/B]

With its waning social gauge, degenerating economy, dividing society on ethnic, sectarian basis and the government’s mislaid priorities, Pakistan is emerging as a disturbed state. Institutions like independent judiciary, strong vibrant civil society and moderate-thinking Pakistanis are delaying its fatal decline.

Pakistan as a state is weakening but the Pakistani society is strengthening with every passing day. If state has failed to counter insurgency, terrorism, extremism, intolerance, ethnic and sectarian divide, the society has made itself indifferent to such monsters. Both are working in isolation. However, this indifference is making Pakistan more feeble and society more artificial.

Who hurt the state? All. General KM Arif in his latest book says: “Pakistan is a wounded nation, hurt by both friends and foes. Her national body is riddled with injuries of insult, neglect and arrogance inflicted by dictators and democrats; judges and generals, the bureaucrats and media. None of them are blame-free”. On international scene, she has been badly treated by its friends, situated thousands of miles from Islamabad. Pakistan has been more harmed by its allies than by its enemies in the name of Cold War, détente, and the war on terror, to name a few.

The power corridors believe in guided democracy with a byproduct of political stability. Had it been vice versa, Pakistan history would have been based on strong pillars of tested democracy mustered by political constancy. Transformation for economic growth, national security, and Islamisation were given precedence in the past and every effort was made to bring out a concrete shift from the past to present.

It was a superficial change which eroded civilian and democratic institutions that pushed the country further into deep troubles. Enlightened moderation with selected accountability was also tried. But by now, larger population of the country has turned extremist, kudos to the CIA’s war against Soviet Union in Afghanistan and drone strikes in the tribal areas of Pakistan. This resulted in a permanent threat to democracy and challenged faint political stability.

With every change of government, a new set of politicians rise to prominence with old slogan of giving birth to a new Pakistan. Ayub Khan tried to be the rebirth of Jinnah. Bhutto was the second most popular politician after Jinnah. General Zia was ‘the Mard-e-Momin Mard-e- Haq’. Benazir was ‘Mohtarma Fatima Jinnah’, the sister of Quaid-e-Azam. Similarly, Musharraf wanted to bring a new generation of competent politicians to power by putting electoral bars on old politicians and by introducing a new local government system.

However, none realised that the success of democracy is to give more time to democracy for its nurture and maturity. Adopting names do not change disposition of a person. A crow sitting on a hill-top can’t become an eagle.

In a democratic setup, politicians make mistakes and learn from them in the long run. Today, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his governing team are more mature than 12 years back. Had their government not been overthrown in 1999, they would have been more mature and competent than today. Failure of democracy brings technocrats in power. But politics is to politicians and not to technocrats. Non-elected can’t be equated with the elected ones. In the past 65 years of Pakistan’s history, the only thing we have failed to understand is to differentiate between the servants of the nation and representatives of the people. Representatives serve the nation with the help and assistance of servants. We deserve more wisdom to know the difference.

Pakistan would be a stable state with conducive and permanent relationship between the Centre and the provinces. A democratic reform strategy is based on equitable and balanced distribution of powers and resources between the Centre and provinces.

During military rule in Pakistan, provinces always cry for their rights and thus result in centrifugal forces. However, in a democratic setup, provinces are satisfied with their due share granted to them with mutual consent. 18th Amendment provided provinces their due right. Fiscal and administrative powers were devolved to federating units and hence, all the four are moving in harmony and with their support, a strong federation is working in Pakistan.

Keeping in view the Balochistan situation, military operations in Waziristan and the TTP insurgent movements in other parts of the country, any blow to 18th Amendment would result in a huge shake of the nation for which it is absolutely not ready. This means stability grows from below — from districts to provinces and from provinces to the federation.

Rulers of Pakistan always idealise vision of the country in shape of compassionate slogans like “Saab Se Pehlay Pakistan”, “Politics of Reconciliation”, “Real Democracy”, “Nizam-e- Mustafa”, “Basic Democracy” and “Naya Pakistan”. But they are neither good strategists nor good implementers. They always have permissive or lax attitude towards result-oriented projects. They talk more and act less. Their short-sightedness is costing the nation immensely. Had they been far-sighted, we would have had a successful negotiation round with the Tahreek-e-Taliban-e- Pakistan (TTP), we would have a friendly Afghanistan, we would have a motorway and bullet-train from Peshawar to Karachi, we would have a strong economy based on friendly ties with IMF and the World Bank, we would have had very friendly and sincere ties with the US, we would have won the War on Terror (rather the war on terror would not have started in the first place), we would not have been deceived by our allies during the War on Terror, and over and above, we would have a stable and secure Pakistan for the Pakistanis.

Violence is another mean of damaging a country’s security and stability. Pakistan is eroded by its domestic cancer of sectarian, ethnic and regional violence. With every passing day, their death squads intensify their war against their opponents. Most of them are fighting a proxy war on behalf of other hostile countries to harm Pakistan.

Economic stagnation, high rate of growing poverty, bad governance, unequal distribution of wealth between haves and have-nots and lavish style of government produce frustration amongst the common man. Thus a foreign funding to any small group to play a subversive role in Pakistan makes a huge dent in the country’s security. A group of deprived people, starved of basic necessities of life, after receiving foreign funding, consider themselves as ‘the Mujahid of Islam”, or “Anti-Americanism” and wage a jihad against the “stooges of the West” and “usurpers of the rights of underprivileged”.

Organised violence, including suicide attacks, can never bring any change in foreseeable future of Pakistan. Every militant organisation has to change its discourse and disposition from militancy to political entity. This is the way to their success. By acquiring power through electoral and democratic means, their agenda, appreciated and recommended by the majority of the populace, will be implemented through democratic means. This will give not only permanence to their entity but would also reduce a sense of threat to the people of Pakistan.

[I]The author teaches at the Department of International Relations, University of Peshawar [email]syedshaheed@hotmail.co.uk[/email])[/I]

[B]21.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]“Transparency in decision-making and accountability of actions are crucial”[/SIZE]
Dr Sania Nishtar, former caretaker minister for Science & Technology, Information Technology & Telecom and Education
By Saniyya Gauhar
[/CENTER][/B]
Now that the general elections are over and the new government has been sworn in, the ministers of the caretaker government have presumably returned to their normal routine. For Dr Sania Nishtar, that means a return to her NGO Heartfile.

As caretaker minister of three federal ministries — Science & Technology, Information Technology & Telecom and Education — in two short months, Dr Sania has certainly left her mark on these ministries in the shape of her handover papers, which she hopes will set a new benchmark for accountability and decision making transparency.

When she assumed office as federal minister many were keen to see how she would perform outside of being a policy analyst and author in her civil society comfort zone. She turned out to be an astute implementer, evidenced in the manner in which she spearheaded the creation of a health division at the federal level. Her voluntary personal appearance at the Supreme Court may have saved Pakistan from what would have been an ill-prepared e-voting embarrassment. She reached out and built bridges with the Higher Education Commission and diffused tensions through creative engagement with the media. The News on Sunday was able to get an interview with Dr Sania to learn more about the motivation behind her much talked about handover papers.

TNS: It seems you were trying to set many precedents through the handover papers. Can you tell us a little about what you were trying to achieve?

SN: Yes, I was trying to achieve several objectives through these papers. Foremost, I voluntarily wanted to submit myself for accountability. Government offices and ministries are places where safeguards against conflict of interest, the need for transparency in decision making and accountability of actions matters the most. Conversely, it is exactly in such settings where there are no mechanisms in place to institutionalise these attributes. I wanted to set a precedent by being the first one to open my decisions for scrutiny and share with people the rationale for these decisions. The other precedent related to the process of government transition. I was quite surprised to see that in an institution as critical as the government where a formal handover would matter the most, there is virtually no mechanism to enable that. No wonder we see the detrimental policy vacillations. Therefore, I wanted to summarize for my successor minister the work that was done and highlight reform plans developed so as not to lose any forward momentum.

TNS: You had a short span of time at your disposal and three portfolios to deal with. How did you organise yourself?

SN: I was aware that I needed to be very strategic in my approach and that every day counted. I spent the initial week imbibing briefings in all the three ministries. I reflected on the challenges and potential opportunities within the given context, limited timeline and defined mandate. I then categorized my scope of work into three areas: support for the elections process, which was the core mandate of the caretaker government, administrative running of the ministry and strategic planning for potential reform. With regard to the latter, I tried to identify sectoral and specific challenges and respective opportunities to overcome them within each ministry. These I summarized in my handover papers to my successors. However, to the extent possible, I also tried to sow the seeds of reform. The papers highlight what I was able to do.

TNS: What was the key thrust of your work in each of the ministries?

SN: The nature of what I did in the respective ministries varied according to the need. For example, in the Ministry of Information Technology, I noted that there was a dire need to put governance back in order, since there were serious distortions. The ministry had been without a minister for five years. With frequent changes in secretaries, ad hoc appointments, attached departments deviating from their missions, affiliated companies not complying with corporate governance polices, and sick public sector enterprise hemorrhaging resources, the first priority was to focus on governance.

An account of what I did to initialise reform and the needed next steps are in the handover papers for that ministry. In the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET), I focused more on strategic parameters regarding federal, provincial and district education roles after the 18th Constitutional Amendment. In the handover paper for MoET, I articulated a framework for reform relevant to each of the five areas, which are federal functions in education after the 18th Constitutional Amendment and demonstrated how selected policy choices in the ‘pathway to change’ had the potential of ushering sustainable change. Launching of the Tuition Fee Access Scheme was an effort to show how the federal edge can be strategic for equity objectives in a context where education is a provincial subject.

Also, in the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) my engagement was more at a strategic planning level. I formed a think tank, drawing on the support of eminent experts. My concern was that MoST’s research institutes are largely disconnected from academia and that both do not optimally link with the market, entrepreneurs and national sectoral research priorities. The latter have not been defined as a starting point. In this regard, I have recommended five policy levers of change for reform within this sector.

In my opinion, if these are implemented in tandem, they could have a synergistic effect in linking research and development (R&D) and academia with the process of national development on the one hand and can have a transformative role in promoting a culture of entrepreneurship on the other. I have tried to sow the seeds of change to the extent possible within the two-month term.

TNS: You also had responsibility for health during your term? Why was there a need for special arrangements in this area?

SN: In 2010, Pakistan became the only country in the world with no central health institution after the health ministry was abolished as a result of the 18th Constitutional Amendment. Although many institutions were retained at the federal level, they were scattered across nine divisions. The resulting institutional fragmentation was aberrant.

Every stakeholder, including the provinces, suffered as a result of lack of clarity and some donors refused to invest money in needed activities unless arrangements were clearer. Things had come to an impasse. I had been advocating for a central health structure at the federal level for ‘national’ responsibilities since 2010 and when I assumed office, I offered to the prime minister that I would like to put these arrangements back in order. My cabinet colleagues supported consolidation of federal health functions and the decision was widely hailed internationally.

TNS: There has been much talk about your “unusual gift” to government functionaries, can you tell us a little about that?

SN: Yes the day I left office, I mailed a wallpaper message to thousands of government employees in Pakistan with the Pakistan Flag against the backdrop of the inscription: “While serving under the flag of the Crescent and Star, always remember the government is a sacred trust.” I think that pretty much conveys what I was trying to communicate.

[B]21.07.2013 [/B][B][CENTER] [SIZE="5"]Pakistan and Army[/SIZE]
“Pakistan: The Garrison State” deals with ever-expanding influence of the Pakistan army over political, social, and economic milieus in Pakistan since 1947
By Helal Pasha
[/CENTER][/B]
Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed’s recent book “Pakistan: The Garrison State”, published in 2013, by Oxford University Press, immediately after his seminal work “The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed” in 2011, is a remarkable achievement in terms of time spent on research, reviewing numerous sources, and analysing multiple events spread well over 70 years. His dedication in recording Pakistan’s history and unearthing, previously unknown, undocumented events is laudable. Dr Ishtiaq travelled extensively, interviewed incredibly large number of people, including former president Gen. Musharraf, and many top India army officers.

As the title suggests, the book principally deals with ever-expanding influence of the Pakistan army over political, social, and economic milieus in Pakistan since 1947. In the last decade, luminaries such as Ambassador Husain Haqqani, Ayesha Siddiqa, Ahmed Rashid, and many others wrote books discussing the Pakistan army. Ayesha Siddiqa’s Military Inc. stands out for her breakthrough research in detailing the army’s flourishing entrepreneurial endeavours and control of the economy.

Ironically, the army is more or less openly involved in business and industry highlighting most of its enterprises by using prefix ‘Fauji’ (army man in vernacular) or ‘Defense’, and there is nothing secret about it. Siddiqa did not focus entirely on army’s business interests. She veered off to itemising personal monetary benefits enjoyed by the generals. That triggered a backlash and an angry retort by the generals.

Dr Ishtiaq takes a different route. He starts off by examining ideological inclination of the army. His inquisitiveness on the use of metaphor ‘Fortress of Islam’ by a former president in his speech, in 2001, ignited the urge to get to the core of such a haughty vow. The result is a phenomenal book that will make scholars’ proud libraries richer, and readers immensely conversant with insight from the early development of the idea of Pakistan to a state incapable of untying the Gordian knot for the last several decades. “Pakistan is Islam’s fortress,” an arrogant declaration adopted by Pakistan army from an old Jamaat-e-Islami political slogan during the army rule in the 1980s. The army concomitantly embraced “Jihad, for Allah” as one of the armed forces guiding maxim around the same time.

The book largely deals with the ideological progression translated into political dominance of the army over the country, as well. Primarily, due to the ideological mishmash of the independence movement, the Pakistan army catapulted itself as indubitable protector, and arbiter of the ideology of the nation after independence.

Dr Ishtiaq seeks to decipher the origins of the concept garrison state that certainly is not a religious concept. The roots of garrison state are in the early human development along with the concepts of area boundaries and protection of communities.

The first question that needed to be resolved was: whether Pakistan is a garrison state or not? A dominating army does not make a garrison state. He has candidly pointed out, despite the ominous cries of military-industrial complex, US is not a garrison state. Many historian and defense analysts would not accept it kindly. The Pentagon’s influence extends far beyond just the defense policy. There are many institutions including the largest eavesdropping organisation in the world, National Security Agency (NSA) that report to the Pentagon and information to the White House is filtered through the Pentagon. Pentagon usually overrides the US Foreign Office.

Dr Ishtiaq rightly implies that the purpose of small forts or fortresses or cantonments now, was primarily to keep the populations under control. The British extended the concept when they organised the volunteer army in undivided India. Their patterns of recruitment solidified the Pakistan army’s influence on certain areas of the country.

Dr Ishtiaq then embarks upon a discussion assessing national security state and garrison state. He traces the roots, the reasons, the Mughal and the British influences that Pakistan inherited. He enforces his views using strong arguments by various academics.

He concludes that Pakistan fits the profile of a garrison state. He observes that Pakistan can continue as a post-colonial garrison state as long as the donors are proving the required resources. At this point, the reader is left with only one answer: Pakistan will probably disappear as soon as the donors lose interest in Pakistan. Is that an accurate conclusion?

Dr Ishtiaq pronouncement appears to be rushed and needs further examination. Having cantonments, large army, and overbearing generals, does not qualify Pakistan to be billed as a garrison state. Considering that the garrisons are supposed to help in controlling the population and frontiers, Pakistan army’s garrisons are located smack in the middle of the large cities that render them useless in their basic functions.

Cantonments in Karachi, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Multan, Gujranwala, and many other cities do not intimidate the population. They are commercial hubs, and it would be better for the army to sell the prime lands, and use the proceeds to take the cantonments as far away from the cities as possible. Money from selling two cantonment Karachi and Hyderabad would finance almost ten new cantonments in rural areas.

However, these cantonments are a major source of income for the army and former army personnel. Similar to the business interests that Ayesha Siddiqa pointed out in her book. The new breed of army officers and generals prefer to stay close to the cities, and personal comfort takes precedent over war readiness.

The harsh reality is that looking at the current state of affairs, Pakistan might qualify as a dysfunctional national security state that is, paradoxically, incapable of supporting its security needs. The state acquired nuclear option, as the US looked the other way to maintain balance of power in the region. The US still provides finances for the maintenance of nuclear warheads.

A garrison state or a security state; the Pakistan army still manages to control the country in many ways, and the distinction between the two does not diminish the quality of the book and effort that has gone in to documenting complex, controversial, and highly noticeable army position in Pakistan politics.

[B]To be concluded
[/B]
[I]Dr. Ishtiaq Ahmed is a Lahore born Swedish political scientist and author. He is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Stockholm University. Readers in India and Punjab enthusiastically welcomed his previous book “The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed”. The book won him many laurels including ‘Best Non-Fiction Book’ Prize at Karachi Literary Festival in 2013.[/I]

[B]28.07.2013 [/B][B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Tackling the local governance crisis[/SIZE]
As the political parties, driven by the political climate, move towards local governments, it is vital for the provincial governments to make their plans public for wider debate and commentary
By Raza Rumi[/CENTER][/B]

Pakistan’s governance crisis has manifested itself in various ways including the inability of the state to provide services and create a responsible relationship with its citizens. Throughout its history the greatest paradox has been that of creating an effective system of local government.

The military regimes were always keen to create local governments, as they wanted to bypass national and provincial politics and create a constituency of support for martial rule. This is why the three long serving dictators — Generals Ayub, Zia and Musharraf — were quick to create local governance structures. The elected governments, on the other hand, have been wary of local governments and since 2008, Pakistan unelected local institutions were managed by provincial bureaucrats.

Musharraf’s experiment of local government was perhaps the boldest as it aimed to increase the power of elected officials and abolished the office of district magistrates and divisional commissioners. The bureaucracy as well as the provincial elites due to various reasons resisted it.

The key issue was that while the provinces were meant to transfer power and resources they were still controlled by the strong central government and unfair federal revenue sharing arrangements. The latter was taken care of in the previous government and the 18th Amendment also transferred powers. While these transformational reforms were being carried out, the provincial governments during 2008-2013 remained averse to holding the local government elections.

The irony is that Musharraf’s cronies in the shape of Pakistan Muslim League (Q) had already denuded the 2001 local government law and had initiated a reversal of various features therein. For instance, the key service departments also with the highest potential of kickbacks and commissions e.g Public Health and Engineering Department, were gradually recentralised. The Police Order of 2002 was also abandoned by the political elites during the Musahrraf’s tenure. By 2008, it was formally laid to rest thereby ending the little movement towards reform.

There is no doubt that the Musharraf and his junta’s agenda was not to deepen democracy at the local level. The cynical use of local governments was to create an artificial constituency in support of military rule. However, the conduct of political elites to have thrown the baby with the bathwater in 2008 was also unwise. If the local government system had flaws they could have improved them instead of scraping it altogether.

The political parties in Pakistan have another rational reason not to have local governments and their noisy existence. Patronage and resources are tightly controlled by party machineries to benefit their constituents and the lackeys at the local level. With local governments, the patronage has to be shared which also dilutes the ability of party leaders to grant favours when in power. Also the larger issue of party funding remains unresolved in Pakistan. Patronage is also used as a means to sustain party’s structures. Several cash handouts and welfare schemes; and the way these were managed, reflect the party interests preceding redistributive efforts.

With the new elections and federal and provincial governments, the debate on local governments has restarted. Two factors have led to this reemergence of the debate. First, the commitment of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) to hold local government elections in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) has generated a competitive momentum which both the PML-N and the PPP cannot ignore simply for political reasons. Second, the renewed activism of the judiciary in asking for local government elections has catalyzed political clamouring. There were petitions pending in the past three years as well but this time the courts seem determined to push the local government agenda which among other things is also a constitutional obligation of provincial governments.

The Sindh government recently announced that it was going to revive the 1979 law. However, reports suggest that now a committee is deliberating the precise contours of the system that will be in place. Punjab has prepared a draft bill which, by and large, retains the 1979 bureaucratic model with some improvements.

In the new local government scheme, there is a proposal to set up Education and Health authorities along with reconciliation councils to resolve disputes at local levels. Proposals for panchayat systems and municipal police in cities are being considered as well which is a welcome step. The proposed law has a clause 14(1) which states that quotas would be filled indirectly by elected LG members (hence allowing for potential for nepotism and cronyism).

The PTI criticism on the draft legislation also mentions that the Punjab government wants DCOs and Commissioners to maintain law and order, thereby confirming their fear that provincial government would control local affairs.

In KP, the provincial minister for local government has recently stated that KP might hold elections by October or November 2013. The KP government plans to introduce a new law which would replace the earlier 2012 law.

In line with its manifesto, the PTI envisages a four-tier system of local, village/neighbourhood, union, tehsil and district councils. Its vision document has a detailed plan to create grassroots structures but media reports have also suggested that the selection processes mentioned by the party need to be revisited.

Balochistan had enacted a law earlier, which mirrors the 1979 Ordinance with heavy involvement of the bureaucracy. The new provincial government may take some time to announce and work on the kind of vision it has for the local government.

In summary, the political parties, driven by the political climate are now moving towards local governments. It is a welcome step even if it means that the bureaucratic control of local authorities and service providers would not be replaced by democratic accountability. Having said that, it is vital for the provincial governments to make their plans public for wider debate and commentary. What is clear is that Pakistan’s governance will further crumble if local governance arrangements are not sorted out.

Three factors ought to be kept in mind. Social sectors require complete decentralisaton and service providers need to be accountable to the local elected officials. Secondly, law and order capacities cannot improve if police laws are not enacted by the provinces which complement the local governments and also clarify the fuzzy ad hoc relationships between the province and local governments.

Finally, we need to think creatively to include women, the marginalised, peasantry into the local bodies which may help avoid elite capture of local institutions and also increase public trust in participatory democracy.

[I]Raza Rumi is a writer, analyst based in Islamabad. He is the author of “Delhi by Heart: Impressions of a Pakistani Traveller” (Harper Collins, 2013). Follow him on Twitter: @razarumi[/I]

[B]28.07.2013 [/B][B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]In deep water[/SIZE]
Taking stock of the emerging water crisis, Pakistan needs to redouble its efforts for the conservation of water resources while protecting its water rights as a lower riparian
By Alauddin Masood
[/CENTER][/B]
Alarm bells have started ringing, conveying a message loud and clear. Once, water abundant Pakistan has become “one of the most water-stressed countries in the world, not far from being classified water scarce.”

In 1947, Pakistan possessed 5,600 cubic meters of water per person, which decreased to 1,100 cubic meters per head by 2009 and now stands below 1,000 cubic meters per person. According to international water standards, countries having water reservoirs below 1,100 cubic meters water per person are considered among the chronic water shortage states.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB), in its mid-July report this year, has pinpointed that Pakistan’s water storage capacity (the amount of water it has on reserve in case of an emergency) is limited to 30 days, which is far below the recommended 1,000 days for countries with similar climates. The report notes that the last several years have seen Pakistan plagued by chronic energy scarcities and power outages lasting up to 18 hours a day, with damaging effects on its economy and the well-being of its citizens.

According to ADB, deficiencies of energy and water resources have the potential to intensify the already unstable situation in the country. Early signs of the potential imbroglio that could transpire are already beginning to take shape. In mid-July, the residents in Abbottabad (KP) vowed to hold mass demonstrations if the local government was unable to address rampant water shortages in the city. The country’s demographics suggest this trend will only worsen over time and demand for water grows due to exponential growth in population, which was expected to swell to 256 million by the year 2030.

Pakistan’s thirst for water, a vital resource for people’s health, livelihood and economic development, has been constantly rising over the years because of population growth, increase in industrial activity, over-exploitation, climate change, failure to augment water resources and lukewarm cooperation of India, with which Pakistan shares Indus River basin, requiring integrated basin management. In addition to electricity, the scarcity of water has emerged as one of the main impediments to the sustained growth of agriculture and industry. But, unfortunately, successive governments in the country have been unable to create national consensus to resolve this crucial problem head on; while some quarters spare no effort in making even technically feasible mega-water conservation projects controversial, on one count or the other.

Meanwhile, taking advantage of wrangling in Pakistan and the country’s inability to execute major water conservation projects, India remains continuously engaged in building scores of hydropower projects on rivers flowing into Pakistan despite her assurances, under the Indus Basin Treaty, not to interfere with the Pakistani rivers. India’s tacit role in making controversial those economically feasible hydropower projects in Pakistan, which could be promptly launched, cannot be ruled out.

Under the Indus Basin Treaty, the World Bank had agreed to finance the construction of two dams — Mangla and Kalabagh — to compensate Pakistan for the loss of waters of its eastern rivers. President General Ayub Khan advised his team to fudge the estimates so that the country could build another (third) dam with the World Bank funds. While Tarbela was built, somehow Kalabagh dam became controversial and over the years the stands of the provinces on this issue has continued to become more rigid.

The Indus Basin Treaty was signed in 1960, after World Bank’s intervention, following rising tensions between India and Pakistan after New Delhi stemmed the flow of Indus tributaries to Pakistan on April 1st, 1948. Under the Indus Water Treaty, India has rights to waters of rivers Sutlej, Ravi and Beas (Eastern rivers) while Pakistan to the waters of rivers Indus, Chenab and Jhelum (Western rivers) as a lower riparian. Pakistan had accepted the treaty at the stake of its very survival and assurances from India that it would not interfere with the waters of Western rivers, but India never honoured its promises and started tempering with Pakistani rivers, at a massive scale, beginning 1980s.

Taking advantage of Pakistan’s inability to execute major water conservation projects since building of the Tarbela Dam, about 39 years ago (in 1974), India has accelerated plans to control and harness the water potential of the Himalayas. This scribe has been highlighting India’s endeavours to build dams, through articles written frequently during the last decade, and a detailed one titled “Pakistan’s water vision Vs Indian hydel-projects in Occupied Kashmir” appeared in The News as early as September 11, 2004.

To add 7,036.5 MW hydro-power during 12th Plan (2012-17) and increase it further in later years, according to daily the Kashmir Times (Jammu: June 24, 2009), the projects that India envisaged to complete during the 12th Plan included: Baglihar-II (450 MW), Sawalakote (1200 MW). Kirthai-I (240 MW), Kirthai-II (990 MW), Lower Kalnai (50 MW), New Ganderbal (93 MW), Parnai (37.5 MW), Kiru (600 MW), Karwar (56 MW), Kishanganga (330 MW), Ratle (690 MW), Pakaldul (1000 MW), Ujh (280 MW) and Bursar (1020 MW).

Some other hydropower projects finalised, completed or under various phases of completion by India in IHK include: Sewe II (120 MW), Chutak (12 MW), Uri-II (280 MW) and Parkachak (30 MW). After completing the first phase of Baglihar Dam in the last decade, New Delhi is now engaged in raising the capacity of this hydropower project to 900 MW during phase II.

After completion of these dams, some 5.516 million acres of land in Pakistan’s nine districts (Namely, Multan, Jhang, Faisalabad, Gujrat, Okara, Vehari, Bahawalnagar, Bahawalpur and Rahimyar Khan) would suffer acute shortage of water; while 406 canals and 1,125 distributaries would become completely dry. The most affected areas, where fertile lands can become barren due to non-availability of water, include: 3.55 million acres of fertile land in Okara, 669,000 acres in Neely Bar, 626,000 acres in Khanewal, 182,000 acres in Sulemanki division, 420,625 acres in eastern Bar and 68,308 acres in western Bar.

Pakistan has been raising objections to the Indian activities aimed at construction of hydroelectric projects in IHK on the grounds that these works violated the provisions of the Indus Basin Treaty (IBT). However, notwithstanding Pakistan’s objections and provisions of IBT, India geared up work on completing the hydel projects in IHK.

Quite close to Pakistan-India border, on the river Chenab, Pakistan has three large headworks of Marala, Khanki and Quadirabad, feeding large tracts of agricultural fields in Neeli Bar, Ganji Bar and Sandal Bar areas. The Baglihar Dam provides New Delhi leverage to stop the flow of river Chenab at will and strangulate Pakistan’s agriculture by depriving it of 30 million acre feet of water.

Likewise, Kishanganga hydroelectric project, which is located alongside AJK’s Neelum valley, has been designed to change the course of river Neelum by some 100 kilometres through a channel and a 27-kilometre tunnel, by diverting it to join the Wullar Lake and the river Jhelum near Bandipur in IHK. Presently, both rivers Neelum and Jhelum join each other at Muzaffarabad in AJK.

India is contemplating to construct scores of other hydropower projects in IHK, enabling her to take control of rivers Chenab, Jhelum and Sindh like the rivers Sutlaj, Bias and Ravi. In fact, India has already identified scores of projects, ranging from one MW in Puga Leh to 200 MW Naiaguh in Kishtwar of Jammu’s Doda District, for construction.

The names of some projects in this category and their projected capacity are: Lower Kalnai, Doda (50 MWs), Lower Ans, Udhampur (37 MWs), Parnai, Rajouri (37 MWs), Mandi, Rajouri (37 MWs), Bichllery, Rajouri (36 MWs), Uri-II, Baramulla (200 MWs), Sonmarg, Srinagar (83 MWs), New Ganderbal, Srinagar (50 MWs), Sewa II, Kathua (90 MWs), Mawar Hydel, Handwara (6 MWs), Boniyar Stage II, Baramulla (6 MWs), Lidder, Anantnag (30 MWs), Vishar, Kulgam (15 MWs), Aru Hydel, Anantnag (30 MWs), Wangat Hydel, Srinagar (30 MWs), Sandarn Hydel, Anantnag (6 MWs), Lassipora, Handwara (4 MWs), Kahmil, Handwara (4 MWs), Chingus II, Rajouri (2 MWs), Neeru, Doda (25 MWs), Paniklor, Kargil – Par Kochok (30 MWs), Chatok, Kargil (7 MWs) and Igophe Merileng, Leh – Merlaezng (4 MWs).

Taking stock of the emerging water scenario, Pakistan needs to redouble its efforts for the conservation of water resources while, at the same time, it must strive for protecting its water rights as a lower riparian. It is time that the nation also develops a consensus on mega water conservation projects and engages in serious and united efforts to preserve its water rights.

[I]The writer is a freelance columnist based at Islamabad:alauddinmasood@gmail.com[/I]

[B]28.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Lacking the local level[/SIZE]
The disconnect between the state and society is expanding due to the absence of institutions at the basic level through which the state delivers
services
By Raza Khan[/CENTER][/B]

Eventually, the Supreme Court of Pakistan (SCP) has ordered the four provinces and Islamabad administration to complete legal and administrative formalities, including delimitation of constituencies by August 15 so that the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) could hold local government elections in September. The SCP has also directed all the provinces to issue schedule for their respective local government elections as the former wants the elections in September.

The provinces, which under previous governments were reluctant to hold local government elections, are now ready to have them but needs some time in this regard. In particular, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Balochistan provinces have told the SCP that they would be ready in a couple of months to hold local government elections while the Punjab has also finally expressed its willingness to have these elections. Sindh, which is again ruled by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), has told the court that it is not possible for it to hold elections within a few months as it needed more time to make arrangements.

The main problem of the PPP government in Sindh regarding the local government is that it has serious difference over the structure of LG system in the province with its previous coalition partner the MQM. The latter wanted a separate system for urban Sindh than rest of the province. The PPP, during its last stint in power in the province, had even agreed to the MQM demand and had issued notification for a dichotomous LG system. However, stiff resistance from within the party and Sindhi nationalist parties forced the PPP to take back the decision.

Punjab, though has problems with holding LG elections, has agreed to do so following the SCP orders. The PML-N having a sweeping majority in the provincial legislature is now in a better position to hold elections.

The KP, which is now ruled by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf-led coalition, is showing alacrity to have LG elections as it has been a cornerstone of the party’s election manifesto and politics of ‘changing the system’. The PTI had promised to introduce a new system of local government in all the provinces.

The PTI is going to shortly unveil a new LG system in which a new tier of Village Council would be introduced. This is quite innovative as governmental and administrative powers have never been devolved to such a rudimentary level of human habitation. The proposed village council would be the lowest tier while above there would be the union, tehsil and district councils.

Balochistan has also shown its readiness to hold LG polls. This is quite important because of all the four provinces Balochistan needs the local government system most urgently. Still, most of the districts of the province are ‘B’ areas where policing is not possible and, thus, levies are given law and order duties. So, when in an area policing is not possible it means that there is a huge administrative vacuum there. In this context, local government would be instrumental in filling this administrative vacuum.

The SCP, taking a stern notice of the dillydallying attitude of some provinces regarding holding local government elections, warned that the delay of a single day would not be tolerated in this regard. This stand of the SCP needs to be applauded because the traditional ruling parties have not had a favourable attitude towards the local government. This is fundamentally because of a tendency for the concentration of political and administrative powers in a few hands.

Since the introduction of the local government system in 2001 by General Musharraf, the two successive local government elections had somewhat stabilised the system at its core and it was expected that with two or three further elections, anomalies in the local government system would have been removed. However, since the return of elected governments in 2008, the political parties have been shying away from holding local government elections on one pretext or the other.

For feudal or feudal-turned-industrial classes, surrendering power to people is akin to depriving the political elite of its traditional hold on power. Continuation of the status quo denies any space for development and progress. The delay in holding local government elections has inflicted colossal damage on the process of good governance.

Holding of local government elections is the constitutional responsibility of the provinces under Article 32 and 140 A of the Constitution which they have been overlooking on one pretext or the other.

The SCP bench, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, observed during the case regarding law and order in Balochistan that the new government also failed to maintain law and order. The court rightly observed that without having local government, the situation would not improve.

State administers its territories through institutions and local bodies are the fundamental administrative machinery which carries out all the governmental functions.

In Pakistan, the raison d’être of many problems is the disconnect between the state and society. It is in this context that the august court observed, “Prima facie, we are of the opinion that for want of a network at the grassroots level it is difficult to establish contact with citizens living in far-flung areas.”

This disconnect has expanded over the years. Because the policies, which are conceived and formulated at the state level or parliaments, cannot be implemented at the local level due to political-democratic vacuum due the absence of local governments.

The installation of local elected councils would reduce the burden of administration on the provincial governments. The provincial ministers and their departments, in such a situation, would concentrate more on policy. Therefore, if the state has to address the grave administrative lacuna and to link the disconnected state and society it has to ensure the holding of local government elections at the earliest.

[I]The writer is a political analyst and researcher.razapkhan @yahoo.co[/I]

[B]28.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Medical negligence
It is rarely negligence or deliberate improper treatment that is the most likely cause of the possibly ‘avoidable’ deaths of patients in hospitals
By Syed Mansoor Hussain
[/SIZE][/CENTER][/B]
Recently three children died at one of the largest specialised public hospitals in Lahore. Question of negligence was raised and an enquiry committee was set up to investigate.

This is something that happens every so often and will keep happening until and unless hospitals set up internal mechanisms to monitor and enforce appropriate care. Just setting up a committee to investigate when the affected family raises a public protest that is picked up by the press is not an answer. Eventually, such committees blame some junior physicians or paramedical staff, slap a few wrists and possibly suspend these members of the staff for a short while or until the public furore dies down and then ‘business as usual’ continues.

Some ‘unfortunate’ outcomes, when treating sick patients, are inevitable. Most patients that come to a well-equipped and a well-staffed hospital should do well but some will not and this can be due to many reasons. The most common reason is that the patient is too sick and even the best available medical intervention cannot reverse the course of disease and prevent the patient’s death. Other than that many different factors can come into play.

However, as I said above, what I am thinking of is a hospital that is ‘well-equipped and well-staffed’. Well-equipped might mean something different for a small rural or suburban hospital than it does for a ‘super specialised’ hospital. But well-staffed implies that the medical as well as the paramedical staff is appropriately trained for the level of care that is being offered.

Even in the best of hospitals things will go wrong. There is human error, chance occurrences that cannot be predicted and most important of all, no two human beings are alike and, therefore, the same treatment can have different results in different patients. Well-run hospitals have mechanisms in place to minimise poor outcomes and when they do happen then there are further internal review systems that attempt to determine what if anything went wrong and if something did go wrong how it can be prevented from happening in the future.

The concept of internal review systems or what are often referred to as ‘morbidity and mortality’ conferences is based on the premise that all the physicians and paramedical staff involved in care of patients know what they are supposed to be doing. Good hospitals, especially good teaching hospitals, greatly emphasise the need for their staff to be appropriately trained and aware of the latest diagnostic and treatment methods available.

In my previous column, while addressing the question of medical ethics, I mentioned that the first part of medical ethics is that physicians must keep up their education to be able to take care of patients properly and this includes physicians in training. Unfortunately, as I pointed out, there is no mechanism available to ensure that that is happening, not even in the so called teaching hospitals in Pakistan. This then creates a situation where inadequately trained junior physicians take care of most patients as they come into the hospitals. This is made worse by the fact that most of our major public hospitals are overcrowded and take care of more patients than they can handle properly.

Overcrowding, insufficient facilities and inadequately trained physicians create a particularly unfortunate situation where patients often do not get appropriate care especially in emergency situations.

In my opinion, it is rarely negligence or deliberate improper treatment that causes bad outcomes of the sort that are being ‘investigated’. Rather it is a confluence of factors that I mentioned above that are the most likely cause of the possibly ‘avoidable’ deaths of these sick patients. Whatever the reason, if these deaths were avoidable then that is indeed inexcusable. Unless real negligence is involved, junior doctors or the nursing staff should not be held criminally responsible but rather the entire system should be examined, weaknesses identified and then rectified. But this statement out of necessity includes only those hospitals and healthcare facilities that are owned and operated by the health departments of the different provincial governments.

In the private sector, there is a free for all without any established rules and regulations for the qualifications of physicians or ancillary medical personnel that are employed. The state of the private sector hospitals is something that I will address in a future column.

So what can be done? I do not want to propose any grand or impossible to implement solutions. Perhaps, we should try and address the three major reasons I identified that cause most of the problems in our public hospitals.

The first thing I mentioned was inadequately trained junior physicians that are usually the first ones to take care of patients that arrive in emergency rooms or the outpatient areas. By definition ‘junior physicians in training’ are not fully trained to take care of all patients. Therefore, there are some important things that need to be enforced. First, that these physicians are provided appropriate training under a rigorous programme and second that they must function under the direct supervision of qualified senior physicians.

The concept of direct supervision of junior physicians is the basic requirement of all medical training programmes and must be adhered to. Also, the ‘morbidity and mortality’ conferences I mentioned above are an intrinsic part of physician education and must be made mandatory for all ‘teaching’ hospitals.

The other problem I identified is inadequate facilities. Many of our specialised hospitals are well-equipped but even so, much of the equipment available is often ‘out of order’ due to improper maintenance. Most of our public hospitals do not have a proper ‘biomedical’ engineering service in house to take care of life saving machines like ‘respirators’, ‘heart defibrillators’, heart and breathing monitors and other ‘basic life support’ equipment when it breaks down. So, original vendors have to be contacted to get them fixed. This can take days or even weeks. Clearly, one of the important steps to improve quality of care is to have services available that can fix these expensive and often life saving machines urgently.

Also, most of the hospital staff is rarely trained to use this equipment in an appropriate fashion. That should also be addressed and whenever a new group of junior physicians comes on board they should also receive training in the use of this equipment.

The last factor is overcrowding that can overwhelm even a well-equipped and a well-staffed hospital. This is the most difficult problem to fix. In another previous column, I addressed this issue. My contention was that peripheral hospitals including those at the district level should be upgraded to provide basic care required for most medical emergencies. This will alleviate to some degree the problem of overcrowding at our ‘tertiary’ care hospitals.

More importantly, by providing care to patients at an early stage of their illness it will prevent the problem of patients arriving in a major hospital in an advanced state of sickness where even the best medical help is often unable to save their lives.

[I]The writer is former professor and Chairman Department of Cardiac Surgery, KEMU/Mayo Hospital, Lahore: [email]smhmbbs70@yahoo.com[/email][/I]

[B]28.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]A quick fix, again[/SIZE]
Developing countries’ experiences with IMF are neither very pleasant nor helpful. However, unless any other lifeline works, IMF is the only option
By Dr. Abid Qaiyum Suleri
[/CENTER][/B]
Shakespearian saying, “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown”, proved very true for Mian Nawaz Sharif who is trying to handle triple “E-crisis” (i.e., energy, economy, and extremism) since his party won the general elections.

The severity of crisis forced PML-N government to utilise three vital lifelines within first month of coming into power. The first lifeline was Saudi Arabia. There were reports about Saudi oil, up to the tune of US$ 15 billion, on deferred payment basis. However, this lifeline did not work and the government had to resort to second and third options, i.e., seeking a bailout package from IMF and rushing for Chinese support mainly in energy sector.

Before the Premier’s current visit to China, Pakistan had signed 400 MOUs with China, including a Free Trade Agreement (FTA). However, more than 350 of such MOUs were just photo-shoot opportunities and could never get materialize. The effectiveness of this lifeline would not depend on the number of MOUs signed during Premier’s visit but on the fact that how many of those would turn into legally binding agreements.

Chinese investment in Pakistani energy sector is quite a viable option provided we can offer an “easy entry and easy exit” policy to foreign direct investors. The biggest bottleneck for FDI in Pakistan is not physical security threats, but the policies and procedures that turn both entry and exit of any investor extremely difficult and painful process. So one has to wait and see if this lifeline brings any relief for current Government.

The third lifeline, IMF is comparatively safer bet than the other two. However, the staff level agreement of providing Pakistan an Extended Fund Facility (EFF, a long term support for economic reforms and to improve balance of Payment) needs to be vetted by IMF’s Executive Board in September 2013, before any transaction can be made to Pakistan.

This vetting would depend on “front loading” by September 2013 of “home grown solutions” committed by Ishaq Dar’s team. Before discussing the pros and cons of this home grown solutions, let me talk you through on how IMF engages with its member countries.

A country decides to go to IMF when its economy is not performing well and outflows exceed inflows. This situation leads to a balance of payment crisis and that is where IMF comes handy. The major component of Pakistan’s outflows in 2013 is debt servicing to IMF. We have just made a hefty payment to the fund in June 2013 and need to pay another US$ 3 billion within next few months. As we don’t have enough forex reserves to make this payment, hence we have to borrow more.

EFF is an engagement for next 10 years. The mark up would be 5.75 per cent ( 3 percent add on US Federal treasury markup which is around 2.75 per cent) and its repayment would start after 4 years. This implies that PML-N would be paying off the major portion of this EFF in its next tenure only if it gets another turn in 2018 elections; alternatively its successors would accuse PML-N of financial mismanagement and may have to resort to another loan to clear this debt.

The cycle where the successive governments have to take tough decisions for its predecessor’s “economic wrong doings” results in lack of political ownership of IMF agreements.

IMF’s prescription is to reform the economy through reducing fiscal deficit. The member country seeking help from IMF has to present a plan on how it would curtail expenditures and increase revenue. This plan is usually known as “home grown solution”. The expenditures of Government of Pakistan consist of debt servicing, defense & security, day to day administration, and development.

The former three are inflexible and more or less sacred so there cannot be any reduction here. It means any home grown solution to reduce expenditures would mainly hit the development expenditures and to some extent (ritually) day to day administration expenditures. This would hit the poor, lower middle class, and middle class the most.

On the other hand, the government of Pakistan’s major revenue sources are non-tax revenue, indirect taxes, and direct taxes. Indirect taxes are applicable on everyone, whereas direct taxes are applicable on taxable class only. While we know Pakistan’s tax to GDP ratio is extremely low, we also know that majority of Pakistanis, irrespective of their social status, are paying some sort of indirect tax. The implementation of taxation policy is highly tilted in favour of elites.

The Finance Minister was adamant that he would not impose new (direct) taxes, and would not abandon the SRO (statutory regulatory order) regime which provides exemption from taxes and duties to selected few. It is true that certain SROs are legitimate and necessary (such as duty free import of medical equipment/ambulances by a charity hospital). However, most of the SROs are a source of tax evasion.

Lack of political will for increasing the direct taxes would lead the government to increase its revenue through indirect taxes and non-tax revenue. Both of which again hit the poor, lower middle class, and middle class the most.

The federal budget 2013, prepared in hurry to present something tangible to the IMF mission who were to start its visit on 17th June, included the above mentioned cost saving and revenue enhancement measures.

One agrees that the economy should be documented; non targeted subsidies should be abandoned; loss making public sector enterprises should be revamped; power sector should be reformed; and austerity measures should be adopted. However, one also expects that on revenue enhancement side, more people should be brought in tax net and direct taxes should be levied. Income above a certain threshold should be taxed irrespective of the fact that it is generated through industry, services, or agriculture.

Developing countries’ experiences with IMF are neither very pleasant nor very helpful. However, unless any other lifeline works, IMF is a quick fix solution. While availing this solution, it is governments’ duty to ensure that majority of Pakistanis who fall in low income group are protected from side effects of front loading of home grown solution. Life of people belonging to middle and lower income groups is already miserable. They should not get the undue share of uneasiness for the crown they never wore.

[I]The writer is head of Sustainable Development Policy Institute. He can be contacted at [email]suleri@sdpi.org[/email][/I]

[B]28.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Sleeping with the enemy[/SIZE]
The Doha negotiation is the make or break process of whatever impact the negotiating parties are going to have on Afghanistan and the entire
region
By Dr Syed Hussain Shaheed Soherwordi
[/CENTER][/B]
The negotiation phenomenon has officially started and temporarily barred between the US and the Afghan Taliban at Doha. The Karzai administration is also on board with a few reservations. However, reservations are becoming a stumbling block not only against the US but also for the entire dialogue process.

The way Karzai is pronouncing statements against the US, the Taliban and the Pakistan’s military establishment, one feels as he is least interested in a positive outcome of the Doha progression. Karzai seems to be a leader of a group who became the President by luck and whose close advisors were made up of the anti-Taliban establishment in the post 9/11 era. This is the high time that Karzai must act now or everyone in Afghanistan fail. Indeed, he deserves support of the comity of nations, but stakeholders in Afghanistan need to see progress on security, reconciliation, and governance by now.

The Doha process will inspire confidence in the Taliban for a successful conclusion of negotiations, and would establish a base on which Afghanistan’s politics would develop after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Without being overly sensational, the Doha negotiation is the make or break process of whatever impact the negotiating parties are going to have on Afghanistan and the entire region for more than a decade. Americans cannot afford to fail and the Taliban cannot maintain the status quo. The US wants a conclusion of the War on Terror with the Taliban by 2014. The Taliban are now mature than pre-9/11 era. Hence, a shift in their thoughts has forced them to sit on negotiating table and to ‘sleep(ing) with the enemy’ in Doha.

Back there in Afghanistan, the negotiating but warring parties are still at the daggers drawn. Hence, in spite of some notable progress, the situation is deteriorating far more rapidly than most are willing to acknowledge. Therefore, a few drastic but important decisions must be taken in view before proceeding further.

Besides negotiations in Doha, in Afghanistan, a significant short term strategy is required to secure the Afghan Capital from subversive activities, keep order in the country, and provide enough security for nation-building efforts. This will increase the US bargaining position in Doha vis-à-vis the Taliban.

There is also a need to create a decentralised federal system of Pakhtun, Tajik and Uzbek regions. Such plan owes a lot to the complex arrangements that had been implemented in Bosnia to stop the civil war between the Serbs, Muslims and Croats. The effects of federalism can be taken from Pakistan where the 18th Amendment has given tremendous powers to the provinces and their nagging against each other has stopped forthwith. Thus political and militant forces pulling Afghanistan apart could be disappointed by either federalism or decentralised political system. Any such suggestion will further contribute to the Doha negotiation process.

A decentralisation of power in Afghanistan must be accompanied by arrangements to ensure that all ethnic groups would have proportional share in the country’s national wealth. Besides, more effective schemes to rebuild the country’s infrastructure uniformly and without any prejudice to any specific region would diminish any future resurrection of insurgency. This all must be included in the peace process between the warring parties at Doha.

Afghanistan has been more ruined by the proxy wars sponsored by its neighbours than by its own warlords. Reducing the neighbouring countries undue interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan is in everyone’s interests. But current course has no prospect of success as no international instrument of law is used to bar foreign hands inside Afghanistan. In the circumstances, a regional nonaggression pact between the neighbouring countries will not only bring peace between its neighbours but would also guarantee Afghanistan’s serene future.

Therefore, to involve neighbours, either of the two ways may be adopted at Doha: The neighbouring countries may be asked to sign the peace deal between the US and the Taliban as guarantors; or they may be included to pledge non-interference in Afghanistan. In both cases, all outsider entities would be stitched into a pact by which their undue and mala fide role would be contained.

As Afghanistan is taking a rebirth from its past internal conflicts, international financial assistance would be the bottom line of running such a nascent state. Many countries have pledged Afghanistan much but delivered extremely less.

Our shortsightedness for far-sighted issues is going to cost us a lot. Americans considered the War on Terror as a phenomenon of months whereas it was the matter of years. Hence, a short-war strategy was applied for a long war. That was their problem which engulfed them. The need of the time is to learn from the mistakes of others and do not befool ourselves by committing the same mistakes for learning.

We need to initiate a dialogue process to deal with the Tahreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The sooner we convert them from militant nature to the political discourse, the better will it be not only for the new federal government in Islamabad but also for the people of this country. Doha process is a lesson for us. Does the Doha timeline match our timeline? We need to establish the benchmarks.

[I]The author teaches at the Department of International Relations, University of Peshawar. [email]syedshaheed@hotmail.co.uk[/email][/I]

[B]28.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]“Right to information is the basis of a democratic society”[/SIZE]
By Aoun Sahi[/CENTER][/B]

Wajahat Habibullah, 67, Chairman of India’s National Commission for Minorities, was in Islamabad last week to share his experience regarding Right to Information (RTI) Act of India. His visit to Pakistan was part of the activities associated with the Chaophraya Dialogue, a track-II diplomacy initiative undertaken by the Jinnah Institute which enabled an exchange of high profile public speakers including parliamentarians, academics and policy experts on both sides of the border.

Wajahat Habibullah, also ex-chief information commissioner, who won Rajiv Gandhi Award for Excellence in Secularism in 1994, has had a distinguished career as a civil servant and a leading face of civil society in India. He has also authored several books on Kashmir and human rights.

TNS talks to him on the value the RTI Act, and how it represented an integral part of any flourishing democracy. He also explains how to develop the means and capacity for passing such legislation and outlines the benefits society and state can get from its implementation.

Excerpts of the interview are:

The News on Sunday: What was the vision behind the RTI law in India?

Wajahat Habibullah: When the initial thinking on the RTI started, I was not associated with it. But, a very good friend of mine, Aruna Roy, was the person behind the RTI in India. Her original concept was that the people, who actually pay for the government to work, are supposed to get benefits from the government. If they are not getting benefits, they have all the rights to question the government why they are not getting benefits. That was the basic theme. Right to information is the basis of a society which calls itself democratic. A democratic government has no right to decline your request regarding any information about any government functionary. So the answer to your question is the basic concept of right to information based on transparency and accountability.

To me right to information is like pouring ‘sunshine’ on the government’s affairs. We must persevere in our quest to make governance ever more participative and more inclusive, which is the essence of democratic governance.

It has not succeeded in meeting its original vision in India. But, it is not a failure at all. We are moving to that direction. There is no total transparency and accountability in the government. You know, unlike the Western countries we have a much closed system here. But, I do think that RTI has set a certain direction. Therefore, that direction is the principal achievement, I think. If I can call it that it is the growth of realisation within the government. The information held by the government must be given when asked for. There are exceptions, of course, but my feeling is that there is a growing realisation, at least in the government of India, that the information I ask for has to be given.

TNS: There is a debate that the RTI is only suitable to Western societies and democracies while in countries like India and Pakistan it weakens the government. How do you cope up with this argument?

WH: It is far more necessary for Eastern democracies because corruption in East is higher than West and the governments also try to not reveal the details here as well. So, the RTI Act is very important in Eastern countries. The RTI would also help the government find out which of its functionaries are not working well. So, it helps governments as well. The RTI is an integral part of democracy. If you really aspire to be a free democracy, the right to information has to be implemented.

TNS: But people fear that this law can be misused!

WH: Of course, any law can be misused. But, the fact that it is misused does not mean the law is not good. Some elements try to misuse the law and the government should take measures to stop its misuses.

TNS: Many people think that the Indian government is backtracking on the RTI and has decided to seek cabinet approval to amend the RTI Act. Why?

WH: It is not backtracking. A recent decision by the Information Commission has placed political parties under the RTI Act. The political parties have resented that decision. I think they have misunderstood the meaning of the law. The law will not make you to create information which you don’t have. It only wants the information you already have and which you have already shared with the Election Commission or Income Tax Department. So, what is the harm if people have got access to that information?

TNS: How important is it for a country like Pakistan to have the RTI law?

WH: It is very important for Pakistan to have a functional RTI Act because it is an emerging democracy. The RTI basically provides means for democratic expression and each country has to find its own way of satisfying its own people.

TNS: You have spent a lot of time in Kashmir. Has the RTI Act been implemented there and have Kashmiris benefited from it in the missing persons cases?

WH: It is implemented in Jammu and Kashmir. As far as missing persons are concerned, I don’t know of any case. But there have been cases in Kashmir where the RTI Act has helped people. For example, the Human Rights Commission discovered mass graves in Kapvara and took up the matter with the authorities. So, there have been instances where the RTI helps out.

TNS: Being an ex-RTI commissioner, how do you see the instances of WikiLeaks and Snowden case?

WH: These things are going to happen as the information technology expands with newer and newer means of information. Why are we hiding? We, in fact, need a framework through which you can regulate flow of information. If you don’t do that, more and more such instances would happen. They are basically whistleblowers.

TNS: Does the RTI Act in India protect whistleblowers?

WH: The law does not protect whistleblowers. Therefore, we need a special law for that purpose.

TNS: You are also head of Indian Commission on Minorities. India’s record regarding minorities is not very encouraging. A report by your commission also revealed that several Muslim youth were wrongly accused in Mecca Masjid blasts in 2007 in Hyderabad. Do you think that police and the administration are involved in Muslim bashing as well?

WH: It is not Muslim bashing. In fact, it is easy for police to arrest people in a riot or bomb blast case who are already on their list. So, it is a quick fix to arrest such people who mostly belong to minority groups. Media also puts a lot of pressure on police to deliver quickly. So, police ends up catching up wrong people. This is what we have been trying to tell the government: Without any evidence, labeling people from minority communities as ‘masterminds’ is shaking the confidence of the youth from minority communities.

[B]28.07.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Less savings account [/SIZE]
Coupled with rising inflation and rupee devaluation, declining returns on National Savings Schemes and banking deposits is very troubling for savers, retirees, pensioners
By Tahir Ali
[/CENTER][/B]
Declining returns on National Savings Schemes (NSSs) and banking deposits is very troubling for a middle class family, especially the retirees, who find it hard to fulfil their basic needs. With the current rate of return, no one can lead a reasonably trouble-free retired life.

The Central Directorate of National Savings (CDNS) recently announced new profit rates for Bahbood Savings Certificates (BSC) and Pensioners’ Benefit Accounts (PBA), Regular Income Certificate (RIC), Defence Savings Certificates (DSC) and Savings Accounts at 12.24 per cent, 9.72 per cent, 10.36 per cent, and 6 per cent, respectively. The rate for Special Savings Certificates/Account (SSC/A) has been fixed at 8.8 per cent for 1st five profits and at 9.50 per cent per year for the last profit.

Returns on NSSs have been on the decline despite rising inflation and Rupee devaluation. For example, an investment of Rs0.1million in DSC had an annual profit of 18.04 per cent in May 1999 and the amount would become Rs0.525million after maturity of 10 years. However, the profit rate stands at 10.36 per cent and the total after completion of 10 years investment period would be Rs268million.

Similarly, the new profit rate for SSC is 8.8 per cent for first 2½ years and 9.5 per cent for 3rd year against 16 per cent and 18 per cent respectively in 1999. And the annual profit rate for RIC is 9.72 per cent now against 18 per cent in January 97.

Similarly, for BSC/PBA, the profit rate is now 12.24 per cent against 16.8 per cent in December 2008. What this practically means is that an investment of Rs100,000 would fetch monthly profit of Rs1020 now against Rs1400 in December 2008.

Savings account — designed to encourage savings amongst the poor and to fulfil their daily needs — is an ordinary account with 6 per cent annual profit against 9 per cent in 2008.

Designed to meet the future requirements of the depositors, the profit on DSC is paid on maturity or encashment for completed years. Profit on SSC/A — three-year maturity schemes — is paid after six months to fulfil the periodic needs of depositors. The BSC/PBA are specifically designed for widows, pensioners and senior citizens. Except the first — BSC and PBA — all profits of the other certificates and accounts are subjected to 10 per cent withholding tax. Earlier, profit on investment below Rs150,000 were exempted from the tax but this exemption has been done away this fiscal year.

BSC and PBA are the major source of incomes for retirees, widows and 60-plus persons. “There is disharmony between BSC and DSC though both are for 10 years’ duration. For an investment of Rs100,000 for 10 years, the total return at 10.36 per cent is Rs168,000 in DSC as against Rs122400 at 12.24 per cent in BSC,” says Sardar Hussain, a retired public servant.

At present, various forms of savings certificates, accounts and bonds are offered by the central directorate of national savings, Pakistan Post, commercial banks, micro finance banks and private companies, but an average person neither has the expertise nor the required information to take the best advantage of the available opportunities.

Potential investors are unaware of the investment products in the market, the risks involved therein and returns thereon. For several reasons — limited coverage, lack of awareness, low returns and so on — most of the people prefer to invest in real estate, gold and bank accounts, but all these areas have either limited return or involve many risks.

The investment made in NSSs is fully guaranteed by the government of Pakistan. Most of the commercial banks have their own peculiar savings schemes. Banks have opened student accounts and minor accounts.

Pakistan has a dismal saving-to-GDP ratio of 13 per cent (as against 20 per cent in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka). With rising inflation and declining rates of return on bank deposits as well as national savings schemes (NSSs), analysts fear further decline in savings ratio.

The State Bank, in its annual report for the FY11-12, says that an average consumer allocated Rs97 out of every Rs100 to consumption expenditure in FY11 which means a marginal savings rate of just 3 per cent in FY11 against 30 per cent in FY01-08.

An average Pakistani tends to spend whatever he earns and saves little. The middle class and the rich, however, save and invest their savings but in non-productive sectors like real estate which leads to increase in the land prices, making housing a distant dream for ordinary Pakistanis.

Low savings mean low investments and leads to higher reliance on foreign aid. The World Bank estimates that investment to GDP ratio in Pakistan was 15 per cent in 2010 against 35 per cent, 28 per cent and 24 per cent in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh respectively. Pakistan’s savings ratio decreased from 26 per cent in 2002 at a time when consistent increase was recorded else during the period.

It has been observed that average people weigh security of their savings and returns more than the extent of the profit they receive. Astonishingly, investment in NSSs is on the rise, rising cost of living and dwindling returns thereon notwithstanding. Total investment made in various schemes of the CDNS was recorded at Rs2.28 trillion; Rs0.350trillion of these in prize bonds.

Analysts think this surge could be the result of huge investments by institutions in saving schemes. The hefty pension and gratuity funds, possessed by institutions, might be the biggest players in the fields. They also think the NSSs have drawn funds from the normal commercial banking system that is offering nominal returns on deposits — around 6 per cent.

Banks paid meagre returns to millions of PLS account holders until imposition of a minimum five per cent rate of return by the SBP order in June, 2008 even though the SBP has been reducing the policy rate — the rate at which commercial banks borrow from the SBP to meet their short-term liquidity requirements. According to the SBP, the banking sector’s profitability has grown annually by 21 per cent from 2004 to 2010.

Small-savers are the major source of funds for over three dozen local and foreign banks operating in the country but they are given peanuts on their deposits. There are only 377 national savings centres in the country. Many areas thus remain uncovered. This problem could be tackled through opening more savings centres or by routing the NSSs through commercial banks. Returns should suffice both inflation and the element of profit. Against the backdrop of higher cost of living, many are forced to delay retirement as there are no competitive returns available on pension savings and investments. The government should keep the returns 2/3 points higher than the rate of inflation. It should enhance the NSS rates at least on the BSC.

“Considering inflation, the banks are paying negative return to their PLS depositors. The SBP should increase the minimum rate of return on PLS and saving deposits,” says a public servant wishing anonymity. The CDNS working under the Finance Ministry needs to be given autonomous status. The NSSs could be used to finance big projects such as dams. This will reduce reliance of the government on commercial banks for borrowings as well as reduce debt to GDP ratio.

Prize bonds are the most cost-effective device to finance the budget and fiscal deficit. “There is huge potential for raising funds and if given a free hand to operate, the CDNS can even provide financing for Diamer-Bhasha dam within three years,” the DG CDNS recently said.

Instead of fixed investment, pensioners and other savers should be afforded opportunities of stocks, shares and option trading. Local agents were given 2½ commission in investment in the past. This facility will give fillip to the savings and investment.

The government can also increase savings ratio by facilitating and creating awareness about investment in mutual funds — pool of money belonging to a group of investors entrusted to a fund manager who invests the money on behalf of the investors. The profit and loss go only to investors while the fund manager takes management fee.

[B]04.08.2013 [/B][B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Sovereignty a matter of national confusion[/SIZE]
What does this omnipresent term ‘sovereignty’ really mean and how is it violated? Questions and definitions aside, nothing will work unless and until we stop undermining our own sovereignty vested in the people and their representatives
By Yaqoob Khan Bangash[/CENTER][/B]

Sovereignty is a key buzzword in Pakistan these days. So we protest the drone attacks because they violate ‘our sovereignty’, and the United States retorts that people like Ayman Al Zawahiri also violate ‘our sovereignty’. We fight against Baloch insurgents because they challenge the ‘sovereignty’ of the country, and a similar threat was also felt when the question of Pakhtunistan emerged shortly after the inception of the country.

Both India and Pakistan routinely jail poor fishermen who stray into the ‘sovereign’ waters of the other country, and threaten to shoot down aircraft which enter our ‘sovereign’ airspace without permission. Even the Penal Code of Pakistan, Section 123A, provides for imprisonment of ten years and a fine, if someone ‘endanger(s) the sovereignty of Pakistan in respect of all or any of the territories lying within its borders.’ Therefore, sovereignty is not only a serious concern, but any challenge to it a grave penal offence.

But what does this omnipresent term ‘sovereignty’ really mean? The term ‘sovereignty,’ since time of Socrates, has had several theorists attempt to clearly define it, but has consistently escaped clarity. An authority on International Law, Oppenheim, once remarked: ‘There exists perhaps no conception the meaning of which is more controversial than that of sovereignty. It is an indisputable fact that this conception, from the moment when it was introduced into political science until the present day, has never had a meaning which was universally agreed upon.’

Therefore, this term has had a very contested definition. However, hard it has been to define, it has been a critical marker of modern statehood, and states, and at times people, have had to go to great lengths to ‘protect’ this hard to define term. While I shall make no attempt to define this term (itself a subject of numerous books), for the purposes of this article, I will note that ‘sovereignty’ consists of the following basic attributes: absolute and exclusive power (or right to), de jure and de facto power and ability, and ability to exercise it both internally and externally.

Therefore, in the modern world a ‘sovereign country’ means a country which has full and exclusive control over its affairs, can exercise this power, internally and externally, and is recognised as having such power by others.

Broadly speaking, four types of sovereignties currently exist in the world. The first one is the oldest form of sovereignty — that which is reposed in one person — the Monarch. This concept was solidified in the Middle Ages in Europe and still holds theoretical strength in a number of countries.

The second model is presented by the French constitution of 1791 which noted that: ‘Sovereignty is one, indivisible, unalienable and imprescriptible; it belongs to the Nation; no group can attribute sovereignty to itself nor can an individual arrogate it to himself.’ Hence, the people are ultimately sovereign.

Another type, found in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth countries, is that of ‘parliamentary sovereignty.’ In this concept, John Austin argued that parliament is sovereign since it enacts laws which others follow but is itself not bound by the law and can change it at will.

The fourth understanding is championed by the United States, where there is no clear repository of sovereignty. The Congress of the United States does not have absolute power to amend the constitution, the Supreme Court has had powers of ‘judicial review’ since 1803, and the states and special constitutional conventions have other degrees of power. Some have therefore argued that the US constitution — as the basic founding document of the country, is then the real ‘sovereign.’ These four broad concepts have given rise to different models of state formation, society and development.

The fascination with sovereignty is not new in Pakistan, and as a matter of fact, has been an overriding concern of most nation-states. Obsession with notions of sovereignty is also a hallmark of post-colonial states, especially since the vast empires they emerged out of had a layered understanding of this concept. In the introduction to their book, Hansen and Stepputat, note that ‘colonial sovereignty was constructed slowly and piecemeal and oscillated between confrontation and alignment, between spectacular representation of European might and culture, and incorporation of local idioms and methods of rule.’

Here one can easily understand how the complicated net of the British Indian Empire, with its areas of directly ruled territories (which were further divided into Presidencies, Governor provinces, Lieutenant Governor provinces, Chief Commissioner’s provinces), tribal areas, and princely states (not to mention the Gulf states attached to the Indian Empire), operated. However, this fluid, complicated, at times simply confusing model did not work for post-colonial states since they were compact territories, not ruled over by a distant metropole, and ostensibly were in the name of the local inhabitants.

Therefore, Professor Ayesha Jalal aptly notes in her assessment of Pakistan that ‘in the immediate aftermath of independence and partition the questions of sovereignty and state-building were inextricably linked in Pakistan.’

So Pakistan too had to answer the ultimate question: where did its ‘sovereignty’ lie? Since Pakistan had directly inherited the British parliamentary tradition, it was expected that the Constituent Assembly wherein the power to create a constitution lay, was the sovereign of the land. However, what became clear in the judgment of the Maulvi Tamizuddin case (1954), was that sovereignty in fact still resided in the ‘sovereign’ of the country — i.e., Queen Elizabeth II of Pakistan (she took her oath as Queen of Pakistan, as distinct from being Queen of the United Kingdom), represented in Pakistan by the Governor-General, Ghulam Mohammad, who therefore could use the Royal Prerogative to dismiss the Constituent Assembly.

What was interesting here was that while the Governor-General could exercise the Royal Prerogative on ‘behalf’ of the Sovereign, she could not! That judgment, and its aftermath, as Allen McGrath argues, witnessed the demise of the parliamentary system in Pakistan. From that time onwards, non-parliamentary forces, and un-elected people carried defacto sovereign power in the country. And the result is in front of us!

The first decade of Pakistan, unfortunately, was still more complicated in terms of sovereignty. The ‘Objectives Resolution’ of 1949, presented by the first Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, introduced a novel concept. The Objectives Resolution stated: ‘Whereas sovereignty over the entire universe belongs to God Almighty alone and the authority which He has delegated to the State of Pakistan, through its people for being exercised within the limits prescribed by Him is a sacred trust.’ The Objectives Resolution, with the curious replacement of ‘God Almighty’ by ‘Allah’ in 1985 by Zia ul Haq, is now a substantive part of our Constitution.

While I cannot make a full assessment of the complications this assertion brought to the country (that will have to wait for my next book!), a simple reading of the above makes it clear that ‘real’ sovereignty, as argued by the Resolution resides in God. Prima facie there is no problem with such a statement, as a believer of any theistic religion would agree which such an appellation.

However, the problem is that perhaps some (or all?) of this absolute sovereignty of God is ‘delegated’ to the ‘state’ and the ‘people’ of Pakistan. To which degree is sovereignty delegated we don’t know, and most especially what effect does this in effect ‘sharing’ of sovereignty mean for Pakistan we do not know! Further, what does this mean for the different arms of the government — parliament, executive, and judiciary especially? Where do the ultimate markers of sovereignty reside? All these questions still haunt us, and even though they might not be the first questions which come to mind, a lot of our national confusion (and national excitement) relates to this very peculiar understanding of sovereignty.

Recently, justices of our honourable Supreme Court have also entered the debate about sovereignty and have given their perspective. Mr Justice Jawwad S Khawaja penned a separate note to the Contempt of Court judgement against Yousaf Raza Gillani in July 2012 where he stated that: “there is no justification in our dispensation, for muddying the crystal and undefiled waters of our constitutional stream with alien and antiquated, 19th Century Diceyan concepts of Parliamentary supremacy.”

It appears, therefore, that in the eyes of the honourable judge, the concepts of ‘parliamentary supremacy’ no longer applied to Pakistan since, ‘When we examine the Constitution, we find that the people in their wisdom have created a balance between Parliament, the Judiciary and the Executive,’ and so no ultimate right of parliamentary sovereignty existed per se, as powers were divided.

Mr Justice Khawaja further elucidated his point and stated that the role of the judiciary was to “examine our own Constitution to ensure that the people of Pakistan, the political sovereigns, are obeyed and their will, as manifested in the Constitution, prevails.”

He, therefore, concluded that the Supreme Court “has performed its democratic role stated in the Constitution to keep elected representatives in compliance with the will of the people manifested in the Constitution.” While this note was written to further explain the reasoning behind the contempt of court judgment against Gillani, its remit is much larger, and it seems to redefine and expand the role of the Supreme Court in ensuring that the constitution of the country is obeyed. It also appears to restrict the legislature, which even though bound by the constitution can still amend it at will.

Therefore, the question is: is power being transferred from elected representatives to un-elected bodies? What ‘real’ power these elected representatives have is essential to their functioning as ‘representatives’ of the people. Since if they cannot wield much power, the sovereignty of the people, or even the constitution which the people have willed, as Justice Khawaja has pointed out, becomes meaningless.

In the end, one thing is clear: throughout history, ‘sovereignty’ has resided in the ‘people’ one way or the other, and modern nation-states are predicated on some version of the sovereignty of the people — be it through parliament, the constitution or different organs of the state. However, what is also patent is that the onus is on the ‘elected representatives’ of the people to not only make sovereignty and its assertion a reality but also to utilise their powers derived from it to improve the lives of the people they represent.

We can keep complaining about the US violating our sovereignty, or the Indian fishermen entering our sovereign waters, but unless and until we stop undermining our own sovereignty vested in the people and their representatives, nothing will work. Our own democratic institutions need to be empowered, made more transparent and accountable, and be allowed to grow and establish themselves, if we are to really become ‘sovereign.’

[I]The writer is the Chairperson of the Department of History, Forman Christian College, and tweets at @BangashYK. He can be contacted at: [email]yaqoob.bangash@gmail.com[/email]
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[B]04.08.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Another page in history[/SIZE]
Not only has History found a new lease of life as a discipline, it has also diversified with its new practitioners no longer simply following the hackneyed narration of political events
By Tahir Kamran[/CENTER][/B]

In Pakistan, History has been a neglected field of inquiry until quite recently. Considered by many as a box of letters from which one can spell any word that one likes, it has remained a relegated discipline.

Immediately after Independence, Pakistan inherited a handful of historians such as Ishtiaq Hussain Qureshi, Shaikh Muhammad Ikram, Mehmood Hussain, Shaikh Rasheed and Aziz Ahmed to name a few, who could have established a professionally informed practice of history. Some of them had enviable careers like Ishtiaq Qureshi who made it to the coveted position of Pakistani representative in the United Nations, and then went on to serve as minister of education.

Despite having occupied such privileged positions, Qureshi did not do much for the promotion of the discipline, in sharp contrast to the likes of Tara Chand, Noor-ul-Hasan and Prof Habib did in India. Their focus remained riveted on establishing history departments in universities and training the next generation of historians.

Lamentably, History as a discipline survived in the Pakistani academic milieu merely as an instrument of furnishing sufficient expertise to ambitious youth to secure a niche in the glorious ranks of the bureaucracy. The descriptive nature of History was deemed ideal for honing writing skills to enable perceptive youngsters to climb to the upper echelons of the government services. Research in order to expand the frontiers of the discipline was neither practiced nor encouraged.

Historians of reasonable merit and erudition like Khurshid Kamal Aziz, Riazul Islam and Ahmed Hasan Dani could not make any substantial difference in the marginal state to which History was consigned. In the 1970s, Quad-i-Azam University had a vibrant department, adorned with qualified historians but very few among them did anything to advance the subject’s cause.

It was only in the last ten years or so that History has started attracting a number of young men and women to embrace it as a career. Not only has History as a discipline found a new lease of life, it has also diversified, with its new practitioners no longer simply following the hackneyed pattern of narrating political events, for in the past, the tales of the kings and battles have scuttled the popular relevance of History. Historians like Tanvir Anjum at Quad-i-Azam University, Faraz Anjum at Punjab University and Muhammad Shafique at Bahaud Din Zakariya University have contributed immensely by bringing medieval history back on to the academic map.

It is important to note here that all of them completed their PhDs in Pakistan and yet their competence and adroitness as accomplished historians is beyond any doubt. Tanvir Anjum in particular, with her extraordinary grasp of classical sources, including her knowledge of Persian, is a remarkable asset. Equally significant is the contribution of Anjum’s colleague, Ilhan Niaz, a profound and prolific scholar who has made a valuable addition to the existing body of knowledge. Endowed with the natural gift of writing, he is likely to make a huge difference in contemporary historiography.

Ambitious, immensely talented and fiercely competitive Ali Usman Qasmi has joined the history fraternity and immediately made his presence felt, not only within Pakistan but beyond. After completing his PhD from the University of Heidelberg, he went to Royal Holloway, University of London for two years as Newton Fellow. Subsequently, he joined LUMS, where he teaches South Asian history. Qasmi will undoubtedly be a worthy human resource for his employer, as his teaching skills are marvelous. In this particular regard, he matches both Hussain Ahmad Khan and Faraz Anjum. His book on Ahl-ul-Quran has attracted the attention of many scholars, such as Francis Robinson, Asad Ahmad and most notably Ayesha Jalal. Trained in the classical tradition of Ranke and Acton, Qasmi is equipped with an uncanny ability of deploying theoretical context to the local historical situation.

Hard on his heels is a slim but extremely vivacious figure of Yaqoob Khan Bangash. Intellectual progeny of renowned historians such as Judith Brown from University of Oxford and Royal Holloway’s famed Francis Robinson, Bangash has worked his way through to the top and assumed the responsibility of managing the History Department at F.C. College (Chartered University), Lahore. In a matter of months, he has shot F.C. College to the centre stage of academic activity. The scope of his international exposure is his biggest asset along with the skill of effective communication. If he sticks to doing history and steers clear of distractions, Yaqoob Bangash has all it takes to be a historian par excellence.

Far more focused and diligent than all his peers is Hussain Ahmad Khan at GC University. He did his PhD at National University of Singapore and his book will soon be out from I.B. Taurus. Among a very few cultural historians in Pakistan, Hussain in all earnestness intends to focus on training students into historians, which he thinks the preceding generation of academics have not done. An infinite capacity to work and an extremely long concentration span are seminal features of his personality, which of course distinguish him from the rest.

He considers education as a public good and the most viable instrument of change. Thus he commands respect from his students and colleagues just because he means business as a teacher. Hussain strongly believes that the historians of Pakistan ought to set up a ‘school of historians’ on the pattern of Annales School or ‘Subaltern School’ with its distinct ethos and methodology.

These budding historians signify a safe future for the discipline of history. Not only many sub disciplines subsuming history will flourish but they will be a great source of transmitting research skills to the coming generation of scholars. In few years time, many more historians will adorn Pakistani education. Some, like Ali Raza, Irfan Waheed Usmani, Umber bin Ebad and Ammar Jan are already very fine prospects.

[B]04.08.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Quest for peace[/SIZE]
War should be avoided at any cost. If it’s imminent, planning for post-war peace must begin much before the start of war itself
By Shahzada Irfan Ahmed
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What are the major challenges to global peace and security? What are the causes of most wars? Are the orthodox theories pertaining to wars and international relations or they need to be refined in the current scenario? What is the secret to a stable Afghanistan and what’s the country’s future once Nato troops leave? How can Fata be administered effectively? What is the prescribed role of UN and how much it has achieved? What are the adverse impacts of drone attacks in Pakistan and how important is it is for the world to take over the issue of Kashmir without delay?

These are some of the many questions discussed and addressed in the recently released book: “Peace and War: Their Precepts and Principles”. Authored by Lt. Gen. (retd) Raza Muhammad Khan, who is a former Commandant of the National Defence College and former president of the National Defence University of Pakistan, the book is primarily a recollection of what he has learnt, read and discussed in his meetings with national and international political and military leaders as well as from the battles he has participated in as a soldier in uniform.

Setting the tone of the treatise, he submits in the very start that all the knowledge he has gained has led him to believe that it is the people who count the most in the time before hostilities, during conflicts and peace after war.

He dedicates his work to the millions, especially those living in Asia, whose lives have been deeply affected by conflicts and wars, in the last three decades. The author disapproves of war which, he thinks, should only be an option where all other peaceful measures have failed. Even in such case, he stresses planning for post-war peace must begin much before the start of a war.

In the first part of the book, the author discusses challenges to peace and security in detail and revisits the general perceptions and notions of peace. He also challenges several orthodox theories and questions their validity in the fast-changing global milieu. While he mentions traditional threats such as proliferation of weapons, nuclear arms race, terrorism and consequences of failed or failing states, he also gives space to non-traditional ones such as socio-economic risks faced by nations. Besides, religious, cast, creed, ethnic and other forms of extremism are also defined and discussed. He also challenges the theories of pre-emption, ingrained in the national security doctrines of some states and terms them a threat to global peace.

The balance of power theories, maintenance of international order through parity and use of military deterrence to avoid wars have been discussed critically, with examples where they have failed to achieve the desired results.

The chapter on the UN’s role in maintaining peace is a worth read as the author has enumerated reasons why this body has failed to maintain peace on many occasions and get its resolutions enforced. The veto power available with the members of the UN Security Council also comes under the scanner in this book.

Raza suggests reforms in the structure and working of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), , United Nations Peace Building Commission etc to ensure implementation of the UN resolutions in an appropriate manner.

He is also for regional organisations that must have internal dispute settlement mechanisms and refer disputes to the UN only when they have themselves failed to achieve the desired result. However, his suggestion that all those countries who fail to comply with the UN resolutions within 90 days of their passage will lose their membership appears to be too ambitious.

As the author has repeatedly stressed it, the timing of the book is highly important. With Nato forces preparing to pull out, Afghan problem unresolved rather worsened, Fata hard for authorities to tackle, Kashmir issue bound to haunt both nuclear Pakistan and India, no end to drone attacks in sight, it is quite likely that the security situations will not improve easily. The book, in words of the author, is an attempt to discuss these issues in detail and suggest ideas to handle them. For example, he strongly suggests that the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan must be immediately recognised by the latter and thereafter strengthened, reinforced and jointly monitored by both the countries.

The second part of the book, which is divided into two parts, focuses on the general and fundamental peace theories with special reference to two areas of conflict in South Asia — Afghanistan and the Indo-Pak sub-continent. Principles of war, response to the nature of wars, preparedness of war, information dominance, international opinion and support and centre of gravity determination are some of the topics which have been discussed at length in the book.

The book provides readers a chance to get a glimpse of what goes on behind the doors, at events where top political and military leaderships of the world meet. A narrative of an interesting one-on-one meeting between the author and some globally renowned personalities gives them a delightful break after they have read pages of serious research work. The details about the ambience, meeting venues, the body language and mannerism of those he has met and the war of nerves that he witnessed during the discourses have been mentioned quite articulately.

Those readers interested in knowing more about top US Centcom leaders such as David H. Patreaeus and John R. Allen, Admiral Mike Mullen, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Afghan General Sher Mohammad Karimi and others of their stature will find the narratives quite interesting and revealing.

[B]04.08.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Deadly debt trap[/SIZE]
The only way to come out of prevalent economic mess is to accelerate growth and enhance tax revenues
By Huzaima Bukhari & Dr. Ikramul Haq[/CENTER][/B]

Pakistan trapped in deadly ‘debt prison’ needs concentrated short and long term efforts to come out of it. Unfortunately, till today no workable plan and viable strategy is devised by the government or any political party in opposition to tackle the issue. The debt burden — Rs14.5 billion internal and $60 billion external — is becoming unmanageable as major resources are consumed by debt servicing. The budget allocation of Rs1.52 trillion for retiring public debt and payment of interest during fiscal year 2013-14 would prove short as there was surge of Rs180 billion in external debts alone during July 2013.

On July 29, 2013, the rupee recorded its lowest value against the dollar: Rs102.4 in the interbank market, Rs104.7 in open market, but actual rate was Rs105.5. Continuous slide of the rupee is not merely due to widening demand-supply gap or maneuverings by unscrupulous elements. Other factors are external debt repayments of around $1billion and speculations about official devaluation in the wake of IMF bailout.

Devaluation will have devastating effects e.g. tremendous surge in public debt (one rupee loss in the exchange rate adds Rs60 billion to public debt), enhancement in debt servicing, further widening of fiscal deficit and more expensive imports, especially of crude oil raising cost of all goods and services.

Already huge debt servicing is taking a heavy toll on economy — fiscal deficit for financial year 2012-13 jumped to 8.8 per cent of GDP as shortfall on the part of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) alone was Rs442 billion. The fast depletion of foreign exchange reserves — from $14.776 billion in July 2011 to $5.153 billion by July 2013 — aggravated the situation. Heavy repayments to the IMF and others plus financing of current account deficit amounting to $2.3 billion in 2012-13 forced the new government to approach the IMF for a bailout package.

The situation on internal debt is equally disturbing. The government, for the first time in the history, borrowed from local banks Rs one trillion during the fiscal year 2012-13. The net government borrowing from domestic banks increased to Rs1.012 trillion between July 1, 2012 and June 28, 2013 against Rs629.9 billion over the same period last fiscal year. The federal government borrowed Rs1.005 trillion for budgetary support as compared to Rs696.5 billion during the corresponding period fiscal year.

The reckless and unabated borrowing from commercial banks is not only retarding growth but also depriving private sector of the much-needed funds for investments. It is but also forcing State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) to inject heavy amounts of liquidity in the banking system through frequent open market operations as high borrowings wipe out liquidity from the money market.

The only way to come out of prevalent mess is to accelerate growth, generate employment, enhance tax revenues, and stop financing luxuries of elites and losses of public sector enterprises (PSEs). But the present government, like the PPP-coalition government, is not serious about it. During its election campaign, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) made tall claims that on assuming power it will get rid of the “cancer of external debts”.

However, the PML-N government is knocking the doors of international lenders more vigorously than the PPP. Besides the IMF’s lending of $5.3 billion to pay off previous loan, Finance Minister Ishaq Dar is approaching Asian Development Bank and World Bank for further borrowing. The main priority of the government is to rely more on external borrowing than mobilising own resources.

Internal debt is now 68 per cent of GDP breaching the limit of 60 per cent imposed under the Fiscal Responsibility and Debt Limitation Act 2010. The law requires the government to prepare and revise the debt management policy every year in January but nothing has been done as there is no debt reduction plan. Making things worse, the government is not inclined to impose fiscal discipline and reckless borrowing continues to pay off liabilities of the corruption-ridden inefficient PSEs. According to SBP, the funding of PSEs has hit economy heavily, increasing the stock of total debt & liabilities (TDL) by Rs500-600 billion.

All the governments — civil or military alike — have failed to end debt enslavement by raising revenues even to the extent of Rs6 trillion, though actual potential is not less than Rs8.5 trillion [complete roadmap was given in Taxing targets, The News, August 26, 2012]. Unless it is done, Pakistan can never come out of the ‘debt prison’.

The Senate was informed on January 23, 2013 that over 3.39 million individuals had National Tax Numbers (NTNs), but only 885,999 filed their returns. The former finance minister, Abdul Hafeez Sheikh, admitted that the number of income tax filers had drastically reduced to 1.6 million by 31 December 2012. The Senate was told that “a large number of businesses and individuals, who were regularly filing their income tax returns, are now avoiding their legal obligations by either under-declaring or incorrectly declaring their assets and incomes”.

After admitting widespread tax non-compliance, no action was taken against any official of the FBR. There is no will to eliminate wasteful spending on monstrous government machinery and inefficient PSEs. The way the government is moving our foreign debt would reach US$75 billion in 2015 and domestic debt would be Rs22 trillion. The policies of appeasement towards tax evaders, money-launderers and plunderers of national wealth and monopolisation of resources by Riasti Ashrafiya (state aristocracy) have pushed the country towards disaster.

The word ‘austerity’ is not in the dictionary of state aristocracy — indomitable military-judicial-civil complex and men in power. The habit of living beyond means — our national addiction — has turned the nuclear-powered Pakistanis into a nation holding the beggar’s bowl. When foreign lenders see the lifestyle of our ruling elite, they immediately show indignation — it is hard to believe for them that the rulers of a nation surviving on borrowed funds can display such flamboyance.

The reluctance to collect taxes from the rich and mighty, rather giving them free benefits and perquisites at state’s expense, is worsening the miseries of the poor. There is no scarcity of resources as propagated by the rulers to shift blame on others, but the real cause is outlandish living of the elites off taxpayers’ money [‘Public parasites’, The News, July 21, 2013]. Look at residences of judges, generals and high-ranking civil officials with army of servants and fleet of cars.

Wasteful spending on state aristocracy and unwillingness to tax the rich is playing havoc with the economy. Behind the present chaotic socio-economic and political situation in Pakistan, amongst other factors, is an ever-widening gulf between the rich and the poor. With every passing day more and more people are being pushed below the poverty line — their total number is now not less than 60 million in a country where rulers unashamedly waste billions on their comforts and personal security.

The present crisis testifies to the failure of power-hungry, money-greedy politicians and incompetent, inefficient and corrupt bureaucrats. Even the so-called technocrats always take the first flight to Washington after creating mess — where are Shaukat Aziz and Abdul Hafeez now? In this bleak scenario, Riasti Ashrafiya is not ready to surrender extraordinary perks and privileges enjoyed by them at the cost of taxpayers’ money. How can rulers and bureaucrats living in fortified containments, completely oblivious of the ordinary people’s plight, feel the pinch of life’s hardships?

We cannot come out of debt-enslavement unless we restructure our state on the principle enshrined in Article 3 of the Constitution — from each according to his ability, to each according to his work. For this, everyone should be given work and fair reward for that. There should be a complete change in the style of governance — the president, governors, prime minister, chief ministers, ministers, parliamentarians, and high-ranking government officials should be paid ‘consolidated pay’ liable to tax like income of an ordinary citizen.

Palatial residences occupied by them should be sold or converted into income-yielding assets, and all perquisites of civil servants and public office-holders should be monetized to remove the burden off our country’s broken financial back.

[I]The writers, lawyers and authors of many books, are Adjunct Faculty Members at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)
[/I]

[B]04.08.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]‘Clear difference between
planned and unplanned areas in political plurality’[/SIZE]
Haris Gazdar and Hussain Bux Mallah discuss a study of planned and unplanned areas in Karachi that informal economic governance can take the path of collective action as well as coercive enforcement
By Sarah Humayun[/CENTER][/B]

The violence in Karachi has been analysed extensively in terms of political parties’ agendas and motivations, their ethnic affiliations and electoral ambitions. Haris Gazdar and Hussain Bux Mallah, two researchers based at the Collective for Social Science Research, have addressed these problems differently in a recent paper for Urban Studies ‘Informality and Political Violence In Karachi’, May 2013.

The paper mentions in passing that “political violence is readily associated with ethnic violence in Karachi”, and then goes on to shift the focus from this association in some important ways.

It focuses on the link between violence and the socio-economic governance traits displayed by migrant groups in Karachi based on their migration “cohorts”, in the absence of government regulation (“private contract enforcement and dispute resolution”, for which you use the term “informal”).

“Cohort” seems to be a complex concept that employs the identificatory benchmark of the time at which or the initial conditions under which the group moved to Karachi.

Roughly, the paper identifies three cohorts, pre-partition, partition and post-partition.

It then links cohort to the planning or regularisation regimes (or lack thereof) the migrants met upon arrival and which continued to exert an influence on their subsequent social economy. And then the paper tracks the way that political organisations interacted with, or in the case of the MQM, possibly shaped, this developing political economy. It maps the political violence that resulted from the confluence of informal socio-economic arrangements and political activity.

Some insights of the paper are of special interest to laypersons who want to understand Karachi’s violent politics. A link is sometimes made between the 1980s and the rise of the MQM against the background of Gen. Zia’s dictatorship.

The paper renews interest in but also complicates this link by arguing that MQM “mirrored” state-like characteristics in its operations, and further links it to the collective social experiences of the partition migrant group associated with the party.

It suggests in its discussion that “non-state enforcers [of informal socio-economic arrangements] may generate and appropriate rents by filling an institutional void, or actually instigating one through protection rackets”, and that “prior social capital” can have something to do with whether the group resorts to third-party enforcement or uses “within-group collective arrangements”.

It argues that coercive enforcement is not just contracted out to third party enforcers (like criminal gangs) but can be an internal practice used by the group to maintain coherence and hierarchy, and to gain social capital by resisting formal enforcement by state authorities.

Another thing that the study does is to look at migrant cohorts and their interaction with urban planning. It finds that partition migrants, because of the conditions under which they migrated, benefited “as an exceptional cohort” from planned housing provision while pre- and post-partition migrant settlements mostly secured post-hoc regularisation through small scale collective action and as a result of the support and protection of political parties.

It further implies that these urban histories of resettlement in Karachi account for the different political experiences of migrant cohorts. It correlates urban planning history with election data on “dominated” polling stations to conclude that “the planned and mixed area polling stations went overwhelmingly to the MQM and a majority of those in unplanned areas were won by the PPP”— “The main sites of non-state monopolistic territorial control [of elections] were planned rather than unplanned areas. Unplanned areas were more plural and competitive political spaces than their planned neighbours”.

From the study it seems that collective action in situations where a multiplicity of ethnic groups who share identities based on kinship or, crucially, form new identities based on social relations as a result of mobilisation, represents a “relatively non-violent route”, since enforcers have to use their “coercive advantage prudently”.

All of this leads to these critical observations in the case of the migrant cohort where this didn’t happen: partition migrants. “The urban experience of partition migrants contrasts with that of the poorer pre-partition and post partition migrants. The former mostly bypassed the long processes of settlement, consolidation and regularisation which had led to collective action based on proximate kinship group solidarity among the pre-partition and post-partition migrants. There were fewer barriers to the entry of a disciplined state-like organisation or the construction of an encompassing or exclusive ethnic identity. Organisational competence can, of course, be seen by non-supporters as a hegemonic threat. Unplanned settlements presented, by contrast, seemingly chaotic multiple modes of collective action and negotiation alongside greater political openness”.

The News on Sunday (TNS) talks to co-authors Haris Gazdar and Hussain Bux Mallah (HG and HBM) about the different routes taken by informal governance in Karachi’s planned and unplanned areas.

TNS: One of the things that struck me about the argument that you are making is that it shifts focus away from notions of the “overdeveloped state” and the “deep state”, that, in effect, you’re talking about the way different socio-economic arrangements came into evidence in different migrant cohorts, which in turn sustained different patterns of political activism and in some cases violence.

How useful, in the light of your work, do you find the idea of the violent politics of Karachi, which you have related to different kinds of informal economy, as being a result of state failure? Or would you describe them as a “strategy of political management” by the state, which, even allowing for different capacities, can nowhere regulate everything?

HG and HBM: At one level political violence as well as informality are both expressions of state failure. The ways in which we might measure state success or failure will make reference to our prior notions of what the state ought to be capable of doing. The prevalence of informality clearly signals that much is happening outside of regulation and formal law (or in this case planning) and hence the objectives that state organisations set for themselves were unmet to a great extent.

Violent crime including political violence is a much simpler case of state failure since most minimal state objectives would include maintaining civic peace. So we start from the premise that we can observe state weakness (let’s concede failure is too strong a term) in two important dimensions of state activity [regulation of economy and regulation of crime], and ask whether/how these might be linked. We don’t much go into reasons for state weakness/failure in the first instance, but engage with its implications.

TNS: You say that a key insight from the political economy of organised crime is that “while non-state enforcers will tend towards creating monopolies in the use of force over their domains, their rents are optimised through enabling rather than extinguishing economic activities”. Do you find that this insight is borne out in the case of Karachi? Does it apply or fail to apply equally to both unplanned and planned “modes of informal economic governance” that you have described? To the layperson it seems that the interaction of crime and politics in the case of Lyari and some of the criminal-coercive measures practised by the MQM have not been “enabling”.

HG and HBM: We wanted a theoretical framework which allows us to make a link between the two main areas of state weakness which we observed in Karachi: viz, political violence and informality. The literature on organised crime was one such strand which was then theorised by Avinash Dixit in a more general framework of economic governance. The very fact that the informal economy seems to thrive in Karachi – that there are multiple transactions which have little chance of legal enforcement – is itself indicative that some form of non-state economic governance prevails. Of course, there are cases when/where non-state enforcers bleed economic activity through sheer extortion or disruption. But, in general, the city’s economy thrives and for the most part “stable” protection rackets do not extort the economy out of existence. The value that protection rackets offer is protection from themselves and others like them. These were the insights from work on the Sicilian mafia as well as other studies of organised crime or non-state economic governance. The comparator is not a functioning liberal state. We start from the premise that the state is already weak/failed for historical-political reason. Under those conditions, private enforcement of the type “offered” by the violent groups can facilitate economic activity.

Of course, what we find is that in the unplanned areas the forms of social organisation which performed economic governance were not like third party enforcers, but took the collective action route through kinship-group based solidarity, leadership and negotiation. So, not everything is done on the basis of private third party enforcement. Also, the state is weak but not entirely absent. Its agents too act as third party enforcers.

TNS: While your paper does not go into the question of political parties, you do speak of the MQM “mirroring” state-like functions. And you describe how the People’s Party’s left-leaning activism in working-class Lyari led to anti-eviction activists aligning with it, the party supplanting employers as channels to public services, and eventually in the 2000s, deploying gangs that “were used by employers to control troublesome workers”. There seems to be multiple processes of “mirroring” of state and social practices by political parties going on here. What weight would you place on the impact of the political party in these informal economies, the impact of the kind of politics it is pursuing, in what context it developed and what its historical or cultural antecedents were?

HG and HBM: We argue that in the case most of unplanned settlements, politics of regularisation was led by local activists who had various trajectories. In Lyari many were from ideological cadres already mobilised by left parties. In other areas (but also in Lyari) many were leaders (albeit political) with support of extended kinship groups. These leaders and groups entered political parties, and also negotiated with them. The MQM stood apart from this, or more correctly, came from a different route altogether. Its constituents were not involved, by and large, in the local politics of regularisation.

TNS: There are views in politics that the mass political party, disciplined and hierarchical, is increasingly obsolete, that it models itself on the in egalitarian and rule-bound institutions of the state and inhibits a variety of manifestations of political involvement and activism. Would you say that the informal economy perspective that you use would complicate the role of the political party in a similar way?

HG and HBM: We would say that these other forms of collective action (around the politics of regularisation) made it difficult for the disciplined party to gain a foothold in the first instance. The feature of the disciplined party, which most resembles the state, is its constant attempt at establishing territorial monopoly. This was just not possible in communities where the existing leaderships and forms of collective action were already involved in negotiated relations with political parties.

TNS: Related to the above, there is a very interesting notion of “urban experience” at work in your paper. I wonder if you could say a little more about this. In one place, you conflate it with “social capital”. Is urban experience something more than a kind of social predisposition based on experience? While you use the informal economy perspective to avoid establishing motivation for violence, as you say, can we think of this in a way that avoids replacing motivation with a notion of social predisposition or social capital?

HG and HBM: We are bit wary of the term “social capital” because it means so many different things, and we did not have the space to elaborate our own critique/preferred definition of it. But what you allude to is probably the suggestion in our paper that the “urban experience” is accredited, in theory and much historical and sociological literature, with the spread of modern political values and institutions. What we find in Karachi is that there is a clear difference between planned and unplanned areas in at least some measures, such as political plurality and competitiveness, which we showed using the 2008 elections data.

TNS: In a previous paper, The Making of a “Colony” in Karachi and the Politics of Regularisation’( in South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal[Online], (5) 2011, URL : [url]http://samaj.revues.org/3248[/url]) you have written that “ethnic or kinship group identity, and patriarchal sub-group leadership, may on closer examination turn out to be innovative adaptations to urban possibilities and challenges. But perhaps most importantly, while collective action around unplanned settlements may not transcend into social movements, it can help to keep the door open for plural democratic politics”. Your conclusion that unplanned settlements present more pluralistic, negotiatory politics also supports this. However, this goes against criticisms of systems of informal patronage based on ethnic identity and kinship that have been made recently, that see them as retrogressive colonial hangovers that inhibit politics of ideologies. What, in the light of your work, would you say in this debate?

HG and HBM: This is linked to our response to your previous question. Again, we can examine what exists and what we see, and not what might have been. So, the fact of unplanned settlements exists, as does the politics of regularisation. What is interesting for us are the implications of these politics for broader political processes in the city and the state. In this paper we have gone further from our SAMAJ paper to which you refer, and are able to draw a distinction between ethnic and kinship-based solidarity and collective action.

The smaller group kinship-based collective action in unplanned areas, paradoxically keeps them open for more plural and competitive and negotiated party politics, which according to most benchmarks ought to be a hallmark of liberal democracy. Yes, of course, we have another normative position on the implications of informal patronage and kinship-group based collective action – not least that such collective action often rests on and then buttresses patriarchal social structures. But that is a subject for future work!