[B]08.09.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]“Energy sector needs $7-8 billion”[/SIZE]
Dr Musaddiq Malik, advisor to the Prime Minister on Water and Power, lists government’s initiatives to end energy crisis
By Aoun Sahi[/CENTER][/B]

The News on Sunday: What are the main challenges confronting the energy sector in Pakistan?

Musaddiq Malik: Basically, there are three fundamental electricity challenges in Pakistan — firstly demand supply gap, secondly high cost of production and generation and thirdly administrative issues like electricity theft, line losses and revenue collection pitfalls.

Due to these basic problems, Pakistan is losing 4000-5000MW electricity. Similarly, high cost of electricity, which is calculated to be Rs 12 per unit, is also a major problem. Inefficient distribution and transmission of electricity account for 20-25 per cent loss. But seeing the system of transmission and distribution, I come to the conclusion that the losses are much more than reported.

Nowadays, we are burning everything to produce more electricity. Last month, we produced 14000-16000MW. If we start producing 18000-19000MW, we don’t have the infrastructure to distribute it. So the entire country could plunge into darkness because of our transmission lines failure. It will take 3-4 years to generate more electricity and to improve transmission system of the country.

TNS: If we look at the National Energy Policy 2013 introduced by your government, it aims at producing 5000MW more electricity, reducing the production cost from 12 cent/unit to 10 cent/unit and reducing the transmission losses to 16 per cent by 2017. How would you do that?

MM: If we want to fulfill the prevailing demand and supply gap, which is between 5000-6000MW, we need $7-8 billion to invest. Amidst the prevailing economic situation, the government does not have $7-8 billion for the energy sector. As we know that Pakistan cannot afford such a massive amount, then only private sector can invest this amount in the energy sector and private sector will only invest if they are assured that they will profit.

What we can do is to give sovereign guarantee to private sector that if they invest $120-150 million in energy sector, we will purchase power from them for the next 20-25 years at such and such rates. The Supreme Court and high courts are saying repeatedly that the Government of Pakistan is violating the sovereign guarantee that it has to give to IPPs. It is important for the government to honour sovereign guarantee because in its absence people stop trusting us and eventually stop investing in Pakistan. This mistrust makes it impossible to plug the gap of 5000-6000MW electricity shortfall.

At present, the government is producing electricity at the rate of Rs12/unit while it costs the government Rs15/unit when it reaches the end users as the government is only charging Rs9/unit. The serious investor knows that the government has to pay Rs6/unit from its own pocket which comes to around $4-5 billion and the Government of Pakistan does not have the resources to pay this difference.

The investor would only come if he is assured that the government is capable of paying. Therefore, the government should ensure measures to restore the confidence of investors and assure them that if they invest, the government will pay them and not default on its sovereign guarantee.

TNS: To regulate private sector, you need to have a strong government. Do you think your government would be able to stop private sector from exploiting the people in Pakistan?

MM: We will do so by strengthening the regulator. What will we do to end 14-16 hours loadshedding in rural areas and 08-12 hour loadshedding in urban areas if we do not invite the private sector because the government has no money. Therefore, the government has an obligation to strengthen its regulation process. If NEPRA and PEPCO are not made world-class institutions, the situation is not going to change for the better; therefore regulation process should be ensured on sophisticated grounds.

TNS: The vision of your energy policy reads ‘Pakistan will develop the most efficient and consumer-centric power generation…’ So, with tariff adjustment and private sector’s participation, how would you ensure this consumer-centric power generation?

MM: If I want to give subsidy of $5 billion and I have no money, is it sustainable? So to make energy consumer-centric, you have three choices. First, the government should somehow arrange $5 billion to put in energy sector and the only way to do it is to print more money which will raise tariff as well as inflation. If you print money unabatedly it will result in 10 times more inflation in the country. Previously, industry was the second largest recipient of subsidy after residential consumers. A man who is making money was the second recipient of subsidy.

Because of our energy mix, the cost of electricity is Rs12/unit while we are selling it for Rs9/unit. So with a heavy heart we have adjusted the tariff. The tariff hike would also change the behaviour of people as well and they would think twice before wasting energy.

The second thing we are doing is changing energy standards. We bring in most inefficient motors and appliances because they are cheaper. So we are trying to come up with standards for efficiency that will automatically improve energy consumption. So with the same quantum of energy, it will be possible to run more ACs, more motors and more machines with less electricity. We are also proposing to employ these energy standards for our industrial units. We are making it public that in next four years we will not tolerate this energy inefficiency. So four-year time period is given to introduce energy efficiency equipment.

Third, we are working to introduce new construction standards. Most of the energy is lost due to engineering styles of construction. Our windows and doors are not insulated that result in more consumption of energy. We should employ new building standards for energy efficiency and encourage zero-energy cities and green cities standards for future constructions.

We have also been working to introduce time of day metering because energy demand varies from time to time in a day. We have prime time which remains from 06pm till 10pm, so all day energy requirement is 12000-14000MW, which goes up to 18000MW from 06:00 to 10:00pm. If we start charging people more during this peak time, the behaviour will change. You will see shops in Liberty Market, where traders usually have installed 200 to 400 bulbs in their shops, closing down early. The traders will start using fewer light bulbs and energy efficient light bulbs. We also need to shun the practice of shopping at night. We should encourage people to carry out their day-to-day activities in sunlight.

TNS: The new energy policy has also been facing a lot of criticism from different quarters which say that it does not offer out of the box solution, your comment.

MM: I want to focus on demand and supply strategy, distribution and transmission strategy and for better results everything from generation to transmission should be reformed. I am open to adopt better ideas to reform the system from tariff to billing.

In my opinion, policy is a living document. In the next couple of years, realities in Pakistan are going to change. We need strategies and policies to deal with new emerging situations. Everyone is invited to give better ideas on energy and good ideas will find their place in policies of the next two years.

TNS: Will it be profitable for Pakistan to shift electricity generation to coal as the world is trying to move away from coal?

MM: Our cost for electricity is Rs12/unit whereas India is trading it at Rs7/unit and making 60-70 per cent of its energy from coal whereas Pakistan’s electricity generation ratio from coal is less than one per cent. So why are we paying double price. Why should we burden our people?

The cost of solar energy is Rs20/unit, furnace oil Rs19-27/unit, hydel Rs7-8/unit, coal Rs 8-9/unit, nuclear about Rs5/unit and on gas with subsidy the price is Rs6/unit. Hydel is cornerstone of our strategy which is no doubt inexpensive and long-term energy source. Though big dams are controversial, there is no controversy on hydel source of energy.

TNS: My last question relates to circular debt, how will the government control it?

MM: I think we have started paying it and the day we paid it, 31st of May, it started mounting again the very next day. Our projected circular debt and subsidy for this year was $5 billion. We will reduce the circular debt by reducing subsidy. Rs135-145 billion electricity is being stolen every year. If we recover Rs100 billion from electricity thieves, we will be left with only Rs70 billion circular debt.

[B]08.09.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]The intractable case of Syria[/SIZE]
The US-led invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan have proved to be a military misadventure due to exorbitant human and material loss. The same is likely to happen again
By Tahir Kamran[/CENTER][/B]

The Syrian crisis has taken an ominous turn. The civil war, which started in the wake of Arab Spring in March 2011, is killing 5,000 people every month and has created 1.8 million refugees. The recent incident which has alerted the Western powers, including America, happened in Eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, which was allegedly shelled by Syrian armed forces around 2am on August 21 using sarin gas, resulting in the deaths of more than 1400 people. A definitive outcome of any investigation as to who, in fact, is the culprit is yet to come, but some people of considerable influence are squarely blaming the Bashar al-Assad government for the atrocity.

Immediately after the incident got the media spotlight, yet another strike by the ‘Global Cop’ (read America) seemed imminent in close collaboration with its coalition partners — Great Britain being the foremost among them, followed by France. It was not, however, a smooth sailing as some, including Barack Obama and John Kerry, thought it might be.

The House of Commons in Great Britain has voted against the ninth western intervention in Arab or Muslim countries in 15 years, putting the American president in an awkward position. The backbench revolt among the Tory camp with 30 MPs joining the opposition to vote against launching any military offensive on Syria seems quite heartening. Cognizant of the sustained opposition within UK and within the military establishment too, members of parliament went on to represent the will of the people.

The anti-war component among British parliamentarians carried the day with apparently a slim margin of 13, it nevertheless had a lasting impact. Professor Philip Cowley of Nottingham University told the BBC that, “No government has lost a vote over matters of defence or military involvement since at least the mid-19th century.” That is exactly what makes it into a historic event. One hopes that people of considerable influence like Boris Johnson, London Mayor, Lord Howard, a former conservative leader and Sir Malcolm Rifkind, a former foreign secretary, who are putting pressure on David Cameron to return to parliament for another vote, don’t succeed in their bidding.

Britain, by voting against the (imperial) war, has not only set at rest the widely held perception of the country being Washington’s bloody adjutant, but it has also caused commotion and disquiet in America. One more important upshot of that historic event has been Obama’s climb down: the “beginning of the historic American retreat”.

The American wobble caused by the House of Commons definitive stance on the Syrian crisis has reverberated significantly in other countries of Europe too, particularly France is a case in point. Francois Hollande is coming under increasing internal pressure to hold a debate on the issue of Syria in parliament as opinion polls show 64 per cent of the French populace disapproves of intervention in Syria. Francois Fillon, former prime minister and the main opposition leader, referred to Syria as part of a region which is a ‘powder-keg’ and argued that France should act “responsibly” and not follow anyone into an attack, even America.

People at large, particularly in Europe, are surely entitled to ask for clarity from their political leadership, not least because the consequences, unintended or otherwise, of many of the previous eight interventions in Muslim countries by the Western powers hardly show any sign of abating. The invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan have proved to be a military misadventure for Nato-led forces. The human and material costs incurred in these invasions have been exorbitant vis a vis the anticipated outcome. The same is likely to happen if history is allowed to repeat itself.

The most toxic and enduring element of the civil war in Syria is its significant sectarian dimension, which one must not lose sight of. Although the Shia-Sunni sectarian divide has historical roots, the way American forces used Shia militia against Sunni insurgents during its military engagement in Iraq exacerbated the sectarian malaise in the region. Besides Syria, it will have destabilising impact on Turkey, Iraq and Lebanon and it may turn out to be extremely perilous for Israel too. It is probable that the Western powers are not alive to the grave threat that this proposed military action will widen the gulf between Muslim world and the American-led West beyond measure.

The Arab League’s role in this crisis is absolutely lamentable. Saudi Arabia and Qatar in particular appear to be all the more anxious to see the back of Bashar al-Assad. Their prime concern is to stall Iranian influence in Syria. Resolution passed by the Arab League espousing the military attack on Syria is highly regrettable to say the least.

[B]15.09.2013 [/B][B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Historical myths and realities[/SIZE]
Contrary to the official history, the Ghazanvid and Ghorid eras were perhaps the darkest periods of Muslim rule in India with instability, warfare, economic collapse etc, as hallmarks
By Yaqoob Khan Bangash[/CENTER][/B]

In Pakistan, we often idolise people without knowing much about them; though perhaps that is the reason we idolise them. In government published history textbooks, and in the dreaded Pakistan Studies curriculum, two people and periods have often been lionised — the time of Mahmud of Ghazna and his empire, and the period of Shahabuddin Muhammad Ghori and his empire. We revere these two personalities so much that even the military has named its cruise and ballistic missiles after these two men. The main argument in their favour is usually that these two men and their rule were beneficial for ‘Islam’ and ‘Muslim’ rule in India. The reality, as often found, is nearly the opposite of what we are officially told in Pakistan.

The dynasty which Mahmud replaced in most of what is now Pakistan is seldom remarked upon in our textbooks. All we learn is that it was the ‘Hindu Shahi’ dynasty, and that is usually about it. We never read how prosperous, developed and peaceful this region was before Mahmud and how it was then transformed into a region of continual warfare and misery. The Muslim traveller and chronicler, Al-Biruni commented on the Hindu Shahis: ‘We must say that, in all their grandeur, they never slackened in the ardent desire of doing that which is good and right, that they were men of noble sentiment and noble bearing.’ With this background we must judge the entry of Mahmud into South Asia.

Mahmud of Ghazna was nothing more than a looter and his main interest in India was plunder. That is why when he dislodged the Hindu Shahis he did not appoint a ‘governor’ or ‘viceroy’ but left the conquered areas usually in the hands of sipahsalars — Generals — who were only interested in collecting revenue and defence and had scant interest in governance and justice. Thus during Mahmud’s ‘rule’ if one might call that, India suffered economic plunder, political instability and a distinct lack of justice.

Pakistani texts also boldly claim that Mahmud and his successors fought for Islam against non-Muslims — nothing could be further from the truth. Not only did they not do anything for the spread of Islam, they even attacked Muslim principalities. For example, in 1006 AD (396 AH), when Mahmud wanted to march to Multan, a Muslim principality, he wanted Ananadpal, the Hindu ruler of Lahore, to allow his safe passage. However, Anandpal made common cause with Daud, the ruler of Multan, and marched up to Peshawar to oppose Mahmud’s advance. This was perhaps the first example of a common Hindu-Muslim front in opposition to an invading Muslim army, which both the Hindu and Muslim rulers in India knew brought only death and misery. So much for Mahmud’s Muslim friendly credentials!

Pakistani writers also give the impression that Mahmud and his successors were zealot Muslims who only fought for the cause of Islam. This would obviously rule out any cooperation, let alone incorporation, of non-Muslim elements in these seemingly ‘Jihadist’ forces. However, there is ample historical evidence that not only were Hindus employed in the Ghaznavid armies, they also held important positions. For example during the reign of Nasiruddin Masud, Mahmud’s son, several Hindus were generals in the Ghaznavid armies and fought for the Sultan against rebellious Muslim nobles.

Professor Baqir notes in his history of Lahore that when conflict broke out between the Sultan-appointed salar of India, Ahmad Nialtagin, and the Qazi at Lahore, ‘Sultan Masud dispatched Banah, a Hindu general, at the head of a large army to the rescue of the Qazi. But Banah was defeated and got killed. Another Hindu general Tilak then offered his services to Sultan Masud for this purpose. This offer was accepted and Tilak reaching Mandhakur gave a battle to Ahmad Nialtagin. Nialtagin this time did not take a firm stand and after fighting for a short time escaped towards Multan. His defeated army was routed by Tilak, who also placed a price at the head of Nialtagin.’

This incident where a Hindu general, fighting for a Muslim ruler, defeated a Muslim noble, must rattle the brains of those who give a very clear cut — Hindu vs. Muslim — colour and interpretation to this period of history. This incident, and several others like this, should certainly make us wonder about the real power dynamics of the time. I am no expert on Indian medieval history, but even a cursory look at the available sources makes a strong argument that it was more about conquest, loot and power politics than religion which marked this era.

Mahmud and his successors were Muslims, surely, but they were not so concerned about the spread of Islam than they were about the regular flow of revenue (read harshly extracted revenue) from India. As a matter of fact, there are several occasions during this period where the Ghazna-based Sultan marched into India because the revenue flow had been stemmed, but hardly any incident where the Sultan attacked the country for the spread of Islam.

As it is with official Pakistani history writing, it is also conveniently forgotten that the empire created by the Ghoris dislodged that of the Ghaznavids. After all, both empires covered almost the same area, so one must have defeated the other — a Muslim defeated a Muslim. Of course the seamless jump from Mahmud to Muhammad Ghori in our texts prevents people from questioning the great Islamic credentials we like to ascribe them.

Professor Baqir notes the surrender of Lahore by the Ghaznavid Khusru Malik to Muhammad Ghori in the following manner: ‘...Muhammad Ghuri, collecting his forces, attempted a third time to reduce the city of Lahore, which he effected by treachery in the following manner. While he was preparing for his expedition, he wrote to Khusru Malik that he was desirous of accommodating their differences by a treaty of peace. To convince him of the sincerity of his intention, he released his son Malik Shah, and sent him back to Lahore with a splendid retinue....In the meantime Muhammad Ghuri with a large army, marching with incredible expedition, came to Lahore and surrounded the camp of Khusru Malik at night. The emperor awoke in the morning, and seeing no means of escape, threw himself at the mercy of his enemy. The gates of the city were accordingly thrown open to receive him, and the empire passed from the house of Ghazna to that of Ghur.’

Therefore, not only did Muhammad Ghori displace a Muslim ruler, he achieved it by deception, something again not in keeping with our idealistic view of him. I wonder what this means for the impression we want to create with our Ghori missiles?

In reading the early medieval period we must also be very careful about the terms in which conquests are justified. Almost always religion is evoked as a cause, but almost always religion is only a secondary interest. The Ghorids too used religion to expand their empire: after all there was no better morale booster and a battle cry than the spread of Islam in those days. But the mere invocation of religion did not mean that the conquerors were either pious Muslims working for a selfless mission. Even Firishta, the sixteenth century Persian Muslim historian, noted the often dual nature of conquests.

Commenting on Muhammad Ghori’s conquest of Benaras, Firishta noted that ‘...he broke the idols in above one thousand temples, which he purified and consecrated to the true God. Here he also found immense plunder.’ One must wonder, therefore, if Ghori’s main intention in attacking Benaras was to loot its famously rich temples or to destroy un-Islamic ‘idols’? The concentration of wealth in temples in India might have given the prime pretext for such looters to combine their raiding expeditions with giving some service to the cause of Islam as a by product.

History writing in every age is a biased operation. This is because no historian, no matter how much they try, can be free of all bias. Therefore, there are different versions and books on history, since if one could write an ‘unbiased’ and ‘objective’ version of history, all the other historians would be out of business. However, a historian must try not to hide facts and only use verifiable facts and evidence to create an argument. It is in the interpretation of the facts and evidence that historians differ, not in their existence. Unfortunately, the trend in Pakistan has been to simply fabricate facts and lie. A large section of official history writing in the country does not even go to the trouble of offering a different perspective or argument — they simply make things up or hide things.

In the case of the Ghaznavid and Ghorid eras, we have been so obsessed with making them into ‘Islamic heroes’ that we have simply not told people what actually happened in those eras. Few people in Pakistan study medieval history, and students in school get a neat and clean version of these eras as a glorious epoch in Indian Muslim history, where these eras were perhaps the darkest periods of Muslim rule in India with instability, warfare, economic collapse etc, as hallmarks. The lack of information, discussion and understanding of this era has meant that even historical faux pas have been made, as with the recent ‘restoration’ of Muhammad Ghori’s ‘tomb’ near Jhelum in the Punjab by the infamous Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, when almost all historical accounts agree that while Ghori was assassinated near Jhelum, his body was taken to Ghazna and buried there. Only if people had read history!

[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]15.09.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Well being[/SIZE]
How proximity to an oil/gas well may bring prosperity to a community neglected by state?
By Shahzada Irfan Ahmed[/CENTER][/B]

It’s time for roll call. The young energetic boys, clad in their yellowish orange uniform, raise their hands one by one and speak out their names loudly. Every student is supposed to speak out his address as well, so that the teacher can work out the attendance rates of children coming from different areas.

The exercise does not take long as the teacher has to simply write down a digit or digits in the address column. The children simply yell out the number of the gas well they live close to and do not have to mention anything else. The message gets across.

Students of a government elementary school in Daharki, Sindh, these boys have grown up seeing personnel of oil and gas exploration companies all around. Despite inhabiting land rich in natural resources and home to more than a dozen of country’s biggest industrial units, these people have had little contact with the representatives of the state.

It is estimated that the government revenue generated from this city is next only in volume to that generated from Karachi but unfortunately the state expenditure on development here is one of the lowest.

In Daharaki, there are no functional Basic Health Units (BHUs), government dispensaries, government schools with proper buildings and furniture or safe drinking water provided by the civic authorities. All the major development one can see is mainly due to the initiatives of oil and gas companies and other corporates under their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) obligations.

No doubt, it is binding on big companies to spend their funds on development projects in the areas of their operation. But the question here is that does this obligation on companies exonerate the state of all its responsibilities with respect to meeting the basic needs of its citizens? The answer simply is that the CSR funds are meant to supplement the efforts of the state in such areas and can no way be an alternative to government resources meant for this purpose.

The investments they have made in Daharki are much more than mere fulfillment of a contractual obligation, states Col (retd) Dr Sanaullah, Deputy Manager Medical at Mari Petroleum Company Limited — a public listed company doing exploration work here since 1957.

He tells TNS the oil and exploration companies are required by law to invest in the social sector development but their investments are manifold of what would have been enough to fulfill this requirement. “Here the company itself identifies public’s needs and executes projects which suit them the most.”

Mari Field areas lie within the vicinity of a desert. Initially there were no roads and the local communities could not access public transportation facilities and commute easily with other areas nearby. Over the decades, the company has laid up infrastructure in the area which includes 57 kilometers of metalled road, 308 kilometers of dirt (kacha) road, 13 bridges over canals etc and is spending around Rs 14 million on its maintenance and operation every year.

In fact, Sana says, there is a typical model of development in Daharaki. It starts with discovery of a gas well. The area of the well belongs to private parties but soon after the discovery, it is bought over by the company at a good price. Instead of outsourcing the security to some company, the owner of the land is offered the job of chowkidaar at Rs 20,000 a month for an eight-hour shift. As there are three shifts, and a backup is required on an off-day, the owner gets around Rs 80,000 a month which is quite a handsome amount. Most owners open shops at the sites of the wells.

The discovery is followed by laying of road network, shifting of communities to the site due to development, opening up of shops and markets etc, dispensaries and so on. So far, 113 gas wells have been discovered in Mari Fields and almost all of them have communities centered around them. The members of these communities identify themselves with the numbers of these wells. The company manages mobile dispensaries to provide treatment to over 100,000 patients annually in remote areas including those close to Indo-Pak border. Unfortunately, these areas do not have functional government dispensaries.

No doubt one-time investments are also a big deal, but the real issue is how to sustain these initiatives. This is really a big concern for them, says Sana while referring to the Mari Maternity Home constructed by the company back in 1990.

This maternity home is located in the central location of Mari field in union council Dad Leghari, the oldest village there, even before partition of Pakistan. This maternity home was handed over to Sindh Health Department but it could not make it functional for many years.

On the request of local notables, MPCL had to take over its operations in May, 2003. This maternity home treats over 15,000 patients annually and offers services of normal deliveries, DNCs, ultrasounds and other gynecological procedures. “We have generators here as there is hardly any electricity throughout the day. Even if it is there, the voltage is too low for even the ultrasound machine to operate,” says Dr Shahida Faiz, gynecologist at the facility.

The expectations of local communities in oil or gas rich territories are also high. Discouraged by lack of response from state, they look to corporates for relief. Probably, this was the reason why locals from Sanghar district approached Supreme Court last week and complained about disregard of contractual obligations and neglect of social sector development by oil and gas exploration companies in the district. The apex court has sought details of different Exploration and Production (E&P) companies’ spending under CSR in their jurisdictions.

However, there is an explanation on why it is sometimes difficult to fulfill certain obligations. For example, it is impossible to give maximum jobs to locals in the absence of technically trained manpower. For this very reason, major industrial units in Daharaki could give low-paying and non-technical jobs to locals and managerial and technical posts would go to outsiders.

But today, the Technical Training Center (TTC), Daharaki trains needy local youth in the fields of mechanical engineering and chemical engineering. Set up by The Pakistan Chemical & Energy Sector Skills Development Company (PCESSDC) with financial support from Engro Foundation, MPCL and others, the center offers a three-year diploma in these subjects. This qualification increases employability of students — a proof of which is that the Engro Group has offered to hire the complete batch of 80 students as soon as it passes out, says Brig (retd) Raja Muhammad Ali, CEO, PCESSDC.

An interesting fact is that though mega companies may compete with each other in business arena, they have to work in tandem with each other to avoid duplication when it comes to execution of development work.

For example, MPCL does not need to worry about incidents of snake bites in Daharki as Engro Group is running a huge facility to cure these. On the other hand, the MPCL manages a TB Clinic at its lease area where all the tests required for the diagnosis of the disease and X-rays are available free of costs. The patients come from Mari lease area, other areas of Ghotki, Rahimyar Khan, Jacobabad and District Sukkur, says Dr Tajammul Baig Mughal, Senior Medical Officer at the facility.

The facility works in collaboration with WHO, and tracks new and old patients from over a huge catchment area. “We cannot afford to miss them as every single patient has the potential of infecting 15 more people if not treated in time,” he adds.

[B]15.09.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Tax reform agenda[/SIZE]
The country will keep surviving on bailouts unless the rich and mighty are taxed by creating a corruption-free and efficient tax apparatus
By Huzaima Bukhari & Dr. Ikramul Haq[/CENTER][/B]

The dire need in today’s Pakistan is to tap the real tax potential and make the country a self-reliant economy, stop wasteful, unproductive expenses, cut the size of the cabinet and government machinery, make government-owned corporations profitable or restructure them, accelerate industrialisation and increase productivity, improve agricultural sector, bring inflation to single digit and reduce inequalities through a policy of redistribution of income and wealth.

Higher rates of income taxes, capital transfer taxes and wealth taxes are some means adopted for achieving these ends in all democratic countries. In Pakistan, there has been a gradual shift from equitable taxes to highly inequitable taxes. The shift from removing inequalities through taxes to presumptive and easily collectable taxes has destroyed the fundamental principle of horizontal and vertical equity.

In Pakistan, the poor are subjected to heavy and cruel taxation to finance the luxuries of Riasti Ashrafiya — militro-judicial-civil complex and public office-holders who enjoy free perquisites, benefits, including expensive plots at throw-away prices at prime locations that belong to the state. The way they waste and plunder the taxpayers’ money is no secret. The country is surviving on bailouts from the IMF due to perpetual failure of the ruling elite to tax the rich and mighty that matter in the Land of Pure. Revenues worth trillions of rupees have been sacrificed by governments — civil and military alike — since 1977 extending unprecedented exemptions and concessions to the privileged classes. Gradually, the governments abolished all progressive taxes e.g. Estate Duty, Gift Tax, Capital Gain Tax etc.

The historic decision of taxing “agricultural income”, passed by the Parliament in the shape of Finance Act, 1977, was thwarted by the military regime of Ziaul Haq. Through this law, the Parliament amended the definition of “agricultural income” as obtaining in section 2(1) of then Income Tax Act, 1922 to tax big absentee landlords. This was a revolutionary step to impose tax on agricultural income at federal level for the first time in the history of Pakistan, but ruthlessly foiled by a military dictator. During Zia’s rule of 11 years and that of General Musharraf for nearly 9 years, absentee land owners (including mighty generals who received state lands as gallantry awards or otherwise!) did not pay a single penny as agricultural income tax or wealth tax. Taxation of “agricultural income”, at present, is the sole prerogative of provincial governments under the 1973 Constitution of Pakistan. All the four provinces have enacted laws to this effect, but total collection in 2012-2013 was less than Rs2 billion against actual potential of Rs200 billion (share of agriculture in GDP was about 22 per cent).

No one has calculated how much tax loss Pakistan suffered perpetually since 1977 on account of non-taxation of agricultural income alone as suggested under Finance Act, 1977. If we add total loss of revenue through various exemptions, non-taxation of benefits given to state oligarchy (Riasti Ashrafiya) and through Statutory Regulatory Orders (SROs) issued during the last four decades, the number comes to over Rs100 trillion — this explains how unprecedented concessions to the rich has made the state poorer rendering every citizen of this country to an enormous indebtedness. We would not have required any borrowing at all, if tax losses were not incurred.

How the governments were abusing taxpayers’ money can be judged from the decision of Supreme Court on April 17, 2013 suspending the March 14, 2013 notification issued by Interior Ministry granting former interior minister Rehman Malik and his predecessors lifetime perks and privileges. Hearing the suo moto notice case regarding unlimited perks and privileges granted to two former prime ministers, all former interior ministers, Sindh chief minister and other senior officials by the outgoing government, the five-judge bench of apex court sought a response from relevant authorities in this regard.

It is thus no wonder that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) posted shortfall of over Rs450 billion for fiscal year 2012-13. Very few people know that in the face of such shortfall, the FBR withdrew the biggest revenue spinner — 1 per cent withholding tax on manufacturing — resulting in a revenue loss of Rs18 billion. Drastic cut of federal excise duty on sugar to 0.5 per cent aimed at benefiting the influential sugar industry owners, causing a loss of Rs8 billion to the national exchequer. 50 per cent cut on sales tax for steel melters caused revenue loss of nearly Rs4 billion.

In the budget for fiscal year 2013-14, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is assigned a target of Rs2475 billion — nearly 25 per cent increase over the collection made for 2012-13. All experts are of the view that it is irrational and ambitious in view of expected growth rate and enforcement capabilities of the FBR.

Adding insult to injury, despite the dismal performance, the FBR gave bonuses to its staff and officers ranging from one salary to three salaries. This was shocking to say the least, especially as the country had been going through the worst economic crisis. It is not understandable why the FBR even gives double basic salary to its staff in addition to annual bonuses — they are government employees and should be entitled to normal emoluments like all other public servants.

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and the National Assembly should look into the affairs of the FBR asking them to justify double basic salary and undue “bonuses” — especially when 90 per cent tax collection comes through withholding or voluntary payments with returns, and revenue targets are missed every year.

At operational level, the challenge is creating a corruption-free, efficient and result-oriented tax apparatus. Though the World Bank and other donors gave a lot of money and consultancy to Pakistan, things have changed only for the worse. If the FBR wants to improve its efficiency, administrative pragmatic reforms are the immediate need of the day — a successful model of Mauritius Revenue Authority ([url]www.mru.gov.mu[/url]) can be studied, debated and adapted after making necessary changes to suit our peculiar conditions.

At enforcement level, the biggest challenge is how to bridge the tax gap — collection by the FBR is one fourth of actual tax potential [Fiscal fiasco, The News, 12 May 2013]. Issues of documentation and tax compliance are lingering on for years even after completion of a costly $100 million World Bank funded Tax Reforms Administration Programme (TARP).

The only way to check massive evasion in customs, income tax and sales tax is implementing an integrated Tax Intelligence System, which is capable of recording, storing and cross-matching all inflows and outflows. All in-bound and out-bound containers should be scanned/x-rayed to check evasion of customs duties and taxes payable at source. However, no reform agenda can succeed unless FBR is insulated from outside political pressures. It should be made National Tax Collection Agency, responsible for collecting all federal and provincial taxes and should be run by an independent Board of Directors selected by National Finance Commission and/or Council of Common Interests.

It would facilitate taxpayers to approach one agency only and data sharing for all taxes would help in increasing revenues for the federation as well as the federating units.

[I]The writers, tax lawyers, are Adjunct Faculty at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)[/I]

[B]15.09.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Back to school[/SIZE]
Proper implementation of Article 25A to bring back 25 million children to school poses a serious challenge to political parties, provincial governments, policymakers and stakeholders
By Adnan Rehmat
[/CENTER][/B]
Pakistan is ranked the second worst country of the world boasting the dubious distinction of having the most school-going age children out of schools — the staggeringly high number of 25 million. Only Nigeria has worse figures.

More than 6 million Pakistani out-of-school children are of primary school age. This is the highest ranking in the world. Sudan is the second highest at 3 million. Pakistani girls enrolled in primary schools expressed as a percentage of total number of pupils in primary schools stands at about 40 per cent. This is the second worst ranking in the world, after Afghanistan. Close to 4 million girls of school-going age in Pakistan are out of schools — this is the worst ranking in the world. How can we possibly sleep at night?

Whose responsibility is it to ensure children go to schools? What does the state feel about this? Article 25A as part of the 18th Amendment of the Pakistani Constitution enacted in 2010 promises free and compulsory education for children between 6 and 16 years. Says Article 25A, rather succinctly, “The State shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to sixteen years in such manner as may be determined by law.”

But the devil, as they say, is in the details — in the absence of definitions of ‘free’ education and ‘compulsory’ education or elaboration for the age bracket of ‘6 to 16 years’, there cannot be accurate estimations of the resources necessary to enforce Article 25A. The key implication for the federal state and provinces, then, is that they are in serious danger of rigging themselves up for failure in regards to enforcing Article 25A.

Reading 25A right:

What does ‘free’ education mean? Does it mean just free tuition, or also free books and free transport? Education being a provincial subject, the budget for free text books and free transport would be different from the budget for free tuition. Then there’s ‘compulsory’ education. Does this mean parents will be forced to send children to school and if not forced will they be punished? If so, legislative requirements will be needed for this, as well as enforcement mechanisms — and allied budgets. Are provinces ready for this?

And what about the bit of Article 25A that promises taking care of the educational needs of children between the ages of ‘6 and 16.’ Does this mean 10 years of education or educating children of this age group up to matriculation? What if a student fails and cannot complete matriculation by age 16? In such a case, will s/he not be subsidized for full matriculation?

Lack of clarity on interpretation on scale, scope and mechanisms means the provinces may not be able to work out the budgets to implement Article 25A. If this isn’t bad enough, the last National Finance Commission (NFC) Award, which allocates the share of national revenue for the provinces, came before the 18thAmendment (and the attendant Article 25A). This means that the provinces’ allocations for education budgets are devoid of the accuracy in estimation of resources required to enforce Article 25A. This has a real potential for Article 25A to be doomed for failure with the dire implication that even more children will be added to the tally of 25 million children already out of schools.

25 million voters for

education:

The latest general election was held in May 2013 and education was one of the key themes of focus of manifestos on which promises of political parties were made. This means the demand side of education was outlined — both through political consensus on 18th Amendment (inclusive of Article 25A) and through the election pledges of parties. Elections have happened and different parties have come into power in the provinces.

Over 25 million votes have been secured based on promises and now it’s time to fulfill them, i.e., it is now time to investigate and attend to the supply side of education. There is a need to create a lobby to demand enactment and to help bring the focus on drafting mechanisms, not just compliance. Bringing together relevant stakeholders to create such mechanisms and lobby to serve as a watchdog on the commitments made by political parties is important.

The practicality of implementing Article 25A needs to be understood by political parties, provincial governments, policymakers and stakeholders through investigation and advocacy about the essential links between promises by political parties, resource allocations and governance mechanisms on education policies for them to succeed. This investigation is missing and needs to be conducted.

The fact that the NFC Award, which divides national revenue among the provinces, came before the 18th Amendment means that the massive funds required for effective and successful implementation of Article 25A are not available. The appropriate allocations were, therefore, not made by any province in the budget for the new fiscal year after the May 2013 elections. This also means the provinces and the new parties that have come to power there are not really equipped to meet this obligation.

Subordinate legislation:

For all the above, subordinate legislation is necessary. Do the parties/provinces know about this, are they doing something about this, and have they the resources to do it, or have the priority and commitment to do this, or have made pronouncements and facilitative policies to make it happen so that allocations can be secured? So what about mechanisms for implementation, enforcement and facilitation and the resources necessary for these mechanisms? The NFC Award doesn’t factor these and recommend/allocate resources. So does this mean a new NFC is needed? Or a new amended Article 25A is needed?

Then there is Article 140A of the Constitution dealing with devolution – asserting that ultimately subjects including education are to devolve from provinces to districts. So how prepared the provinces are for this in terms of policies and resources required to fulfill the obligations of Article 140A? Don’t hold your breath on this one.

Putting another 25 million in classrooms:

The following roadmap is recommended to build a consensus in each of the four provinces to generate the urgency of effort and detail required to promote prioritised enforcement of Article 25A:

1. Identify the resource allocation and budgetary gaps between implied costs of implementation of Article 25A and the last NFC Award allocations relating to education.

2. Quantify the costs of pledges made on education in manifestos of political parties heading provincial governments now and their actual allocations to education in the latest provincial budgets with specific focus on implementation of Article 25A.

3. Promote awareness and dialogue among key stakeholders, including parties, governments, CSOs working on educational issues and educationists, on the gaps between promises and actual budgets and actual resources and mechanisms needed for implementing Article 25A.

4. Empower key supply-side actors such as teachers and their unions to move beyond demands for higher salaries to articulate demand for realistic resource allocations from policymakers for implementation of Article 25A.

Efforts are needed to assist and inform the debate on implementation of Article 25A at the federal and provincial levels by generating accurate, specific and relevant information, research, analysis and context required to generate support for the cause to promote better understanding among the key stakeholders for the kind of planning required to implement Article 25A.

By generating relevant and currently unavailable data and analysis on the links between promises of political parties, allocations of resources and proper interpretation of the implications of Article 25A, particularly in relevance to the NFC Award, the provinces can better plan implementation of this constitutional guarantee. There is a dire need to nudge the debate from generalities to specificities and practicalities to improve the chances of the success of implementation of Article 25A and generate the right resources that currently don’t exist to make this happen.

Time is running out. We need to send our 25 million children to schools who haven’t seen the inside of one. How can this possibly not be the top national priority?

[B]15.09.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Changing realities[/SIZE]
Pakistan’s foreign policy needs to see beyond Afghanistan as
cooperation with Central Asian Republics will have long term benefits
By Dr Syed Hussain Shaheed Soherwordi
[/CENTER][/B]
The foreign policy of Pakistan has been passing through a transitional-shift stage. The US drawdown of its forces from Afghanistan, revival of its relations with India and China as economic and strategic partners in regional affairs, and negotiations with Taliban have direct impact on Pakistan’s foreign relations.

Pakistan has shifted from singular dependence on the US to more of a multipolar foreign policy. Pakistan’s active and growing relations with China, the UK, Iran and other smaller nations of South Asia makes a security umbrella against India. For all the outreach and obfuscation, only two countries are central to Pakistan’s security: India and China.

The US is a nation which flirts with Pakistan and vice versa. Pakistan considers India as a major threat for its political and economic reasons. To counter any Indian adventurism, a strong military is a prerequisite. Many in Pakistan believe that by trimming the Pakistan army’s wings by reducing its number and its budget, the chances of military takeover would be diminished. However, the Indian threat is so immense, immediate and strong to Pakistan’s survival that curtailing Pakistan army would mean a defenseless Pakistan. Therefore, the anti-military establishment finds itself between the devil and deep sea. It’s like a catch-22 situation for them.

There is another extremist view which is followed by a section of Pakistani society that India wants to conquer Pakistan for its ultimate objective: the Maha Bharta. I do have concerns at India’s goals vis-à-vis Pakistan. However, I do not go to such an apocalyptic level. I don’t see benign scenario with India. The question is how actively malignant it is. Hence, we need to keep an eye on the growing Indian role in our backyard — Afghanistan — as well as its growing influence in other smaller five south Asian sister countries. In a way, Pakistan has every reason to be concerned about India.

Indo-US nuclear deal for civilian purposes has completely altered the South Asian strategic balance. She has now a dominant influence in Afghanistan. Its security agencies are actively playing their role in Balochistan insurgency via Afghanistan. Indians are supporting terrorist groups targeting the unionists in Balochistan. The Pakistanis periodically pay courtesy calls on Indian foreign ministry officials and the Pakistani prime minister and president often invites the Indian prime minister. Usually they pose smiling and show off warm handshakes. But both understand that the smiles are of crocodiles and elephants. Somehow, it’s not understandable why Pakistani political establishment is begging for the Indian PM’s visit to Pakistan?

Every nation wants détente with its adversaries. However, no one is compromising on its national respect and honour. The day Indian political establishment realises they need to normalise relations with Pakistan, they will move ahead and will come up with good intentions. However, Pakistan’s keenness for relaxation of the tension and India’s consistent response for curbing terrorism and then normalising relations between the two countries have become a joke now.

In worst case scenario, for the national security against any Indian attack, the Pakistanis are looking up to China. But this reliance is problematic given that China is on a path to normalization of relations with its neighbours, especially India, in the post-9/11 era.

While the Indians focus their hostile rhetoric almost entirely on China and Pakistan, the truth is there is not much reason for China than Pakistan to be fearful of India. As the world’s one of the leading military and economic power, China is unlikely to be attacked militarily by India. Or it will surely respond in full force to any Indian attack. Pakistan, however, is much softer, weaker and tempting target due to its deeper involvement in the war on terror, its military deployment in different terrorist-hit areas like Waziristan and Swat and its more focus to counter insurgent tendencies in Balochistan.

Though Pakistan army is equipped with the US weapons and every year shopping list of weapon purchase is allocated in the country’s federal budget, Pakistan cannot defend itself without the US diplomatic support or Chinese active military intervention or involvement.

However, keeping the religious orthodoxy in view, being too friendly to America is also a problem for Pakistan. Thus, reluctance of cooperation between the two nations is too visible. This has further been confirmed by the recently held All Parties Conference (APC) in which the case of US/Nato drone attacks on Pakistan’s border areas was pledged to be taken at the UN. Notwithstanding the tension and apparent detachment, the Pakistani role in the war on terror is unquestionably a high national security interest of the US. This is more important than Pakistan’s role during the Cold War against Soviet Union. After all, during the Cold War, at least twin towers were not erased and that the Soviet Union had never hurt the US inside the US territory.

Need of the time is a review and structural overhauling of Pakistan’s foreign policy. India is a part of Pakistan’s foreign policy. We need to develop and revive our relations with other South Asian countries which are equally important from strategic and economic perspective.

Similarly, Afghanistan has been very important to the Foreign Office. However, we need to see beyond Afghanistan. Central Asian Republics (CARs) have been ignored completely in the shadow of war on terror. Revival of economic ties with the CARs will have long term benefits. The war on terror is coming to a formal end in 2014. With the end of the game, money will also be over.

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

[B]15.09.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]My right to know[/SIZE]
A lot remains to be done to make
people aware about the right to
information law in KP
By Gulbaz Ali Khan
[/CENTER][/B]
It is the right of the general public to seek information. But it is really a challenging task when a government department is not willing to share.

As we know, easy access to information is not only helpful in empowering the poor and the vulnerable groups in society but also reduces incidence of corruption and injustice. It is time that all democratic governments take a step towards openness and transparency.

The elections in 2013 have brought four major parties in power in four provinces of Pakistan. It has started healthy competition among all the ruling parties to take lead in showing performance, especially in governance and local service delivery. In this regard, legislations on the Right to Information (RTI) and local governments are underway.

In few provinces, it has been presented and passed by the provincial assemblies. KP has taken lead in developing a comprehensive RTI law ahead of all provinces.

Through broad-based consultations and deliberations by the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a law was enacted on August 13, 2013 in this regard. The leadership of PTI-led coalition in the province has initiated steps in promoting transparency and accountability and is in the process of developing citizen-friendly good governance laws and RTI is one of them.

On August 15, 2013, PTI Chairman Imran Khan announced the law in a packed seminar in Peshawar and gave a briefing on the salient features of the law and its relevance to promoting good governance in KP.

The ceremony was attended by a large number of government officials, common citizens, activists, media and civil society organisations. A majority of the stakeholders applauded the efforts of the provincial government for a broad-based consultation for development of RTI law in province.

What makes this law different from the earlier toothless versions is its easy citizen-friendly process of getting access to a wide range of pro-active and on-demand information in the public interest.

It encourages a pro-active disclosure of information, which must be placed in a printable format in the public domain for wider use.

The procedure would be something like this. An information request, subject to payment of reasonable fee, will be dealt by the Information Officer. A receipt will also be issued to the requester upon submission of a request.

Under the law, the relevant department is bound to provide information within 10 days, extendable to another 10 days in case information is not properly stacked and requires search. It ensures quick provision of information in only two days in case it is deemed necessary to save human life.

It is argued that the literacy level in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa differs in different areas and the gender divide is clear, restricting a majority of the population to make use of this law. But, this binds an information officer to provide assistance to the requester in submitting the request and also elaborating the required information.

Any delay or holding of information request can be challenged. A requester has the right to lodge a complaint with the information commission. It will be binding on the public body to prove its position. The information commission will decide about the compliant within 60 days. If the concerned officer is found guilty of denying information to the requester and destroying/mutilating the public records, he/she can be awarded punishment of a maximum of 2-years imprisonment and or fine of Rs250 per delayed day to the maximum of Rs25,000.

Unlike an Ombudsman as an appellant body, the Information Commission will be established within 120 days, headed by Chief Information Commissioner and supported by three Commissioners from retired government officers and members from the judiciary, bar council and civil society. This commission’s prime responsibility is to dispose off the requester complaints, however, it will also develop rules and standards, publicise RTI, conduct awareness and training activities, etc.

The law also provides protection to whistleblowers who bring wrongdoings in limelight in the larger public interest.

Though the government has shown its commitment of promoting good governance and transparency through inclusion of citizens into government functions, it seems a gigantic task to fully implement the law in such a debilitating socio-economic and fragile security conditions.

While speaking during a seminar on RTI, Secretary Information asked the civil society and media to give support in ensuring proper use of this law by the common citizen.

This is something already being practised in India where a peanut vender in a small town can hold an Assistant Commissioner accountable for misuse of government vehicles by having access to information through RTI. Citizens in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa can also avail the offer only if they know about the law.

KP is lucky as it houses institutions where common citizens are engaged in management and oversight. Parent Teachers Councils (PTCs) in the education sector, Primary Care Management Committees (PCMC) in the health sector and Water User Committees (WUC) in the water sector have been instrumental in transforming decision-making into a more inclusive and participatory exercise, resulting in improved service delivery.

The social service committees have their workforce engaged constructively both with the community and administration to provide an opportunity to the government for wider RTI promotion and awareness.

Once this huge social workforce knows about the RTI, its use and effectiveness in holding local administration accountable, it will add to a faster social change at the grassroot level. An effective strategy, engaging these committees, will transform their members into local RTI activists.

[I]The writer is a social accountability expert based at CESSD, Peshawar and can be reached at [email]gulbazali@gmail.com[/email][/I]

[B]15.09.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Religion vs nation-state[/SIZE]
Either religion has to submit to the exigencies of the nation-state, or else the nation-state,
by acquiescing to the ‘universal’ call of the religion, will sacrifice its very existence
By Tahir Kamran[/CENTER][/B]

One of the criteria to ascertain the level of socio-cultural maturity among any group of people is to assess its demeanour towards those adhering to a different belief system. Co-existence, if not camaraderie, among the followers of different faiths or sects is absolutely vital for the sustenance of the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society of Pakistan, which is also conspicuously punctuated by wide variety of sectarian denominations.

The rapidly diminishing proportion of religious minorities in Pakistan provides a stark testament to our collective attitude towards divergence of any sort, and especially of religious difference. Exclusion in the name of religion has become an institutionalised practice which clerics practice with impunity, and the inability of the state to successfully counter such a social malaise has debilitated not only the state itself, but society too.

On September 7, 2013, the 39th anniversary of the passage of the Second Amendment was marked by the holding of the Markazi Khatm-i-Nubuwat Conference in Johar Town, Lahore. The conference was reportedly riddled with diatribe against Ahmadis. Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rehman, Chairman of the Ruet-i-Hilal Committee was among the principal speakers at the conference. The virulence that his speech contained epitomises yet again the changed character of Barelvi Ulema, particularly in post-independence days, but also it reflected the prevalence of exclusionary rhetoric in a sect known historically for its relative docility. Other speakers including Dr Amir Liaqat Hussain, Pir Muhibbullah Noori, caretaker of Baseerpur and Justice (retired) Mian Nazir Akhtar were equally relentless against this minority group.

Majlis-i-Tahaffuz-i-Khatam-i-Nubuwat, under whose auspice the conference was held, has a history of posing challenges to the state. It almost rocked the foundations of the state apparatus in 1953, until the Army was called in and a tight rein was put on its leaders. History repeated itself in 1974, when they declared Ahmadis to be non-Muslims. Z.A Bhutto acquiesced because he was threatened with yet another challenge to the state. MTKN then perpetuated this challenge (if not direct threat) to the state through Sipah-i-Sahab and the much-feared Lashkar-i-Jhangvi.

This latest conference is yet another repetition of a call to revisit the horrific episodes of religious fanaticism and bigotry that no civilized nation can afford.

The tone, tenor and language employed by these fire-brand guardians of Islam points to their intolerance of those who practice different faiths. This also begs the question as to how a ‘citizen’ is to be defined given the de facto situation obtaining in Pakistan. Practically, the beleaguered minorities of Christians and Ahmadis are denied the right to be citizens of Pakistan. The two categories of ‘Muslim’ and ‘Pakistani citizen’ have become conflated and therefore ceased to be independent of each other. So, whether citizenship should be conferred only on Muslims, or on anybody possessing a Pakistani passport or national identity card irrespective of his/her religion or creed, becomes an open-ended question.

Another point here concerns the obligation of a state to protect its citizens, a duty which it is constantly shirking. The Pakistan Penal Code succinctly pronounces (in section 153-A) a punishment of up to five years of imprisonment and a fine for inciting disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will between different religious groups. The invocation of such punishment becomes mandatory in such circumstance in order to rein in anybody flouting the law, even if it is in the name of religion. Unless this is done, the menace of religious extremism, which inexorably leads to sectarian militancy, will not be contained.

That people who, at one point or the other, have represented the state of Pakistan, such as Muneeb-ur-Rehman and Justice (retired) Nazir Akhtar, are now employing religion to incite violence, which is lamentable, to say the least. The neutrality which used to be a sine qua non for any one holding official position is starkly compromised. Unfortunately, in Pakistan this has become the norm. The government officials make appearances on TV channels and write regular columns expressing views antithetical to stated government policy.

Reverting to the point of the relationship of the religion and the nation-state, which, at best, is erratic primarily because of their inability to co-exist on an even keel. Either, religion has to submit to the exigencies of the nation-state and compromise on its transnational agenda and appeal, or else the nation-state, by acquiescing to the ‘universal’ call of the religion, will sacrifice its very existence. Any religion claiming to have a ‘universal’ agenda will be at the cross purposes with the nation-state, which is run by a constitution and is contained within properly demarcated and internationally accepted frontiers. Even the Muslim states with firmly established theocratic systems of governance, like Saudi Arabia and Iran, keep religion under check. Religion in the particular case of Pakistan tends to disregard such a thing as ‘national frontiers’.

Similarly, religion accords rights and privileges to the believer in its fundamentals, whereas a nation-state is obliged to protect the rights of those living within its frontiers irrespective of their belief system. It is, therefore, essential that, in the peculiar case of Pakistan, the state must assert its position vis a vis the individuals and agencies representing religion. The solidarity and strength of Pakistan is what seems to be in jeopardy here.

Ironically, the surest way to discredit anyone is to call him/her an Ahmadi, in the way that the JUI-F has orchestrated a campaign against Abdul Lateef Yousafzai in spite of the fact that he has denied being an Ahmadi. It is indeed frustrating to know that such people will be sharing the responsibility of governing this hapless country with the PML-N. One can only hope, against hope, that the current government will pay heed to such a situation.

[B]15.09.2013[/B][B][CENTER] [SIZE="5"]Assault on rationalism[/SIZE]
A man of virtues, charged with apostasy, Dr Narendra Dabholkar lived and died for a cause to liberate human minds from the shackles of blind faith and superstitions
By Naseer Memon
[/CENTER][/B]
What Dr Narendra Dabholkar could not accomplish after years of campaigning, his body did even before its cremation. State Cabinet of Maharashtra approved the law to proscribe superstition and black magic on the next day of his grisly murder. The law remained in cold storage for more than eight years after it was approved by the cabinet but could not see the light of day and lapsed. The law seeks to make it punishable for self-styled godmen to prey on people by offering rituals, charms, magical cures and propagating black magic. Dabholkar laid down his life for this landmark legislation, not too exorbitant a deal for a person whose glow would eclipse moons in the skies of human history.

Dr Dabholkar, a septuagenarian crusader for rationality, was silenced by a sanctimonious brigade during his morning stroll on August 20, 2013. It was not an ordinary murder. The assassinated rationalist was an extraordinary soul who relentlessly campaigned for a law against superstition and black magic in India for years. His campaign riled extremist Hindu groups who charged him with apostasy and termed him “anti-Hindu”. His murder sent a shockwave among peace lovers and people who promote rationality in society. The grisly incident reminded such people of their vulnerability across the globe. Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan, who attended Dr Dabholkar’s funeral in his native place in Satara, likened him with Mahatma Gandhi and compared the murder to the assassination of Gandhi.

A man of virtues, charged with apostasy; breathed and died for a cause to liberate human minds from the shackles of blind faith. His family presented the most befitting posthumous accolade by upholding his mission and decided not to scatter his ashes into water as the apostle of rationality believed that immersing ashes of the dead pollutes water bodies. His soul must have found eternal ecstasy that his family decided to scatter his ashes on his farm where his wife Shaila practices organic horticulture.

Human history is full of evidences that blind faith never tolerates logic and rationale. Dogmatism has an innate propensity to subjugate pragmatism. Orthodoxy in every religion adopted such a course. Muslim clergy of Spain did not spare 12th century Muslim scholar Ibn-e-Rushd. He was a polymath, possessing mastery on Aristotelian philosophy, Islamic philosophy, Islamic theology, Maliki law and jurisprudence, logic, psychology, politics, Arabic music theory, and the sciences of medicine, astronomy, geography, mathematics, physics and celestial mechanics. He challenged clerics for their literal practice by claiming that philosophers had better sense to understand Quranic allegory through lenses of logic. Not just Islamic clergy but Catholic Church was equally snarled by his writings on rationalism that sneaked into European borders from Spain. He was reviled as a heathen.

Similarly, Jewish proselytizers loathed Moses Maimonides (M?s? ibn Maym?n in Arabic). Moses, a great Jewish philosopher and a friend of Ibn-e-Rushd, joined the ranks striving to reconcile religions with reason. He defied Jewish orthodoxy by writing that “If one has the means to provide either the lamp for one’s household or the Chanukah (a Jewish festival) lamp, the household lamp takes precedence”. Orthodoxy barreled its ire towards him and his books were burned publicly.

Europe liberated itself from clutches of blind faith some eight centuries ago. Dabholkars of Europe paid no lesser price either. When Copernicus challenged the geo-centrism of Ptolemy with his heliocentric interpretation of universe, he actually challenged the self-proclaimed divine wisdom of Church. Nicolaus Copernicus was a mathematician and astronomer who placed the Sun, rather than the Earth, at the centre.

Likewise Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno went beyond the Copernican model: he proposed the Sun was essentially a star, and that the universe contained an infinite number of inhabited worlds populated by other intelligent beings. Bruno actually revealed the continuum of universe, which provoked ire of the clergy. Roman Inquisition charged him with blasphemy and he was burnt at stake.

Much adored heroine of France Joan of Arc who led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years, War, was put on trial for charges of “insubordination and heterodoxy” and was burned at the stake for heresy when she was only 19 years old. Twenty-five years after her execution, an inquisitorial court revisited the trial and pronounced her innocent. The court declared her a martyr. Later, she was beatified in 1909 and even canonized in 1920.

Countless courageous Dabholkars have been protecting the liberty of human minds through their audacious struggle and heroic battles. Spiraling extremism is an accelerating challenge for rationality in every domain of life. Obscurantist elements are bent upon enslaving human minds and seeking to shape a world where rationale should be subservient to faith. Rationalists like Dabholkar are considered more dangerous than guns and arsenal and therefore eliminated brutally.

Whereas the war between rationale and faith is as old as human society is, its recent manifestations are more complex. Political economy of faith has added new dimensions to human society. It has transformed from a banal matter of individual worship to a complex web of militarised political and economic interests. Millions of simpletons are made fodder of this endless insane war. Both faith and counter-faith have been used as a fig-leaf to conceal nefarious motives such as controlling natural resources and dominating regional and global power structures.

Forces fighting wars in the name of faith and protection of peace often pursue their ulterior motives. Warriors, most of them in their innocence, are hoodwinked and become fuel for the fire. Since dogma dominates their minds and does not allow altruism to nest in their cerebrum, they turn malevolent.

Extremism either in the name of faith or peace has emerged as a serious peril for human society. Societal needs of billions of people are being heavily compromised due to resource drain on wars and illusive security. Conventional security demands are becoming predator for real human security agenda. Millions languishing in hunger, illiteracy, morbidity and unemployment are left with crumbs to crawl with. Human development agenda has been eclipsed by security priorities, which will logically perpetuate extremism and violence. National budgets are heavily skewed in favour of security demands and vital areas of health, drinking water and education are left starving.

From foreign policy to trade and investment, every policy domain revolves around security mania. Regional alliances have also veered their focus towards cooperation for security and not for human development in the member countries. Faith and fear have emerged as defining factors and rationale no more guides the decision making process.

The real crisis in today’s world is not security but the dominance of faith and the ensuing fear. When decision-making process becomes a function of fear and faith rather than rationale, it will only multiply the prevalent crisis.

In this context, Dabholkar’s murder is not just a crime but actually an assault on rationalism. What should prevail; logic or faith is the ultimate battle of human societies. It will not be unfounded to insinuate that the Homo sapiens will relegate to Chimpanzees if rationale is trounced.

[I]The writer is Chief Executive of Strengthening Participatory Organization-SPO; [email]nmemon@spopk.org[/email])[/I]

[B]22.09.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Political alternative [/SIZE]
Globally, the focus of the left has shifted from regime change to searching out political spaces and networks, and bringing people together to make normative claims about freedom,
justice and equality. Is the left in Pakistan, particularly the younger lot, committed to similar goals? Do they see the ‘party’ as one channel for what they are trying to do? Do they have
dogmatic formulations on this subject? Here’s an attempt to find answers to these and many other questions
By Sarah Humayun[/CENTER][/B]

Discussions of the political left, as indeed the political left itself, will always search for their own relevance and never be in danger of being irrelevant.

It is within these parameters that we can begin to inquire into the conversations the political left is engaged in, with itself and with others — the conversations it is having on class, identity, revolution, authority, among others.

In trying to write about this, however, I would like to steer clear of judgements on left’s standing in the ‘actually existing’ power politics of today. It is hardly news that the post-1990s left is extremely marginal to mainstream politics and diminished, with the exception of a few luminous struggles such as in Okara and Faislabad, even in their traditional stronghold of trade unions and peasant struggles. Or that its positions and perspectives find no forceful, organised articulation in the public discourse, although, as one activist pointed out to me, they are increasingly echoed there without necessarily being associated with the left.

But though the politics of the centre and the right have absorbed shades of leftist thought — as they have of liberal thought — it might be fair to say that this has happened without the centre having shifted to the left. In addition, the left has lost visibility in the public space; in this respect, it has fared even worse than the NGOs, whose liberal pro-civil-society thought has been similarly assimilated without increasing the appeal of liberal thinking as such in the public space.

Why pay heed to the left when they do nothing, or almost nothing that shows up on the media-charted political map of mainstream and populist politics? Why take an interest in their interminable bickering over dusty ideologies, their painstaking and fragile mergers, the promise and disappointment of their wavering existence?

By self-admission, the left is in a state of crisis. The 2013 election delivered a clear mandate for a socially-conservative, economically-neo-liberal and poor-indifferent political parties. But the elections did not so much as mark a shift to the right than extend and confirm it. Religious conformism that gives direct and indirect support to murderous policies towards Qadianis and Shias, not to mention other groups classified as ‘minorities’, is one of the more obvious markers of the shift.

Significantly, the populisms of the last few years, from Imran Khan’s faltering tsunami to Tahirul Qadri’s pro-establishment long march to judiciary and media activism, have been pro-right or, in the lingo of the moment, pro-middle-class. Their slogans are corruption, security, and good governance, often justified with reference to religion and nationalism, or presented in the idioms of righteous piety and nationalist hysteria. These slogans make hegemonic claims on ‘our’ behalf and have successfully come to dominate the public space as the rightful demands of the ‘people’, without significant alternative being articulated by groups whose interests may not be aligned or be differentially aligned with them.

At present, the issues of the middle-class (as commentators are noting with increasing insistence) are making a claim to being ‘everyone’s’ problems, or everyone’s in the same way. This point is only rarely made in mainstream public media (a recent article in Dawn, [url]http://dawn.com/news/1034430/terror-talk[/url], was a welcome exception).The middle-class represents a sizeable chunk of key state institutions — army, bureaucracy, judiciary — as well as the media and the professions. It is interested in producing wealth and acquiring education, in better service delivery and a functioning government. But it is also invested, its critics would say, in regressive norms of social stability, in opposing collective action for labour issues, in patriarchal and exclusionary religion that favours social conservatism and sexual puritanism, in enforcement of law without change in the status quo and without radical interventions on the side of social equality and wealth redistribution.

Would the picture change if we admit other collective entities as parties to the public space, resources and policies in their own right, entitled to make a bid for the name of ‘the majority’ or ‘the people’? ‘Class’ could draw attention to the fact that security, governance and corruption can have a different place in your life depending on differential ownership or influence over resources, your ability to create opportunity or control your environment through possession of material or cultural assets, or to mobilise with others to defend what is in your interest. A working-class position, it has been argued, generates conditions and experiences that form subjects who are marginal to or altogether outside the prevailing status quo, who perceive illusion or division in socially-inscribed reality where another class might see them as given or necessary.

Class in this sense is not necessarily an empirical category; it is a socially-constructed subject position to which meanings and possibilities can be ascribed, and not just by people who count themselves as its members.

But how might class be mapped on the grid of today’s cultural and social figurations, and what can be accomplished politically with it is far from clear. A lot depends on whether a class is seen to exist prior to the struggle for its ‘emancipation’ or whether it is political struggles themselves that shape the parties who struggle, for which ‘class’ may be one name among others. In other words, are emancipatory struggles hitched to groups who define themselves as classes or nations? Or are politics or political struggles themselves shaped, not by a social and historical vector that remains constant, but by the unpredictable unfolding of contingent and context-bound political processes?

The new-er leftism seemed inclined to take the latter route. Globally, the focus has shifted from regime change favourable to the left to searching out political spaces and networks, discrete articulations and struggles, which may or may not link up to produce the phenomenon recognised as class struggle or collective identity but which nevertheless brings people together to make normative claims about freedom, justice and equality.

The recent Arab uprisings are a case in point; they will keep the mandarins arguing for long about whether or not they count as ‘revolution’ — perhaps only to answer both yes and no. Benjamin Arditi noted after the events of 2011 that they gave ‘political thought with the opportunity to come to terms with the loss of loss’, which means ‘parting ways with a grammar of emancipation that was never there to begin with, at least not in actual uprisings: an alternative to the existing order comes in handy but has rarely played a central role in rebellions. One can then begin to think the difference between insurgencies and programmes as a difference in nature instead of framing their relationship within a hierarchy of stages that commits us to place programmes above revolts in the political food chain’. This dialogue with an event is critical because it puts the narrow worlds of both academia and the organised left in contact with an outside which has no obligation to prove them right.

One of the more striking thing about the admittedly few young lefties that I met (all have or have had a link with the Awami Workers’ Party, though not all are current members) is that they see the ‘party’ as one channel for what they are trying to do. No doubt, they are cautioned by the left’s history of parochialism and factionalism; but possibly their imaginations are no longer limited by the horizons offered by party politics.

Refreshingly, I did not hear many dogmatic formulations on this subject. The form of the party does not seem obsolete, and there were lots of remarks that suggested enthusiasm for elections, even if only as a mobilising opportunity, and a considered engagement with party squabbles that showed amusement, exasperation, and perseverance. Everyone had something interesting and slightly different to say about this, and did not seem particularly concerned with reaching agreement; even at times pointed out express disagreements between themselves.

What this means for the long-term strength or coherence of ‘the party’ is difficult to say, but to those in search of a different politics of heterodox forms, the opportunities to come together will have a value of their own. ‘The left gathers those who seek to improve on existing thresholds of egalitarianism and solidarity through critical thought and collective action’, writes Benjamin Arditi in a recent discussion of what counts as the left today. ‘It is not particularly relevant whether this pursuit is channeled through mainstream institutions of liberal democratic states — parties, legislatures, and executive branches of government — or through other sites of intervention that are starting to demarcate a post-liberal setting for politics. Echoing Karl Marx, all this happens in circumstances that are not of the left’s choosing and within the constraints imposed by the strategic relationships with others, the available resources, and a particular time frame.’

Is it surprising that the political left — with its insistence that the ‘social’ cannot be mapped solely by monotheistic or monopolistic forms like state, capital or religion, its organising metaphor of ‘class’ that stresses division — is disunited, perpetually on the verge of merger or split, perpetually restless and in disagreement? (I would point anyone tempted to think this a peculiarly Pakistani affliction to read this article on the Indian left is the latest EPW [url]http://www.epw[/url]. in/commentary/why-left-more-divided-right.html, and this article in the Guardian [url]http://www.theguardian[/url] .com/politics/2013/sep/09/time-for-leftwing-ukip-labour on the new British far left, which mentions its ‘apparent belief in an age-old socialist maxim: why have one party when 59 will suffice?’) This can seem like a good or bad thing depending on where you stand — but it is certainly discouraging for those who want the left to present a unified front and maybe even make some kind of showing at the polls.

In 2012, news of the merger of three left parties (Labour, Awami and Workers’ parties) in the Awami Workers’ Party revived a degree of interest in the subsequent course of action of the organised left. I asked a couple of left activists about life after the merger. One senior activist I talked with described it as an arranged marriage, in which you have to get to know the person after you end up with him. Unfamiliarity with electioneering and perhaps a fear of democracy-by-vote caused organisational friction. Fear stemmed from recoil from what abject defeat could confirm about the present status of the left among the awam as well as what the process of engagement would do the parties who had spent much of the 1990s closeted in on themselves. In the event the AWP did field some 14 candidates.

Yet, the younger activists or engagés that I met with seemed to be under no illusion about their ‘objective’ standing in electoral or popular politics. One admitted that their participation in the Lawyers’ Movement, which aggregated the forces of lawyers, civil society activists and some political parties, brought home to them the sorry state of their ability to mobilise street power.

The PPP’s legacy casts its huge shadow or glow, depending on how you see it, on the left today; the time may now be ripe to have an informed, multivocal debate about what the left, specifically, can take away from this legacy. For some left activists, the current state of the state is a direct corollary of the disappearance of left-wing politics from the public sphere, which leaves the field wide open for rightist religious extremism and pro-market social conservatism. In this narrative, the PPP is sometimes credited with keeping the floodgates closed. It presented a confused hydra-headed form — Islamic-socialist, secular, pro-nationalist, pro-Sindhi-nationalist and pro-poor, and perhaps even pro-intellectual — that managed to win a substantial public space. As long as it was not in a full-term government, where possibility decisively failed to translate into performance.

But beyond the nostalgia for the PPP myth, a more pertinent question for the left might be if there is any appetite left for a politics that makes a reality out of so many illusions and compromises. What cannot be underestimated, however, is the value that attaches to representation of interests above and beyond the success of a particular political party. Are the ‘people’ are in need of a new party — the disenfranchised factory labourers, peasants, slum dwellers, women, liberals and artist whose constituency was so ambiguously represented by the PPP? Or is this a juncture at which a new politics is possible, one that would put the PPP in perspective and possibly make a case for a politics not against but adjacent to the state-party-establishment form.

[I]Sarah Humayun is a writer based in Lahore. She can be reached at [email]sarah.humayun@gmail.com[/email]
[/I]

[B]22.09.2013 [/B][B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Education and self-interest [/SIZE]
The elite in Pakistan are never genuinely convinced that expanding education opportunity will accrue benefits to them, even if they were to be in the form of enhanced stability and security
By Irfan Muzaffar[/CENTER][/B]

This is the first of a series of articles on education. In these, we will think through some very basic questions about education, such as, why do we need universal education? Should it be state’s responsibility to provide education for every child? Is education an instrument of equity and social justice? In addition to these and other key questions, we will also address some very specific issues pertaining to education reforms such as preparation of teachers, growth of private schools and their consequences, and other pressing issues.

In this article, I will consider the rhetoric of Education for All (EFA). Those of us working in education sector have repeatedly grounded their work in EFA. Since the introduction of the term in 1990s, both the civil society and government have talked about Pakistan’s efforts to expand educational opportunity in terms of an obligation to the international community.

Nearly every new proposal and policy framework that I have seen invokes EFA, and now MDGs, as international obligations to be met by our government. Just to give you an example, the second paragraph of the most recent National Education Policy (2009) justifies the review of the earlier policies in these words: “…the performance remained deficient in several key aspects including access, quality and equity of educational opportunities and secondly, the international challenges like…MDGs, …EFA Goals and the challenges triggered by globalization...” The policy proposals must be grounded in an overarching policy framework. The rhetoric of EFA and MDGs works to supply such a framework in the case of education sector in Pakistan.

Although EFA is usually traced to the UN conference on education in the Thai city of Jomtien in 1990, the rhetoric is certainly not new. Most countries becoming independent from the colonial rule mentioned the idea of universal education as a central plank of nation building.

In Pakistan, for example, the participants in the very first national conference on education held in Karachi in 1947 resolved to provide free and compulsory education for a period of five years, which was to be gradually raised to eight years. Likewise, even before the 18th Constitutional Amendment that made state responsible to provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of 5-16 years, education for all was on the constitutional anvil as a principle of state policy. So the rhetoric of EFA only assumed an international tenor after Jomtien, while it had been with us all along.

But there was one crucial difference between the new and the old EFA. The early advocates of universal education grounded its justification in terms of such imperatives as nation building, individual and national progress, and so on. The later advocates of EFA needed only refer to the international obligations of their state. While the early advocates of EFA articulated it in terms of state’s obligation to its citizens, the recent advocates justified it in terms of state’s obligation to the international community. Does this difference matter in terms of actually achieving education for all? Let us this question by looking at the history of the struggle for universal education.

Not many people realise that human civilizations have not always entertained the idea of universal education and that it was necessitated only after substantive changes in the organisation of societies. This has nothing to do with the importance given to education per se. For instance, it is undeniable that Islamic civilisation at its peak supported both knowledge acquisition and production. Yet it did so without ever requiring all children to be educated at state’s expense.

If you could go back about 300 years in a time capsule, and then keep going further back, you are highly unlikely to find any civilisation on the planet that supported universal education. It is only in the last three hundred years or so that the idea of universal education took roots. How did nations arrive at this strange idea to educate everyone at state’s expense? As you may have guessed, the rationality behind this universalisation of education was anything but moral.

Establishing a system of universal education required huge financial commitments by the state. This is never easy as demonstrated by our own experience with frustrated attempts to raise the percentage of GDP spent on education. How difficult it must have been to persuade the policy elites to pay for basic education of all children with public funds. The advocates of common schools in most countries that universalised education in the mid to late 19th century were involved in a protracted struggle to convince the policy elites of the benefits that would accrue from educating everyone in the society. Their arguments were largely pragmatic.

Just to give you one example, Horace Mann, one of the most fervent advocates of common education in the US, used to draw the attention of policy elites towards a growing tide of menace and decline at the source of which, he claimed, was the unschooled mind. The following quote from his lecture succinctly captures the argument for EFA in his times: “The mobs, the riots, the burnings, the lynching, perpetrated by the men of the present day, are perpetrated, because of their vicious or defective education, when children. We see, and feel, the havoc and the ravage of their tiger-passions, now, when they are full grown; but it was years ago that they were whelped and suckled. And so, too, if we are derelict from our duty, in this matter, our children, in their turn, will suffer. If we permit the vulture’s eggs to be incubated and hatched, it will then be too late to take care of the lambs.”

So those championing common education saw it as an instrument to create a secure society, to ward off the menace of undesirable ideologies, and to help achieve the goals of economic progress and individual fulfillment. It is easy to see that Horace Mann’s frontal arguments would have lost their rhetorical force if he were to ask his fellow citizens that it was their international obligation to expand educational opportunity.

It is not always the fact that the policy elites are well meaning, that they really intend to expand public education of a decent quality to all citizens for moral reasons, but are finding it hard to do so.

The findings of some recent research on political economy of education are quite provocative in this respect. When the governments undersupply public education they do so because those who control the policy do not want other people’s children to become educated (B.W. Ansell. (2010) From the ballot to the blackboard: The redistributive political economy of education).

Let us imagine a society, which, in its given state, consists of two segments of population, a small educated elite and a very large inadequately educated semi-literate or illiterate segment. Someone demands that this society should be given educational opportunity and that doing this will increase the life chances of everyone in it. Imagine further the existence of a small policy elite in this society and assume that it has the wherewithal to make and influence all policy decisions. If the size of the economy of this society is small then it is imaginable that redistribution of resources aimed at making the disadvantaged better off would leave the rich worse off. If so, wouldn’t it be perfectly rational for the policy elite to block educational expansion if it were likely to leave them worse off?

The readers can see how difficult it might have been to persuade the key players within a political economy to expand educational opportunity. It only happened because the elite were convinced that it was in their own benefit to spend on education of all children. It was not because they owed it to some international agreement but because they were genuinely convinced that they would be better off by spending on education.

In this country, we have a similar situation. The elite are never genuinely convinced that expanding education opportunity will accrue benefits to them, even if they were to be in the form of enhanced stability and security.

As I mentioned earlier in this article, the rhetoric of EFA has been with us all along but after 1990, the civil society and government started referring to Pakistan’s efforts to expand educational opportunity in terms of her obligation to the international community. I would like you to contrast this with the justification for education proffered by Horace Mann to his own policy elite in the mid 1800s. The justification appealed to the self-interest of the people and not to external treaties.

The recent rhetoric of EFA and MDGs etc. has had an unfortunate effect of justifying in terms of international treaties, what should have been grounded in, and justified on the basis of, a compact between the state and its citizens and on the basis of enlightened self-interest of all segments of the society.

[B]22.09.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Limiting education [/SIZE]
Public universities in the country don’t give admission beyond a certain age that discourage applicants with session gap
By Sher Ali Khalti[/CENTER][/B]

Miss a year at college or university and you miss the opportunity to get into one ever again. The doors of universities in Pakistan close to students who have a session gap or who have turned 25-year-old before admissions to universities open.

Result of graduation has been announced throughout Pakistan and students are enthusiastic to enter in relevant educational institutions but there is no opening for those who have crossed the 25 years age mark. It is printed in every public university’s prospectus and was clearly advertised as well.

Those who have no finance to get education now, after 3 or 4 years if they become able enough to afford education they will not be allowed to apply for admission in public universities and their affiliated colleges.

The literacy rate of Pakistan is 58 percent which is not good to live in the 21st century and only 16 percent are going to take admission in universities. Most of the people don’t even knock the door of universities due to poverty but those who do, must get an opportunity to study. This calls for declaring emergency in public universities as well.

Muhammad Anwar Sajid, Registrar University of the Punjab, says preference will be given to fresh graduates if they seek admission in Bachelor and Master Degree Programme. Although there is 2-year relaxation for male and 3 years for female candidates, those who fail to get admission can apply on self-support programme.

Director Admission Committee student’s affairs of Azad Jammu and Kashmir says, “We have set criteria for admission. After 22 years no student can be enrolled in BSc and if the candidate touches his 26 birthday he will not be given admission in Master programme. There is no space for students who are overage and have session gap. The government should provide more land and buildings for students because population has increased and in the given structure only as much as can be accommodated.”

He considers the present admission policy oppressive — prohibiting people from seeking knowledge.

He says one can get education at any time and state should facilitate people in the pursuit of education. There is no concept of age and session gap in learning of human beings in the developed countries. We need to create equal opportunity and we have a long way to go.

Deputy Registrar Farhat Safdar from Sardar Bahadur Khan University Balochistan told TNS that she is not aware of age and session gap because the university does not come across such cases. Balochistan is a backward province and people are poor so majority of the graduates don’t get education in Master’s programme. “We have opened the door to everyone.”

Lahore College for Women University doesn’t give admission in BS 4 years programme if the applicant is more than 22 years old. “If a student wants to get admission in MS or PhD, age and session gap don’t matter,” says the Deputy Registrar of LCWU, Shahid Jameel.

Universities in the west have a different concept. Correspondence with some top of the line universities revealed that age and session gap are no issues there.

Harward and Cambridge University see years spent in work after graduation or pursuit of one’s career as no limitation to their programs.

Oxford University puts no age limit to any of their programmes of study. “We find that students are more frequently working for a number of years before undertaking graduate studies, however you might like to discuss your situation and your application with the department before applying, to ensure that you do have necessary background to undertake our programme,’’ was the reply from Oxford University.

Even in an African university — Obafemi Awolowo University Nigeria, a 74-year-old man got admission. Some universities take their own tests along with taking grades under consideration.

An intellectual, senior journalist and columnist Khawaja Jamshaid Imam Butt says this policy was introduced during Gen Ziaul Haq’s reign to eliminate influence of students’ federations. It was necessary for Zia to keep the youth away from politics.

Butt says first word of revelation is “Iqra” which means “read”, Our Holy Prophet (PBUH) was taught at the age of 40. “Why are his followers being stopped from getting education,” he questions. “According to 1973 Constitution no law or policy can be drafted in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan which is contradictory to the Quran and Sunnah. Denial of admission on the basis of age or session gap goes against them. It is a violation of the fundamental right to get education.”

“You would be surprise I got admission at MAO Post Graduate College affiliated with Punjab University at the age of 48 and got my degree when I was 50 years old just 2 years ago. I got admission on the call of HEC secretary Ahad Cheema to chairman mass communication department MAO College. We are living in class-based society where law is only for the fragile.

Member of National Assembly Muhammad Mohsin Nawaz Ranjha from Sargodha sees the age bar/session gap policy as a hurdle in getting higher education. “I condemn this policy of admission. Every citizen has the right to get education any time. He promised to do something to change the government policy regarding this matter.”

Shahzad Roy, a famous singer, social worker who has a lot of contribution in the field of education says, “Everyone has the right to seek the light of education. It gives the opportunity to look outside the window, the door to knowledge should never shut at any cost.’’ He demands from the government an end to age and session gap policy. “I will launch a programme against this discriminatory policy which has become a hurdle in the way of education,” he says.

[email]sherali998@gmail.com[/email]

[B]22.09.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Qualified quacks! [/SIZE]
Physicians educated in approved medical colleges, trained in recognised Unani Tibb institutions and homeopaths trained in homeopathic colleges are accepted as ‘regular practitioners’
By Syed Mansoor Hussain[/CENTER][/B]

The Punjab Healthcare Commission (PHC) recently announced that there were around two hundred thousand (200,000) quacks practicing medicine in the Punjab. By ‘quacks’ we mean ‘medical practitioners’ that have not gone through a proper educational and training process that qualifies them to provide medical care.

Physicians that graduate from ‘accredited’ medical college and receive post graduate medical training as house physicians and advanced training in medical specialties firmly believe that all forms of medical care ‘other’ than what they themselves provide is quackery. This in spite of the fact that officially, Homeopathy and Unani Tibb (Greek-Arab Medicine) are accepted as established alternate forms of medical treatment. So it would seem appropriate to try and define what exactly a medical quack is. A little bit of history is then worth looking at.

Modern medicine is indeed a modern reality. However, there are some systems of medicine that have been around for thousands of years. Of these, the best known is the Greek system of medicine that is often associated with Hippocrates (Buqrat) circa 400 BCE and Galen (Jalinoos) circa 200 CE and was refined and improved on by generations of Arab physicians during the previous millennia including the likes of Ibn Sina (Avicenna). Well into the sixteenth century, this was the primary medical system in Europe. However, this started to evolve in the seventeenth century or so into a more modern ‘scientific’ system while it continued relatively unchanged in the Indian subcontinent especially under the Muslim rule. Hakeem Ajmal Khan was perhaps its most famous practitioner in India during the twentieth century.

Besides the Hippocratic system, we also have Chinese medicine that includes herbal medicine, acupuncture and other modalities like massage therapy. All these three have survived into modern times with some change. Then we have the Ayurvedic system that originated in India in antiquity and survives even today. Most of these ‘ancient’ systems are relatively ‘benign’ in terms of treatment with the emphasis being on diet, exercise and ‘behaviour modification’. Herbs and other indigenous substances were also used for treatment and still are.

What we call the modern system of medicine started to develop during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as scientific discoveries helped to advance medical science. These included the discovery of ‘germs’ and then identification of germs as cause of disease. Also herbal medications were chemically broken down to identify the ‘active’ ingredients in them and these were then synthesised in the laboratory.

Most importantly there developed the idea to use a particular type of treatment and record its results; this was followed by the concept of medical trials that further refined treatment. This gave rise to what is now called ‘evidence based medicine’. General anaesthesia, discovery of blood groups and development of blood banking as well as the concept of sterilisation revolutionised surgery. Until the discovery of antibiotics and many modern medicines, even the so called modern medicine was still relatively primitive and its results were often not satisfactory.

During the nineteenth century as medicine was evolving, many other schools of treatment based often on what are now proven to be errant scientific ideas also developed. Of these, Chiropractic, Osteopathy and Homeopathy survive albeit with modifications. So, patients disappointed by regular medical treatment often resorted to these forms of therapy looking for relief. The important thing about these systems especially Homeopathy is that treatment is unlikely to produce any serious adverse effects. To sum it up, in Pakistan physicians educated in approved medical colleges, trained in recognised Unani Tibb institutions and homeopaths trained in homeopathic colleges are accepted as ‘regular practitioners’. All others that practice medicine then are by definition quacks.

But let us look a bit deeper into this situation. Should all those that provide some form of basic healthcare without belonging to one of the three categories mentioned above be called quacks? As it is even in a country like the US that has strict laws about who can practice medicine, we are seeing some liberalisation when it comes to primary healthcare. Nurses and pharmacists are being allowed to take care of some basic medical problems and midwives are allowed to oversee uncomplicated home deliveries. The understanding, of course, is that any problem above and beyond the capability of such ancillary medical personnel to manage will be referred to a qualified physician. This allows physicians to take care of those that really need their services.

Besides freeing up physician time, when ancillary personnel participate in primary and basic medical care, the cost of treatment is also considerably decreased. Things like a fever with flu, a sore throat, and an upset stomach can all be treated quite adequately by a nurse, a lady health visitor or a pharmacist. And that is often what does happen in many of our rural areas as well as in more than a few urban areas; people that have had some medical training provide basic medical care. As long as such ‘practitioners’ stay within the ambit of their abilities and appropriately triage patients to hospitals and qualified physicians as needed, their services should be allowed.

More importantly, since these practitioners are community based, therefore, they have a better idea of local problems and also have the need to provide ‘good’ results if they want to continue to offer their services in that particular area. In my opinion then, such practitioners should not be penalised but should rather be mobilised and provided educational resources so they can provide better care including immunisation and pre and post-natal care.

That then leaves two categories of people that should be called quacks. The first are those that have little or no medical training but pose as qualified physicians. The major problem with such practitioners is that they often misdiagnose patients, treat them with incorrect medicines and make things much worse. There are those among them that to make money often give unnecessary ‘injections’ with inappropriately sterilised needles and syringes. This can produce massive infections and worse transmit deadly diseases like Hepatitis C from one patient to another. In this category, we should also include ‘road side’ dentists that use unsterilized instruments and are also responsible for spreading Hepatitis C.

The second category that I consider quacks are also sometimes referred to within the medical profession as ‘hacks’ are ‘qualified’ physicians that out of greed give every patient an injection or worse an intravenous infusion (the bottle) whether the patients needs it or not. And they often reuse needles exposing their patients to the risks mentioned above. Such physicians frequently over treat patients even when the patient is not getting better and will only refer the patient onwards to a major hospital when the patient’s condition has deteriorated and is often beyond salvage. Little can be done about them since they possess a ‘genuine’ MBBS degree.

As long as there is a need for inexpensive and locally available healthcare, especially in areas where qualified physicians are not available, quacks will fulfil that need. And as things stand, there is little the PHC can do to control this problem.

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

[B]22.09.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Playing dirty [/SIZE]
For decent urban living, sprawling Karachi needs an effective and corruption-free solid waste management system
By Dr Noman Ahmed
[/CENTER][/B]
The Sindh Assembly has passed a new local government law in August 2013 which has virtually revived the status of municipal bodies to the level of 1979 status. The city had a development authority in 1979 which has disappeared as a consequence of devolution in 2001 and the post-devolution bargains among political power wielders. The Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) also seems to have miserably failed to maintain the sanitary conditions in the city. Heaps of garbage on main streets and neighbourhoods, rampant dumping along public open spaces, unregulated burning by sweepers and choking of city sewers due to solid waste are common observations.

It is disappointing to note that despite investment of billions of rupees in SWM sector by international financial institutions and the federal and provincial governments during the past 25 years, the position of cleanliness has been reduced to a null status. Needless to say that decent urban living is unimaginable without a credible system of solid waste management.

The changing life styles and rise in consumer-oriented tendencies have been catalytical in increasing the quantity of waste. According to conservative estimates, the total amount of waste generated in the city is over 13000 tonnes per day. This waste does not include the construction, electronic, industrial and hospital waste for which authentic statistics are not available. About 12 per cent of this waste is segregated and disposed of at the household level, 10 per cent is separated and disposed of by the waste pickers, 5 per cent is used for different operations in land reclamation, predominantly along the coastline of the city and 33 per cent is picked and disposed of by municipal bodies – when they work normally – and an equal amount is dumped in natural drains, nullahs and creeks.

In terms of composition, a sizable part of this waste comprises urban organic waste with low calorific value. Recyclable items are largely separated at source or at the kundi where they are sold to junk dealers. Over 600 units of recycling industrial units exist in the city, which belong to informal sector.

Fact finding studies by Urban Resource Centre — an action research based NGO — has revealed that over 7500 households draw their livelihoods from the informal recycling industry. The city lacks properly designed transfer stations for interim storage, sorting and onward transfer of waste. As a result, informally designated garbage dumps can be found almost every where in the city.

There is no scientifically designed sanitary landfill site for the safe and final disposal of waste. Most of the garbage is presently dumped in Jam Chakro dumping site near Surjani Town; Govind Pass (near Hub) and Mehran Town near Korangi. Sizable waste is illegally dropped by municipal trucks on the way to dumping sites in connivance with waste pickers and higher municipal officials. As no public health procedures are applied, open dumping causes enormous problems.

Due to visible falling standards in performance in the past, privatisation of services was conceived as a universal remedy by the donor agencies for performance ailments in the developing countries. SWM was attempted for privatisation in the previous formats of local government.

In 1994, the KMC contracted the waste collection to a private entrepreneur. He had installed an imported plant to convert urban organic waste into compost (which is a form of plant food used for soil enrichment). However, due to various administrative and procedural reasons largely unknown, the plant closed down and the contract was prematurely terminated.

In 1998, DMC-Central awarded a contract of waste collection and disposal for North Karachi and Federal B Area to a private contracting firm. The contract ran into controversies soon after its takeoff. There were allegations and counter allegations between the contracting parties. It was soon terminated.

According to the contractor he had to undergo heavy financial losses in the capital investments made for purchase of vehicles (trucks and other form of vehicles) and manpower. The DMC-Central accused the contractor of poor performance.

The outputs of SWM privatisation were below the desirable level. Most of these experiments have encountered different types of problems during their initial phase. The donor agencies, principally the World Bank, have been promoting the concept of private sector participation for improving the efficiency and level of service in a cost-effective manner. A number of formats and arrangements have been tried and tested in this respect, which have met a varying degree of success.

It is a typical situation in most of the developing countries that the private sector operators are small in scale and capacity and are not able to handle all aspects of the services themselves. They also have to bear the load of taxes and duties on their equipment and accessories. In order to remain profitable in the market situation, they establish political linkages with the members of the government to get better conditions in the contract. This is a case found prevalent in most of the Latin American cities.

Cost recovery and financial fitness are two essential criteria for inducting private sector in a municipal system. With the passage of time, the municipalities find it difficult to maintain the large scale sanitation infrastructure and components as well as the spread out staff which is generally inefficient. The private sector is normally hired at lower costs but due to its compatible scale of operation, it generates an optimum level of efficiency. Cities in Nigeria, Brazil and Colombia are examples in this respect. Several lessons can be derived from these experiences.

Livelihoods of certain low income households are linked to SWM belonging to informal sector. While devising a system of formal privatisation, the existing informal practices of picking, sorting and recycling should be kept into view. It is interesting to know that while we talk of privatisation today, the informal private sector has been doing its job for several decades. It not only maintains its own survival but also provides useful service to the city by reducing the waste volumes, generating some useful products and bye-products through recycling and creating avenues of employment for skilled and unskilled labour force.

According to studies, there are more than 200,000 labourers/people in Karachi who are directly or indirectly involved with income generation activities related to waste on a part time or full time basis.

[B]22.09.2013 [/B][B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Monopolising nationalism [/SIZE]
The people of KPK sent the ANP packing for its stereotyped nationalism aimed at maintaining status qou in politics
Dr Javed Badshah[/CENTER][/B]

The phenomenon of nationalism is very vague in today’s world politics. Generally, nationalism is attributed to the cause of a community whose language, creed, culture etc are the same since long. Nationalism has so many faces and concepts by virtue of which the objectivity and subjectivity of a specific community is set. Modern world has introduced various kinds of nationalism i.e, territorial nationalism, civic nationalism, state nationalism and so on.

In Pakistan, some political parties are having a federal face and a few parties proclaim to protect the rights of the people of a specific province, region or area.

After 9/11, Khyber Pakhthunkhwa came into the international limelight due to its close boundary with Afghanistan. The nature and nomenclature of the Khyber Pakhthunkhwa is very heterogenous not only in the form of its geological/geographical structure, but in the form of communities living here with different origins, castes, creeds and languages.

Keeping in view the very recent history of Khyber Pakhthunkhwa, some valid questions arise in one’s mind about the political parties of this federating unit. The ANP normally claims to be the champion for the rights of the people of Khyber Pakhthunkhwa and its slogan is Khpala khawara Khpal Ikhthiyar (our soil, our authority) and for this slogan it manipulates nationalism.

The ANP usually claims to protect the rights of Pakhthuns, but its role in the provincial and federal level is not in line with the concept of nationalism. Rather it appears that the slogan is wrongly interpreted and exploited for personal wishes and whims. The party credits itself for giving the province its present name i.e, Khyber Pakhthunkhwa. The truth is that the very same resolution was passed twice unanimously by different parties (both national and provincial) of the former provincial assemblies. It is worth mentioning that the name suggested for the province in those unanimous resolutions was “Pakhthunkhwa” and not “ Khyber Pakhthunkhwa”. The ANP compromised on these resolutions accepting the ammendment in the name with the word “Khyber”.

It is really astonishing that with the change of the name of the province, suddenly the movement for the Hazara province got currency. The ANP’s policies gave justifiable reasons to the people of Hazara for carrying on an active movement for a province of their own.

In 70s, the JUI being a religious party and the ANP being a secular party formed a coallition government. Can anyone point out as to what the ANP gained for its nationalistic motives in this respect? If one wants to bring benefits to people, there are several other issues such as health, education, social sectors etc that can be used in manifestoes and slogans. But the ANP stereotyped nationalism for its very own interests to maintain its status qou in politics.

It is high time that the ANP leadership revise its concept of nationalism and determine the parameters of idealogical nationalism, territorial nationalism and state nationalism. Pakistan is a federation and the ANP has its roots in one of the federating units, but its concept of nationalism still carries a big question mark.

In the light of recent elections, the ANP also needs to re-consider its position in comparison to the PTI, which managed to grab majority seats in the provincial and national assemblies. The 2013 election has conveyed a message that the people of the province, instead of banking on nationalism alone, want uplift in the fields of education, health and other social sectors.

[B]22.09.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Withdrawal symptoms [/SIZE]
All believe the control of Malakand
Division should be handed over to civilian administration. But, is the
situation ripe for army withdrawal?
By Tahir Ali[/CENTER][/B]

As expected, the Tehreek-i-Insaf-Jamaat-i-Islami coalition government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has announced a phased ‘withdrawal’ of army from seven districts of Malakand Division — Swat, Buner, Shangla, Upper Dir, Lower Dir, Chitral and Malakand — after which civilians would take over control of administration in the region.

The troops’ pullout was expected to begin by mid-October and completed under a plan approved by the KP chief minister. However, the plan is put on hold for the time being after the Peshawar High Court orders.

Initially, troops would be pulled out of Buner and Shangla. In the second phase, after assessing the impact of withdrawal of troops from these areas, a decision about troops’ withdrawal from other areas would be taken.

It hasn’t been explained whether it will be a complete withdrawal of army from the region or it will only restrict its visibility and relocate to barracks by handing over control of administration to civil authorities. In the former case, it will have far reaching consequences. In the latter, it will be a routine matter.

Arguments for and against it:

Sardar Husain Babak, the parliamentary leader of the ANP in KP Assembly who hails from Buner, terms the decision an attempt at point scoring and grabbing newspaper headlines. “Malakand has been badly hit by terrorism. Any decision about it should be taken after due deliberations, consultations and assessment of ground situation and capacity-building of civilian institutions, if required. I don’t think these steps have been followed. At a time when insurgents could attack and kill as high a target as General Officer Commanding of Swat, Major General Sanaullah Niazi, I think the decision is illogical. The PTI leadership is confused and devoid of any vision and ideas. While the other side asserts it is at war with the state, this government declares them as its brothers,” he said.

Zahid Khan, the president of Swat Qaumi Jirga (SQJ), who was shot and critically injured by the TTP target killers, thinks the decision is tantamount to presenting Swat as a cake to Taliban.

“If Taliban accept the constitution and writ of the state, army can be withdrawn. But at a time when even a major general is not safe, neither have talks with militants begun nor any pact concluded with them, Taliban still denounce the constitution/ sovereignty of the state and police is insufficiently trained, ill-equipped and therefore ill-prepared to be a substitute for army, the decision is uncalled-for and wrong. Whatever peace is there in Swat, it is due to the vast intelligence network and quick response of army,” he adds.

He asserts the decision to keep or withdraw army from the region will be taken by the SQJ. “If the government plans to withdraw army from the militancy-hit Swat, it should also pullout troops from cantonments in Mardan, Peshawar, Nowshera and other cities. Swat needs army. There should be cantonment here so that troops are available immediately if need be.”

Afzal Khan Lala, the famous nationalist leader from Swat, says the PTI government is mandated to take whatever decisions it likes but it should think that army was called by the government itself.

“Fazlullah-led TTP had challenged the state writ. And whether by design or per chance, they attacked police — the first line of state’s defence. The civilian forces could not withstand the insurgents. So army was called up. It defeated the militants, restored the state authority in the region for which we Swatis are indebted to it. Army shouldn’t have permanent control over civilian administration but as for its withdrawal, the question is: is police ready and able to take complete control of the region from army? If yes, it should come, otherwise army presence should be maintained.”

Replying to a question, Lala says if Swat or any other area needs a permanent cantonment, it should be built. “After all army, police and we all are sons of this soil. They can be stationed anywhere including Swat if needed.”

Religious parties, however, support the withdrawal plan.

“Army personnel are ignorant of and careless about local culture and traditions. They, for example, intrude into homes without permission. Their presence in MD has created lots of malice and misgivings about them. We are against the use of army in Malakand and elsewhere. Army can’t/shouldn’t be assigned permanent control of administration. Civilian institutions are best suited for this. The sooner the army is pulled out, the better,” opines Mufti Fazle Ghafoor, a JUI MPA from Buner.

When asked was police ready to take over, he said it should be enabled if it isn’t.

Is the situation ripe for withdrawal?

Analysts say the ineptness of the withdrawal offer was revealed barely a day after the government announced the pullout plan when the militants killed three army personnel including Major General Sanaullah Niazi.

Prolonged presence and dominance of military in civilian administration is not desirable. In principle, the army should withdraw from Malakand sooner rather than later. It should be pulled out of Fata as well. But is this a realistic supposition in the given circumstances when the TTP stresses it is at war with the state forces and won’t miss any opportunity to attack them?

The Peshawar High Court recently asked the federal and the KP governments to make laws before withdrawal of troops from Malakand division as withdrawal without proper legislation will result in legal and constitutional crises such as the maintenance of army’s internment centres and future of the hundreds of detainees kept there, transfer of detainees to regular prisons and the future course and mode of their trials.

The court also asked the authorities to think over the legal consequences of withdrawal since the notification issued by the prime minister calling troops, Action (in aid of civil power) Regulation 2011, was still in the field.

Basic ingredients of any counter-terrorism strategy are: clear, hold, build and transfer of authority to civil administration. Residents of the area say that extremists’ ability to occupy an area permanently has been weakened but they fear militants could stage a comeback if the army is withdrawn without consolidating the civil law enforcement agencies and taking precautionary measures.

The army flushed the TTP militants out of Malakand and restored the state’s writ in 2009. Later, it was decided that army would remain in Malakand for two years. It was hoped the local security infrastructure would be fully operational and capable by then, however it’s not clear whether they are or aren’t.

Police has been fairly successful with the limited resources after it was given partial control of Buner and Shangla in May 2011. But more information needs to be made public about its strength and state of preparedness. Repeated attempts to take feedback from police in the region could not materialise.

Also, it is not clear whether the federal government and the newly-reconstituted Cabinet Committee on National Security have approved the plan and whether the army and police are on board?

Peace has been established in the area but improved governance, provision of speedy/cheap justice, equitable distribution of wealth, poverty alleviation through job opportunities, rule of law and tolerance are other requisites for sustainable peace. The state also needs to fight the “political, psychological or religious” trends that lead to radicalism.

There is no room for complacency as militants continue their hit and run campaign. “Six of SQJ activists have been killed in 2013 in target killings claimed by Taliban. Unfortunately, there has been no further investigation,” says Zahid Khan.

Then Malakand Division is both a settled district as well as part of PATA. Both Fata and PATA are inherently different from rest of the country. The CrPC or PPC aren’t applicable there – PATA are governed by PATA regulations and the Fata by FCR. Income tax, customs act and many other laws of the land are not applicable there unless specifically notified. These anomalies need to be removed.

[I]The write blogs at [url]www.tahirkatlang.wordpress.com[/url] and can be contacted at [email]tahir_katlang@yahoo.com[/email][/I]

[B]22.09.2013 [/B][B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Genesis of violence [/SIZE]
Karachi is no more a provincial or national issue now. A more complex regional and international vested interest operates behind what is unfolding in the city
By Naseer Memon
[/CENTER][/B]
Karachi never evaded limelight during recent decades, albeit under a gruesome spotlight. The city has become an ever bleeding wound. Politics in the city is so fractious that a single incendiary statement can trigger death of dozens. An inflammatory rumour can ignite ethnic or sectarian inferno that may take days to douse. A single day strike call causes hemorrhage of billions to national exchequer and leaves millions of wage earners unfed.

Debilitated by unremitting violence, the city has descended into a quagmire of felony. Magnitude and complexity of fratricide in Karachi has proved that the prevailing malaise is far deeper and sporadic surgical interventions can only restore semblance of peace that may be also too ephemeral to rejoice. Long term socio-political solutions are already over due.

The ongoing turf war among different groups is embedded in years’ long inept politics of myopic minds. Ethnic and social stratification fueled by free movement of arms has made the city a fertile battleground for fiercely fragmented population. Genesis of the turmoil can be traced into unregulated migration and refugee settlement in 1947 that laid the foundation of the powder-keg called Karachi now.

Being the most developed port city in 40s, the smart, educated and socially advanced migrant community fastidiously chose Karachi and other developed towns to be their abode. To make it almost exclusively a migrant city, administrative steps were taken to keep other communities specially the natives at bay.

According to a report of Pakistan-Sindh Joint Refugees Council, by May 1948 more than 700,000 refugees entered Sindh and three-quarters of them settled in Karachi alone. Sindhi speaking made 61 per cent of the population of Karachi in the Census of 1941 against only six per cent Urdu speaking. Mass influx in the wake of partition, altered the demographic composition of Karachi. A corollary of unbridled emigration, Urdu-speaking population swelled to 50 per cent and Sindhi-speaking shrunk to only 8.6 per cent in 1951. This deluge systematically excluded Sindhis from Karachi through evacuee property laws and other administrative measures which created an ever yawning crevasse among the two permanent communities of Sindh. Baring few ruses hardly any serious efforts were taken to forge some meaningful bond among Sindhi and Urdu speaking population.

Being more educated, socially advanced and better penetrated in civil-military bureaucracy, urban leadership preferred bonhomie with Punjabi-led civil-military establishment. Streak of superiority and imprudent political arrogance of migrant community fueled an acrimony that jeopardized shared interest of both Sindhi and Urdu-speaking communities.

Enigmatic murder of Liaqat Ali Khan marked the decline of migrant’s supremacy in the state matters. Over the period, Punjabi-led establishment became the prime ruler and the migrants were reduced to a junior partner. After the assassination of Liaqat Ali Khan, the politics of Urdu-speaking community was trapped in a pernicious mania of sense of insecurity. Outmaneuvering by Punjabi establishment sowed the seeds of insecurity among them. This sense of insecurity was fully exploited by their leadership while the false sense of superiority distanced them from native Sindhis.

Influx of Pakhtuns in 60s further multiplied the feel of insecurity. With the rise of Bhutto, rural Sindh strode from a predominantly feudal society to a gradually transforming middle class-based society. This middle class-led Sindhi society asserted its legitimate political share in the province and Urdu-speaking population already spooked by sense of insecurity construed them as yet another competitor.

Language riots and the movement against Bhutto in 70s further drifted Urdu-speaking population away from Sindhis as their leadership aligned with anti-Bhutto security establishment, thus paving the way for a dark decade. In the ensuing years, indifferent attitude of urban population during MRD movements of 1983 and 1986 was another lost opportunity to cement ties with local population.

Isolation of Urdu-speaking community was further sharpened when the MQM raised the slogan of Mohajir nation and entered into bloody confrontation with Pakhtuns, Punjabis and Sindhis in 80s and 90s. Gory incidents of September 30 and October 1st, 1988, perpetrated by hawks on both sides worsened the matters. This made Urdu-speaking population acrimonious to all other communities thus becoming more vulnerable to exploitation with a sense of insecurity. The irony was that a sense of insecurity was initially inculcated by urban leadership, then nurtured and ultimately exploited to its full at the cost of thousands of innocent lives.

In the meanwhile, an active social transition continued in rural areas of Sindh and during 90s a self-grown rural middle class made inroads into urban centres. Excruciating law and order situation and faltering agriculture economy forced rural Sindhis to migrate to urban enclaves of Hyderabad and Karachi. Ethnic riots in 80s and 90s virtually bifurcated Hyderabad and Karachi into Sindhi and Urdu-speaking precincts. Since then the short spells of peace were frequently punctuated by abominable bloodshed.

However, the major conflict in Karachi started when unabated migration of Pakhtun community started claiming their share in businesses and politics. Major influx of Pakhtun community from up country was witnessed after the army operation in tribal areas.

In 2008, ANP first time scrambled to wring out two seats and became shareholder in Sindh government. Baloch militancy further shoved the MQM from old Karachi and deprived it of sizeable extortion revenue from its areas of influence. Spook of false sense of insecurity and isolation has now attained a new peak among Urdu-speaking population as they feel that Karachi is no more a unilaterally regulated entity. Religious extremism is the latest entry that has added a new dimension to prevalent anarchy. An estimated three to four million illegal immigrants are also a contributing factor to the ongoing malaise.

Meanwhile, police department went through a rapid institutional decay due to mass recruitment of political loyalists by the PPP and the MQM. The recent years witnessed an unprecedented surge in crime and homicide as the police department has been paralysed. Gravity of the situation can be fathomed from the statement of former DG Rangers Sindh, Major General Aijaz, recorded before the Supreme Court on September 7, 2011. He made a startling statement by lucidly mentioning that “the problem in Karachi is very serious, rather more serious than that of South Waziristan. The political face of the city has been taken hostage by militant groups of political parties. Political parties are penetrated by the criminals under the garb of political groups who use party flags. The militants and criminals are taking refuge in the lap of political and ethnic parties which use the flags of these parties to commit illegal activities with impunity.”

Politics of violence and gun power that was induced in the city in mid eighties has now sprawled in other communities with an alarming ferocity. This has perturbed the ranks of the MQM who enjoyed almost unparalleled authority in yesteryears. The party leadership seems to have got fractious and committing fatal mistakes one after the other, thus making life tormenting for its own constituency.

The MQM’s ethno-centric politics that refuses to shun violent means and its addiction to power seat have impaired its cognitive abilities to take sagacious political decisions. Demanding new provinces and issuing irresponsible statements about integrity of Sindh at this juncture is a decision bereft of political prescience that may erode the residual scant affinity among the two permanent communities of Sindh. The MQM ought to realise that sense of superiority, appetite for sole proprietorship of Karachi and dictating terms through gun power would only heap more miseries for Sindh, specially for Karachites.

Also, Karachi is no more a provincial or national issue now. A more complex regional and international vested interest operates behind what is unfolding in the city.

The Nato’s exit from Afghanistan in 2014 and Sino-American cold war make Karachi an epicentre of the regional power race. A peaceful Karachi would only be possible if politics is detached from violence, streets are indiscriminately combed to flush out terrorists and their arsenal, police are purged of obnoxious Trojan horses and illegal immigrants are expelled. Dilatory cure has already perverted Karachi and any further laxity may culminate in a meaningless mourning. All this requires a firm political will that is not subdued by machinations of power politics.

[I]The author is a writer and analyst; [email]nmemon2004@yahoo.com[/email][/I]

[B]29.09.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]The toleration of intolerance [/SIZE]
The current virulent strain of intolerance in Pakistan is not only eroding the country from within but also weakening the very essence of humanity within us
By Yaqoob Khan Bangash[/CENTER][/B]

It is no news that Pakistan is going through a very turbulent time. Not only is the country beset by an armed challenge to its authority by the Taliban, various economic and social challenges have laid bare the weak and vulnerable structure of the country.

While certain elements of our society have shown remarkable resilience in the face of great adversities, certain sociological, political and religious changes have significantly altered the nature of our society. Pakistan is no longer the region where the mystic Mian Meer was friends with the Sikh Guru Arjun, and even laid the foundation stone of Sikhism’s holiest shrine, Harmindar sahib — the famed Golden Temple — in 1588, and where Baba Farid Gang Shakar’s poetry became an integral part of Sikhism’s holy book, Guru Garanth.

Nor is it a place where the maverick mystic Shah Hussain fell in love with the Hindu boy, Madho Lal, in the sixteenth century.

It has, unfortunately I think, become a place where no level of difference is tolerated. Pakistan is now a land where the slightest of difference can lead to violent attacks, death and destruction. Pakistan is now a country where even the different schools of thought in Islam are not tolerated, let alone other religions and traditions.

The recent bloody Sunday attack on a church in Peshawar was a watershed in the history of inter-religious relations in Pakistan. Not only was it the single most destructive attack on Christians in Pakistan’s history, the choice of All Saints Church was also poignant. Out of all the churches in Peshawar, All Saints Church, erected in 1883, resembled the ‘inculturation’ motive of the Church of England’s mission in India.

The church was built in the style of a mosque replete with minarets and niches, and Persian and Pashto inscriptions. It, however, did keep its traditional Christian cruciform design. The rationale behind the building was that Pakhtun Christians should worship in a Christian church which resembled their culture and traditions, and not of distant England. Having a replica of an English parish church, however beautiful, would have still made the structure look and feel alien. Therefore, traditional mosque-style architecture was employed so that not only the local Christians feel at ease in the building, the surrounding Muslims also do not feel that an alien structure has arisen among their midst.

Its success, both construction and usage wise, was testament to the fact that Christianity — which in fact predated Islam in South Asia — was indeed now a local phenomena. The use of mosque-style architecture also exhibited a comfortable syncretic outlook where styles emanating from both religions could feel at ease in one structure. The attack on bloody Sunday also challenged this notion.

Intolerance does not only manifest itself in mass murder, as in Peshawar, but also exists in efforts to limit discourse. Therefore, in another way, equally disturbing was the news from Lahore where a furore was caused over the attempt of Lahore Grammar School, a leading private school of the country, to teach its students ‘Comparative Religion.’ This subject, which is the norm in most sensible countries, caused such a fracas that the government of the Punjab intervened and banned the subject.

The perverse and wicked mind of a television anchor further added fuel to the issue by simply lying about the whole scenario.

So what was the school, a pioneer in so many best practices in schooling in Pakistan, trying to achieve? According to the school principal at LGS, the rationale behind the course was that her ‘...institution believes in inculcating values such as tolerance and empathy in all our students. Comparative Religion is essentially a history of religion. It is not merely comparing religions; we aim to educate our students about Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Hinduism and their fundamental teachings. Doing so, we believe, will enlighten our students about the importance of peaceful coexistence.’

So, in a nutshell this course taught students what these other religions were about, what they believed in, what practices they had etc. So what is wrong with such a course? Surely any good history course does the exact same thing, and the only difference here is that this one focused on religions. In a world where people hate other religions without knowing anything about them, what is the harm in actually being informed about those religions? At the very least it might bring that level of misinformed hatred down and ease tensions. Such a course might actually inform students of the shared ethical basis of most world religions as well as their similarities, and differences, in an objective manner. However, such an endeavour was ill-fated in an increasingly ill-fated Pakistan.

According to a newspaper report, the Vice-Chancellor of the oldest educational institution in Pakistan, Government College University, said that “students of primary and secondary grades should not be taught comparative religions as they were not able to analyse the contents. He was of the view that the schools should not select such syllabus which could become a reason to confuse the students.” The news report did not directly quote the Vice-Chancellor and I earnestly hope that it is a misquote or a mistake; otherwise, the Vice-Chancellor does not know anything about education.

Education is simply the pursuit of knowledge through reason — one of the highest goals of humankind. Clearly there are subjects which are taught at different levels, but to claim that middle school students are not able to ‘analyse’ and will be ‘confused’ by the simple narration of religious principles is ludicrous. If this is indeed true then most religions which teach their precepts to young children have been striving in vain. If children can have the capacity to understand their own religion at a young age theologically, then they can surely understand other religions and their basics in a historical narrative.

Two other ignorant allegations were also hurled against the school. The first charged that the school had dropped the study of Islamiat in lieu of this course. However, the principal clarified that: ‘we have not abandoned teachings of Islamiat; we do so from classes 2-10 at the end of which, the students appear for the subject’s board exam.’ Therefore there is no ‘threat’ to the study of religion as a subject in the school and it continues to be taught in its theological and philosophical domains. Secondly, some quarters charged that the course violated Article 22 of the constitution. However, if one actually reads the article it states that ‘No person attending any educational institution shall be required to receive religious instruction, or take part in any religious ceremony, or attend religious worship, if such instruction, or ceremony or worship relates to a religion other than his own.’

Clearly the above is referring to ‘religious instruction’ which means that no one should be required to study a religion theologically if they are not a part of it. The article does not preclude the study of the history of religions, or a mere learning about what they are. Such an interpretation would mean that we would not be able to study ancient India since that is all about the Vedic religion, we cannot study Ashoka since he focuses a lot on Buddhism, the Reformation and Renaissance — the critical periods in Western history — would have to be left out because they are primarily about religion, and so on.

Perhaps the real scare in this saga is that students might begin to ‘think’ from this course — something which still scares traditional minded ‘academics’ and others in Pakistan. As several people have noted, critical thinking and questioning is mostly discouraged in Pakistan. As a matter of fact, even asking a question from a ‘senior’ teacher or professor is considered a heinous crime, and tantamount to rejecting their ‘authority’ — whatever that means.

One of the fundamental responsibilities of educators is to help develop the conscience of their students and thinking is a critical part of it. Freedom to think, which also means freedom of conscience, is an integral part of human development and without it civilisation cannot progress. In fact, the Western world only began to experience rapid progress when freedom of conscience started to be guaranteed. Freedom of conscience is the fresh air in which humankind is truly free. However, sadly such a right is yet to be realised in Pakistan and the reaction to this episode is a sad reminder of it.

Ultimately the two sad episodes above show the high level of intolerance present in our culture, and its multifaceted nature. On the one hand, the presence of another religion is not tolerated in Peshawar, and on the other even the teaching of another religion — even as history — is not allowed in Lahore. We also have had several recent examples where Shia Muslims have been similarly attacked because their ‘religion’ is suspect. Attacks on Sufi shrines in recent years is yet another illustration of unacceptable ‘religion.’ All these attacks on non-Muslim as well as Muslim places of worship should make us wonder what ‘religion’ is indeed acceptable to the perpetrators of these attacks.

In most religions of the world — Sophia — wisdom — is one of the main attributes of God, and wisdom is most readily obtained and nurtured in academia, be it the gymnasium of ancient Greece, the great universities and monastic institutions of medieval Europe, the Darul Hikma of medieval Baghdad, or institutions like Lahore Grammar School and Government College in modern day Pakistan.

Academia is where people experience real learning and real freedom, where the greatest ideas in the world are incubated, discussed and realised, and where, if properly channelled, God can be understood. The current virulent strain of intolerance in Pakistan where nothing except a jaundiced and myopic view is acceptable is not only eroding the country from within but also weakening the very essence of humanity within us.

I hope the above two incidents not only shock us but also lead us to action to stem this toleration of intolerance.

[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]29.09.2013 [/B][B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Estimating urbanisation [/SIZE]
The urbanisation process is significant with
implications for the understanding of politics, poverty, empowerment, gender and governance
By Raza Ali[/CENTER][/B]

In our article, ‘How Urban is Pakistan’ published in 1999, we analysed the preliminary results of the 1998 census, particularly regarding urban population. We noted that city populations were higher than what official data was prepared to reflect, pointing to the issue of definition, specially the change introduced in the 1981 census and the use of administrative boundaries that contributed to the ‘under-estimation’ of the urban population in the census (Box 1).

In a later version published as ‘Underestimating Urbanisation’ after the final results of the census had been released, we noted that leading Pakistani demographers and social scientists had commented and raised questions on the apparently low urban population reported in the 1998 census, considering it inconsistent with trends and evidence-based research. They argued that the urban population as a percentage of total population could not be less than 40 per cent and could be up to 50 per cent. (See Box 2 on the implications of the changed census definition of ‘urban’). Here, we take up the subject again.

Why is it important to look at the urbanisation process? As we had argued earlier, in transitional societies, urbanisation and its key characteristics are major determinants of the political process. Urbanisation has an impact on the realisation of political rights and participation in political processes, on the relationship of and responsibilities between the citizen and the state and the related institutional structures, on the nature of the breakdown of existing societal structures and the forging of new and complex ones, and on the composition of revenue base and the criteria for resource allocations.

There is a critical need to recognise and understand the urbanisation process: here, we look at the process to present estimates of urbanisation and rural population.

In preparing estimates of urbanisation and rurality, we draw from our earlier work, and, use the latest available census pertaining to 1998. However, before we proceed with the estimates, we need to discuss the matter of definition. This is important because the use of varying definitions may not capture the degree of population agglomeration, and, changes in definition complicate comparisons over time. Similarly, global population and urbanisation databases, such as that maintained by the United Nations since 1950 (and other agencies) are derived from national data based on country-specific definitions used by various countries (Box 3 and 4), international comparisons are made more difficult. This should not be interpreted to mean that the national definitions are flawed, but that they distort cross-country comparisons and, in many places, the implied urban/rural dichotomy is inadequate to reflect the degree of agglomeration.

What then is urban and what is rural? Census offices usually define what is ‘urban’ or metropolitan for census purposes and assume the ‘residual’ to be rural (See Box 1 for Pakistan definitions). Governments use different definitions for policy — such as ‘urban and ‘rural’ in Sindh for job quotas to bring equity in government employment; and, in the United Kingdom, 30 different definitions of ‘rural’ are used by government departments. ‘Rural’ and ‘urban’ seem clear terms with contrasting images: isolated farms, tiny hamlets, cultivated fields and villages, versus, the thriving city, skyscrapers and slums. This may have been a simple but adequate way of defining ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ some centuries or even decades ago, and while this dichotomy may be comfortable, it is imprecise and over-simplified.

Life changes in a variety of dimensions along this route: from fields and intensive cultivation, villages and small market towns, to larger towns, small cities and the cosmopolitan city and is not a single homogenous activity — it is multi-functional and diverse. Categorisations are largely becoming irrelevant as people live their lives in different ways rendering conventional definitions obsolete and many social, cultural, economic and environmental issues are inadequately addressed by current approaches separating ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ agendas.

The key features of the urban context have been defined as proximity, density, diversity, dynamics and complexity. Population density, an urban core and proximity to city can be considered the key indicators that define the conceptual framework of agglomeration economies and rent. These critical factors have been used to create an agglomeration index as an alternative measure to adequately capture human settlement concentration rather than rely on ad-hoc and non-comparable definitions that, because of their implied urban/rural dichotomy, may not adequately reflect the degree of urbanisation (Box 5).

(a) Population density

Population density is an important criterion for economic behaviour — to have a thick market, there must be a certain mass of people. Density is a proxy for market thickness. Dense proximity of a diverse pool of skills provides agglomeration benefits: drives agglomeration economies that are a defining feature of cities — transport, infrastructure, amenities — also bear on these economies. Density also affects unit cost of investment — fixed facility costs or higher mean travel cost to facility. Low-density areas may be too small to support competition in product and service markets, leading to capture by local monopolies.

(b) Urban Core and Proximity – distance to city:

The existence of an urban core and its proximity (or distance) captures important determinants of economic opportunities and constraints — a proxy for market access and lower transport costs. Areas with ease of access or within commuting radius of a city may not be considered rural even if they are agricultural farms, and, towns outside the radius may be considered rural. Economic activities change systematically with distance to city: proximity and remoteness.

Lack of an urban core and low overall population density impacts ability to diversify economic base compared to cities. The most extensively researched source of evidence for the claim that proximity is good for productivity is from studies of areas of dense economic activity: doubling of size increases productivity from 3-8 per cent — from a town of 50,000 to one of 5 million means a 50 per cent productivity increase. Further, this effect is larger in higher technology sectors.

What does Pakistan look like in terms of the critical factors that determine the urban and rural:

n Population density, and

n Urban core and proximity.

Overall population density in Pakistan has increased from 42.4persons/skm in 1951 to an estimated 231.6 persons/skm in 2013 with the highest density in the Punjab (488 persons/skm, 2013 estimate) and the lowest in Balochistan (27.4 persons/skm, 2013 estimate). The largest increase is in Balochistan (from 3 to 27 persons/skm), followed by significant increases in K-Pakhtunkwa from 61 to 313 persons/skm) and Sindh (43 to 313 persons/skm). Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest province in terms of area (43.6 per cent), stands in sharp contrast to the other provinces: 70 per cent of Balochistan’s population lives at densities below 50 persons/skm compared to 1 per cent in the Punjab and 3 per cent in Sindh and K-Pakhtunkwa; there is no population living at densities above 500 persons/skm compared to 51 per cent in Punjab, 41 per cent in Sindh and 38 per cent in K-Pakhtunkwa.

Other than Balochistan, the majority of the population live within one-hour from a city (83%, 80% and 68% in Punjab, Sindh and K-Pakhtunkwa) and a small proportion living more than two-hours away (the respective figures being 1%, 7%, and 9%); Balochistan presents a different picture with only 20% of the population living less than one-hour and 20% living more than 6 hours-away from a city.

In the framework of the critical factors and using criteria and thresholds that we establish, we can proceed to estimate the urban and rural in Pakistan (Box 6). As mentioned earlier, the census defines only the urban and assumes the rest to be rural; we however establish criteria for both the rural and the urban. The base case criteria were adopted after considering and preparing estimates on several criteria.

In the base case criteria, we consider (a) all areas with scattered populations (i.e. low population density), all areas that do not contain a town (i.e. urban core), and all other areas beyond a given travel time (i.e. proximity to city) to be rural: the base case criteria are: 250 persons/skm; absence of a town of 50,000 within the area; and a travel distance of more than 75-minutes to a city; (b) a city core (100,000 or more in a single Pakistan census urban place) and its linked built-up and surrounding areas as ‘urban’ area provided they have a minimum density of 500 persons/skm (overall).

Of course, this leaves a gap between what we are considering rural areas and urban areas. As mentioned earlier, the categorisation of rural and urban appears inadequate and imprecise and there does not appear to be a natural dividing line or break point between the two: the urban/rural divide appears as a gradient, rather than a dichotomy. Behaviour and conditions change drastically along the gradient, and there seems no compelling reason to segment them into just these two categories. We, therefore, introduce the concept of an ‘urbanizing’ area to classify areas which clearly are not rural since they have both an urban core and an overall density higher than the criteria we are using to classify the rural although they have not achieved our criteria for urban areas but could be considered in transition.

We categorise all areas that have (i) a population density more than 250 persons/skm (overall) and 400 persons/skm in the urban core, (ii) a town (i.e. urban core) of 50,000 or more, and (iii) lie within a 75-minute distance of a city (100,000 or more) as ‘urbanising’ areas. The base case criteria we use for an urban area is significantly higher than what is considered ‘urban’ in most of Europe, Oceania, the Americas, Africa and Asia. The base case criteria for urbanising area is considered ‘urban in most countries, with few notable exceptions. Similarly, the criteria are much higher than that used to calculate the agglomeration index (a comparison is given in Table B, Box 6).

Table 1 provides a comparison of these estimates with the 1998 census.

In looking at the comparisons, it should be borne in mind that while the census has only two categories — that defined as ‘urban’ with all the ‘residual’ non-urban areas treated as rural — we classify all areas in one of our three categories using defined criteria for each. It will be seen that our ‘urban area’ estimates in the case of Punjab and K-Pakhtunkwa are higher than the census urban population by 27% and 3% respectively; our higher estimates are partly due to the use of administrative boundaries of the city by the census resulting in the exclusion of suburban development (see Box 2) that forms an integral part of the city is excluded from consideration in the census but gets included in our estimates.

On the other hand, our estimates for the urban area in Sindh are lower by 18% compared to the census due to the exclusion of small rural towns from our estimates for their lack of urban core (i.e. below our threshold size: town of 50,000 population) and lower density, but are included in the census due to their administrative status, while in Balochistan, we do not find any area which meets our criteria for urban (primarily due to the density criterion).

The main differences are in the case of our rural estimates: since (i) our ‘rural area’ estimates are derived from defined criteria for the ‘rural’ while the census assumes all the population outside the city boundaries to be “rural”; and (ii) we introduce the concept of an ‘urbanising area’ for the areas that clearly are not rural (they have both an urban core and an overall density higher than the criteria we are using to classify the rural) while they have not achieved the base case criteria for ‘urban area’. The introduction of ‘urbanising area’ brings into play the various elements of our criteria: in Punjab and K-Pakhtunkwa, due to higher densities, presence of urban core (town of 50,000 population) and proximity to city (within 75-minute of a city of 100,000), a very significant population classified as rural by the census falls in our urbanising area (the census classifies all areas outside city boundary as rural — the ‘residual’ approach); in Sindh, certain areas classified as urban by the census do not meet our criteria for an urban area but qualify as urbanising areas; and in Balochistan, the Quetta area containing the only city of the province, is considered as an urbanising area due to lower overall population density. There is a significant part of the population living in areas that are no longer rural but at different stages of urbanisation.

To sum up in the Pakistan context: the urban-rural definition of the census measures attributes of administrative areas and does not adequately reflect the process of urbanisation and agglomeration. We use density, urban core and distance to city to measure the urbanisation process and show that the census definition ‘underestimates’ the magnitude of the population in areas undergoing urbanisation (‘urbanising areas’).

The definition, and the consequent flawed understanding of the urbanisation process, has led to serious policy distortions. It is both the nature and the magnitude of the urbanisation process that is significant with important implications for the understanding of politics, poverty, empowerment, gender, governance, culture, inequality, informality and marginality. Based on an understanding of this process, many concepts have to change and policy interventions repositioned.

(Box 2) Definition matters – Pakistan

The definition adopted in the 1981 census, and subsequently for the 1998 census, was based on an administrative criterion. This implied that places which would earlier have qualified as urban, would be ignored: in 1951 census, of a total of 235 urban places, 121 or 51.5 per cent did not have administrative status; in 1961 census, of 336 urban places, 219 or 65.2 per cent did not have administrative status – and according to the 1981 definition would not have been classified urban. By using administrative status as the criterion for the 1981 census, 72 urban places in the 1972 census with a population of 1.356 million was declared rural in 1981, thus shifting 5.7 per cent of the urban population to the rural; similarly 1,462 places with a population of 5,000 or more were classified as rural some of which would have been classified as ‘urban’ had the definition not been changed. In the 1998 census, 3,691 places of 5,000 and above, with a population of 31 million were classified as rural; once again, many of these would have been classified as ‘urban’ had the changed definition not been applied. An estimate shows that 361 places with a population of 5,000 or more that were considered rural in the 1998 census actually had urban characteristics better than many places considered urban in the census; if their population is considered urban, this would add another 6.5 per cent to the 1998 urban population of Pakistan (Arif, 2003).

Leading from the use of an administration criterion is the use of administrative boundaries under the changed definition introduced in the 1981 census: this meant that people living outside the administrative boundaries were not counted as urban. City populations have extended outside these administrative boundaries through suburban and peri-urban development, a phenomenon that has gained in significance. For instance, in Lahore, public sector suburban development (Johar Town, Sabazaar, others) most private sector suburbs, and the Defense Housing Authority area, are not included in the count for urban Lahore. Similarly, settlements peripheral to the city, capitalising upon their proximity, transport links employment opportunities and access to services have grown substantially and even acquired “urban characteristics”. Not surprisingly, the census results show that municipality population grew at 3.14% p.a. while the surrounding “rural” areas at 4.14% p.a. Re-estimating the urban agglomeration would result in an increase of well over 20% to the 1998 census urban population of Lahore.

(Box 4) Definitions matter - internationally

The definitions used by various countries vary widely (Box 2) and in making comparisons across counties and regions, reliance is placed on the data compiled by the United Nations but there is "general under-appreciation of the fact that the UN is forced to rely on member countries' definitions of what constitutes urban and rural. Not only do these definitions vary widely by country, in many places the traditional urban/rural dichotomy is becoming increasingly inadequate" (Cohen, 2004). This leads to distortions, "misunderstandings and misreporting". For example, the share of India's population that resided in urban areas in 1991 would be 39% instead of the official figure of 26% if 113 million inhabitants of 13,376 villages with population of 5,000 or more were classified as urban. The share would be even higher if the Swedish definition of urban (settlements with more than 200 inhabitants) were applied. The notion that South Asia is densely populated but that a relatively small proportion of the population lives in urban areas may not be as paradoxical as it sounds. In Mexico, the urban population in 2000 was 74.4% when settlements of 2,500 or more were defined as urban. If that threshold were changed to 15,000 or more (Nigeria and Syria, for example, have cut-offs of 20,000), the urban share of the population would drop to 67%. A country's definition also can change over time, adding yet another layer of confusion. In China, for example, the urban share in 1999 could have 24%, 31%, or 73% depending on the official definition of urban population used (Satterthwaite, 2007).

(Box 1) Definition matters

As the 1961 census noted, “The distinction between an urban and rural population is based on the definition of what is an urban population” and “The essential difference between a rural and urban population was that the former was mainly engaged in agriculture and the latter in commerce, manufactures and other occupations. Thus a place having a population of 5,000 or more would be considered a village if it did not possess urban characteristics” (Census 1931). Since census taking began in British India in 1861, “urban population meant the de facto population of cities and towns”. Cities and towns included: “(1) every municipality; (2) all civil lines not included in municipal limits; (3) every cantonment; (4) every other continuous collection of houses inhabited by not less than 5,000 persons, which the provincial superintendent may decide to treat as town for census purposes”. The 1981 census changed this definition of ‘urban’ to an administrative criterion — that of the administrative status of municipal governance — thus only the population living within the boundaries of municipalities and cantonments was designated as ‘urban’.

(Box 5) Agglomeration Index

In order to adequately capture human settlement concentration rather than rely on ad-hoc and non-comparable definitions that, because of their implied urban/rural dichotomy, may not adequately reflect the degree of urbanization, an alternative measure of urban concentration was proposed by Uchida and Nelson (2008) based on earlier work by Chomitz, Buys and Thomas (2005). The agglomeration index is based on a uniform definition of what constitutes an “urban” or agglomerated area that can be used in cross-country analyses. “It is based on three factors: population density, the size of the population in a “large” urban center, and travel time to that urban center.” “The index does not define what is urban per se – it does not incorporate urban characteristics such as political status and the presence of particular services or activities.”

The World Development Report 2009 adopted and used the index. The set of thresholds used were the same as in Chomitz et.al (2005): population density of 150 persons/skm; 50,000 for minimum population size, and 60 minutes for travel time to nearest large city. The density threshold is the one used is by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development and the threshold of 50,000 for a sizeable settlement was “considered reasonable for developed and developing countries” (WDR 2009).

Based on country-specific definitions of the ‘urban’, the worldwide share of urban population was 47%; using the criteria this ratio is 52%. A comparison of the country-specific and uniformly defined shares of the urban population is given in Table A below.

(Box 6) Estimating Urbanization - Definition and Criteria

Rural Area: All areas with scattered populations (i.e. low density), and, all other areas, regardless of density, which do not contain a sizeable town (i.e. urban core), and, within a specified travel distance from a city.

Urban Area: A city core, its suburbs, linked built-up and surrounding areas are urban areas provided they meet the overall density criteria.

Urbanizing Area: Areaswith an urban core, an overall density higher than that for the rural, and within 75-minutes of a city, but below the criteria for urban areas.

On this basis, several criteria were used to prepare a series of estimates and base case criteria were adopted. The criteria are given in Table A below.

The base case criteria used for an urban area is significantly higher than what is considered ‘urban’ in most of Europe, Oceania, the Americas, Africa and Asia. The criteria used for urbanizing area is considered ‘urban in most countries, with few notable exceptions. Similarly the criteria is much higher than that used to calculate the agglomeration index (discussed in Box 5). A comparison of the criteria used with the country criteria for the United States used by the US Bureau of Census and that used for the agglomeration index in the WDR 2009 is given in Table B below.

[B]29.09.2013[/B] [B][CENTER] [SIZE="5"]Mangoes round the year [/SIZE]
Farmers in Pakistan have succeeded in increasing the shelf life of mangoes by using the hot water technology and state-of-the-art mega processing plants
By Alauddin Masood[/CENTER][/B]

Rejoice mango lovers. The fruit of your first choice — mango — will now be available round the year to satisfy your taste buds.

Some Pakistani growers have introduced dehydrated mango in slice and cube form for the first time in this part of the world. The pioneers displayed dried slices and cubes of the ‘king of fruits’ at a trade fair organised by the Multan Chamber of Commerce and Industry at the beginning of September, this year. The dried mangoes have the taste like the fresh fruit. According to the pioneers of this technique, 1000 kilogram of fresh mangoes yielded 288 kilogram dried slices and cubes of this fruit.

Marketing horticultural products in dried form is not a new technique. It has been practiced in this region since ancient time, but the shelf life of vegetables and fruits dried by using primitive techniques was short. Some progressive farmers in Pakistan have succeeded in increasing the shelf life of mangoes by using the hot water technology and state-of-the-art mega processing plants.

Some countries, including China, are already marketing their apricots, peaches, plums, etcetera in dried form, beautifully wrapped like expensive candies and packed in elegantly designed containers. They send packs of dried fruits as gifts to friends, within the country and abroad, on festive occasions. The diplomats of those countries use festive occasions as opportunities to introduce the fruits of their native lands to important people in the country of their posting.

Pakistan has some of the sweetest mangoes in the world. With a total production of 1.80 million tonnes, Pakistan is the sixth largest producer of mango fruit across the globe, however, its exports of the fruit are relatively low compared to the country’s actual potential. Against a target of 175,000 tonnes, Pakistan exported 160,000 tonnes of mango, earning $54.85 million in foreign exchange, till the end of August, 2013. The exporters of mango fruit are optimistic to achieve the export target set for this year. Last year, Pakistan exported 118,000 tonnes mangoes for $36 million. These figures show that though the export of this fruit is rising, it still remains less than 10 per cent of the country’s total production.

Hot water technology and processing by mechanical plants has increased the shelf life of even the fresh mangoes up to 40 days by making the pulp of the fruit free from nine bacteria elements. More shelf life of the fruit, it is believed, would help in increasing the export of Pakistani mangoes, earning more foreign exchange for the country and becoming instrumental in the expansion of its agro-based sector.

Till recently, Pakistan’s focus has remained limited to exporting mangoes to the United Kingdom and some Middle Eastern countries. In the last two years, Pakistan has discovered new markets and exported its mangoes to seven new countries, including China, Jordan, Mauritius, South Korea, Japan and Lebanon. In addition to trial shipment of mango fruit to Australia, mango shows were also organised in Malaysia and Singapore this year. As the mango season coincided with Ramazan this year, there was an increase in demand for Pakistani mangoes in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, UAE and the Central Asian Republics.

With a little effort, the experts believe, the country can appear as one of the leading mango exporting country on the globe. The major constraint to the expansion of market for Pakistani mangoes had been related to the country’s inability to supply competitively priced high quality mangoes in a significant and consistent manner, in keeping with the international standards and demands of the supermarket chains.

Eyeing to increase its exports of mangoes to 250,000 tonnes over the next two to three years, the country has geared efforts to adopting international standards, including hot-water technology, stringent quality control measures during several stages of production, processing, packing and export. At present, Pakistani farmers are processing mangoes in Multan, using a pair of giant-sized processing plants. As far as hot water technology is concerned, these plants have two to three times more capacity to process mangoes than any such plant in use anywhere in the world. One of these plants has the capacity to process 15 tonnes mangoes per hour and the second 10 tonnes per hour. The third big plant in Mexico possesses the capacity to process 4.5 tonnes mangoes per hour.

The flesh of mango is peach-like and juicy. It is rich in sugar and acid. The mango fruit has best flavour if allowed to ripen on the tree. When ripe, the fruit is entirely pale green or yellow marked with red. The quality of the fruit is based on taste and scarcity of fiber. Pakistan is the house of some fine varieties of mangoes, which are known for their good aroma, excellent taste and almost total absence of fiber content.

Among over 150 varieties of mango fruit produced in Pakistan, the choicest varieties are: Samar Bahisht (Paradise’s fruit), Fajree, Chaunsa, Super Langra, Shan-e-Khuda (God’s magnificence), Anwar Ratol, Lahoti, Ratool, Sindhri, Alfanso, Dusehri, Roosi Dulhan (Russian bride), Lab-e-Mashooq (Darling’s Lips), Lab-e-Habshi (Negroe’s Lips), Shaheed-e-Zam Zam and Tota Pari. Some other varieties include: Kala Pahar (black mountain), Gulab-e-Khas (special rose), Saleh Bhai, Al-Khausa, Neelum, Baigan Phelli, Seroli and Batasha. Amongst these, Chaunsa and Sindhri have great potential for hitting the US and EU supermarkets.

In the entire South Asia Sub-Continent, people relish mangoes and nostalgically refer to it as the ‘king of fruits.’ In fact, the fondness for mangoes in the South Asia is deep-rooted, and as old as the history of human civilization. No section or community, including the royalty, the elite, the intellectuals, the men of letters, is immune from craving for this highly nutritious fruit. One and all relish the mangoes. It also finds mention in the Punjabi, Sindhi and Hindi folklore.

The rich folk hold mangoes as a good dessert; while it constitutes an integral part of the diet of the villagers during the summer and monsoon seasons in Pakistan. People who go out for picnics during the monsoon season never forget to carry some mangoes with them. On such occasions, the youth also hold mango-eating contests. In short, in Pakistan, as in many other regions of the world, people greatly relish the fruit and its products.

Mangoes not only sweeten the economy and dining table in a variety of ways, they also provide jobs to millions of people from farms to export houses. From the early stages till it ripens, mango is processed into pickles (Achar, Chatney and Murabba), jams, jellies, nectars, juice, syrups and mango pudding and it involves millions of people, including growers, transporters, retailers, vendors, juice and ice-cream makers and exporters, throughout Pakistan. Taste-wise, it is one of the best fruits, which provides dozens of tastes and attracts people of all ages.

Rich in a variety of phytochemicals and nutrients that qualify mango as a super fruit of high health value, till recently mango has mainly been used as a fresh fruit. It is high in prebiotic dietary fiber, vitamin C, polyphenols, and provitamin carotenoids. The antioxidant vitamins A, C and E comprise 25 per cent, 76 per cent and 9.0 per cent respectively of the Dietary Reference Intake in a 165-gram serving.

New research studies have shown that polyphenols chemical found in mango can help cure some forms of cancers, including colon, chest, lungs, bone-marrow and prostrate. According to Dr S. Tailcoat and her husband, mango pulp, juice, peel and seed can create resistance against cancer. These research findings are likely to result in increasing the demand for mango fruits manifold.

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

[B]29.09.2013 [/B][B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Revenue degeneration [/SIZE]
The FBR’s Year Book 2012-2013 proves beyond any doubt the
inefficiency of the revenue collection agency of the state
By Huzaima Bukhari & Dr. Ikramul Haq[/CENTER][/B]

The Year Book 2012-13, released by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on September 23, 2013, admits miserable performance during fiscal year 2012-13 — it collected Rs1939 billion against the original target of Rs2381 billion and even could not meet the three times revised budget of Rs2007. The shortfall of Rs442 billion pushed fiscal deficit to 8.8 per cent of GDP forcing the government to resort to further regressive taxes and begging before International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other lenders.

The collection was merely Rs57 billion more than what was collected in 2011-12 — this 3 per cent growth should be read as minus 6 per cent as average inflation rate during 2012-13 was 9 per cent.

In his ‘Foreword’ to the report, Tariq Bajwa, new Chairman of the FBR, while noting with concern that original as well as revised targets were missed by a wide margin, solicited comments of the public on the dismal performance of the FBR. This is a positive move and a healthy sign — in earlier reports, self-criticism and quest for improvement were totally missing.

The latest report of the FBR does not mention why the ex-chairman and many others received ‘honourariums’ (six months’ salaries) for their pathetic performance. There is a consensus that over the period of time, the FBR has become an institution wrought with corruption and inefficiency. The frequent occurrences of mega scams — fake refunds, tailored amnesty schemes, flying invoices, under invoicing, excessive payments of export rebates, just to mention a few — have increased manifold confirming the existence of a strong mafia.

The fiasco in fiscal year 2012-13 started with the political posting of Ali Arshad Hakeem as the FBR Chairman on July 11, 2012 under the direct command of former president Asif Ali Zardari. Though it was declared unlawful by Islamabad High Court, but by that time, he succeeded in destroying the collection strategy for 2012-13. On assumption of charge, he made some tall claims of surpassing the revenue target of Rs2381 billion by using “extraordinary managerial skills”, “innovative IT tools” and “amnesty schemes”. All these proved to be just self-praise as revenues nose-dived during his tenure. Fake refunds of billions of rupees were issued under his chairmanship.

The same scenario continued under the caretaker setup. Genuine refunds were blocked unlawfully and fake were issued causing loss to exchequer. The Federal Tax Ombudsman (FTO) categorically warned the FBR to be “careful and do not resort to blockade of refunds.” But they did not heed his advice as usual. It should be remembered that in 2011, the FTO took suo moto notice [complaint number 982/2011] of figure fudging by the FBR through unlawful “borrowing of funds” in July 2011 by the Large Taxpayer Units (LTUs) from some companies to show higher collection but no action was taken against the officer involved in this crime despite the matter went to Public Accounts Committee. This undesirable act continues even today — the FBR’s officialdom thinks “nobody can touch us as rulers being tax evaders are in our pockets”.

There is no effective check of the government or the parliament over the FBR. In India, every year a comprehensive report is prepared by the Public Accounts Committee of the Parliament where the performance of tax machinery is critically examined and suggestions for betterment are made — latest report is available at [url]http://www.itatonline.org/info/index.php/parliament-committee-hauls-up-dept-for-adventurous-assessment-orders/[/url].

Time and again, different chairmen of the FBR admitted before the Standing Committee of Parliament on Finance that tax reforms, funded by foreign donors since 2004, have failed to yield desired results. At the end of the five-year Tax Administration Reforms Programme (TARP), extended for another year, there was unprecedented decline in tax-to-GDP ratio — from 12.5 per cent in 2002-2003 to 8.2 per cent in 2010-11. This was one of the lowest in the world — confirming apathy of the ruling classes who, instead of paying due taxes, thrive on the national resources meant for the welfare of the weaker segments of society.

Even the new FBR Chairman is not ready to admit that Pakistan’s real revenue potential is much higher than lowly targets fixed in the budgets every year

The FBR’s Year Book 2012-13 shows that major burden of collecting taxes is shifted on withholding agents, who are performing the essential state function without any reimbursement of cost — they incur exorbitant expenses for performing this onerous task by employing people and providing them necessary infrastructure.

The FBR has conceded in Year Book 2012-13 that 80 per cent of taxes are being collected by the withholding agents. The corporate houses in general and banks in particular have virtually been converted into ‘FBR Collection Houses’. Withholding agents incur substantial cost for complying with tax collection provisions on behalf of the government (man-hours, infrastructure use and stationery, just to mention a few) and then face penal actions for alleged non-withholding of taxes. Corrupt officials are making lots of money encouraging unscrupulous elements not to deposit the withheld tax in the government treasury and instead, share the same with them.

The FBR’s book contains the same lies that its bosses keep on repeating in public and before Standing Committees of Parliament that “our tax base is narrow”. They claim that only those who file returns are taxpayers. In fact, millions are paying income tax at source. The total number of income taxpayers alone is over 50 million — there are active 50 million mobile users who pay 15 per cent income tax both on postpaid and prepaid connections, though number of return filers by business people is less than 500,000. Had the FBR allotted National Tax Numbers (NTNs) and issued notices to mobile users paying Rs60,000 or above as annual bill, it could have proudly said to have registered taxpayers of at least 15 million. Our tax base in not narrow, number of tax filers are pathetically low for which entire blame rests with the FBR.

If the new chairman is really serious in revamping the FBR and tapping the real tax potential of Pakistan, he must consider the fact admitted in Year Book 2012-13 that there was 31 per cent decline in 2012-13 in tax collected by the FBR officials — this alone reflects their own efforts compared to tax coming through withholding regime (59 per cent) and voluntary payments (33 per cent).

Out of total collection of income tax at Rs739.7 billion, the collection on demand was Rs89 billion — only 12 per cent of total collection, whereas in 2011-12 it was Rs130 billion or 17.6 per cent of total collection. It proves beyond any doubt the inefficiency and ineffectiveness of the FBR as revenue collection agency of the state.

[I]The writers, tax lawyers, are Adjunct Faculty at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)[/I]

[B]29.09.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Live and let live[/SIZE]
Islam is a most tolerant religion which some self-proclaimed interpreters and agents of ‘God’ have distorted, playing havoc with the society
Dr Syed Hussain Shaheed Soherwordi[/CENTER][/B]

Islam, a religion of peace, is followed by a section of people who do not believe in a pluralistic society. They aim to convert all other religions into their group. Why can’t they accept another person with different ideas and beliefs?

Where is religious pluralism — the outcome of an attempt to provide a basis in theology for tolerance of other religions and sects. 9/11 affected every aspect of our life. It has turned us intolerant even of the harmless communities of our society — the Christians. But Quran says: “Let there be no compulsion in religion” Surah Baqrah, Ayat 256). Why do we coerce people in the name of religion?

All Saints Church of Peshawar was blown by two suicide bombers of Jandola group, a broken fraction of the TTP, also considered as the Punjabi Taliban, headed by Asmatullah Muawaya. They don’t want to negotiate with the government of Pakistan. The attack took place at a time when the country’s army and political parties were in the process of conducting peace talks with Taliban militants.

When non-Muslim citizens live under Islamic sovereignty, they enjoy a special status and are known along with other minorities as ahl adh dhimma or dhimmis. Dhimma is an Arabic word, which means safety, security, and contract. Hence, they are called dhimmis because they have agreed to a contract by Allah, His Messenger, and the Muslim community, which grants them security.

Ibn Ishaq in his seerat (biography of the Prophet) states: “When the delegation of Najrani Christians came to the Prophet at Madinah, they entered his mosque in the afternoon to meet him. It was their prayer time, so they began to perform their prayer in the mosque. Some Muslims were about to prevent them from doing so, but the Prophet, upon whom be peace, said, “Let them pray.” So they faced eastward and performed their prayer.

In addition to the covenant made by the Prophet with the Christians of Najran, which placed them under the protection of Allah and his Prophet and provided for the safeguard of their wealth, religion, and churches, the one made by Umar ibn Al Khattab with the citizens of Iliya (Jersusalem) stated: “This is the protection which the servant of Allah, Umar ibn Al Khattab, the commander of the faithful extends to them (non-Muslims): the safeguarding of their lives, property, churches, crosses, and of their entire community. Their churches are not to be occupied, demolished, or damaged, nor are their crosses or anything belonging to them be touched. They will not be forced to abandon their religion, nor will they be harmed. None of the Jews will live with them in Illiya (Jersusalem).” (Tarikh At-Tabari, Volume 3, p. 609)

Our Prophet (peace be upon him) said that security of the minorities is the primary responsibility of the Muslim state.

When the Bamiyan’s Buddah statues were bombed, I wondered why. Who were they harming? It’s not Islam which is intolerant but few people who do not accommodate others; who try to coerce against the spirit of Islam.

Islam replaced earlier religions in the very beginning. However, its practice in Pakistan and in the subcontinent in general is different than in the Arab world. Spiritual as well as publically conformist, most Pakistanis are influenced by Sufism and integrate local paraphernalia such as visiting the shrines of saints, devotional songs and dancing. Pakistan is generally composed of a society that is tolerant and pluralistic, believing in religious harmony. Extremists, on the other hand, take a different view: they believe the accommodation of other religions as a dangerous deviation from Islam.

“If you want to understand inclusiveness and tolerance in Islam, you have to turn to spiritualism which will lead to the core of tolerance,” says Sidra Aziz Alizai, a researcher in Peshawar.

Taliban are using Islam as a means to influence the people in Pakistan. Pakistanis’ anger at the Taliban is counterbalanced by anger at the US policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, especially drone attacks on Pakistan’s tribal belt and Iraq. They believe that the US is following a distinct anti-Muslim policy. The question is why should the Pakistani Christians bear the brunt of the US wrong policies?

These extremist elements, organised in the 80s, stepped into war with lofty assurances that “their version of ideology is the solution”. They did not lack for listeners or, within a few years, for dollars provided by the US administration. Petrodollar spawned funding for the most radical Muslims.

Their ‘great expectation’ has been that a return to strict Islam would provide the strength for a final victory over the US. A strict Islam has gained momentum after the Taliban customised religious vocabulary and visuals for political ends. In Peshawar University, people jokingly say that in paradise, wine will be alcohol-free.

It’s high time to preach legitimate co-existence. We committed serious crime against our people by keeping them illiterate and promoting intolerance.

Islam can be observed in ways that complement pluralism rather than suffocate those practicing other religions. Live and let live must be the slogan of the time. No one has the authority to act on Allah’s behalf, that too will tantamount to blasphemy.

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

[B]29.09.2013 [/B][B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Offload and take off Deterred by IMF-driven [/SIZE]
sell-off plan, stakeholders are suggesting alternative
solutions to PIA’s woes
By Shahzada Irfan Ahmed
[/CENTER][/B]
The government of Pakistan has decided to privatise 26 per cent shares of Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) under a deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Fund set up certain conditions for release of loan to Pakistan and privatisation of loss-making State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) was one of them.

The government believes it is the only way to take the national flag carrier out of the crisis and save the billions it has been doling out to the ailing organisation. Critics of this proposed plan claim the decision has been taken in haste just to satisfy the IMF.

For example, they state it is quite evident from so many examples that privatisation in Pakistan never produced desired results. There are issues in this decision of selling 26 per cent shares with management control as nobody is clear whether the subsidiaries of the airline would also be given under the control of the new management or not. The government has not provided any roadmap in this regard as how just a management control can save the airline from deep-rooted issues responsible for its downfall.

Some of these issues include political appointments, corruption, inefficient technicians, outdated and isolated engineering base, maintenance issues, depleting routes, non-airworthy aircraft, imprudent contracts, declining service standards, lack of reliability and punctuality, pilferage and theft, lack of quality manpower, training and job rotation, ageing fleet, overstaffing and high loans resulting in high finance cost etc.

The question that arises here is whether it will be possible for the government to find a buyer in the presence of all these ills? In case there is a buyer, will it be possible for the government to fetch a good price is another question?

Looking at the past experiences of privatisation deals, one finds the desired results could never be achieved. To the contrary, these have resulted in downsizing, increasing costs, creating mistrust among employees, suffering to the customer and no remedy to affectees. There are fears the same will happen in case of PIA privatisation.

Suhail Baloch, convener Joint Action Committee of PIA Employees (JACPIAE), complains employees have never been consulted both by the airline management and the governments regarding how they can help improve the airline. Instead, privatisation of PIA is always posed as panacea for all the ills this airline is suffering from by dint of corruption, non-professional high officials, political interference etc., he adds.

His point is that unfortunately the employees are mostly blamed for the ills of PIA whereas, in his opinion, it is the top hierarchy which rots and has been appointed on the basis cronyism and nepotism. All the previous governments considered PIA as their personal property by appointing their friends and relatives for their political gains.

So, if privatisation is not viable then what is the solution to the crisis?

Suhail, who is also president of Pakistan Airline Pilots Association (PALPA), tries to answer these questions saying the government should implement the orders of the Supreme Court of Pakistan by appointing honest and capable chairman and managing director on merit; constituting a judicial commission under a serving judge of the apex court to investigate the airline’s downfall and holding the responsible accountable; and making the grounded fleet airworthy.

The proposed plan is being seen with skepticism for one major reason — the dubious handling of aviation matters by the PML-N government. First the government appointed a Canadian national as the aviation advisor despite having no commercial airline industry experience and then Shahid Khaqan Abbasi was included in the Aviation Committee despite the fact that he owns AirBlue and has direct conflict of interest with PIA. There was more to come; the government then promoted a matriculate pilot to the post of Deputy Managing Director (DMD) in the airline.

Regardless of the fact that the said privatisation is workable or not, there is no doubt the announcement has rung alarm bells among the PIA staff. In a bid to convince the rulers that they can themselves bring the airlines out of crisis, they are coming with different solutions every other day.

One such official says PIA has never worked on how to increase its routes; in fact the network is shrinking with the passage of time. The poor marketing is responsible for that as they did not even go for code-sharing with other airlines, he adds.

The official, who does not want to be named, says the management did not try to expand the fleet. The optimum number of aircraft in proportion with the current route network should be 40 to 50 (both wide body and narrow body), but PIA’s fleet comprises 34-38 (official quotes vary) aircraft. Out of these, only 20 are operational while the rest are not airworthy at the moment. The reason, he says, is financial crunch due to which the management is not able to buy spare parts and has cannibalised these 14 or so aircraft to keep other 20 or so airworthy.

Though the airline faces a loss of Rs3 billion a month, the official believes over-staffing is not a big issue but fuel cost is as salaries constitute almost 21 per cent of the total revenue which internationally is around 35 per cent. This is despite the fact that the employee-to-aircraft ratio in PIA is around 500 against the internationally desirable ratio of 100.

Currently, the fleet on average is 26 years old, which is why PIA is losing up to 55 per cent of its budget on fuel against the international standard of 35-45 per cent, says the official, adding: “Rest is corruption and inefficiency which eats up huge revenues.”

As for overstaffing, PIA is running many departments which other airlines have outsourced, so employee base is not an issue as long as they are not burdening the balance sheet.

Aviation expert Shakil Aftab Kashmirwala tells TNS that downsizing or retrenchment is not an option for PIA while domestic, regional and international competitors keep expanding in all directions that are 100 per cent owned by their states.

While supporting the government decision to privatise PIA, he thinks this is not the right time as currently PIA is in such a bad shape that the government would get nothing for its privatisation as the losses are huge. He said the human resource in the airline would deliver, if the management is in right hands.

Kashmirwala, who has 28 years of airline industry experience and happens to be the only Pakistani having successfully served as a CEO of a foreign national flag carrier Eretrian Airlines, says the main objective should be to increase airline’s revenue per kilometre and cutting down costs wherever possible. Simultaneously, he says, more revenue streams will have to be re-established by reviving ground handling unit, catering, duty free sales, engineering & maintenance, training school and hotels to make it a profitable airline.

He says in the short term fleet would have to be made airworthy with upgradations of seats, lavatories, cabin and galleys. Catering, ground handling services, passenger services will have to be improved. Above all, it’s the quality of service which will make the difference. The airline should realise it is high time that people should be able to book/purchase tickets, pre-assign seats, select meals, purchase ground transport, hotel rooms etc. through website.

[email]shahzada.irfan@gmail.com[/email]

[B]29.09.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"] Despite all the barbarity [/SIZE]
An insight into Pakistan’s history to look at both the contributions of Christians as well their persecution at the hands of the majority
By Tahir Kamran[/CENTER][/B]

Christians, according to th 1998 census, constitute 1.59 per cent of Pakistan’s population, making them the second largest religious minority. This rather meagre number of Christians in Pakistan has worked to their disadvantage. Any Christian who has the means to do so has already moved out of Pakistan. Those who fall in the lowest strata, lacking this recourse, are condemned to live an uncertain life. At any moment a bolt may fall from the blue and a Shantinagar-like incident may unleash terror, resulting in the death of many.

Pakistani soil appears to have become accustomed to sucking the blood of hapless Christians in order to sustain itself.

Thus, when 81 Christians were blown up in a Peshawar Church last week, one felt a sense of déjà-vu of what happened in Sangla Hill, Kasur, Bahawalpur, Murree and Gojra in the past. Churches were set ablaze, houses ravaged and properties of the Christians destroyed. The miscreants could not be identified, charges were not pressed, and perpetrators went free.

This inaction encouraged a repeat of the ‘heroics’, which was done with impunity. One may argue, as does Shaun Gregory, that the Muslim majority and non-Muslim minorities are two components of the Pakistani polity with different rights as well as obligations — the status of the people in the minorities is markedly different from those hailing from the majority.

To counter that widely-held impression, Pakistani State and society will both have to initiate a process whereby the minorities are integrated well as a part of its citizenry.

The works of Francis Nadeem, Joshua Fazal Din, Peter Jacob, Michael Nazir Ali and Patrick Sookhdeo provide an insight into Pakistan’s history which has been largely ignored. It, therefore, seems necessary to highlight the contributions of the Christian community for which we have to peep into the past.

Punjab’s Christians first espoused the All-India Muslim League’s political struggle in 1928 when Christian leader L. Ellia Ram boycotted the All-Parties Conference called by Moti Lal Nehru, as did the League. The Lahore Resolution of March 1940 became a benchmark of the cordiality that Christians extended towards the Muslim League.

According to Chaudhry Chandu Lal, thousands of Christians participated in the Muslim League’s annual meeting. Unlike Christians in Bombay, Goa and Madras, those in the Punjab lent unequivocal support to the cause of the Muslim League. Important among such Christian leaders were S.P. Singha, C.E. Gibbon, R.A. Gomes, S.S. Albert, Fazal Ilahi, Alfred Prashad, F.E. Chaudhry and Raj Kumari Amrit Kaur.

In the elections of 1945-46, three Christians were elected to the Punjab Legislative Assembly who subsequently voted for Pakistan. Father J. Saldanha considered this if not ‘decisive’, at least ‘a small sincere contribution’ on the part of the Christians. Their leaders recorded their statements before the Punjab Boundary Commission and requested that “the Christian population may be counted as part of Pakistan”.

Just after partition, on Aug 17, 1947, a church in Karachi held a thanksgiving service for the creation of Pakistan in which, Christian sources assert, Quaid-i-Azam also participated.

At the outset, Pakistan faced severe dislocation arising from partition. 7.5 million refugees came to Pakistan. Majority of them were consigned to refugee camps in Lahore and other points where food and shelter were inadequate. The monsoon had also set in, giving rise to epidemics. Many contracted cholera. In dire circumstances, Christians came to their help. In 1947, about 70 to 75 per cent of the paramedical staff in the hospitals was Christians. They looked after the ailing and injured refugees.

While shedding light on the contribution of the Christians in helping out migrants, Victor Azriah says, “Its classical example stays alive in our history when the Hostel of F.C. College, which was closed at that time, had been converted into full-fledged hospital known as United Christian Hospital.” Furthermore, Christian educational institutions provided shelter to many refugees in the wake of mass migration in 1947.

In 1951, the provincial elections for the Punjab Assembly were held, and the Christians were well-represented. The faction of the Muslim League that won the elections included three Christian members of the provincial assembly — B.L. Rallia Ram, Fazl Illahi and S.P. Singha. Chaudhry Chandu Lal was elected Deputy Speaker.

Despite the nascent process of marginalisation of the Christian minority, their influence was still palpable. When in 1952, seven Christians were burnt alive in Matta village, the accused was prosecuted and justice was dispensed. But, it was not to last long enough. Things gradually started to change. The recent incident in Pashawar was ‘the unkindest cut of all’.

Ayub Khan’s era was marred with the first atrocity against the Christian minority. The gory incident took place in Martinabad village in Sheikhupura District, when blasphemous remarks were found chalked out on a school’s boundary wall. As a consequence, the Muslims of the neighbouring 14 villages raided the Christian villages Youngsonabad and Martinabad. Christians of the area tried to plead their innocence, but their requests fell on deaf ears. An attack was launched, but under the command of Youngsonabad’s Chaudhry Diljit Lal, it was successfully thwarted. Eventually the tension was dispelled by police from Nankana Sahib.

It was consequent to Ziaul Haq’s policy of Islamisation, hinged on such exclusionary measures like Blasphemy Law (in 1982 and 1986), that subsequently put the Christian community in jeopardy. That law gave a plausible pretext to the religious zealots to deploy it against Christians and other minority groups. The number of incidents of collective violence against Christians was witnessed in utter disregard to the legal process during the last 20 years or so.

The Shantinagar tragedy in the Khanewal district provides an illustration of excesses against Christians. In April 1997, in the Tibba Colony, there was an unsubstantiated claim that a Quran was burnt. Thirteen churches and 1,500 houses were burnt down as a result. Furthermore, in November 2005 in Sangla Hill, District Sheikhupura, Yousaf Masih was accused of burning pages of the Holy Quran and more violence ensued: three churches, a convent, a girl’s hostel, a school and a priest’s home were set ablaze by a mob of between 1,000 and 2,000. The pattern persisted: in Chungi Amar Sadhu, Lahore, Yunus Masih was charged with blasphemy in September 2005. He was beaten by a gang with billiards cues. In 2009, in Bahmniwala village, nearly 110 Christian families (about 700 people) were forced to leave their homes by a gang alleging that Christians showed disrespect towards the Prophet. Houses of eight Christians were set ablaze. In Gojra, nine Christians were killed and their houses ransacked.

Despite all this barbarity, there is hardly any plan or policy being devised by the State to ensure safety of the minorities, what to talk of their integration into Pakistani society irrespective of any discrimination.

[B]06.10.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Politics of relief [/SIZE]
And the questions we ignore — that there is an uprising in Balochistan, that the historic marginalisation of this far-flung province is responsible for the devastating consequences of the
earthquake, and that the Baloch associate the security forces with daily harassment, disappearances and torture who they think cannot pretend to be neutral aid distributors overnight
By Mahvish Ahmad[/CENTER][/B]

After a 7.7-magnitude earthquake hit southern Balochistan last week, flattening entire villages, killing hundreds, and rendering thousands homeless, politics has been treated as a topic best left untouched. Ask the politicians and journalists, governments and state institutions seeing and engaging with Balochistan, and they will tell you that politics obfuscates. For them, bringing the p-word into the equation is both irrelevant and dangerous. Irrelevant, they say, since earthquakes are natural: an inevitable act of God or nature that no one could have avoided. And dangerous, they add, because any talk of politics can hamper urgent humanitarian relief.

For them, the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) attacks on army and government convoys carrying food, medicine, and tents, is a clear-cut example of the dark consequences of politics on emergency help.

Here is the problem: Refusing to talk about politics does not make it go away. We might successfully cleanse our conversations of it, but we cannot excise politics from Balochistan, its devastating earthquake, or the relief that it so urgently needs.

There might be a strong urge to just “get things done”, but anyone with that urge needs to be careful that they do not just stumble around in the dark like well-meaning, clumsy giants trying to “do some good”. They will end up breaking everything they run into, because they were either ignorant of the situation on the ground, or too lazy to bother to understand the politics of the place they are getting involved in.

There is an uprising in Balochistan. Those engaged with the Balochistan question can disagree on the scale of the separatist movement, but few can deny that it is a significant force in the province’s politics. This uprising is rooted in a very real disenchantment with the powers that rule Pakistan. And it has gained traction because of the enormous presence of the security forces. According to an Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) press release, there are currently 1000 soldiers from the Frontier Corps (FC) and Pakistan Army stationed in southern Balochistan alone; 700 before the earthquake hit last week, when the army deployed troops to the region from Karachi and Quetta. Another 1000 troops are stationed in Quetta according to a source within the FC, and many more can be found across the province, including Dera Bugti and Kohlu, the homes of the notorious Bugti and Marri sardars. The massive presence of soldiers across Balochistan indicates that even our state institutions recognise the presence of rebellion and discontent with the governments in Islamabad and Quetta.

If the earthquake had taken place in, for example, Balochistan’s northern Pakhtun belt, the politics that we needed to consider might have looked very different. The fact of the matter, however, is that it did not take place in northern Balochistan, but in the province’s southern belt, known for its remittance-fueled, urbanised towns and BLF-sympathetic middle-class Baloch. The epicenter of the earthquake, Awaran district, is also the birthplace of the current Baloch uprising’s most popular militant leader: BLF commander and doctor-turned-guerilla fighter Dr Allah Nazar.

The historic marginalisation of this far-flung province has fueled the support for the BLF, and is one of the driving factors behind the devastating consequences of the earthquake. While those who are opposed to bringing politics into the conversation will claim that earthquakes are God- or nature-given, others who closely analyse and work with natural disasters know that the poor are always disproportionately affected.

The decision by governments in Islamabad and Quetta to finance major development projects aimed at supporting Pakistan’s aspirations for economic growth at best, and filling the pockets of politicians at worst, has meant that those parts of the province where people go about their daily lives do not have infrastructure ready to withstand the threat of earthquakes. There is a reason that earthquake-prone Japan sees nothing near the devastation that we see in Pakistan — they have decided to invest in buildings that will keep their people safe.

To say that politics is irrelevant in understanding last week’s Balochistan earthquake is disingenuous, if not an outright lie.

Relief is no different. Just like earthquakes, relief takes place in a political context. Independent reports in BBC Urdu, which has provided some of the best coverage of the earthquake over the past week, verify that many Baloch in the disaster-hit areas associate security forces with daily harassment, disappearances, torture, and the notorious kill-and-dump policies where families discover the corpses of their sons bored through with holes. The security forces have also been known for launching operations in this region, many of them ignored by the mainstream press in the rest of the country. For example, in late December last year, the FC launched an operation in Awaran district’s Mashky, the home of Dr Nazar. At least 20 people, including women and children were killed in the operation, and the FC established at least 12 new checkpoints in this far-flung part of the country. To pretend that the army can transform itself into a neutral aid distributor overnight is a farce.

Acknowledging that the army is a political player in Balochistan, even after a devastating earthquake, is not the same as condoning BLF attacks on their relief convoys. One’s position on the Balochistan question is unrelated to the importance of acknowledging the tense political context in which the earthquake has taken place, and in which relief is now being distributed. There are some, like politicians in Quetta and Islamabad, who argue that the BLF is just as much a source of fear in southern Balochistan as the army, if not more, and that the militant group and others allied to them have been part of attacks on Punjabis and innocent government officials. Such a position does not change the facts on the ground: that politics matters, and that anyone truly interested in seeing relief effectively delivered and distributed in Balochistan will have to integrate them into their planning.

A relief that is politically aware, rather than politically ignorant or blind, might ensure that the thousands who are affected by the earthquake will finally receive the aid that they so urgently need. Malik Siraj Akbar, the editor of the banned online magazine, The Baloch Hal, has recommended a ceasefire between the separatists and the army, and the involvement of international humanitarian organisations.

Dr Abdul Malik, the chief minister of the provincial government in Balochistan, and Dr Allah Nazar, have both called for the involvement of international humanitarian organisations. These organisations, from Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), know that the contexts within which they work are tense, and their policy of neutrality comes not from a denial of the political, but from an acknowledgement of politics.

Interestingly, it is some of the most unpopular actors, i.e. the federal government and the security forces, that have been less than enthusiastic about international aid workers. When the earthquake first hit Balochistan, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said that it would not be putting out a call for international help. The army has likewise said that it is concerned about whether it will be able to provide security for aid workers. Some have said that federal and security force tentativeness around aid workers is a September 11, post-Dr Shakil Afridi phenomenon, where they are afraid that foreign governments will use the opportunity to send spies into Balochistan — an indication that even aid can be political.

But separatists and their sympathisers disagree, arguing that the government and the army want to keep humanitarian agencies out because they are afraid that their human rights abuses in the province will be exposed.

It is still unclear whether international humanitarian agencies will be allowed into interior Balochistan. Either way, the politics of the earthquake and the relief that surrounds it reveals a larger truth: In the end, few attempt to paint a full picture of what is going on in Balochistan. Sometimes it is because they are stopped from doing so. Access remains difficult for local and foreign journalists, and those that have tried, have been attacked: for example the offices of the Balochi newspaper, Daily Tawar, ransacked a few months ago.

But other times, it is because we naively assume that the state version of what is going on in Balochistan is more correct than what we hear from the Baloch themselves. And because we fail to understand the larger politics of the events in Balochistan. Missing persons cannot be understood without deeper knowledge of the uprising. Attacks on development projects and Chinese engineers cannot be comprehended without knowledge of the historic socio-economic marginalisation of the province. And, earthquake and relief cannot be understood without a sense of the political dynamics at play in Balochistan. Questioning dominant state narratives, and having an understanding of the politics at play is not equal to taking a pro- or anti-Pakistan position, or a pro- or anti-Baloch insurgency position. It does, however, ensure that we do not grapple around in the dark, and that we become far more aware of what exactly it is that we’re dealing with.

[I]Mahvish Ahmad is a journalist and lecturer living in Islamabad. She is also the co-founder of Tanqeed | a magazine of politics and culture ([url]www.tanqeed.org[/url]).
[/I]

[B]06.10.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Sites of innovation [/SIZE]
How does the Left in Pakistan — II address the woman — and the NGO-question?
By Sarah Humayun[/CENTER][/B]

Though ‘class struggle’ is made out to be the prime vector of progressivism in Marxist historiography, it has never been free of its own ‘contradictions’ (to use a choice Marxist term of art). To pick out one issue that is being articulated with increasing urgency: the ‘woman’ question. The problem is not new. “Working class resistance was constituted in the past by defending its own forms of oppressions (against women or apprentices) against the regulation of the state or of the capitalist market. The feminist movement is advancing resistance today by not fearing to “divide workers”,” writes Jacques Ranciére.

This remark finds an echo in the experience of women’s struggles who have not found an ally in the left or have felt the organised left to be an irrelevance if not a hindrance. This 2011 article from Guardian ([url]http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/jul/20/blue-labour-conservative-female-subservience[/url]) shows a woman Labour councillor reminding the anti-market and pro-community Blue Labour that “liberal rights and the role of the state has done a lot to help women — and many other groups for that matter — break out of community bonds that have often been oppressive, unaccountable and male dominated”. Many women in the UK might have a problem endorsing the romantic nostalgia for ‘working-class culture’, for the community-and-union dominated ‘traditional’ leftism that has been much in evidence in the UK, not least among academics.

‘The woman question’ is one of the sites of innovation for those interested in rethinking the left, of taking it beyond the era of base and superstructure, of progress on the back of the planned socialist economy and nationalist struggles for liberation. I found almost all of my interlocutors were thinking along these lines. “The woman is the most political being in Pakistan,” said one in an interesting if enigmatic formulation. Although all but one of the lefties I met were men, they are open, even keen, to acknowledge that the left had a woman problem, that this was not restricted to representation in the party but extended to social and personal relationships in evidence in left circles. In conversation, it seemed that there was a great desire to do something about the ‘woman question’ as well as some uncertainty as to what, specifically, an activism of the left might do here, whether they would go beyond or work with women’s rights advocates and feminist activists.

But were the women comrades comfortable working with the men; did class differences compounded by gender sometimes get in the way of comradely sociability? This question was met with some unease, a pause to weigh up words and thoughts. It is difficult, someone said. Another made a remark about choosing places carefully; another, about the need to maintain gender presentations in order to keep functioning working relationships.

The stories I was told about field activism were predominantly stories about men; men having arguments late into the night, hiding from the police, coming together to play cricket or to drink in what seemed to be cherished times of camaraderie. An office that I visited was a welcoming space, but it was full of men. Personally, the people I met were at ease with mixed-gender groups, counted many women as friends and a few women as colleagues. But the few that were mentioned in connection with party work seemed also to be upper-class academics.

Knowing all the reasons why women can be absent or less visible, often by choice, I’m not sure what weight to place on this. How is the difficult terrain of personal interaction affected by affiliating oneself with a school of thought explicitly committed to equality? Does this mean enfolding the question of gender in class, conceived as the rubric under which difference and elimination of difference is thought? Does taking account of class differences present in the party offer a way out? Or does the ‘woman question’ need another type of articulation, and what might that be, given the commitment to universalist thinking in the left?

Thinking about women and thinking about class may never be a seamless fit, nor will the designation of a class as the subject of emancipatory politics and capital as the object of resistance open out paths to taking account of the diverse ways in which the ‘woman question’ has been addressed. In the intellectual resources open to the left (as well as to other political tendencies) the ‘woman question’ will pose repeated threats of splits and divisions — of the vote, of a homosexual culture i.e. culture of one sex (as Luce Irigaray puts it), of the family and of society.

It will be interesting to see how the left addresses this question, if it ever does, under the sign of ‘merger’. But it should also be emphasised that the principles of justice and equality that left parties everywhere have subscribed to have given greater space for women historically to articulate their concerns (even if they’re labelled ‘marginal’) and to organise resistance. Small differences of political opportunity and intellectual space are important and should always remain firmly in view.

In Pakistan, the debate about women and the left has an added twist. It is sometimes pointed out that in recent history women have done better under the anti-politics, rhetorically liberal dictatorship of General Musharraf. The provision of 33 per cent seats in local bodies, the dilution of the Hudood ordinances, the promotion of education and media and culture (which arguably helps women to claim more public space) were all achieved under conditions when politics, or electoral politics, were in abeyance. This contention deserves detailed and nuanced debate.

But what is emphasised through this type of argument, I think, is that the promotion of socially progressive causes does not need a socially progressive politics that searches out new possibilities of thought and action. It can be done, for example, through personal enlightenment (presumably gained by buying an expensive education), through an investment in social stability and existing norms of citizenship. And by sticking to economic and social formulae that have been shown to work elsewhere.

This type of thinking informs much commentary in the nominally-liberal media. The point being made is that ‘causes’ do better without ‘politics’, do better in conditions where they succeed through an implicit social consensus and a firm government, the ‘writ of the state’. The onus is on citizens to reach consensus and abide by the norms of government and the laws of the state.

NGOs have been linked to projects of citizen empowerment that seek to circumvent political processes by working on projects that bring in both assumptions and funding form ‘elsewhere’ — this is commonly criticised by those on the political right. When it comes to the left, the criticisms are more complicated. Often in terms of field practice and the projected strategic effects of mobilising for this or that issue, they are virtually indistinguishable from the left. As some activists note, in the field they are often identified as NGO-people; and they often give support to NGOs and rights-based campaigns, who have more money to spend and bigger networks to tap for mobilising.

In addition, one would hazard to guess, not a few working in NGOs would self-identify as leftists. In spite of all this, I heard some strong criticisms of NGOs from one activist in particular: NGOs prevent leaders from emerging from within movements, ‘organically’, by creating and identifying key individuals through whom they choose to work and to channel funds. They make these leaders less accountable to movements. They dissolve relationships of solidarity that might otherwise exist, and inhibit internal democracy. They systematically discriminate against working-class knowledge.

Others were more cautious, putting down the antagonism between the left and NGOs to a struggle for identity and ‘intolerance of small differences’. A student activist was not dismissive of the service-delivery aspect of NGO work. He emphasised that ‘urban centres needs social services’ and the left should not overlook this in its work. He disagreed with some people who ‘confuse this with NGO work and refuse to see it as revolutionary’.

But he was still at pains to dispel suggestions that the left received NGO funding. The politics/issues distinction, however, was still in his mind: NGOs work on political issues but not on politics.

Has the effect of NGO-work been non- or anti-political; or is the anti-political a possibility present in any programme of politics? This, again, is a subject that needs a more-than-cursory treatment, and there must be many useful discussions on this subject that I haven’t read. But one can perhaps note that both the civil-society-before-politics argument and the politics of progressive-change-through-solidarity-and-antagonism argument are narrow enough in their own way. Both are tainted with purism and demand certain types of essentialised political subjects before they can get under way. Absence of ‘organic struggles of resistance’ do not necessarily indicate an absence of politics. Nor does the absence of ‘citizens’ as posited by liberal thought mean a dead end for projects that seek to mobilise civil society.

This may suggest a way of looking at another concern often voiced about the left, and no less about NGOs: that they are intellectuals and academics, remote from political reality. Probably many of them are what they are accused of being. But is not clear to me what kind of discomfort is signified by accusation of intellectual/academic: discomfort with smugness, purism, authoritarianism and policing of ideological deviance, which many intellectuals are prone to? Or a discomfort with the always-looking-elsewhere — to other thinkers, places, intellectual traditions and sources — which is a trait of any politics but particularly of left politics?

This ‘otherness’ and foreignness can also exist in what we claim as our own reality. It can appear to offer itself, for instance, as a ‘sufi’ or working-class tradition, or in a sub-nationalist movement that erupts with the promise of a different perception of political reality. But there is always a risk here that the ‘otherness’ is not pure, that a tradition or struggle that claims to be an alternative bears in it layers and possibilities of the status quo.

In my view, this risk can be dispelled neither through intellectual rigour nor through impeccable praxis.

[B]To be continued
[/B]
[I]Sarah Humayun is a writer based in Lahore. She can be reached at [email]sarah.humayun@gmail.com[/email][/I]

[B]06.10.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Federalism and decentralisation[/SIZE]
Against the backdrop of 18th Constitutional Amendment, the
recently held UNDP conference weighs the relevance and
implications of decentralisation
By Amjad Bhatti[/CENTER][/B]

The 18th Constitutional Amendment passed unanimously in April 2010 has sharpened the debates on federalism in Pakistan. A number of issues have emerged in the process of implementation and transition management in last three years where a plethora of diverse argumentation have pre-dominated the political and governance discourse in the country.

Some have argued that the 18th Amendment was “too little and too late”, while others have adjudged it as “too much and too soon”. The contest on the relevance, implications and implementation of the 18th Constitutional Amendment continues till today.

It was against this backdrop that UNDP’s project on “Strengthening Participatory Federalism and Decentralization” designed an international conference on “Participatory Federalism and Decentralization: From Framework to Functionality” on 25-27 September in Islamabad. The Conference was jointly organised and co-hosted by UNDP, Inter-University Consortium on the Promotion of Social Sciences, Ministry of Inter-Provincial Coordination, the Forum of Federations, the Higher Education Commission, and the National College of Arts.

The conference was aimed at studying different trends, levels, and indicators of institutional interplay between democracy, federalism and decentralisation at national, regional and global levels. Global and regional case studies were presented on the subjects, which provided a technical baseline to inform and facilitate the process of triangular integration between democracy, federalism and decentralisation in Pakistan.

Thirty papers were presented in the conference out of which 13 papers covered international case studies by foreign scholars while 17 papers were presented by the local academia, experts and government representatives from all four provinces. International representation comprised Ethiopia, Canada, Australia, Sri Lanka, India, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Nepal, USA, Russia and Germany.

Besides, political leadership from different parties was invited to provide participants an opportunity to understand divergent perspectives and ideological standpoints of different political dispositions in Pakistan. Prominent among them were Senator Mian Raza Rabbani, Maulana Fzalur Rehman, Mahmood Khan Achakzai, Shafqat Mehmood, Marvi Memon, Taj Haider, Danyal Aziz, Qamar Zaman Kaira and Farhatullah Babar.

Key messages of the Conference:

Pakistan being a society blessed with the richness of diversity and multiplicity reached a landmark consensus on federalism through a journey of continuous democratic struggle in last six decades.

The 18th Constitutional Amendment has set new directions for Pakistan as a federal, democratic and parliamentary state – and this has rightly been taken as a point of celebration for the proponents of federalism throughout the world.

Pakistan is in a state where it can learn and teach at the same time. It can learn in this formative phase of devolution management from the countries who have extensive experience of working within federal and decentralised frameworks of governance.

Pakistan can offer its learning to other countries as how consensus can be forged in diverse societies by relying upon the instruments of democratic decisions making. Pakistan has demonstrated its capacity to coin innovations in the structures of governance with a sense of inclusiveness, pluralism and equity.

Subsequently, the incorporation of the values of federalism, decentralisation and inclusiveness can further be facilitated by developing comprehensive institutional frameworks at different levels of the decision-making.

Streamlining of intergovernmental fiscal relations in some countries was not followed by true political decentralisation. This has led to a wider conclusion that fiscal federalism may survive without the political decentralisation only for a limited period of time.

Countries where local government systems have democratised state have also seen major innovations in governance and service delivery. Local governments increase the ability of voters to hold local decision makers accountable and it also strengthens the quality of national democratic leadership. It also broadens the bases of political leadership.

Local government systems need a substantial amount of hard power in order to exercise soft power. You can’t win with the losing hand. This is the fatal flaw in the community governance vision.

Decentralisation is also usually part of the ongoing power struggles between central and regional political leaders. Conflicts between modernising central governments and traditional regional authorities may limit the potential for positive outcomes for women.

The legislation on local government in Pakistan must ensure the compliance of Article 140 by devolving the political, fiscal and administrative authorities to the elected representatives of the local governments. The current legislations on the local government in four provinces do not reflect substantially the intent of the Article 140-A.

The 18th Constitutional Amendment was the beginning of the transfer of power from federal government to the provincial governments, now it is the turn of the provinces to keep in line with the constitutional commands and transfer powers to the lowest tiers of the governance for an effective service delivery and representative governments at the grassroots level.

Some governments implement electoral quotas that can compensate for women’s marginalisation by increasing their representation as legislators.

There have been areas of unclear relationship with federal legislation and the Election Commission of Pakistan which underpinned unclear legislation with significant gaps. There has been number of areas left for regulations to be written by civil servants.

Instead of the Rules of Business of the Federal Government, the rules of Council of Common Interests apply to the National Economic Council. In the view of 18th Constitutional Amendment, the Chairman of the Planning Commission should be appointed by the CCI on rotation basis to represent the Federation. Currently, CCI is not being involved in planning as required by the 18th Constitutional Amendment.

Introducing fiscal federalism, the 7th NFC Award has ushered a sense of autonomy in the federating units and is, therefore, a landmark achievement of a democratically elected government.

The implementation of Article 172 dealing with the joint ownership of natural resources can sufficiently bridge the economic disparities and reduce poverty with indigenous resources in Pakistan.

The Article 10-A introduced by the 18th Constitutional Amendment provides for a comprehensive review of justice system in Pakistan and it necessitates judicial reforms, cleansing the justice administration from colonial codifications hampering access to justice and fair trail.

Article 19-A of the Constitution set benchmark for the transparency and accountability by making right to information a fundamental right. The current legislations on right to information have emerged as disabler rather than enabler laws in the country.

Three nonlinear steps to march towards the course of reconciliation in Balochistan were suggested which include: (a) establishment of Balochistan Truth Commission; (b) redistributive justice as the equalisation of property and wealth ownership by direct political fiat and (c) incorporation of consociational elements into federal design.

A continuous process of dialogue and knowledge exchange between provinces would enable more informed transition management of 18th Constitutional Amendment in Pakistan.

The newly-reinvigorated institution of Council of Common Interests need to be strengthened and as commanded by the Constitution of Pakistan a separate secretariat for the CCI needs to be established which should be providing required data, information and evidence to the CCI on the subjects assigned to it through Federal Legislative List Part II.

Ministries established at the federal level on the subjects devolved to the provinces should be abolished with immediate effect as this has been taken as violation of the provincial autonomy and the demarcation of powers between centre and the provinces.

It was also noted that the reversal of 18th Constitutional Amendment with special reference to those Articles which deal with the parliamentary system of government and provincial autonomy will create political instability in Pakistan.

The conference underlined the need for creating more spaces of mutual learning between political leadership, development partners and academia to deepen the understanding of political, legislative, administrative and fiscal dimensions of federalism. The required technical knowledge base would inform the process of decision-making for a coordinated implementation of massive devolution.

[B]06.10.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Preventable deaths [/SIZE]
Being well-off does not necessarily promise a long and healthy life as both poverty and affluence contribute to the causes of preventable or premature deaths
By Syed Mansoor Hussain[/CENTER][/B]

One of the more interesting concepts in medicine is of the ‘preventable or premature deaths’. Putting aside the effects of trauma and accidents, the two other major causes of preventable deaths are poverty and affluence.

One of the most dangerous points in a human life is birth. This is dangerous especially for the mother but also for the child. Maternal and child mortality continue to be a major problem especially in poor countries including Pakistan. However, it is interesting to note that more than a century ago, child birth was equally dangerous for the rich as well as the poor.

Even in modern medical literature, the period before delivery of a child is often referred to as ‘confinement’. That is a serious problem; women that are active until the time of delivery of a child have a better chance of going through an uneventful delivery. The well to do that are confined to bed and await the time, do worse. Child birth is hard work and those that are used to hard work do better.

There is an interesting story of an obstetrician in Vienna during the nineteenth century called Ignaz Semmelweis. He made an important observation about the occurrence of puerperal sepsis (infection during child birth that was often fatal). What Semmelweis noticed was that women who had ‘street births’ or in other words were too poor to come to a hospital had a much lower chance of getting infected than those that delivered their babies in a hospital.

What Semmelweis realised and that is a seminal observation in medical history was that women who delivered babies in the hospital were taken care of by doctors who would come down from the ‘autopsy rooms’ and deliver babies without washing their hands. As such they transmitted infection from the dead to the living. By instituting the regimen of washing hands before delivering a baby, Semmelweis was able to cut down tremendously the incidence of infection.

But then being ahead of your time is never good. Since Semmelweis could not prove why washing hands was good, he was ostracised and rejected by the physicians who thought that washing hands before delivering a baby was beneath their dignity. Germs as cause of infection was yet in the future and after being rejected, Semmelweis fell apart and eventually died in a ‘mental asylum’ after being beaten up.

Today, child birth is still fraught with danger among the poor. First, because of ‘child marriages’. When ‘children’ get pregnant they are often just not physically developed enough to go through a normal delivery. Second, during child birth medical help, including the possibility of a ‘caesarean section’, is not available. Third, the child after a prolonged labour is often not well enough and neither is the mother and without medical help both might not survive.

There are two other factors that increase maternal and child mortality. First is inappropriate nutrition for the mother, most if not all poor women going into child birth are severely deficient in terms of blood strength (anaemia) and even a moderate amount of bleeding during delivery of a child can push them into severe medical problems that they might not recover from. And if the mother is not around or is too sick, the child will also have a hard time surviving.

Once the child is born and is well at birth, there are other problems in store for the poor. The first is malnutrition. Malnutrition in the poor countries remains a major cause of early (preventable) death. But even if a child gets adequate nutrition, the fight for survival has just begun.

Overcrowding, unsanitary surroundings, inadequate access to clean drinking water, lack of education, and almost no access to primary medical care and immunisations all contribute to early deaths. Without going through all the possible diseases, let me just mention the frequent epidemics of ‘gastro’ (short for gastroenteritis) and enteric fevers (typhoid) that are almost entirely due to drinking water contaminated by human refuse or else due to food prepared by persons that don’t wash hands after a visit to the toilet. Lack of immunisation in children often leads to epidemics like the recent one of ‘measles’. Adequate ‘education’ especially of the mothers could well prevent many of these problems.

Overcrowding has an interesting history. Pulmonary Tuberculosis (TB) was the scourge for the last few centuries. TB was called the ‘white plague’; it was also often a ‘romantic’ disease that infected people of a ‘sensitive’ nature. To name two victims, first is the famous poet, John Keats, the second of course is Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. Interestingly, even before the definitive antibiotic treatment for TB was discovered in the middle of the last century, the incidence of TB was rapidly declining and this was due to the fact that overcrowding became less common especially among the well to do and as such transmission of this disease from person to person became less common.

Here two ‘stories’ are of interest. Many of us of a ‘certain age’ were brought up on Indian movies in which one member of a ‘romantic triangle’ often died from TB thus leaving the field open for the friend and romantic rival. Also, while reading a book on the history of TB a few decades ago, I came upon a reference given by the person who discovered Streptomycin during the nineteen forties, the antibiotic that was the first definitive treatment of TB. The person who discovered Streptomycin mentions that he received a letter from a physician who asked for Streptomycin to treat a national leader in the ‘east’ but a few months later the physician sent a letter saying it was no longer needed. Was the patient Jinnah?

And now to the diseases particular to the well off. The diseases that have become the scourge of the modern world, of these two are worth mentioning. First is what we call Adult onset Diabetes (Type II Diabetes) that is almost entirely due to the increasing consumption of refined starches and sugars and the entailing obesity. The second is blockages of heart arteries leading to heart attacks.

Besides, Diabetes and obesity, the most important predisposing factor for blockages of the heart arteries is a lack of physical activity, once again the result of a life style that can only be sustained by the well off. Unfortunately, being well off does not necessarily promise a long and healthy life. In most developing and developed countries, Diabetes and heart disease are now the major causes of preventable (?) deaths especially among the emerging middle class. Interestingly, it is the newly ‘affluent’ that are much more prone to dietary excess.

That leaves two types of disease that make up the second tier of preventable or premature deaths. First is ‘cancer’, frankly if we didn’t live long enough, most of us would never develop cancers. It is for this reason that cancers don’t come in as a major cause of premature death in poor and developing countries. The other category is of diseases associated with aging. Here again you have to live long enough to develop these conditions.

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

[B]06.10.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]A crisis long over looked[/SIZE]
National Nutrition Survey (NNS) 2011 suggests malnutrition plays a substantial role in Pakistan’s high child morbidity and mortality rates
By Arshad Mahmood[/CENTER][/B]

“Well fed people can enhance their dignity, their health and their learning capacity. Putting resources into social programs is not expenditure. It is investment”, LuizInácio Lula da Silva, former President of Brazil.

Finally, the federal government has launched the long-awaited National Nutrition Survey (NNS) 2011 in Islamabad. Findings of the NNS 2011 are depressing and clearly depicts how neglected the subject is in Pakistan. There has been no improvement in nutrition indicators for the last almost four decades and Minister Ahsan Iqbal rightly lamented the fact that the last decade following NNS 2001 has been totally lost as no tangible steps have been taken to improve the situation.

Federal Minister for Planning and Development and the Minister of State for Health Services Regulations and Coordination with the respective secretaries, representatives of the Provincial Governments and the Planning Commission of Pakistan, Donors, UN Agencies and civil society were present at the launching ceremony.

The NNS 2011 was the largest nutrition survey in the history of Pakistan conducted by the Aga Khan University’s Division of Women and Child Health, Ministry of Health and UNICEF with the financial support of AusAID and DFID. The NNS 2011 covered all provinces, Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), Gilgit Baltistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata). This included 1,500 enumeration bocks (EBs)/villages and 30,000 households with a 49 per cent urban and 51 per cent rural distribution.

Results from the NNS 2011 indicated little change over the last decade in terms of core maternal and childhood nutrition indicators. With regard to micronutrient deficiencies, while iodine status had improved nationally, vitamin A status has had deteriorated and there had been little or no improvement in other indicators linked to micronutrient deficiencies.

The NNS 2011 revealed that the nutritional status has not changed much over the past decade. The anthropometry of children under 5 revealed that 43.7 per cent were stunted (too short for her/his age/low height for age) in 2011 as compared to 41.6 per cent in 2001 NNS. Similarly, 15.1 per cent children were wasted (weight that is too low for her/his height) compared to 14.3 per cent in 2001. As per World Health Organization’s standards, a national average of 15 per cent or above is labelled as an “EMERGENCY”.

The NNS 2011 indicates that stunting, wasting and micronutrient deficiencies are endemic in Pakistan. These are caused by a combination of dietary deficiencies; poor maternal and child health; a high burden of morbidity; and low micronutrient content in the soil, especially iodine and zinc. Most of these micronutrients have profound effects on immunity, growth and mental development. They may underline the high burden of morbidity and mortality among women and children in Pakistan.

Malnutrition plays a substantial role in Pakistan’s high child morbidity and mortality rates. Due to its correlation with infections, malnutrition in Pakistan currently threatens maternal and child survival and an estimated 35 per cent of all under 5 deaths in the country are linked with malnutrition. It is imperative to respond to the situation if Pakistan has to be on track to achieve Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 4; about two third reduction in under 5 mortality.

More than 1.5 million children in Pakistan are currently suffering from acute malnutrition, making them susceptible to infectious diseases which may even lead to death. Long-term (chronic) malnutrition undermines both physical and mental development; nearly half of Pakistan’s children are chronically malnourished, and have their brain development and immune systems impaired, with life-long consequences.

Most of the irreversible damage due to malnutrition happens during conception and in the first 24 months of life meaning that risk begins from the day of conception to up to two years of age also referred to as the first 1000 days.

It was encouraging to listen to the Federal Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal, during the launch of the NNS 2011, who was very clear that it is time for retrospection and that the issue is not going to be resolved through routine approach and all the stakeholders should respond to the situation as an emergency.

Besides, the launch of the NNS 2011 another positive development is Pakistan’s joining of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) initiative at the global level in April 2013. More than 40 countries have joined the SUN Movement so far, Pakistan being the largest country. The SUN is an opportunity which the government should utilise effectively and gear up to improve the situation of nutrition in the country. Key donors, UN Agencies, National and International NGOs are there to support the federal and provincial governments to scale up efforts for nutrition in a coordinated and efficient manner.

[I]The writer is a development practitioner based in Islamabad and tweets @amahmood72[/I]

[B]06.10.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Food for all [/SIZE]
Genetically-modified foods have the potential to solve many of the world’s hunger and
malnutrition problems
By Zeeshan Mazhar[/CENTER][/B]

The developed world is fast adopting biotechnology in agriculture and the developing world is also trying to catch up. The ever-increasing demand for food and loss in agricultural productivity due to over-cultivation, pest attacks and diseases demand for scientific development of seeds which can take care of these issue.

While countries are opting for genetic modifications in crops, certain anti-biotechnology campaigners in Pakistan are opposing genetically modified (GM) crops on grounds they are not safe and their introduction will create monopoly of big multinationals in agriculture.

They have been alleging that GM crops are ‘untested’ and ‘unsafe’. The fact is that there is no concrete scientific data proving that these crops are not safe for human consumption but there is sufficient scientific data proving that these crops, which are assessed for environmental, food and feed safety by regulatory authorities before being allowed to be grown or sold commercially, are perfectly safe for human consumption.

Regarding their concerns about monopoly of certain seed companies, one can say this debate arises whenever a new technology comes into use and the outdated one has to be discarded. But what happens is that soon after the introduction of a new technology several local and international players enter the market and gives birth to a competitive environment. Why are they going for gene improvement in case of livestock and reluctant when it comes to agricultural production?

All agricultural universities of Pakistan are teaching biotechnology. This means there will be enough expertise soon in the country to challenge monopoly of one or two companies.

There is substantial data available which clearly demonstrates safety and the benefits of the technology to the farmers and environment. Regulators across the world carry out rigorous risk assessment before granting commercial approvals. UN, WHO, FAO, EFSA, Royal Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, French Academy of Medicine, British Medical Association, 25 Nobel laureates (including Norman Borlaug) all concluded that Bt crops are as safe as conventional crops. Billions of meals from genetically modified products are being consumed globally.

Besides, GM food has been safely cultivated and consumed across the world, including tomato, sweet pepper (China), papaya (USA, China), sugarbeet (USA, Canada), corn (16 countries), potato (Sweden, Germany, Czech Republic) and squash (USA). In meeting stringent food safety requirements and standards, biotech foods are among the most thoroughly tested foods available.

No other food crops in history — including foods currently available on grocers’ shelves — have been tested and regulated as thoroughly as have foods developed through biotechnology. After more than 17 years of commercial production and consumption of the foods produced over hundreds of million acres, there are no instances on record where biotech have had negative effect on human health.

In Pakistan, opponents of crop biotechnology often fear that introduction of GM crops would create monopoly of big multinationals. The Bt cotton was first brought in by the farmers through unofficial channels because they thought it was useful for them and the government was too slow in approving the new technology.

Today, there are a number of approved and unapproved varieties of Bt cotton available in the country competing each other in the market. So where is the monopoly fear created by these anti-science lobbies?

The question here is that is it really possible today to fool the farmer? Obviously, it is not. Studies in countries where biotech products have been commercialised have demonstrated that farmers are the major beneficiaries. Technology not beneficial to the farmers can never be successfully marketed anywhere in the world including Pakistan. Farmers always opt for the seeds developed to suit their local agronomic and environmental conditions. They also look out for the fact whether these seeds can bring them substantial benefits in terms of high yields and better crop management.

The government of Pakistan is likely to introduce GM corn shortly. It will have the capability to significantly reduce the losses caused by certain chewing insect pests and weeds and ultimately result in higher production.

In the United States, where 86 per cent of the nation’s corn acreage is planted with biotechnology varieties, average yields in 2010 were roughly 30 per cent higher than the average corn yields prior to 1996 — the year biotech varieties were first planted. In the Philippines, the only Asian country where GM corn has been commercialised, there has been average yield increase of 15 per cent with herbicide tolerant corn while 25 per cent with insect resistant corn.

Above all, genetically-modified foods have the potential to solve many of the world’s hunger and malnutrition problems, and to help protect and preserve the environment by increasing yield and reducing reliance upon chemical pesticides and herbicides. The majority of these benefits continue to increasingly go to farmers in developing countries. The environment is also benefiting as farmers increasingly adopt conservation tillage practices, build their weed management practices around more benign herbicides and replace insecticide use with insect resistant GM crops.

The reduction in pesticide application and the switchover to no-till cropping systems is continuing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, feeding a world population of 9.1 billion in 2050 will require raising overall food production by 70 per cent (nearly 100 per cent in developing countries).

To meet this challenge, farmers will need to find ways to grow more food more sustainably. Biotechnology has already helped increase food and feed production. For example, biotechnology traits have added 74 million tonnes and 79.7 million tonnes respectively to global production of soybeans and corn since its introduction in 1996. Vitamin A-enriched ‘Golden Rice’, which has been developed by International Rice Research Institute (IRRI-Philippines), is one of the examples of biotech crops that fight malnutrition (Vitamin A deficiency).

Globally, GM crops’ opposition is subsiding day by day as relevant scientific data is convincing more and more anti-biotech campaigners to admit the fact that agricultural biotechnology is safe and should be fully deployed in order to ensure sufficient food for growing population.

World-known British writer and environmentalist Mark Lynas, who helped spur the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, has recently confessed that he was completely wrong to oppose GMOs. In Pakistan too, agricultural scientists have been informing the stakeholders that biotechnology is safe and can be a key to address challenges facing the agriculture sector. University of Agriculture Faisalabad VC Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan had recently said, “GMOs would lead to the new green revolution and termed the GMOs a great and safe intervention that would enhance the productivity to feed the growing population.”

Agriculture is the backbone of our economy and any wrong decision regarding adoption or rejection of any agricultural technology can have an adverse impact on our country. Therefore, it is suggested that the government should take decision on biotechnology, purely on the basis of scientific evidence and ignore the propaganda of certain interest groups.

[B]06.10.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]The language trinity [/SIZE]
Our medium of instruction
policies are determined too often by political and nationalistic exigencies, playing a divisive role and contributing to fragmentation, exclusion, and growing disparities
By Irfan Muzaffar
[/CENTER][/B]
Our country has always been multilingual due to our uniquely rich cultural landscape. The language one uses changes not just with geography, but also with each passing hour during a typical day of an average Pakistani.

At home you use your mother tongue, whatever it may be. At the work place your language performance is expected to alternate between English and Urdu depending on your educational background, your position within the institutional hierarchy, and who you are talking to. Pakistanis’ social and educational upbringing programmes them when to switch to the most relevant language to get what they want. We, as a people, are expected to be skilled in more than one language.

How has Pakistan’s education policies addressed the problem of medium of instruction in this multilingual context? The short answer is that they have utterly failed to turn this cultural dividend, our multilingual heritage, into an educational opportunity. Our medium of instruction policies have shown utter disregard to pedagogical considerations and are determined too often by political and nationalistic exigencies. These policies have also played a divisive role and contributed to fragmentation, exclusion, and growing disparities.

It all begins at home much before we encounter the effects of education policies at school. In Pakistan, it is not uncommon to find middle class parents exposing their children to a medley of available languages. That’s the sort of language exposure I received from my own parents in early years. I listened to Punjabi, was talked to in Urdu, and less frequently in English. More frequently it was a mix of the three languages. But this wasn’t all. I also came to associate different attitudes with the languages in use. Punjabi was associated with loudness and informality, Urdu with my much sought after bedtime fairy tales and rhymes, and English with cartoon characters and space and time travellers such as those found in Star Trek and The Time Tunnel.

Somewhere along the line, I learned that language was not just about talking and listening and entertainment. It was much more, just like we had a national anthem and a national bird, we also had a national language. Fortunately for me, the national language happened to be the one in which my grand mother gave me my daily doze of fairy tales.

When in school, I also learnt that English was not just about Popeye the Sailor, Star Trek, and The Time Tunnel. I was never explicitly told in those early grades that doing well in English was indispensable to my future success. But there was an unspoken understanding that English was superior/preferred, an understanding constructed at times by being fined for speaking in Urdu. Those of you who have been cadets in the cadet colleges or academies might even recall being asked to frog jump for speaking in ‘vernacular’. In the school, English just came across as much more superior than the so-called national language.

What sort of an odd society it was that first taught me that I had a national language and then fined me to speak in it? To say nothing of the mother tongue, which I did not even remember I had.

There it was then, a language version of the holy trinity — a mother tongue, Urdu, and English. English, being the language of bureaucracy, commerce, science, and technology, was the holiest of all. Urdu, being the national language, was holier. The sanctity of mother tongue was anyone’s guess. It goes without saying that to get the best of this trinity for their children, the parents must choose to send their children to an English medium school — only if they could afford to do so.

While some of our parents could afford to put us on the right side of the language trinity, most Pakistani children had this trinity on their wrong side. Many of my age-mates would never even see a school, and the education of those who’d go to Urdu medium public schools or the low cost private schools would not be prepared to compete with those of us who went to private English medium schools. Little did we realise that more than anything else, it is the language, which most effectively sets up the mutually exclusive social, cultural, and economic zones.

So we have effectively ended up creating categories of persons in our society, differentiated by access to different languages and the ability to speak them. So we effectively ended up creating a range of persons in our society characterised mainly by differences in access they had to different languages. The language trinity could be clearly mapped onto scales of privilege, advantage, and development. Mother tongues and vernaculars were placed on the lower end and Urdu and English on the sophisticated and developed end of these scales. It didn’t matter how well grounded one was in his or her first language, s/he would still be perceived as suffering from development deficit if inadequately skilled in English.

Clearly, we are in a bind on the issue of the demands that language diversity make on education system. At least, in part, it has to do with the lack of willingness of the Pakistani state to fully understand and take on the burden of actually delivering a decent education to all children. Much like any other modern state, Pakistan has always expressed the desire to extend educational opportunity to all children. But in the same breath, it has also said that the state could not finance it and has asked the private sector to pitch in. Among other things, this only strengthened the effects of the language trinity.

The early policies, at least apparently, proposed to turn the first two terms of the trinity around by suggesting a time bound transition to national language. The delegates of the first conference on education held in 1947, while clearly in favour of declaring Urdu as the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan, recognised the importance of the mother tongues and of teaching both Urdu and English as a subject. Some attending the conference thought that [Urdu] “should be taught right from the beginning of the school stage so as to increasingly and progressively adopt it as the medium of instruction in the educational system”. But there were also those who argued that “it would be educationally unsound, particularly when the mother tongues were sufficiently developed…the mother tongues could flourish and develop side by side with the lingua franca and one need not throttle the growth of the other” (From the report of the 1947 Conference on Education). The conference ultimately resolved to require the schools to teach Urdu as a compulsory subject in schools and left the question of medium of instruction to be decided by the provincial governments.

The first conference had resolved to gradually replace English with Urdu by developing the latter further and let the provincial governments determine the medium of instruction in elementary schools. By 1951, different regions within Pakistan were accommodating the language trinity in different ways. While the mother tongue had been made the medium of instruction [at least officially] in all primary schools, Urdu remained the medium of instruction in secondary schools in the Punjab, Balochistan, the [then] NWFP and Bahawalpur. In the case of Sindh and East Bengal, the regional language constituted the medium of instruction and Urdu was taught as a compulsory subject.

With regards to English, the report of the education conference held in 1951 observed that it was only in the universities that English remained the medium of instruction and that the ministry of interior was pondering over the question of time frame needed to fully replace it with Urdu and Bengali in the West and East Pakistan. The Urdu Committee appointed by the minister of interior, Mr Fazlur Rehman, had recommended starting using Urdu on an experimental basis side by side with English as a medium of instruction in the Universities of Karachi, Punjab and Peshawar. The results of this experiment were to be reviewed in 1956.

Meanwhile, the market place for English medium education, then largely being given through the missionary schools and a few selected publicly financed institutions, was allowed to flourish as it continued to produce an exclusive elite. Undoubtedly, the quality of education offered at those institutions was much better than the run of the mill public school. Yet it was only a few who could benefit from this higher quality education. The hypocritical policy elites of Pakistan continued to send their own children to these high quality English medium schools while arguing for replacement of English by Urdu for the rest.

The holy trinity of language pervaded our daily lives, while the education policy looked the other way. The height of this hypocrisy was reached with the first education policy issued by the military regime of General Zia-ul-Haq in 1979. His education policy called English medium schools a colonial legacy and called for the abolishment of this nomenclature. Nothing could be more hypocritical than a policy elite selling to the masses at large what it wouldn’t buy in the education market place itself. English continued to be holiest in the language trinity by preserving its place as the language of the military, the bureaucracy, commerce, science, and technology.

[B]06.10.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Centres of destruction [/SIZE]
History suggests that when universities start to act as moral vigilantes, academic standards nosedive
By Tahir Kamran[/CENTER][/B]

The widely held presumption that certain madaris are hatcheries of jihadis, target killers and suicide bombers stands punctured after startling revelations about universities in Lahore and Islamabad. Nine al-Qaeda suspects were arrested from a Punjab University hostel, including their handler. Four of them had received jihadi training in Miranshah in North Waziristan, while the other five had expertise in information technology/communication and the making of improvised explosive devises (IEDs).

Obviously, they could not have acquired all the skills they needed from any madrassa, certainly not the diploma in automobile technology and media coordination, with which some of them were equipped. One may surmise that madrassa-graduates may, at best, act as cannon fodder whereas graduates in science and technology from Pakistani universities form the critical mass for the anti-state forces.

On September 3, 2013, an Arab national was apprehended by a premier intelligence agency from a hostel at the Punjab University who had come to Lahore to lead a fidayeen (suicide) mission. He was living in a room allotted to a member of the Islami Jamiat Talba (IJT), whose spokesman denied link with any terrorist organisation. However, anyone having the slightest cognisance of the affairs of the Punjab University knows well that nothing can come to pass without the affirmation of the IJT’s high command.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, one of the al-Qaeda leader, was arrested in March 2004 from the home of a leader of the Jamaat-i-Islami’s women’s wing in Rawalpindi, providing evidence of the latent nexus between the two. If educational institutions are left the mercy of ideological monoliths, such occurrences become a norm and not an aberration. By such means, the largest educational institution in Pakistan has become no more than a conquered estate, to be guarded at all costs against any encroachment by the ‘liberals’. Subjected to the sway of one ideology, the Punjab University is now a hideout for terrorists. This calls for a requiem to a bygone era when the pursuit of knowledge and not terrorism was its emblem.

If this was not enough, in a recent incident one terrorist by the name of Hammad Adil was nabbed from the Sabzi Mandi area in 1-11 Sector, Islamabad. He, in cahoots with Omar Abdullah, Tanveer and Abdul Sattar, admitted to killing Shahbaz Bhatti, the lone Christian Federal Minister in the PPP government, on March 3, 2011. Adil also confessed to the murder of the prosecutor in the Benazir Bhutto murder case, assistance in the suicide attack on the Danish Embassy, burning Nato containers and attack on a general in the Pakistan army. A vehicle laden with 120 kilogrammes of explosives was recovered from his residence in Bara Kahu, in the outskirts of Islamabad.

Worryingly, Hammad Adil went to the Islamic International University (IIU), Islamabad and ‘was convinced to go on jihad during his stay in the hostel’. Similarly, his accomplice Tanveer graduated in Sharia law from IIU. Syed Irtiaz Nabi Gilani, nephew of Asiya Andrabi, the chairperson of the all-women pro-freedom outfit Dukhtran-i-Millat, absconded when police raided his house to arrest him on terrorism-related charges. A huge cache of ammunition and four spy planes were recovered from his house.

Irtiaz too is a science faculty member at IIU. That university, according to senior journalist Khaled Ahmed, was ‘decreed by the Saudi king to consolidate the growing involvement of Pakistan with Hadith-based dogmatic Islam’, and bears the notorious imprint of Abdullah Azzam, the intellectual founder of al-Qaeda, who once served there as a teacher.

Rizwan Omar, an enterprising police officer currently serving in Islamabad, claims that graduates in Sharia-Law from IIU betray a strong subversive streak with reference to the state of Pakistan. If that university is purged of Saudi influence and its curriculum is radically transformed, it can serve the society in a positive way. If not, then institutions like IIU, working to foment someone else’s ideology, are likely to wreak disaster on the beleaguered Pakistanis.

Omar also mentioned the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore and National University of Science and technology (NUST) as imbued with overriding religiosity. The latter was recently in the news for enforcing a strict dress code on its female students. Another institution of higher education in the medical sciences, the Khyber Medical University Peshawar, also tried to emulate NUST, ostensibly to promote ‘Islamic values’.

The Jamaat-i-Islami, a coalition partner of the Tehreek-i-Insaf of Imran Khan in KPK, is said to be a driving force in enacting such a regulation. History suggests that when universities start to act as moral vigilantes, academic standards nosedive. That is exactly what has happened to our universities in the last three decades or so.

In such a situation, expecting our institutions to impart a liberal-humanist education to our coming generation — which Cardinal Newman identified as the main function of a university — remains a distant dream. Similarly, the Humboldtian ideal of creating scientific minds will remain unattainable for our youth. Thus, Tariq Rehman’s despondency over the indifference of Pakistani universities to the prescriptions of Newman and Humboldt makes perfect sense.

Pakistani universities are churning out youngsters equipped with technological know-how but obsessed with wreaking devastation with it. Things can be improved if instruction in science and technology is coupled with a critical understanding of socio-political realities. That will come only through a carefully thought-out curriculum of social and human sciences, made compulsory for all at the under-graduate level.

[I]The writer is a noted Pakistani historian, currently the Iqbal Fellow at the University of Cambridge as professor in the Centre of South Asian Studies[/I]

[B]13.10.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]An ideological vision [/SIZE]
A look at Muslim ‘decline’, the narrative and responses it evoked in the last two and a half centuries, and the profound bearing it had on Muslim politics leading to the creation of Pakistan
By Tahir Kamran[/CENTER][/B]

Decline’ as a central theme of North Indian Muslim sensibility is conspicuously reflected in literature from the late 18th century onwards. Pathos and an overall sense of bereavement are succinctly articulated through Urdu poetry. The befitting metaphor of ‘Karbala’ was deployed invariably in genres such as marsiya and also ghazal — to depict the contemporary situation.

Babar Ali Anis and Mirza Salaamat Ali Dabir elevated this particular genre of marsiya almost to a level of perfection in 19th century Awadh. However, the theme of ‘decline’ did not remain confined only to marsiya and it was not only used to narrate the events of Karbala — as is illustrated by Altaf Hussain Hali’s Musaddas written in the same form. It, in fact, transcended any genre or form of expression.

Shehr-i-Ashoob (city of mourning) was yet another leitmotif that was evident in the poetry of maestros like Mir Taqi Mir and Mir Dard. Both of them lamented the sacking of Delhi at the hands of Ahmad Shah Abdali and Nadir Shah.

Thus, the tragedy emanating from the objective situation of Muslim ‘decline’ from the 18th century onwards came to be the seminal feature of all literary forms. Akbar Allahabadi’s take on decline was satirical and Iqbal’s was philosophical.

Shuddering over the prospects of being branded ‘jejune’ or ‘simplistic’, for not taking a nuanced view of the Muslim decline in North India, the writer nevertheless asserts that ‘decline’ as a narrative has been significant in the body of literature produced during the last two and half centuries. Even when the era of Urdu prose had set in, by the closing years of the 19th century, ‘decline’ provided an essential context to these newly-formulated literary forms — be the letters of Ghalib or the novels of Deputy Nazir Ahmed like ‘Mirat ul Aroos’ and ‘Taubattun Nusooh’.

‘Decline’ and its attendant sensibility have had a profound bearing on the course of Muslim politics too. It became the salient feature of the Muslim politics in the 20th century. The emergence of the reform movements, with their puritanical agendas, sowed the seeds of socio-political exclusion. The same happened in other communities — Arya Samaj and Sangh Sabha being good illustrations of the puritanical propensities among Hindus and Sikhs respectively.

Since this article is solely concerned with the state of Muslims, it is not necessary to go into the details of these movements. Suffice it to say that the reform movements fostered respective ideologies which they tried to implement through their peculiar educational modes.

These ‘educational/ reformist modes’ can generally be classified as modernist — represented by the Aligarh Movement, and the tradionalist exemplified by the Deobandi variant of Islam. The former advocated emulating the West to wriggle out of the ‘decline’ besetting Muslims, whereas the latter accorded primacy to the foundational texts to regain lost glory. These two modes, as is well known, were mutually exclusive but the common trait between them was ‘exclusion’. Interestingly, both adopted different forms of exclusion.

The modernists, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan in the vanguard, excluded themselves politically from the Hindus and exhorted Muslims not to join the Indian National Congress. Camaraderie with British was preferred over solidarity with Hindus, which was a stark change punctuated with the sense of ‘decline’.

The ‘exclusion’ practiced by the tradionalists was directed against fellow Muslims, with denominational differences as the delineating factor. That sort of ‘exclusion’ ushered in an era of takfeer, which contributed significantly in solidifying sectarian identities particularly after Pakistan’s Independence.

Another group of luminaries who did not position themselves clearly, such as Shibli Nomani, Altaf Hussain Hali and Hasrat Mohani, merit a mention here.

As a historiographer, Shibli was a trendsetter. Drawing inspiration from renowned British historian Thomas Carlyle, he wrote numerous biographies of eminent personalities, including ‘Siratul Nab’i, ‘Al Farooq’ and ‘Al Ghazali’. His writings had a profound impact on the historical understanding of the coming generations, while the personalities who were the subject of his historical enquiry reflected his Hanafi denomination. His books give primacy to ‘the personality’ as a driving force of history and were instrumental in casting a shadow of nostalgia on the Muslim laity.

Thus, the notion of a golden past was considerably invigorated, a notion which strengthened the urge to relocate bygone glories into the present.

Having said this, one must be cognizant of the fact that Shibli differentiated between deen and politics. Hali and Hasrat shared the same inclination. Their concern for the ‘declined’ Muslims, though quite tangible in their poetry in particular, could not be translated into their politics. Politically, they did not practice exclusion.

The common perception of Pakistani historians is that the All India Muslim League inherited its ideology from the Aligarh Movement, which eventually led to the formation of a separate state for the Muslims. This is despite the fact that both the founding fathers, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Allama Iqbal, did not go to Aligarh for education. Both of them, nevertheless, accorded a lot of importance to that institution. One may assert here that the prescription to deal with the ‘decline’ would be to follow modernist Aligarh and not regressive Deoband. Readiness to accept influences from other cultures and communities holds the key to overturn the decline, a point that Aligarh emphasised through word and deed.

But reverting to politics, the point worth pondering here is the ideological side of the All India Muslim League which was essentially progressive but subsequently transposed with the help of meaningless aphorisms and slogans. Besides progressive ideology, the principal anchoring force for the Muslim League was the personal charisma of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, which held it together and drove it forward.

A different ideological vision, embedded in religion, was conjured up after Jinnah’s demise. Shabbir Ahmed Usmani, a Deobandi alim and founder of Jamiat-i-Ulama-i-Islam, and Abu Alla Maududi, as Vali Nasr asserts in the context of the passage of Objective Resolution, in his book The Vanguard of Islamic Revolution, were the main protagonists of the ideology that the Muslim League was to embrace. This same ideology has now accorded legitimacy to the reactionary elements who don’t regret the decimation of humans, mosques and churches in the name of religion.

[I]The writer is a noted Pakistani historian, currently the Iqbal Fellow at the University of Cambridge as professor in the Centre of South Asian Studies
[/I]

[B]13.10.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]The IMF, the elite and the poor [/SIZE]
The persistent failure of successive governments to overcome budgetary deficit has
created a situation where the very economic viability of the state is at stake
By Huzaima Bukhari & Dr. Ikramul Haq[/CENTER][/B]

With meagre three per cent growth rate, sky-rocketing inflation, continuous energy shortage, devaluating rupee, decline in exports, increase in imports, poor tax collection and above all worsening law and order situation, the present regime, like its predecessors, is bound to fail in curtailing the burgeoning fiscal deficit — mother of all economic ills faced by us. The persistent failure of successive governments — military and civilian alike — to overcome budgetary deficit has created a situation where the very economic viability of the state is at stake. The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), without effective enforcement, will not be able to achieve the target of Rs2475 billion — resultantly the government will not be able to cap fiscal deficit at 5.8 per cent of the GDP as agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Everybody is criticising the IMF’s conditions under recently concluded $6.7 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF), but no one is ready to admit that fault lies with us. Pakistan, entrapped in debt prison due to its own wrongdoing, approached the IMF and not vice versa. Pakistan, as a beggar, cannot be a chooser as well. IMF has clearly asked the government to restrict fiscal deficit to Rs1463 billion — 5.8 per cent of GDP.

The document signed with the IMF shows that it has allowed the government to maintain deficit of 1.7 per cent in the first quarter, 1.8 per cent in the second, 1.3 per cent in the third and just 1 per cent in the fourth quarter. Many experts are of the view that these ratios would not work and in the end the deficit will be as high as Rs1950 billion, if not more. The question is whether 5.8 per cent ceiling is too “sacrosanct” to be achieved by the government in all circumstances? The reply is obvious: IMF will relax it as in the past!

Let us stop blaming the IMF and others for our own faults. The rich and influential in Pakistan are not taxed according to their capacity to pay. Adding insult to injury, they enjoy many benefits and luxuries at the expense of the taxpayers’ money. Just take a look at the huge golf clubs in the cantonment areas — these are not meant for the ordinary lot. The civil-military elite and “influential persons” of the city enjoy these superb facilities and that too at subsidised rates. These facilities, funded from public money, are meant for the rich and mighty for their personal comforts and luxuries. If they want to avail such luxuries, they should pay from their own pockets and not burden the already depleted national exchequer. Although these facilities are on public lands, they are meant exclusively for the elite — top civil and military officials.

Members of militro-judicial-civil-political complex have palatial bungalows, guest houses, luxury cars, domestic servants, cooks, gardens, watchmen and what not. All these are funded from taxpayers’ money. The “official” guest houses are maintained with public money but subsidised rates are enjoyed by public servants, their families and friends, and definitely not by any member of the public.

The security provided at the GORs shows that lives of the “sahibs” [officers] are more precious than ordinary mortals. Government properties comprising the governor’s houses, golf clubs, guest houses, wedding halls, even bakeries and commercial markets in cantonments are not meant for official business yet taxes are not levied on them on the pretext that these belong to the state. The poor are dying of starvation, their children are undernourished but our ruling elite, despite having cognizance, is not ready to mend its ways. These privileged classes are not only avoiding taxes but also enjoying luxuries created from money generated through taxes, much of which is regressive in nature and levied on the poor ruthlessly, sparing the rich from proper direct taxation.

Indirect taxes are pushing more and more people below the poverty line — out of total population of 185 million their number is now 70 million. In the face of this stark reality, pleading for more regressive taxation is criminal. The need of the hour is to make taxes equitable — a levy of income tax with progressive rates on all sources of income, including agricultural, if total income exceeds Rs500,000. There should be no exemption, not even to the president, governors, prime minister, ministers, judges and generals. The perquisites and benefits in kind given by the state to its employees and officeholders should be monetized and taxed.

In the first three months of the current fiscal year (July 2013-June 2014), the FBR showed collection of Rs481 billion — the target was Rs509 billion — “amid allegations of blocking refunds and taking money in advance to paint a rosy picture before the IMF”. The real dilemma of the FBR is that it is not ready to tax the rich and mighty, rather persistently squeezes the last drop of blood from the existing taxpayers — besides relying heavily on regressive taxes.

We cannot overcome budgetary gap unless the government stops extending tax exemptions and benefits to the privileged classes and powerful businessmen. Even after signing agreement with the IMF not to issue concessionary Statutory Regulatory Orders (SROs), the government promptly did so on October 4, 2013 causing loss of billions of rupees to the national exchequer. Tax exemption and concessions are the main source of loss to national exchequer — if we add leakages due to corruption and inefficiency the total figure will not be less than Rs600 billion. Unless these concessions are withdrawn, tax gap is bridged and wasteful expenditure is drastically cut, we will never overcome fiscal deficit but will continue to sink in this debt quicksand.

Presently, about 70 per cent collection by the FBR is from imports and exports, contracts and “extraordinary” profits by petroleum companies and banks. Importers, contractors, retailers and even service providers are, in fact, passing on their tax burden to consumers and clients, courtesy presumptive tax regime introduced in income tax law in 1991-92 and widened manifold since then. This erratic taxation, at the expense of equity and poor people, is nothing but fiscal highhandedness. Despite resorting to all kinds of negative tactics, illogical policies and unjust withholding taxes, the FBR has failed to improve the tax-GDP ratio, which fell to 8.5 per cent in fiscal year 2012-13 from 9.1 per cent in the preceding year.

The burden of a number of presumptive taxes levied under the income tax law (which are nothing but crude forms of indirect taxes) has been shifted from income earners to consumers and clients. These presumptive taxes have not only distorted the whole tax system, destroyed economic growth and made the consumer/client the ultimate sufferers, but these despotic, short-term, myopic and figure-oriented measures have even failed to bridge the fiscal deficit, which is estimated to soar to Rs1800 billion this year.

The men in power say that 67 years of problems cannot be resolved in a few months or even during the 5 years’ term for which they have been elected. They plead helplessness before powerful civil-military bureaucracy.

Successive governments have been announcing unprecedented concessions for the privileged classes. Even the politicians admit massive tax evasion and their criminal culpability in the existing scenario. There exists an unholy alliance between corrupt politicians and tax bureaucrats. Through legal loopholes — for example section 111(4) of the Income Tax Ordinance, 2001 — tax bureaucrats serve their political masters and plunderers of national wealth.

If the present government is sincere to overcome fiscal deficit it should pass asset-seizure legislation and confiscate all ill-gotten and untaxed assets. In the presence of such a law, resource mobilisation and tax compliance will not be a problem anymore.

[I]The writers, tax lawyers and partners in Huzaima & Ikram (Tax and Pakistan), are Adjunct Professors at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)[/I]

[B]13.10.2013[/B][B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]The warming world [/SIZE]
Reports on climate say summer in Pakistan will expand to eight months and winter will squeeze to one month in the coming years
By Haroon Akram Gill[/CENTER][/B]

They claim that they are working for sustainable development, but it is obvious that the so-called development is harming the earth in such a way that there is a doubt that generations to come would be able to live on the earth. And unfortunately, our children would not have any alternative planet to live as Mercury which is the coolest planet after earth has 167C average temperature.

According to a report, the earth’s temperature is rising rapidly and it’s due to heavy carbon emissions. The standard carbon rate should be 350ppm but it has crossed 400ppm globally. An authentic report tells that at present 90 million tons carbon dioxide is being emitted daily into the air. The amount of energy evolving in the air due to carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is 400,000 times of that evolved due to the American atomic assault on Hiroshima, Japan. The report also says that India and China are responsible for two third of this heavy emission as their industry is rapidly growing and half of the world population is living in this part of the world as well.

This heavy energy emission is not only warming the globe but the arctic ice is also melting and raising the sea level. This rise is a permanent danger to the coastal areas and cities globally. According to another report, 10 major coastal cities including Dhaka and Mumbai from South Asian region are endangered to be ruined by sea water till 2070. Dhaka is encountered with another problem that its soil has been salted and is becoming unfertilized rapidly due to sea level rise.

Earth’s temperature has risen rapidly in last decade, particularly. It has been recorded as the hottest decade ever. In Asia, the highest temperature had been recorded in 2010 as 53C and it was in Mohenjo Daro, Sindh, Pakistan. This rapidly increasing temperature is evaporating the moisture of earth and its water level is decreasing day by day. Green fields are turning into deserts with heavy droughts.

In Pakistan, there is a dramatic decrease in water level. Vast area of Thar has been deserted and other areas are also threatened. This drought is a threat to human life as it can cause food insecurity. Droughts have threatened many countries including America, Russia, Turkey, France, South Korea and Switzerland. According to a report, almost the whole world would be affected by droughts till 2090. These droughts are giving birth to food insecurity at large.

Almost every part of the world is food insecure with the exception of North & South America, Australia and some European countries. People in Africa, Middle East and Asia are badly hit by this particular problem. Food prices have been increased thrice in list three years. A major reason of this food insecurity is that farmers have not made them compatible with the changing climate.

Increasing temperature is affecting the crops as well. Due to climate change, timings have also changed for cultivation and harvesting. But due to lack of education and proper training, the farmers are stuck with the conventional timings and patterns which is resulting in low yields and food insecurity.

Scientists say that one degree rise in temperature enhances the water evaporation capacity by 7 times. These water vapours do not only increase the wind pressure heavily but their presence causes massive climate effects also. It results in heavy rainfall, storms and flash floods.

Pakistan is among the most vulnerable countries affected by such climate crisis; this might be because we are the neighbouring country of the two countries that are among the top three responsible entities of heavy carbon emissions. Pakistan has a least participation in carbon emissions, according to Energy and Ecology report. Extreme weather events are occurring here rapidly than any other part of the world.

Although America, China, Canada, India, Argentine, Philippine and other parts of the world have faced heavy rainfall, flooding and storms, due to better planning and resources the damage is lesser and the process of rehabilitation and reconstruction is fast. In those countries, people are also being educated and informed on the issue as well.

According to an official report by National Disaster Management Authority Pakistan more than four million people had been affected by heavy rainfall in 2012. In 2013, Pakistan has once again faced huge damages due to unexpected heavy rains and flooding. Official sources report that 1.5 million people and 7841 villages have been affected till mid September, 2013 and the water has ruined crops on 1,457,299 hectors.

According to American Climate Institute, Pakistan is among the top five most vulnerable countries being affected by climate crisis. That report also says that in the coming years, summer in Pakistan will expand to eight months and winter will squeeze to one month. These dramatic climate changes will change the whole scenario of the region. Another institute “German Watch” working on climate change reveals that Pakistan faces a damage of almost 21.5 billion rupees annually due to climate crisis and the damage has reached to 5.42 per cent of GDP which is higher than any other country in this list.

These figures are horrible, but the fact which is more horrible is that we do not have any proper planning to cope with the issue despite having a Climate Change Ministry and a National Climate Change Policy. Unfortunately, we do not have this policy implemented at any level.

Dr Qamar-uz-Zaman Chaudhry, the lead author of Pakistan’s National Climate Change Policy, believes the policy is more than comprehensive. Even if implemented 40 per cent properly, it can take care of expected floods in the future. Additional water storages on the main rivers have been recommended in the policy to absorb the floodwater. Just by enhancing the capacity of large dams these kinds of floods could be avoided, he adds. But unfortunately, the only thing our new government has done regarding climate is to reduce the status of Climate Change Ministry to a division and cut the budget for climate change.

[I]The writer is a certified climate leader and has been trained by Al Gore, former US vice-president and activist on climate crisis[/I]

[B]13.10.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]Our unsung heroines [/SIZE]
Lady health workers and vaccinators are not only playing a leading role in preventing thousands of child deaths but are also a frontline force against polio
By Arshad Mahmood[/CENTER][/B]

Our frontline health workers including Lady Health Workers (LHWs), Community Midwives (CMWs) and Vaccinators are the real heroes in Pakistan’s fight to prevent child and maternal mortality in the country to be able to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 & 5. MDG 4 is about two third reduction in child mortality and MDG 5 is about three quarters reduction in maternal mortality ratio by 2015.

The progress towards achieving MDGs remains a challenge and an elusive dream for Pakistan where 352,400 children under-5 die of preventable causes every year. The national under-5 mortality rate is 87 per 1000 live births and the maternal mortality rate is at an alarming 276 deaths per 100,000 live births. There is a need to accelerate the efforts to achieve MDGs 4&5.

The LHWs and vaccinators are not only playing a leading role in preventing thousands of preventable child deaths but are also our frontline force against the ongoing fight in the country for the eradication of polio. Unfortunately, however, in the recent past we not only witnessed targeting of the LHWs and vaccinators by the terrorists but also a cold shoulder by the government towards resolving their issues.

The last approved PC-1 of LHW Programme has targeted the expansion of LHWs from existing number to 130,000 by 2015 with a focus on expansion to marginalised and disadvantageous uncovered areas. The 18th Amendment has brought the programme to a standstill owing to lack of funds. Lately, through judicial intervention, the LHWs have been regularised throughout the country and their rewards have also been increased. However, we still see LHWs on the streets demanding documentation of their regularisation and implementation of the decision in letter and spirit by the federal and provincial governments.

Lack of frontline health workers such as LHWs and Community Midwives is one of the major reasons of Pakistan’s slow progress towards achieving MDG 4 & 5 as currently there are 97,639 LHWs and 3,843 Lady Health Supervisors (LHSs) in the country covering only 60 per cent of the population against the proposed target to increase this number to 130,000 by 2015. Following the Supreme Court of Pakistan’s intervention, the previous government regularised the services of LHWs, LHSs and other staff of the Family Planning & Primary Healthcare Programme with the federal government’s full funding for this programme up to 7th NFC Award (FY-2015) as already decided by the Council of Common Interests.

While regularising the LHWs, the previous federal government included a stringent condition; the posts that may become vacant as a result of resignation, losing jobs or otherwise shall stand abolished for the purpose of federal funding and new recruitment w.e.f. 1-7-2011 will be financed by the provincial governments. Likewise, any new creation of posts/appointments or future need will be financed by the provinces from their own budget/resources. This condition resulted in decrease in the number of LHWs instead of increasing their number i.e. in Punjab the number of LHWs decreased from 49,000 to 47,300.

The incumbent federal government should intervene and reverse this decision by allowing the provincial governments to fill the vacant position — 1,700 positions in Punjab to be filled immediately. The federal government should coordinate with the provinces and support them in recruiting more LHWs and make budgetary allocations for necessary supplies to reach the uncovered areas and help Pakistan progress towards achieving MDGs 4 & 5. Similarly, the provincial governments should also take responsibility and start allocating resources for increase in the number of LHWs, CMWs and vaccinators in the respective provinces to be able to reach out to 100 per cent population and achieve mother and child health related targets.

According to the findings of research studies by Professor Dr. Zulfiqar A Bhutta and others, in many countries, community health workers are now offering a wide range of services to communities in different types of challenged settings. Their services include conducting deliveries, conducting counseling and health education, immunization, management of childhood illnesses at community level such as diarrhea, malaria and pneumonia and malnutrition. The community health workers’ services have led to decrease in child and maternal mortality in different countries.

The successive governments since 1993 have relied on LHW Programme for the delivery of health services to the far flung areas. The key policy instruments of development in Pakistan over this time period have included LHW Programme as a primary area of investment for meeting health challenges. Besides, non-governmental initiatives such bilateral projects, UN initiatives for child health etc have also heavily relied on LHW Programme for delivery of services targeting the achievement of MDGs.

The menu of services of LHWs include 20 key tasks related to maternal, newborn and child healthcare and the health indicators in LHW covered areas are significantly better than the national averages. Research has proved that the coverage of some key interventions for maternal and child health such as fully immunized children, knowledge of mothers about preparation of ORS, antenatal consultations, measures of exclusive breastfeeding have improved in LHW covered areas.

There are issues around LHWs coverage, remuneration and operational aspects of their programme. It is imperative that LHWs coverage is expanded to un-served rural poor populations and urban slums and that will be possible only if their number is increased and all the current vacant positions are filled immediately. Similarly, it is important to ensure that they are provided with the required stock of medicines and equipment, their terms of reference are reviewed and routine immunization is formally incorporated. The monitoring mechanisms should be strengthened as well to ensure effective utilisation of this vital human resource.

It is crucial that the provincial governments take a leadership role, with the support of the federal government, and strengthen the programme at the provincial levels. The programme should be structured in such a way that the staff is satisfied and are able to concentrate on performing their job which is critical for Pakistan’s progress.

[I]The writer is a development practitioner and child rights activist and tweets @amahmood72[/I]

[B]13.10.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]A worried Baloch [/SIZE]
“I would like to see the Ireland-type solution in Balochistan, not the Sri Lankan solution,” said
Dr Abdul Malik Baloch during Faiz Mela in London
By Ahmar Mustikhan[/CENTER][/B]

“We have to deliver in the first year,” Dr Abdul Malik Baloch said, adding “sweet talk won’t satisfy the people.”

Dr Baloch is the first-ever commoner to become the chief minister of the area-wise largest Balochistan province since the troubled area gained provincial status after the end of one unit. However, his dream to turn Balochistan into one of the most educated regions of Pakistan, faces multiple challenges: haughty officials of the security establishment, jealous tribal chieftains, heavily armed insurgents and religious extremists, and highly corrupt bureaucracy.

Concern was written large on the face of the medic from Mekran, even before the earthquake of September 24 killed over 400, injured more than a thousand and left 25,000 people homeless in a poor but insurgency-torn Awaran district of Balochistan. He was the most worried Baloch on earth.

Dr Baloch was in London, along with Senator Hasil Bizenjo. The two were invited to the UK capital as the main speakers at the Faiz Mela, organised by the Faiz Cultural Foundation and sponsored by the Jang Group of Newspapers.

However, the political degradation in Balochistan against the backdrop of unmitigated militancy and accompanying suffering of the people was evident at the Faiz Mela. In the past, the Baloch showed up in large numbers at such events as the Pakistani progressives were considered to be the best allies of the Baloch in their long drawn struggle marked by blood and tears over six decades. However, the Baloch intellectuals in London were conspicuous by their absence at the Faiz Mela, indicating of high level of Baloch estrangement with Pakistan.

“Our coalition has been named the government of four bald men as it includes myself, Hasil Bizenjo, Mehmood Khan Achakzai and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif,” Dr Baloch said in a lighter vein. In spite of having more members in the Balochistan parliament, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif agreed to give Dr Baloch the chief minister’s slot in a province where traditionally tribal leaders and their close family members have held sway.

Dr Baloch’s elevation to the position marks the healthy transition of the middle class in positions of political prominence, much to the chagrin of the parasitical sardars or feudal despots of Balochistan. “It is apparent the middle class will now call the political shots,” said Dr Haider Baloch, a former health minister from Turbat, who is now a Briton.

But an even bigger achievement for Dr Baloch is the go-ahead given to him by the All Parties Conference, along with the consent of the omnipotent military GHQ — the main power in Balochistan — to initiate talks with the Baloch militants. This marks a softening of the military stance, but the Baloch militants have adopted a hardline position and have rejected the idea of talks. This shows the political immaturity of Baloch militants, many of whom are egotistical sons of feudal lords. Generally, it is the government that refuses to talk to the militants, like in the case of Turkey and Kurds.

“I like to see the Ireland-type solution in Balochistan, not the Sri Lankan solution,” he reiterates his political line of action. In his private discussions, Dr Baloch made public confessions of the political mistakes he committed in the past. “We sided with Nawab Khair Bakhsh Marri, not with Mir Ghous Bakhsh Bizenjo, after the National Awami Party split in 1977,” Dr Malik Baloch said. The youth at that time, including Dr Baloch, rejected Bizenjo’s politics and adopted the Marri line of militant struggle. However, this line of action failed to stand the test of time. “We decided to go into mainstream politics ten years later, adopting Bizenjo’s stance of 1977, when the Balochistan National Youth Movement was launched in December 1987.”

At the Jang forum in London, Dr Baloch appealed to the powers-that-be for an end to the extrajudicial killing of Baloch youths. He advocates following the due course of law and putting the suspects in jail. “Jail ended a solid party like the National Awami Party,” he recalled.

At least 400 Baloch have fallen prey to militant bullets in the last decade. Dr Baloch himself survived at least two assassination attempts on his life carried out by the Baloch Republican Army, which is led by Geneva-based Brahumdagh Bugti. Dr Baloch’s party, the National Party, has lost at least six active workers to attacks by the BRA and the Baloch Liberation Front, which is led by a 20-year junior medic fellow from Bolan Medical College in Quetta, Dr Allah Nazar Baloch.

Abdul Haleem Tareen, a London-based Balochistan notable, met Dr Baloch during his London visit but complained that he was kept away from Balochistan natives. Tareen shared some of the concerns of Dr Baloch. “This is the first time in Baloch political history that the Baloch have turned their guns on each other. Brothers and cousins are at each other’s throat,” Tareen said.

The Baloch have lost some of their best youths to militancy, Dr Baloch said. He called for a national debate among the Baloch over what they got and what they lost during more than 12 years of strife.

Dr Baloch and Hasil Bizenjo refused to accept any protocol during their five-day stay in London. Instead of staying at the luxury Dorchester Hotel, usual residence for Pakistan dignitaries, the two stayed at the middle class Hilton London Metropole Hotel. The hotel lobby became the meeting place, where any Pakistani could walk in and talk to the chief minister.

As if the political tremors were not enough, an earthquake struck Balochistan, forcing Dr Baloch to cut his visit short and camp in Awaran, a hotbed of the insurgent movement.

[I]The writer, who was in London to attend the Faiz Mela, is a senior Baloch journalist based in Washington DC area. He can be reached at [email]ahmar_scribe@yahoo.com[/email][/I]

[B]13.10.2013[/B][B][CENTER] [SIZE="5"]A fiasco called local government elections [/SIZE]
The way to a smooth political process is a well-functioning local
government system in urban and rural domains
By Dr Noman Ahmed[/CENTER][/B]

At the moment, a tug of war is taking place between the provincial governments and the echelons of superior judiciary. The provincial governments are being reminded by the Supreme Court to fulfil their constitutional responsibility — of holding elections to the respective local bodies as per proviso of Article 140A of the Constitution.

The provincial governments have not been able to meet the deadline set by the superior court. The matter is closely observed by the top judges who cited displeasure on the delaying tactics adopted by provincial administrations.

The political parties, with a few exceptions, consider local governments as an institutional residue of military dictatorships. They also do not wish to create fresh cadres of legitimate leadership which can develop populist associations with vote banks. However, this is myopic thinking. If parties wish to genuinely take the leadership development to the masses, local governments are the best option. This can at least offer an option against hereditary claims to control of political power. There are many examples pertinent to ordinary councillors, women/labour councillors, union council nazims, town/tehsil/taluka level leaders and district level representatives who were able to win offices purely on merit — and later proved their popularity through re-election.

These dedicated public representatives made determined effort to address pressing problems related to education, health, social welfare and area management. Some of them were even devoid of any political affiliation and had to face the wrath of both right and left wing parties. The two elections during 2001 and 2005 were reasonable tests for their performance evaluation, malfunctioning of electoral process notwithstanding.

Political culture cannot be nurtured without a practice in voting on party basis.

Ordinary people have ordinary problems that warrant solutions at the lowest level — not in headquarters of mighty organisations. Besides, people need an efficient service delivery mechanism and complaint redressal system for routines such as attestation, verification and certification. Local institutions and their elected members are normally forthcoming in such tasks. Small-scale development schemes, maintenance and repair projects are also important works that require immediate attention. If the decision-making apparatus is centralised in the person of chief ministers of provinces, little progress can be estimated. Expectation from bureaucrats alone to be sympathetic to the local issues may not be realistic.

A well-functioning local government system in urban and rural domains has to be strengthened after removing the various handicaps that it has faced. Problems identified during the past several years include poor quality of human resource, paucity of operational budgets, weak mechanism of monitoring, absence of effective audit and accounts procedures, financial dependence on the provincial/federal government, lack of control over police force, tutelage exercised by federal/provincial institutions and inability to generate development finance for local scale works.

The city of Karachi is being cleansed through a planned operation. But every operation needs post-surgical care. The relationship of local-scale policing and maintenance of peace and harmony among the ranks of various interest groups can be facilitated through an efficient local government. While the provincial status of the police department may remain intact, some local autonomy can be negotiated among the politicians and civil society to carve out a workable solution.

For the residents of Karachi, who have been held hostage to target killings and turf wars which has taken no more than 6000 lives between 2003 and 2012, local bodies are even more important. So, a political solution in the form of a local governance formula could be an effective answer.

The political parties should evolve a fresh strategy by using elected local governments to serve their clearly pronounced manifestoes. Capacity building in the local service delivery, notification and creation of bodies such as public safety commissions, citizen community boards or finance commissions, municipal services and taxes to generate local revenue are some basic steps. There are many institutional arms, think tanks and non-governmental organisations that have garnered enough experience to transform the political objectives into a proper workable blue print for the future form of local government. The new local governments should bring peace and harmony to the province, not generate further divisions in the already divided ranks in the society.

[B]13.10.2013[/B] [B][CENTER][SIZE="5"]The history of Bahawalpur state [/SIZE]
Since the Nawabs of Bahawalpur were not ‘kings’ in the
normative sense of the word, being of the Abbasid
lineage allowed them to see themselves as a part of the ‘Caliph’ style of rulership,
deriving their primary legitimacy from religious sanction
By Yaqoob Khan Bangash[/CENTER][/B]

Recently, South Punjab and the erstwhile Bahawalpur state have been in the news. The ‘Seraiki suba’ movement had gained so much currency this year that seemed that a new province might be carved out of the Punjab, till the general elections fizzled out the movement. A lot of the claims of the separate province movement are based on historical claims of the ‘separateness’ of the Seraiki people — in terms of language, customs, governance — from the rest of the Punjab.

While it is impossible to assess all the claims of the movement in this space presently, I want to trace the foundation of Bahawalpur state here, which until recently was the ‘Seraiki’ bridgehead. My choice of Bahawalpur is important since it was the only Seraiki speaking province/state in recent memory, and because it was in fact the merger of Bahawalpur in the Punjab at the dissolution of the One Unit in 1970, which sparked the separate Seraiki suba movement in earnest. In the context of Pakistan, Bahawalpur is further significant since it was the only princely state in Pakistan which had some regal claims and airs.

The Nawabs of Bahawalpur, the Abbasi Daudputras, were very conscious of their status and claimed descent from the family of the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad. For the Nawabs of Bahawalpur, this claim brought a certain degree of legitimacy and religious authority to their rule, especially in a Muslim majority state. This claim was similar to the foundation myths of some Hindu princes who claimed descent from Hindu deities. The Muslim rulers of states like Hyderabad or Bhopal did not claim legitimacy from descent from Muslim caliphs, as such an assertion would have gained them little praise from a Hindu majority population.

The myth of their descent from the Abbasid caliphs formed a major part of the regal claim of the Bahawalpur Nawabs and was widely disseminated by courtiers and sympathetic writers. The first history of Bahawalpur written in English in 1848 traced in detail the origins of the Nawabs, but in the end gave two rather different accounts of their ancestry. The first was the typical story of the descent from the Abbasid caliphs.

In The History of Bahawalpur, the author, Shahamet Ali, traces the fortunes of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad from the conquest of Sindh by the Umayyads in the seventh century to the caliphate’s demise at the hands of the Mongols in the thirteenth century. Then Shahamet Ali carefully recounts the direct descent of the Abbasid caliphs and their subsequent move to Egypt. He notes: ‘…that there were fifty two Califs of the house of Abbas, that thirty seven ruled over Bagdad, and that the period of their combined reign extended to a somewhat less period than 524 years. The other branch consisted of fifteen individuals; one of them was Sultan Ahmed, son of Sultan Tahir, who on the fall of the Abbaside dynasty at Bagdad, emigrated to Egypt, where he was received by the government with open arms, and at once proclaimed the ruler of the country in Hijra 659 [1260 AD].’

Shahamet Ali then continues to show how the Abbasids arrived in the Indian subcontinent by stating:‘For five generations, the succession was maintained in Egypt in the direct line, commencing with Sultan Ahmed; but the last Sultan, Ahmed, having first given up his throne in favour of his heir, set out on a expedition to Sindh at the head of a body of 12,000 horses, chiefly consisting of the Abbas race. He made Mekran the point of invasion.’

Ali further narrates that after peacefully acquiring territory in Mekran, Ahmed began to be known by the title of ‘Ameer’. The Abbasids then moved eastwards during the chiefship of Cheenee Khan, who had achieved high office under the governorship of Prince Morad [son of Emperor Akbar] and acquired a jagir in Sindh, with the additional responsibility of collecting taxes from the whole province of Sindh.

Shahamet Ali’s meticulous account describes the generations that followed, arguing that the name ‘Daudputra’ came from the Daud Khan-II, one of the descendants of Cheenee Khan. He notes: ‘[Daud Khan] had many children, and lived to an age of more than two hundred years. It is from the circumstances of his extraordinary age, that he is called the “Great Grandfather;” and from him is derived the name Daudputras...’

Proceeding to the reign of Nadir Shah, Ali notes the tripartite division of the province of Sindh with ‘Shikarpur, Surkana, Sewistan, and Kachee, as far as the town of Choter, were given to the Daudputras.’ It is from this first grant of land that the later descendants of the family consolidated their power, first under Nadir Shah and then under Ahmed Shah Durrani in the eighteenth century.

As the Durrani Empire crumbled at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the rulers of Bahawalpur achieved de-facto independence of their suzerain in Kabul. The subsequent rise of Sikh power under Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Lahore led the rulers of Bahawalpur to make several overtures to the East India Company for relations, but these were rebuffed until a treaty was signed in 1833 whereby Bahawalpur accepted the paramountcy of the Company.

This first extant ‘History of Bahawalpur’ is a very curious work. Even though it primarily attests the official myth of the descent of the ruling house of Bahawalpur from the Abbasid caliphs, it still introduces a different account of their origins — an account which claims that they were nothing more than mere working class progeny. In the ‘Supplementary Account of the Daudputras,’ at the end of the main text it states: ‘The Daudputras, especially that branch of the tribe of which Bahawal Khan is the head, claim descent from Hazrat Abbas, the uncle of Prophet Muhammad. Their real origin is to be traced to a very different source. Their progenitor, Daood, was the resident of Shikarpur of the class called Juhalas, or weavers. He is said to have five sons, Arab, Abbas, Hussun, Hasib and Casim; from the four first are descended the Arbanee, Abbassee, Husseinee and Hisbanee Daudputras.’

There is no author cited for the text, perhaps because dissenting from the official version of the origin of the ruling family might have proved dangerous. The fact that the book was published in London, rather than in India, also suggests that it might not have indeed been possible to include such a ‘supplementary account’ if the book were published in India; only in distant England could it have been inserted at the end of a book affirming the official version. This notwithstanding, it is noteworthy that in the main text the author began with the first Muslim conquest of parts of Sindh and Multan, since this was a critical marker in the self-perception of the ruling family of Bahawalpur.

The Nawabs of Bahawalpur distinguished themselves from other Muslim rulers of India since their origins lay with the foundations of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad, from the family of the uncle of the Muslim prophet. The detailed generational account of the Abbasids from their move from Baghdad to Egypt and beyond, and the succession chart from Muhammad’s uncle Abbas to the current [in 1848] Nawab Bahawal Khan III at the end of the book, illustrated the importance of this myth for the ruling family of Bahawalpur for it gave them a claim to nobility, even holiness, and provided a major legitimising factor to the mainly Muslim population of the state.

The notion that the Daudputras were descendants of the Abbasid caliphs was central in their imagination of themselves as rulers. Since the Nawabs of Bahawalpur were not ‘kings’ in the normative sense of the word, being of the Abbasid lineage allowed them to see themselves as a part of the ‘Caliph’ style of rulership, deriving their primary legitimacy from religious sanction. The assumption of the title ‘Ameer’ by the Nawab in 1947, was a part of this perception and followed directly from the title of the Muslim caliphs, that of ‘Ameer al-Momineen,’ i.e. leader/commander of the faithful. Thus, the Nawabs of Bahawalpur, lacking kingly titles, were still ‘leaders/commanders’ of the people, just like the Muslim caliphs, who were not mere rulers but vicegerents of God on earth.

Nawab Sadiq Mohammad Khan Abbasi-V, who reigned from 1907 until the state was merged with West Pakistan, even imitated the Muslim caliphs by secretly going around his state in disguise. As noted in a post-merger history of the state: ‘…he keeps himself well informed about whatever happens in his State. To find out facts about the agitation in which his Hindu subjects were involved, he went to Bahawalpur from Dera Nawab Sahib during one cold night disguised as an ordinary camel driver.’ This incident clearly hearkened back to the caliphs of the early Muslim period where they would often go around their states like common men to ascertain conditions. Nawab Mohammad Khan Abbasi-V certainly wanted to be seen as one descended from that noble lineage.

The above story of descent of the Bahawalpur Nawabs is interesting since it explains the continued importance of the family, and the different nature of Bahawalpur state, which many people in the region still remember as a ‘better’ time. Foundational myths are important, whether true or otherwise, since they bestow legitimacy, create respect, and are long lasting. In the case of Bahawalpur, the foundational myth of the Nawabs linked them to the great Muslims Abbasid Caliphate which not only bestowed on them the right to rule and legitimacy, but also a religious duty to govern.

As we think about reorganising the Punjab, it is important to be at least aware of the history of the different regions which make up this diverse country. Identities are multilayered and take centuries to crystalise, but are still important parts one’s life. Therefore, let us cherish and learn from them.

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