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| May 11, 2008 | Sunday | Jamadi-ul-Awwal 5, 1429 |
A ghetto called Lyari
Rights for the disabled
OTHER VOICES - Indian Press
With so much to restore
Party politics vs national priorities
THE scroll on one ever-vigilant television channel would have been enough for a Krishan Chander, a Manto or a Ghulam Abbas to sit up and take notice. The sinister message spoke of the Lahore administration’s desire to clear the historic Miani Saheb graveyard of elements that were not, or were no longer, relevant to the place.
THAT recently the PPP-PML-N coalition virtually came to a breaking point on the issue of the judges is not surprising. Right from day one the coalition has suffered from serious differences on structural and policy issues, which if not resolved could, sooner than later, bury the coalition along with the hopes of the teeming millions of voters who look up to it as their ‘last saviour’.
ALREADY on the ropes for quite some time, the rupee suffered a body blow on Friday when its value against the US dollar tumbled by 3.5 per cent, the largest cut ever in a single day. State Bank intervention managed to arrest the slide for a spell, but the respite was temporary and the rupee closed the day at nearly 70 to a dollar. Among other measures, the central bank also directed exchange companies to close their accounts abroad and transfer those funds to foreign currency accounts in Pakistan. Whether these moves will help ease the pressure on the rupee remains to be seen. A spiralling oil bill is said to be the primary reason for the currency’s depreciation. But as there is nothing to suggest any immediate let-up in global oil prices — the trend is to the contrary — no amount of intervention can do away with this supposedly key factor in the rupee’s erosion. If the slide continues, costlier imports could lead to further inflation in the country. Exports too could be hit. Imported inputs feature prominently in the production costs of many exportable goods and an increase in the price of the end product is bound to affect international competitiveness.
In any case, central bank intervention can only address short-term trends. Firefighting may be inevitable from time to time but it cannot by itself bring about a sustainable turnaround. What is needed more crucially from the state and the government is a policy based on long-term vision. In this connection, areas where import substitution is possible need to be identified and developed forthwith.
As the World Bank recently advised, agriculture must be at the centre of development efforts in the developing world. Agriculture in Pakistan requires huge investment in terms of innovation in management — and this includes agrarian land reform — greater mechanisation, more equitable access to agricultural credit, and an emphasis on modern farming techniques that can increase yield and save water at the same time. Significantly higher yields can eliminate the need to import food crops and cotton, and ultimately boost export earnings in telling fashion. A long-term solution also needs to be found to the dependency on foreign oil. Efforts to tap indigenous coal reserves must be expedited, as should efforts to develop renewable energy resources such as hydroelectricity from small- and medium-sized plants as well as wind, biomass, tidal and solar power. With oil prices where they are, almost all existing alternative energy technologies are becoming commercially viable. The focus of foreign direct investment also needs to shift, from financial and other service-sector institutions which cater to domestic requirements to export-oriented industry. Only an integrated approach, not ad hocism, can address the inherent imbalances in the economy.
THOUGH unfortunate, the recent spate of strife in Lyari should surprise no one. After all, life in this lower middle-class neighbourhood of Karachi has its own dimensions defined by crimes, drugs, kidnappings, gang warfare, police encounters and, of late, political unrest. This has been going on for so long that our social sense stands as numbed as is the government’s sense of responsibility. Almost immediately on assumption of office, Sindh Home Minister Zulfiqar Mirza had publicly apologised to the people of Lyari Town for all the sufferings they had undergone because of the failure of successive governments. As is the wont of ministers, he also promised that things “would begin improving soon”. All that has happened since then is the deployment of over 3,500 policemen to provide guard duties to the VIPs while a proposal for allocating 1,000 policemen for Lyari continues to await approval. Clearly, it is more a lack of commitment than resources. The impact of such an ill-advised approach on the morale of the police force is evident from the fact that those posted in the area seek help from the gangsters.
While there can be little doubt about the immediate need for controlling the law and order situation, there is an even bigger need for the provincial government to take a broader, political view of the problem. With a crumbling infrastructure and a blanket absence of civic amenities, Lyari has a long history of official neglect. With hope evaporating from the life of the young, they turn to gangs for injecting some ‘thrill’ into their dull existence. Along with that is the meek failure of the administration to provide a decent life to Lyari’s inhabitants who are vulnerable to the violence unleashed by various gangs operating in the area.The police’s refusal to provide protection has brought things to such a pass that whole families now look up to the gangsters when they are in need of assistance. The general perception is that there is an unholy nexus between the politicians, police and the mafia. It is widely believed that the ordinary citizen’s survival in Lyari depends on his owing allegiance to one of the gangs — be it that of Rehman Dakait or Pappu Dakait. The political parties are also said to be using them for their own purposes. One hopes that Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah’s words about the commitment of his government to turn things around in Lyari and elsewhere will not turn out to be as hollow as were those of his predecessors. More than anything else, political will and integrity is what Lyari needs rather urgently.
THE saying ‘better late than never’ is an appropriate description of the Network of Organisations for Persons with Disabilities Pakistan launched at a seminar in Karachi on Thursday. The organisation was created on the basis of a report, also presented at the seminar, which identified the existing challenges faced by the disabled and offered recommendations on how to overcome them. It is encouraging that the chairman of the National Commission for Social Welfare said he would look into the recommendations. One hopes that his is a firm commitment that will be followed through with the right spirit. Lest one forget, the government has yet to live up to many of its prior promises, like implementing the employment quota for the disabled and signing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities adopted in 2006 and which it had pledged to do. In a touching gesture, the Children’s Museum for Peace and Human Rights, amongst other groups, is gathering signatures on a petition to ask the Pakistan government to join the UN convention. It has so far collected 70,000 of the 100,000 signatures it hopes to attain.
But these steps will hardly make a difference to the lot of the disabled unless they are matched by concerted efforts to address the problems they face in society. Even updating the census on the actual number of disabled in the country has not been done, the last figures being 3.2m collected in the census in 1998. A World Health Organisation estimate from 2007 says that the physically challenged could be as high as 10 per cent of the country’s population. It is, therefore, important to correctly ascertain their number, especially in the rural area where facilities for them are non-existent, so that appropriate strategies and programmes can be formulated. These should include provisions for their education as a disabled condition does not prevent one from getting an education or gainful employment, especially if the employment quota is implemented earnestly. Once these initiatives are put in place and enforced, many of the social stigmas associated with the disabled will be overcome.
Eat your words, Mr Bush
Hindustan Times
GEORGE W. Bush’s proclivity to tread the absurd is amazing. He sought to blame the Indian people for the global food crisis by saying, “[India’s] middle-class is bigger than our entire population... When you start getting wealth, you demand better food... and prices... go up.”... Not to be left behind, the European Union (EU) has emerged more loyal than the king. EU Commissioner for Agriculture Mariann Fischer Boel has asked the world not to overlook the “elephant standing right in front of them”. This, we are told, “is the huge increase in demand from emerging countries like China and India. These countries are eating more meat. … [A] dietary shift towards meat in countries with populations of over one billion … has an enormous impact on commodity markets”.
… [T]hese comments are a brazen admission by the industrialised West that their levels of prosperity are mainly dependent upon the levels of impoverishment and malnutrition in the developing world. Having plundered for centuries through colonialism, they seek to continue to fatten themselves by a similar plunder through the current phase of imperialist globalisation…
According to the US Department of Agriculture, the per capita consumption of grain in the US is 1,046 kg compared to 178 kg in India, i.e. five times more. … So who is eating more?
The fact that under imperialist globalisation, the vast majority of the world’s population continues to remain undernourished is confirmed by the Food and Agriculture Organisation … which estimates that in 2001-03, there were 854m undernourished people worldwide. Of these, 820m are in the developing world … The World Food Summit … in 1996 had targeted to halve the number of undernourished by 2015.
This situation will only worsen given the sharp declines in global food stocks. Wheat stocks in 2008 are forecast at 142m tonnes down from 197 million in 2001 — the lowest since 1982. Rice stocks are expected to tumble to 107m tonnes in 2007 from 136m in 2001. Caving in to pressure from the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank, poor countries dismantled tariffs and other barriers to trade, enabling large agri-businesses and subsidised goods from rich countries to undermine local agricultural production. To some degree, food aid — in the form of dumped subsidised goods produced in rich countries — also played a role in diminishing farming in poor countries …
It is ironic that such comments should come when 78 per cent of Indians live on less than Rs20 a day. … 136,324 farmers have committed ‘distress suicide’ between 1997 and 2005. The per capita consumption of cereals has declined from 468gms in 1990-91 to 412gms in 2005-06. — (May 7)
To someone who has survived the great storytellers of the past, condemned to living a life of predictability, it was a sign that the ghosts of the past were not easily laid to rest, even if ‘reconciliation’ happened to be the most bandied-about word of the time.
The Punjab government, under the visible and spiritual guidance of its restored keepers, the Sharifs, has spent much of its first few weeks in rooting out irrelevant, unwanted souls and putting them in quarantine. Hundreds have been transferred and already a few dozen seem to be carrying the unenviable tag of being ‘officers on special duty’ — a term used to describe civil servants who have fallen foul of the present rulers.
As the word goes, the corridors of power are to be washed clean of the scum of the earth who had the temerity and misfortune to have allowed themselves to run errands for the Chaudhries of Gujrat over the last few years. The clean-up is deemed necessary before the Punjab crown is restored to its rightful claimant, a certain Mian Shahbaz Sharif who may otherwise be seen pressing for a restoration of another kind — on the side promising his loyal subjects a grand two-rupee concession on the price of a kilo of wheat flour.
For the moment, the price spirals heavenwards, as the big men busy themselves attending to the most urgent task at hand. ‘This is the mother of all restoration,’ the group of agitating men in black and white cry out aloud. This Mother’s Day, the matriarch has to be given her rightful place to be able to ensure that everything else falls in place as close to perfect as possible.
This call is the most audible of all prevalent noises, over (and above) the din created by the flour millers with a sea of humanity outside their factories providing the story its human interest angle. A National Assembly member from Kasur and the PML-N, allegedly caught with a few sacks of wheat on him, is but a minor aberration on the path to solving the real issue.
For the moment, everything is being conveniently blamed on the people the present set of rulers have replaced recently — from the hike in the prices of staple items such as wheat and rice to the trouble in the judiciary to the long gaps in the supply of power.
This is not likely to continue for long. People have a short memory and if the photographers are to be believed for once, the image that papers in Lahore chose not to carry in their Friday editions symbolises impatience.
The picture shows a group of Thursday agitators beating up a plainclothesman. It is said that the man had the cheek to pass unfavourable remarks about the protesters.
The media is generally supportive of the good cause yet there is plenty in recent events to suggest that it needs to tread even more cautiously lest it upset the protest bandwagon. If the internet exchanges between some enthusiastic members of civil society are anything to go by, the protesters are not very pleased by some of the reporting feats achieved by the burgeoning Pakistan media of late.
A not-so-pleasing indicator of what the affair may degenerate into came recently in Rawalpindi where a group of lawyers was so enraged by an uncalled for journalistic intervention that they decided to play hack themselves then and there and gave the intruders a due thrashing.
Since this time there was no explanation to the contrary, it is assumed that the victims of this latest uncouth inquisition by the newsmen happened to be lawyers, even if the assertion that the episode had been enacted at the behest of a certain high abode in Islamabad does demand a serious, in-depth investigation by an independent judge of the higher judiciary.
The situation actually demands much more. The grand bargain that some are prescribing for our ills cannot be complete until everyone first reconciles to his or her given role. The reconciliation has to begin with the personal which is why it is thought that World Press Freedom Day on May 3 could have been better used to assess and analyse what factors prompt a powerful group of people brought together by ideology or profession to overstep their original brief and act as a band of revolutionaries where it would be useful to have a few reformers.
Even though the date — May 12 — of the judges’ restoration has been announced, scepticism still persists as to whether the judges would be restored at all due to differences over the method of restoration.
Frankly, notwithstanding their grandstanding on the Charter of Democracy, the coalition was the outcome of Nawaz Sharif’s show of camaraderie with the PPP after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and at a time of strong anti-Musharraf/PML-Q public sentiments, pressure exerted by civil society and the lawyers’ movement, post-election euphoria and popular expectations.
But there was hardly any consensus on the three main issues on which they won the elections: the restoration of judges, the war on terror and ‘roti kapra aur makan’.
On the issue of the judges’ restoration, Asif Zardari admitted in a recent TV interview that the PPP was committed only to its promise of providing ‘roti kapra aur makan’ and that the restoration of the judges was an issue for ‘those who got the votes for it’.
Similarly, Nawaz Sharif threatened to walk out of the coalition if all the judges were not restored, as if the other two issues, no matter how critical, were not his concern.
Similarly, Nawaz Sharif has consistently opposed the war on terror, calling for redefining it and getting it to be fought by US/Nato forces, a view also shared by the ANP, another coalition partner heading the government in the NWFP. But the PPP ‘owns’ the war and considers it a serious threat to the security and secular future of the country.
Then there remains a big question mark regarding the policy of the PML-N towards the PPP’s pledge of providing the people with ‘roti, kapra aur makan’. In fact, of all the election manifestoes, this one is the most ambitious.
Given that the age of socialist economy is over and the state’s role in economic and social restructuring has shrunk in the face of infrastructural and institutional support to market forces, it would be interesting to watch how the coalition translates this programme into reality, especially as there are many forces to contend with.
For one, ever since Zulfikar Ali Bhutto reversed the process of nationalisation to ‘win over’ the estranged industrial and financial classes in the latter part of his six-year rule, a considerable body of literature has been amassed against centralised planning, creating a strong academic bias against state intervention in economic affairs.
For another, during this time, a new crop of big industrialists which included not only the once medium-scale industrial families such the Sharifs, the Chaudhries and the Mukhtars, but also a large number of politically nurtured feudal-turned-industrialists, who will resist tooth and nail any redistribution of wealth, evolved.
Without going into the recent change of heart among a section of western economists as to the merits of the state’s role in capital and financial markets and in monetary stability, the fact remains that the past 30 years of laissez-faire has failed to bring about economic stability, let alone turn the country into an Asian tiger.
Therefore, the coalition cannot avoid bringing in meaningful fiscal, financial and land reforms to correct social and economic imbalances which could lead to serious political crises.
But the question remains: would the PML-N, that represents a major chunk of laissez-faire beneficiaries, support the purported reforms?
Finally, differences also exist between the two coalition partners as to the future of President Musharraf. The PPP without ‘accepting’ his constitutionality seems to have found a ‘working’ relationship with him. But the PML-N flatly refuses to have anything to do with him, treating him as a usurper. Herein lies a structural threat to the coalition.
Already, whereas the induction of the MQM as a coalition partner in Sindh (and potentially in the centre) has understandably fortified the PPP in Sindh, it has also added another bone to the rickety coalition. The PML-N has reservations about the MQM’s past conduct as well as its continued support to President Musharraf.
The PML-N would be naïve to misjudge the ramifications of the PPP-MQM alliance that has not only reduced the PPP’s numerical dependence on the PML-N to continue the coalition, but has also set the future course of party politics. Pragmatically speaking, if the cookie crumbled, the PML-Q (minus the Chaudhries?) could replace the PML-N as coalition partner.
But that would be tragic for two reasons. One, the new alignment would reignite old hostilities between the PPP and PML-N. Two, it would practically undo the anti-PML-Q/Musharraf mandate given by the people.
And they would always be remembered in history for this betrayal.
Therefore, it is in the best interest of the coalition partners that they rise above party politics and meet the aspirations of the people. Any quest for a government dominated by a single party would be folly. The country is faced with a crisis of institutions and requires statesmanship and a bipartisan approach to tackle a plethora of threats.
In any case, coalition governments are a norm in today’s parliamentary democracies, particularly in federal polities. Based on the approach of ‘unity in diversity’, broad-based coalition governments work towards common ‘goals’, allowing each coalition partner to enjoy freedom in implementing its party programme.
In India, the Congress government comprises a coalition of 22 political parties representing a wide spectrum of political ideologies. Why can’t three or four political parties constitute an ‘effective’ government in Pakistan?
The old arguments for ‘stable’ governments don’t hold any more. We have seen the results of long spells of dictatorial ‘stable’ regimes. In this highly informed political environment, a government is rated on its performance and meeting electoral pledges.
The people have already given their verdict, loud and clear, in favour of the three major issues: restoration of the original judiciary, an end to the war, and the provision of ‘roti, kapra aur makan’.
Now it is for the coalition to redeem its pledge, as individual parties and as a coalition, so that instead of evoking the strains of ‘Hum dekhain gain’, people can finally rejoice by singing ‘Bahaar aayee’.
shahabusto@hotmail.com
