Impediments to progress

PRIME MINISTER Shaukat Aziz wants Asia to reduce half of its poverty by 2015. By achieving that, almost half the poverty in the world, estimated to be affecting 1.2 billion people, will be eliminated. And that is the UN millennium goal as well for eliminating poverty from the whole world in stages, along with seeking vast improvements in the global literacy rate and female education.

He was speaking in London at an International conference on “Repositioning Asia: A roadmap” as a keynote speaker along with the British premier Tony Blair. He presented his own comprehensive road map with a six-point strategy. With Japan and China as two major economic powers in Asia, and others like India and Pakistan forging ahead, he wants the 21st century to become the Asian century — the century in which Asia woke up collectively and marched ahead mutually cooperatively, though with mutually competing economies.

Mr Shaukat Aziz is right in giving the highest priority to the settlement of political disputes, promotion of security and stability at the internal and external levels. That is the key to long-term development and prosperity in the region, he argues.

He said while some countries of Asia were making rapid progress, others remained embroiled in internal dissensions or encumbered by disputes, which are consuming their resources. So our long range objective should be to help the less developed countries, maintain stability, narrow the wealth gap and raise the living standards of the people.

If there is a state of war between two neighbours, whether that be a shooting war or a cold war, a great deal of the resources of such countries are spent on acquiring arms and on the armed forces, with their competing claims for larger resources. When the arms are not available through the official channels, they are bought from clandestine suppliers at far higher prices.

Such tensions between neighbours also result in the creation of a large internal security apparatus and a vast intelligence network which means further waste of funds and greater impoverishment of such countries.

Within the countries with a history of differences between groups of people on a political basis or based on religion, race, caste or other subdivisions, there can be conflicts. Such conflicts can negate or undermine the democratic process even when the constitution is sound and high-principled and that can result in larger waste of revenues.

Such conflicts can take a great deal of time of the ministers and officials, and because of the urgency to deal with such issues, other far more important issues concerning people may receive a lower priority. The poor suffer even more in such an environment and their basic needs, including safe drinking water, are not met.

Mr Shaukat Aziz quoted the example of East Asia, or the Asean, which does not suffer from such differences. So they have been able to make rapid progress, though it is often said that they were able to do that since most of them are people of Chinese origin with Confucian values . The Asean states have not only managed to overcome internal differences of their people, they have also enlarged the Asean into an organization of ten states from the original five.

Compare that to the achievements of the Organization of Islamic Conference with 57 members or with the performance of Saarc in South Asia with its seven members (now eight, with the addition of Afghanistan). How few are their achievements despite the manifest advantages of a deepened economic cooperation between them, particularly to reduce poverty.

Governments of poor countries are burdened with large bureaucracies. The more the number of problems, the larger the size of bureaucracy. And a large bureaucracy adds to the problems of the state and increases the red tape in any administration. New bureaucratic structures are created when new problems arise or the old problems aggravate, but ultimately these structures come to exist for themselves like the anti-corruption departments in the provincial governments.

Recently President Musharraf was told of how fifty billion dollars of foreign investment came and went back because of excess of red tape, which made the investors run from pillar to post. In the days of Lee Kuan Yew as prime minister of Singapore, any investor could approach the prime minister’s office with his proposals which, if found sound, would be accepted and promoted actively.

In Pakistan we have eventually come half way to such a stage of problem solution and not all the way. We have to improve on that quick instead of letting too many ministers mess up the investment proposals. The judicial system too should be improved quick and made far more effective. Not only the quality of justice dispensation needs to be improved, but also the time it takes to get a verdict has to be reduced. And the judgments should be enforced quick and effectively instead of being neutralized by various agencies.

The government has a plan to set up commercial courts to deal with commercial disputes speedily, but it is taking a long time to materialize. Setting up of such courts should be expedited now. Settlement of disputes in land ownership cases should not take years. The World bank representative in Pakistan recently spoke of a land case in which the bank was involved and even after 20 years no judgment has been delivered.

The prime minister did not deal with the issue of corruption, which is rampant in the developing countries where that evil seems to be the norm. It is said there is no corruption at the top now but it is a debatable matter. If there is corruption at all other levels particularly in the police and the judiciary with whom people deal with too often, that is just too bad. The police fleeces the poor man on one pretext or the other as they are helpless. And corruption inflates the cost of investment as too many officials at lower level have to be pleased.

Power is a major problem in the developing countries particularly in Asia at a time when they are opening up their economies to investment and are inviting foreign investors. The small and medium enterprises need dependable power at reasonable prices. Such countries need adequate number of barrages both to produce power and provide water for agriculture. Such dams can also reduce waterlogging and salinity by regulating the supply of water. Since hydel power is the cheapest source of energy, more and more avenues for producing hydel power should be explored.

Waste of agricultural products as a whole should be avoided through better harvesting, transportation and storage and a larger use of the coal storage should be brought in to play.

As long as poverty is a major problem in the country and the less poor are not living too well either, the vastly wasteful marriage ceremonies with their excessive ostentation should be avoided. Not only the rulers and officials indulge in such excesses on their part, but also patronize such wedding extravaganzas. The issue is not only of serving a meal at a wedding, but also of preventing the far larger excesses.

In the industrial sector, higher productivity should be the continuing goal and waste should be reduced in this sector in all its forms. The unit cost of production should be brought down and there should be real diversification in industry instead of excessive concentration on textiles.

In the financial sector savings should be encouraged and rewarded instead of being penalized most of the time as the banks do with the blessings of the State Bank. If that results in less consumption, more will be available for exports and that is what the country needs now instead of the modest export surplus. At the individual level, poverty can be reduced by providing employment to the poor. They should be paid fair wages instead of low wages which force them to take up many jobs.

A low income earner may take up several jobs together because of inflation. Inflation is one of the worst enemies of people. More so when it is sustained and high. Hence the objective of the government should be not only to provide employment, but also to hold down inflation to make the wages meaningful. It is not enough for the government to argue that higher inflation is the other side of the coin of high economic growth. A sound monetary policy should be able to take care of that.

In a developing country where education should have the highest priority, it is not enough if large funds are made available for education. The government must ensure the money is well used and made truly effective. Money spent on female education should be truly well spent.

We talk of fair treatment and empowerment of women. The larger reality is far different. Faisal Edhi of the Edhi Foundation says that 99 per cent of the babies left at the cradles of the Foundation are girls and 99 per cent of the bodies left abandoned and picked up by the foundation are girls. This is a chilling reality.

Shaukat Aziz did not mention the need for family planning to keep down the population of poor countries and the size of the families. An active family planning drive is essential in the poor countries and among the poor people to have less number of the poor. The drive for good health among the poor should begin with safe drinking water for all. Impure water is the cause for more than half the stomach ailments and other diseases in the country. It is not that the burden of building a better society rests on the shoulders of the government alone. The private sector also has as much a responsibility in a developing country. Now there is talk of public-private partnership. It is slow in coming up.

He wants intra-regional cooperation in such strategic sectors as energy, water, food, infrastructure connectivity, environmental protection and the financial sector to face the emerging challenges. Such widespread cooperation will lighten their task and yield far better results for all.

The developing countries should also use the new technologies to increase the productivity of the land and its products can be exported lucratively. The investment on human capital should be stepped up by providing appropriate education and imparting them the necessary skills. The benefits of the information technology and outsourcing by the West should be fully availed of.

President Musharraf has declared that Pakistan is not in an arms race with India and will not acquire very expensive defence equipment at the cost of other needs. After the minimum defence needs of the country are met , he will spend the resources of the state on reducing poverty and increasing employment .

In modern times it is a folly for the poor countries to spend too much of their money on arms and little on everything else. Finally, after the minimum needs of people are met what they need is good governance. In fact, good governance is a pre-requisite for meeting minimum needs of people by managing the limited resources skillfully. Good governance is a result of a good administrative system, an efficient and upright police force and an effective judicial system known for its integrity.

Restarting the clock

IT is a truism that a clock that is fast is never right, and one that is slow is never right, but a clock that has stopped is right at least twice a day. Ms Benazir Bhutto and Mian Nawaz Sharif whose political clocks were stopped by General Musharraf in October 1999 are clearly hoping that, each having been prime minister of Pakistan twice, time will defy its own laws and allow at least one of them to become prime minister for a third time.

Such a miracle is not an improbability, for the Bhuttos and the Sharifs are already moving closer to each other, politically as well as physically. Recently, Shahbaz Sharif representing his brother Nawaz Sharif called on Benazir Bhutto in Dubai. It was certainly more than a social call. Some persons suspect that Shahbaz Sharif came with a proposal, a marriage of interests between her Pakistan’s People’s Party (minus the defectors who have added another P to their PPP) and that rump of the Pakistan Muslim League, left to the share of the Sharifs by opportunist defectors who have added an alphabet of initials to their own breakaway factions of the PML.

What is it that could have drawn the Sharifs and Benazir Bhutto together? Could it have been an antithetical magnetism, because they are poles apart? Or is it simply the outcome of a belated pragmatism? More likely the latter. Both leaders have begun to realise that time, like General Musharraf, is not on their side. Both know that while they may have the financial means to live abroad (if need be for generations), they cannot afford to spend the rest of their political lives in exile outside Pakistan.

For them, home is not where their luxurious properties and obese offshore bank accounts are; home is where their vote bank lies. The conundrum in their lives is how to gain access to one without forfeiting the other, especially if they want to bypass the man in uniform guarding that bank.

The recent visit of US President George W. Bush has yielded different meanings to all three. To Nawaz Sharif in his Marble Arch flat, it has quickened the hope that democracy, like Selfridges, is just around the corner. He will have interpreted Bush’s public homilies to Musharraf on the need for the restoration of democracy as an unarguable hint for the restoration of the status ante 1999, i.e. the restoration of himself as prime minister. He is still smarting from the humiliating manner of his removal by Musharraf and his corps commanders in October 1999.

Those who have followed Nawaz Sharif’s career will remember that his political upbringing — from the time of his selection as a gauche finance minister of the Punjab to its chief ministership and then to the prime ministership of Pakistan — has been in the hands of the military wet-nurses. His removal in 1999 was more than an ouster — to him, it was a betrayal by the very hand that had fed him.

Given half a chance, he would come to an understanding with the army, even, at a push, with Musharraf. It would have to be only half a chance, though, for it is possible that he might have to share the throne, as some pharaohs were forced to do, with a younger sibling. Even though Shahbaz Sharif is the Aaron in their relationship, he has over the years demonstrated his superior skills as a political negotiator. On more than one occasion, though, especially since the death of their domineering father, he has revealed a streak of independence that indicates a diagonal train of thinking. They share one inexplicable self-indulgence; both have had hair transplants that make them look younger in the eyes of every beholder except their electorate.

Benazir Bhutto’s priorities are different. She does not need a hair transplant to improve her image. Her first priority is to have the sleuths who have been hounding her and her husband called off. As the Shah of Iran and General Manuel Noriega and President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife discovered all too painfully after they were ousted, money, however much in a Swiss bank account, guarantees only one sinecure — a comfortable standard of living for discreet Swiss bankers.

Unlike Mian Nawaz Sharif, Ms Bhutto would have no problems dealing with Musharraf per se. She has no grouse against him. After all, he was not the one who ousted her. She realizes that the lengthy incarceration of her husband Asif and then his equally whimsical release were pressure tactics used to keep them apart, and now together. Similarly, she is too canny to surrender voluntarily whatever NAB suspects she has squirrelled away. She has seen weaker persons like navy admirals share their loot with NAB and watch that sacrifice melt away and disappear like dirty snow.

The only hurdle that prevents Benazir Bhutto from coming to an understanding with those who could facilitate her return is not President Musharraf or even General Musharraf. It is her surname. She can never forgive the judicial assassination of her father nor the violent deaths of her two brothers. She cannot forget — because she was there at Simla in 1972 — that Mrs Indira Gandhi agreed to release the military POWs she had taken after the 1971 defeat in East Pakistan because she hoped that a democratically inclined Bhutto would bury the spectre of martial law in Pakistan, ‘once and for all’. Perhaps the only thing common to both Benazir Bhutto and the Pakistan army and its allied agencies is a visceral suspicion of each other. Ms Bhutto is unlikely to interpret the recent nod and wink by President Bush to Musharraf as an order to allow her and Nawaz Sharif back into Pakistan. Even if Musharraf wanted to, even if he was prepared to grant her and to Nawaz Sharif the same sort of amnesty he extended with less justification to Dr Abdul Qadir Khan, he would not be prepared to do so to them without first sandbagging his own position.

Interestingly, all three in this political configuration — Musharraf, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif — are gradually beginning to think the hitherto unspeakable. While they may never admit this in public, they must in their own separate minds be veering towards a common recognition — that they are not three stand-alone options but a tripod of interests.

History testifies that every political party in government has regarded its mandate as a carte blanche to ride roughshod over its opponents; that every opposition has behaved like a disappointed loser, a petulant spoiler; and that every Army conclave plans for the day not if it has to take over but when it will take over in the name of providing a cleaner, better, more efficient form of governance.

That was the justification given for the coups engineered against Benazir Bhutto and against Nawaz Sharif. Their exit strategy was made clear to them. The exit strategy of Musharraf is less clear. Since 1999, Musharraf has flown even higher than the aircraft that propelled him to power. He has soared to the heights of Camp David. He was Icarus itself. Today, his wings have been clipped by the very Daedalus who encouraged him to fly. He has been warned to return to earth.

When they took over in October 1999, Musharraf and his team came armed with prepared manuals for administrative reform, economic rehabilitation, electoral reconstruction, and moral accountability. The resultant National Reconstruction Bureau, the National Accountability Bureau, the Economic Advisory Board, the National Security Council were instruments of that purpose.

Since then, even Musharraf’s die-hard admirers would admit that he and his government have fallen short of even their own expectations. A government that came in as an evangelist is being gradually defrocked. There are some who say that Musharraf’s government is no better than Nawaz Sharif’s, others that it is no worse than that of Benazir Bhutto. The only difference is that is more recent.

Now that Pakistan has been told by Bush to put its house in order, it is incumbent on all three elements of the political equation — the Sharifs, Benazir Bhutto and General Musharraf’s constituency — to reconcile themselves to the situation on the ground and with each other. The governance of Pakistan is too serious a business to be left to any one of the three alone. There might be merit in all three swallowing their pride and working together in the national interest. This might be exactly the right time to restart the political clock for all three.

Sardar Bugti and the gasfields

BALOCHISTAN is a multi-ethnic multi lingual region with varied climate and geography, whose numerous problems, though somewhat interconnected, can be alleviated or resolved if the specifics of each are dealt with in a purposeful and constructive manner. Here, I offer a few thoughts on a grave crisis, namely, the situation in Sui and adjoining areas and the relationship between Sardar Akbar Khan Bugti and the Federal Government.

I have known Sardar Akbar Bugti since 1948, when he joined the Civil Service Academy in Lahore. Sardar Bugti’s deputation to the academy was in pursuance of a short-lived scheme to improve the Baloch sardari system by training the sardars in civil administration.

Akbar Khan was regular and punctual in attending the lectures but perhaps found them boring or irrelevant and so read paperbacks, sitting in the centre of the front row, facing the lecturer. The leisure hours were devoted to playing cards, which he found fascinating. He was a pleasant but unusual companion.

It was after a lapse of 15 years that I had occasion to meet Mr Bugti just after his release from prison, where he had been lodged in a death cell. We chatted for half an hour but characteristically he never mentioned the hardship that he had undergone.

When I met Mr Bugti next, he was governor of Balochistan, having been appointed by prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. It was ironic that at this juncture, a military operation was in progress against Akbar Bugti’s fellow sardars, the redoubtable Mengal and Marri. In paranthesis, I would recall that General Ziaul Huq was chief of staff of the army during the Baloch operation but promptly called off the confrontation with the sardars when he assumed the office of president, having realised the futility of using military power to reform the Sardari system.

We caught a glimpse of the egalitarianism which is part of Baloch tribal culture when Akbar Bugti, hosting an official dinner for the prime minister and the participants of the Interprovincial meeting, eliminated the main table customoraly reserved for the prime minister and VVIPs and made everyone stand and eat at the buffet.

Again, more than a decade later, we encountered each other when Sardar Bugti was the elected chief minister of Balochistan and I was adviser, finance, in Ms Benazir Bhutto’s first administration. We met frequently. It soon became evident that Mr Bugti, in concert with Mr Nawaz Sharif, was systematically obstructing the working of the federal government. The hostility of the two provincial governments contributed to the impression of disorder and maladministration, which provided one of the excuses for the unwarranted dismissal of the first Benazir administration.

I have narrated these anecdotes in order to make the point that Sardar Bugti is not a revolutionary, much less a terrorist. He is a feudal, with the usual aspirations to wealth and power but with two striking characteristics. He is not a hypocrite and is stubborn and fearless. Since he plays an important role in the affairs of Sui and adjoining areas, it is important to make an objective assessment of his character and attitudes.

There is a glaring contradiction between the largest gas field in the country, with its enormous contribution to the national economy, and above the gas reserves, on ground level, the Bugti area, one of the least developed regions of Pakistan. The conflict arising out of this contradiction had been managed for decades, at the local level, by SGTC and the provincial authorities, with the tacit approval of the federal government. The approach to the problem was cool, pragmatic and relying on negotiations and eschewing force or threats thereof.

The relationship between the authorities and Sardar Bugti was often vexatious and troublesome, but both sides ensured that it would not erupt into a crisis. No pipelines were blown up or villages shelled. This pragmatic policy helped to maintain peace and allowed operations and development of gasfields to proceed smoothly.

It is to be regretted that President Musharaf has castigated the policy as “yielding to blackmail”. In fact, it was good crisis management. The policy was maintained during the long periods of the presidency of Field Marshal Ayub Khan and president Ziaul Huq, who were hardly weaklings, vulnerable to blackmail.

The situation that has emerged since 2004 is deplorable in terms of human suffering, safety of the gas system, repercussions on other problems of the province and the international image of Pakistan. The crisis, in my view, is entirely attributable to wrong policies and actions of the present government, and specifically the reliance on coercion, the threat of permanent military occupation, the attempt to substitute genuine negotiations with grandiose publicity oriented, futile high-level political intervention. Much damage has been done but it may not be too late to eschew violence and threat of force and to go back to discreet, cool-headed and genuine negotiations.

The writer is a former adviser, finance, to the government of Pakistan.

The blogosphere

THE number of bloggers — people who write online journals — topped 30 million last week, according to technorati.com, the search engine that monitors activity of this kind. This may give an exaggerated idea of the size of the global blogosphere because a lot of people have more than one website and others are inactive.

But it does suggest that a milestone may have been passed and that blogging is graduating from being a minority sport to a mainstream activity. Some factors are likely to ensure a continued surge in popularity. First, it is becoming ever easier to establish a blog, especially for those with broadband internet access. It takes barely two minutes to set one up if you decide on a unique password in advance.

—The Guardian, London