Inflated egos and inflation

IS inflation some kind of a sudden plague, which hits without warning, spreads contagious havoc for a while and then disappears as mysteriously as it came? Finance ministers would love such an explanation, wouldn’t they? Unhappily for governments, and fortunately for mere mortals, the voter is not gullible.

Inflation is an interesting phenomenon. It is a consequence of decisions not taken, as much as decisions taken.

A simple analysis of statements made in parliament during the debate on inflation by Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and ‘Cricket Minister’ Sharad Pawar (who also looks after agriculture when he gets time from running the Board for the Control of Cricket in India) will indicate what I mean.

The most startling analysis of basic causes was made by Pawar when he pointed out that the poor had acquired more liquidity, were therefore buying more food, and this, in conjunction with a change in dietary habits was pushing up food prices.

Well, that’s it then. All you have to do is tell the poor to behave. They should remain semi-starved, as they have been for thousands of years, so that the middle-class and rich can buy food at acceptable prices.

The poor, Mr Cricket Minister, are not fools: they do not think that any government can suddenly change their diet from bajra roti and dal into pilao. Even a government that pompously claims to belong to the aam aadmi, or the ordinary people, does not raise hopes among ordinary people. Life has taught them to be realists. The poor do not expect pilao, but they do believe that if they began life with just two rotis for a meal they have a right to three rotis after a while. Is that too much? The insensitivity of Pawar’s statement did not seem to upset anyone in the political class, proving how insensitive everyone has become.

The point is more moot. When did the shift in dietary patterns — as for instance, the rising demand for wheat in the traditionally rice-eating south — take place? On the morning of the debate in parliament? This change in food habits has been a slow turn, years in the making, and the agriculture ministry has been studying this pattern for a long while. So what did the agriculture minister do about it? Nothing. Did he encourage a shift in crop production through, for instance, incentives to ensure that India did not face a wheat shortage? Here is a consequence of decisions not taken.

There is a further twist to the story. We underestimate the role of corruption in inflation. There was a wheat shortage earlier. When did Sharad Pawar step in to import? Not when world prices were low, but when prices had peaked and you had no option but to buy at available rates. The importer of that wheat on behalf of Sharad Pawar is probably flying around in a private jet. A check might unearth some interesting details.

On April 16, the government announced it would import one million tonnes of edible oil. Had prices of edible oil begun rising at the stroke of the midnight hour on April 16? Why did the honourable minister suddenly wake up before a debate in parliament? As long as prices only threatened the livelihood of the poor, the government of Dr Manmohan Singh did nothing. When prices began to threaten the life of the government, there was a flurry of activity. The government of Dr Manmohan Singh is guilty of collusion in inflation.

The economic principle that has driven this government is the oft-repeated ‘trickle-down theory’, a favourite of World Bankers infesting this administration. Every economic phrase has a human meaning. This particular phrase means that the government knew that there would be a waterfall for the few at the top floating in swimming pools, and only a trickle would reach those dying of thirst at the bottom. Its attention has always been focused on the management of the waterfall.

We should have expected this, but we do not have a memory. What was the rate of inflation during the five years that Dr Singh was finance minister under Narasimha Rao? In 1991-92, inflation was 13.7 per cent, and these are the figures for the subsequent years of his finance ministership: 10.1 per cent, 8.4 per cent, 12.5 per cent, 8.1 per cent.

There is a correlation between inflation and political instability. Food prices are not the only factor, but they are a principal reason because food security is an important basis of collective national confidence. The government of Dr Singh, Chidambaram and Pawar believed that food security could be left to market forces. Market forces have now begun to bleed this government.

Inflation during the Jawaharlal Nehru decade, between 1951-52 to 1960-61, was 1.8 per cent. That was undeniably the most stable period of the last 60 years. Inflation averaged 6.3 per cent in the sixties, and the Congress was swept out of power in the states between Punjab and Bengal. It barely managed to survive at the centre in the 1967 general elections.

Inflation rose to 10.3 per cent during the seventies; the turmoil was as high as inflation. Two national governments were voted out of office. Inflation dropped to 7.2 per cent in the eighties and 7.8 per cent in the nineties, but the people still considered it too high and the turnover of governments was high. Calm returned when inflation was reduced to less than five per cent in the first half of the new century, despite a serious drought for one year. Anything above five per cent creates political tremors.

Dr Manmohan Singh’s five years as finance minister reduced the Congress Party from about 240 seats in the Lok Sabha to 145 seats. At the same rate of attrition, his five years as prime minister could take the Congress to below 100 seats.

Dr Manmohan Singh has been kept out of the politics of power since he became prime minister, but the administration of power has been his responsibility. If he had spent even half the time examining the earth beneath his feet as he did staring transfixed at a nuclear deal with George Bush, he would have seen that angel of death known as inflation approaching many months ago.

The writer is a journalist based in Delhi.

Retaking bomb project

THE holy grail of civilian supremacy is control of the country’s nuclear programme, a sphere of national policy so secret that no prime minister since Zulfikar Ali Bhutto has had any input of substance.

That is why Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani’s statement that he is satisfied with the command and control structure of the country’s nuclear structure must be met with some scepticism — not because of the ‘safeness’ of that structure, but because civilian control is virtually non-existent.

Since Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto presided over the fateful Multan conference held under a shamiana in 1972, Pakistan’s quest to join the nuclear club has been shrouded in secrecy — national interest dictating that the veil be lifted only fleetingly. Chagai-I and the A.Q. Khan fiasco ripped the curtain and ever since a profusion of literature on Pakistan’s nuclear programme has rendered the history of our bomb reasonably well-known.

One of the themes of that history is the extent to which the military-bureaucratic alliance sidelined civilian politicians. Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif have been vocal about this in the past. But in candid interviews with Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, the authors of Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons, a book about covert US support for Pakistan’s nuclear programme, the two have spoken out about the extent to which they were marginalised.

Interviewed by the authors of the book in 2006, Bhutto recalled the terror with which she regarded the formidable duo of Gen Beg and President Ishaq Khan. Such was Bhutto’s fear of the men that the young prime minister asked the US ambassador to accompany her to the first meeting with her nemeses. As Ambassador Oakley recalled: “She was scared stiff and they made it crystal clear that she would only be allowed to serve if she agreed not to meddle with the army, stayed out of Afghanistan, and kept out of the nuclear issue.”

When a weak but determined Bhutto tried to fight her way to the nuclear table, telephoning A.Q. Khan and other scientists and reminding them it was her father who had recruited them, she was rebuffed. Khan only agreed to meet the prime minister in the presence of President Ishaq Khan.

According to Bhutto, it was this meeting which led to the creation of the infamous troika: “Eventually it was agreed that the prime minister had to have a role in the nuclear programme. We created ‘the troika’ — Ishaq Khan, General Beg and myself would create a Nuclear Command Authority.” Even this nominal concession to the prime minister was contemptuously dismissed by Gen Beg, who told the authors that it was nothing more than a sop to the US on the eve of a trip to Washington.

Benazir Bhutto’s recollection of another meeting with President Ishaq Khan is also instructive: “I said, ‘I need to know about the aid money that will come in this year. How is it being spent?’ He said, ‘I am not telling you. It’s a nuclear issue. You need to know nothing.’”

The Pakistani establishment was not the only one treating Bhutto with condescension. The US ambassador got in on the act, too. With nuclear-armed India and Pakistan edging towards war over the Kashmir insurgency in 1990, Benazir recalled a conversation with Ambassador Oakley: “He told me the whole thing had gone mad. He was worried. Really worried. He said, ‘Sit tight and I’ll get back to you.’”

Bhutto was not even informed of a secret trip to Pakistan by Robert Gates, the deputy national security adviser, to warn Beg and Ishaq Khan of the consequences of war. Bhutto, who was away on a foreign tour, recalled: “I only learned what was happening because Oakley told me. But even he said everything was being taken care of and so I stayed away.”

As the establishment’s hand-picked man, Nawaz Sharif was expected to stay out of the army’s business. Yet he fared little better. Sharif recalled how he, Ishaq Dar and Chaudhry Nisar Ali were approached by Gen Beg with a plan to tide over Pakistan’s economic problems and subsidise the military budget: sell nuclear technology to Iran for $12bn. He said: “Beg was insistent. I realised then we had to change the way that power worked in Pakistan, to break the stranglehold that kept the politicians on a military leash.”

Sharif and Bhutto undoubtedly have good reason to blame the military for everything; however, the similarities in their stories of the nuclear establishment are uncanny. The basic theme: shut up, keep your head down and do as you are told.

Yet Bhutto and Sharif are far from blameless. It’s one thing to condemn a cabal of mad mullahs, generals and civil servants for nuclear adventurism. It’s quite another to have governed the way they did, knowing what was at stake.

Distracting themselves and the country with petty politics, settling scores and corruption only reinforced the secretiveness of the nuclear establishment. The prime ministers may have proven masters of survival in the cut-throat world of Pakistani politics, but it’s hard to feel much sympathy for either.

In the meanwhile, the loftiest in the military-bureaucratic axis seem to regard our nuclear weapons as a saleable commodity. The economy is in trouble, sell the technology. The Kashmir insurgency needs to be financed, sell the technology. The cavalier attitude towards the sale of nuclear technology — though not necessarily the bomb itself — is terrifying.

Things have undoubtedly changed since the anxious days of the previous decades. The reckless and the religious ideologues in the nuclear establishment have been weeded out and the controls of the nuclear programme tightened.

Prime Minister Gilani’s visit to the Strategic Plans Division (SPD), however, was a reminder that the final — and most difficult — step remains far from reality. On paper, the SPD is subordinate to the National Command Authority, which is charged with formulating nuclear policy and whose vice-chairman is the prime minister. In reality, the SPD is run by the same lieutenant-general — now retired — since its inception in 2000. By all accounts the SPD is a sophisticated, professional body and Director-General Kidwai was widely hailed following a presentation he gave to journalists on Pakistan’s command and control structure last January.

But safe hands do not make for civilian control. Given the experiences of Bhutto and Sharif and eight years of quasi-civilian rule, the extent to which the prime minister — a surrogate leader of his own party — was briefed is questionable. Indeed, years from now a retired or sidelined Gilani may reveal to journalists that the presentation given to him was no different to the one they received.

cyril.a@gmail.com

Marketing real estate and coffins

THE Kacha Garhi camp is located outside the posh Hayatabad Township in Peshawar on the main Khyber Road. It was one of the biggest and most notorious training camps for Afghan refugees dating to the early 1980s when the jihad was at its peak.

But recently, the ‘heroic Mujahids’ overnight turned into ‘bloodthirsty terrorists’ according to the western and domestic lexicon.

Hence, this 2,943 kanal land has been converted into prized commercial real estate in keeping with the current boom of speculative, acquisitive, land-grabbing in Pakistan. So as the poor Afghans are sent packing across the border to the killing fields of Afghanistan, the only remnants of their ‘glorious’ Islamic jihadi period are the spanking, large, new coffins along the main road.

They recount to the world the tragic tale of death and destruction that has wrought the entire region, turning the once pristine and beautiful land into a graveyard.

To save observers the trouble of making a second guess about the status of the so-called jihad, the ramshackle, crumbling camp carries a bold sign announcing it is ‘Pakistan Army property’. Signboards with notices such as ‘announcement’ and ‘warning’ are interspersed with several new coffins that lie in neat rows.

“It could not get more metaphorical than the two symbols of death that haunt this land — the coffins and the Pakistan Army!” Dr Gulalae Wali Khan commented on the phone while returning from nurseries selling beautiful exotic plants and shrubs of all varieties, across the same road.

Is it not amazing that close to these most verdant nurseries lie the coffins made by the enterprising Afghans — the message seems to be ‘you sell flowers to the rich and we sell death to the helpless, homeless and the powerless Afghans on their way out.’ The world fails to notice as global attention is diverted to the new killing fields in Iraq, possibly Iran, and God knows where else. Is this not a microcosm of the world of the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’, the affluent and the dispossessed, the living and the dead?

One can easily conduct a doctoral thesis on Kacha Garhi camp, on the rise and fall of civilisations, of humanity, of values and morality, of greed and global politics and of course realpolitik. It was Zbigniew Brzezinski in the early 1980s and scores of other Americans who visited this ‘model’ of Islamic ruthlessness meant to crush the menacing Red Army.

The beauteous Angelina Jolie and her ilk were the last to set foot on this American enterprise of death and destruction. Does it not encapsulate the entire Afghan jihad in a stretch of two to three kilometres of the Khyber Road?

Beautiful flowers and plants and the elite emerging from their SUVs and luxury cars, spending hundreds of thousands in wild shopping sprees and buying exotic, imported plants and shrubs for their air-conditioned cocoons and make-believe little worlds contrast with the pervading death next door: the dilapidated or bulldozed mud walls, the ghosts of Afghan warriors. And above all, the overweening presence of the Pakistan Army that would not let go even in this hour of death, demanding profits, ownership rights, real estate and power.

Until now, only the cantonment was ‘military business’ — whatever this meant — meddling in civilian life or building rows upon rows of monstrous, hideous, concrete housing schemes for the retiring and often bored officials to reflect upon the great services rendered. But post-9/11 going to the cantonment for shopping or business is no less than a border conflict within. The enormous check-posts with machine-gun toting jawans in ‘ready to shoot’ postures send shivers down one’s spine.

The Thandi Sarak or the historic Mall Road and Fort Road that were once a walking paradise with citrus blossoms, jasmines, hyacinths, rose shrubs, tall trees and so many others, making for heavenly sights and smells for the senses now present a different aspect. Now the area is virtually cut off from the rest of the city as a modern-day Bantustan — the American consulate (like the proverbial imperial outpost) shutting and contributing to traffic congestion on all sides.

With the graceful colonial buildings being dismantled, the huge, endless walls, check-posts, ugly fountains, and statues of one Muslim warrior or another benumb the senses. Having denuded the once beautiful cantonment of flora and gardens, the military is now heading for more lucrative opportunities.

Kacha Garhi camp should be an eye-opener for an oblivious provincial government. It should reassert itself in terms of policy and rules of business. Not just in politics but in civil affairs. The military personnel engaged in this wholesale loot and plunder of our national, and natural resources should be told to back off to return to their barracks.

“Linking the emerging Regi Lalma Township, Ring Road to the main Khyber Road is obviously (for the sake of) strategic real estate land worth billions of rupees,” says Sangeen Wali Khan. “Basically, a shamilaat of Thehkal area, a Kashmiri real estate owner had bought the land from the owners, and has even won the case in the Supreme Court, but the military is using underhand tactics to browbeat the man. Like the rest of Pakistan which is under the danda of the military, this place is no exception!”

Let a garden bloom now in this place as a reminder to future generations of the lives and souls lost to the pointless and atrocious Afghan jihad.

adilzareef@yahoo.com

Minorities: a test case

IS there light at the end of the tunnel for the non-Muslim minorities of this country? Or have their efforts and sacrifices for the re-establishment of yet another experiment in democracy in Pakistan proved futile?

After the swearing-in of the new coalition cabinet, that hope seems to have waned a trifle — and not without reason.

It is disappointing to note that out of a total of 24 ministries not a single one has been offered to a non-Muslim. In his inaugural speech, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani was quick to expound, perhaps for the sake of political correctness, the need for protecting the rights of the minorities. He reaffirmed his unwavering belief in Jinnah’s Pakistan. But when put to the test of distributing federal portfolios, it sounded all but hollow.

Besides being heavily patriarchal, for only two women, Ms Sherry Rehman and Ms Tehmina Daultana, were considered appropriate for filling a federal post, the decision of the government not to include a single member of the minority as part of its federal cabinet did not really help. It added to the feeling of marginalisation felt by the 10 members of the National Assembly selected on reserved seats.

An estimated three million Christians and nearly the same number of Hindus and Sikhs form part of the 170-million population of Pakistan. In the Feb 18 polls, 12 politicians from the minority communities stood for election to the National Assembly and six to the provincial assemblies. None of them were able to win. This in itself is a record as no non-Muslim contested on a general seat in the previous 2002 general elections.

In the past, attempts have been made to placate and appease the minorities by giving them the portfolio of the ministry for minorities, thus causing a deep sense of alienation in them. This time round that formality has apparently been overlooked.

Seen as a party with liberal and progressive moorings, the Pakistan People’s Party won for itself the support of the religious minorities through Benazir Bhutto’s desire to transform Pakistan into a modern democratic state. Equality and protection of minority rights were on top of her agenda, prompting leaders of the religious minorities to ally themselves with the PPP in the hope of seeing social justice, equality and absolute religious freedom.

Following the non-inclusion of religious minorities in the ‘first phase’ of distributing federal cabinet portfolios, the controversial electoral system established by the dictatorial regime of Ziaul Haq for reserving seats for minorities in the national and provincial assemblies has once again come under criticism.

The 10 reserved seats for the minorities are allocated through the same complex system of proportional representation as is seen in the 60 seats reserved for women. But while women are allowed to vote freely, non-Muslims are given the allowance of voting only for candidates belonging to their religion.

After the declaration of the general election results, nominations are sent to the Election Commission and parties are allocated reserved seats in proportion to their strength in the national and provincial assemblies, according to the rules set forth by the Constitution. This discriminatory policy was momentarily suspended in 1999 only to be re-established in 2001 by President Pervez Musharraf. This undemocratic and blatantly biased approach towards the non-recognition of diversity was acknowledged by the federal caretaker law minister, Mr Afzal Haider, who advised amendments to the Constitution for bringing the minorities to the same level as the religious majority.

The minorities provided unflinching support to Ms Benazir Bhutto’s party in the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy. They also made their presence felt when they came out in huge numbers to support the Karwaan-i-Jamhooriat upon her arrival in Karachi on Oct 17, 2007, with many losing their lives when the procession was attacked.

They cheered and responded to the PPP chairperson’s call with 100 per cent voter turnout, honouring her memory by casting their ballot. An estimated 100,000 votes were cast by non-Muslims in Lahore alone. And it would not be inaccurate to assume that the non-Muslims had a decisive vote in many constituencies.

Overlooking the minorities, which needless to say include women, will force people to recognise the great leap made by the government of Pervez Musharraf who gave the highest representation, if only in numbers, to women at the local, provincial and federal levels of governance.

The PPP made history by appointing a woman speaker for the first time in Pakistan; it is now time for it to implement its progressive and liberal policies by giving due representation to the minorities in the federal cabinet as well as the Senate — the highest legislative institution in the country where non-Muslims do not have a single seat.