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Controlling the seas
Spiralling petrol prices |
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UK’s right stand A pointless debate on J&K THE British government has shown maturity in not falling into a trap laid by some anti-India elements over the so-called human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir. A motion on the subject moved in the House of Commons by a Conservative MP, Steve Baker, failed to evoke a full-fledged debate on the controversial issue on Thursday.
Defending Press freedom
Sunset days!
The debate on targeted killings and extortion in Karachi is not only bringing a bad name to the metropolis, it is also administering an unwarranted insult to its great inhabitants.
Window on pakistan
Arresting moral decline
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Controlling the seas WITH China seeking to establish its hegemony over all waterways in Asia, it should cause no surprise that it is on a collision course with India, which is an emerging power in the region. The Chinese warning to India to desist from entering into deals with Vietnamese firms exploring oil and gas in the disputed South China Sea is indicative of the Chinese intentions to put this country on the back foot. The Chinese strategy apparently is to try and browbeat India into submission. Any show of weakness by New Delhi would not only reinforce China’s total sway over the countries in the region but also hold out India as a country that is in awe of China. The statement by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman in response to reports that ONGC Videsh Limited is planning to explore two offshore oil blocks that are in Vietnamese territorial waters under the Convention on the Law of the Sea, is terse and unambiguous. He said China enjoyed “indisputable sovereignty” over the South China Sea and its islands and “we are opposed to any country engaged in oil and gas exploration and development activities in waters under China’s jurisdiction.” Significantly, hours after China’s warning, India’s External Affairs Ministry spokesman said while alluding to the ONGC’s “major joint venture” that India is intensifying energy cooperation with Vietnam. With Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna in Hanoi to chair a joint commission meeting on trade, economy, science and technology cooperation with his Vietnamese counterpart, the ministry must have duly weighed the strong Chinese position on this issue. It is equally significant that recently India had responded to the Chinese objection to its proposed oil and gas exploration in Vietnamese waters with a strongly-worded letter to China asking it to stop its activities in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, including some infrastructure projects. The signal was clear that India would not cave in. While it is good that India has asserted itself strongly, it would be imprudent to escalate matters to a point of no return. The process of dialogue with China must continue and while sticking to its stand on Indo-Vietnamese cooperation, areas of convergence with China must be built upon. This is indeed an acid test for Indian diplomacy.
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Spiralling petrol prices IT is difficult to make political and economic sense out of last week’s hike in petrol prices, the third this year. Petrol prices were deregulated in June last year and since then the public sector oil companies have increased the prices as many as eight times. Taken together, the three increases this year have been higher than the sum of the five increases made last year. The oil companies have cited the weakening rupee as the reason for the hike. The rupee, at a two-year low against the US dollar, raised the cost of imports and the oil companies claimed to be suffering a loss of Rs 15 crore every day. The problem is that the PSUs and the Union Government have not been entirely transparent about profitability of the companies, the ‘Refining Margin’ and the rationale for ad-valorem taxes. The balance sheet of all the oil companies actually show reasonably healthy profits year after year. There is need, therefore, for the government to come clean and take the country into confidence on some of these issues. What is even more worrying is the drift and different voices within the government. While the Union Finance Minister shifts the onus to oil companies and the Congress wants the states to lower taxes, Planning Commission vice-chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia hails the hike as a move in the right direction. While the government claims to be fighting inflation, it is giving out conflicting signals to the market and the people. Even as the Reserve Bank of India is busy tweaking interest rates to curb demand, the government, which has a virtual monopoly over both coal and oil, has allowed the prices of both to rise, thereby leading to an increase in power and production costs. It is indeed important that short-term fluctuations in the value of the rupee or the price of crude should not be allowed to affect prices. While there is growing suspicion that the government may allow petroleum prices to go uncheked till next year before giving some relief ahead of the general election, the least it can do is to convert the ad-valorem import duty on crude to a fixed rate.
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UK’s right stand
THE British government has shown maturity in not falling into a trap laid by some anti-India elements over the so-called human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir. A motion on the subject moved in the House of Commons by a Conservative MP, Steve Baker, failed to evoke a full-fledged debate on the controversial issue on Thursday. Only 30 of the 640 members of the House participated in the discussions with the House business committee disallowing a vote on the motion. British Foreign Office Minister Alistair Burt straightaway rejected the demand for interference by the UK in what he described as India’s internal affairs. In any case, as he pointed out, “It is the long-standing policy of the British government that this is a matter for the Indian and the Pakistani governments, taking into account the wishes of the Kashmiri people.” The UK government has nothing to do with it. Some MPs wanted the British government to intervene in what they described as human rights violations on “both sides” of the Line of Control. The government in London saved itself from getting dragged into an avoidable controversy. It could have led to straining of relations between the two friendly countries over a non-issue. There are elements in Britain always in search of an opportunity to malign India. However, they failed in their designs as the British government saw through their game plan. India, on its part, has always been trying to ensure that there are no human rights violations anywhere in the country, including Jammu and Kashmir. The authorities in J and K have been issuing warnings on this time and again. No one who is found guilty of violating human rights is spared. Interestingly, following a claim made by some people that thousands of Kashmiris have “diappeared” sincee 1990, the Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission has ordered DNA profiling of over 2000 people buried in different parts of the state. Their graves have already been identified. India has demonstrated that it is as sensitive to human rights violations as any other country. It is, therefore, wise on the part of the countries where anti-India lobbies are working to simply ignore the utterances of such elements as the British government has done.
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Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time. — Aristotle
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Defending Press freedom PAKISTAN may not have democracy in the sense the world knows. Nor will it pass the muster in the economic field. But it has to its credit an independent judiciary and free media which lawyers and journalists have won after long battles in their respective fields. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka cannot emulate Pakistan because both have authoritarian rule. The judiciary and the media exercise independence to the extent the two governments allow, although Bangladesh is a shade better than Sri Lanka. India is a different cup of tea. The country’s constitution and the democratic system guarantee free functioning of both the judiciary and the media. Yet the baffling point is that the Manmohan Singh government, battered by scams running to a loss of billions of dollars to the exchequer and the Anna Hazare movement to have an anti-corruption Lokpal (ombudsman), did not interfere in the functioning of either the judiciary or the media. However, while licking the wounds, the government has begun a new way of thinking: should the media and the judiciary have the freedom they enjoy? It is like finding fault with the sea after the ship has been wrecked because the captain failed to act. Home Minister P. Chidambaram, Human Resources Development Minister Kapil Sibal and the experienced Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee are reported to have urged the Prime Minister to “do something” to correct the two. For action against the media, the suppressed report by the Press Council of India has come in handy. “Paid news” is not to the liking of journalists or the people. And it would help cleanse the field if the guilty could be spotted and punished. But the government’s proposed remedy is to give teeth to the council. Such a measure has been discussed many a time and rejected because the Press Council is not another law court, but a forum where peers judge peers. The sanction is moral and ethical, not legal. The government’s proposal may defeat the very purpose of the council. Talking to bodies like the Editors’ Guild and union of journalists may be more beneficial. I dare the government to bring a Bill to curtail the Press freedom. Rajiv Gandhi, hurt by the criticism on the Bofors gun scandal, tried to have an anti-defamation Act. There was such a widespread protest that he had to beat a hasty retreat. In democracy, the media hands have a duty to perform. They cannot be silenced by the group of ministers or even the entire Cabinet. Left to the government, nothing would appear in the Press except official handouts. The government’s mind is clear from the manner in which its television network, Doordarshan, treated the Hazare movement. It just did not cover it, the biggest story since Gandhian Jayaprakash Narayan’s movement in 1974. India’s tax payers finance Doordarshan. It does not have to depend on advertisement. Readers or viewers would always revert to private avenues to get the news. This is exactly what happened when the Congress government imposed censorship in 1975. The fact is that no government wants strong media or judiciary. It has a way to indirectly influence the judiciary because the budgetary allocations are made by the government. The media can be “disciplined” through corporate sectors which have a large advertisement budgets. Justice Srikrishna suggested this in a report on Telengana. He did a tremendous job in naming the leaders who killed Muslims in the 1993 riots. But I did not know that he too could be on the government side. His suggestion to the Home Ministry is that the media should be managed to build opinion against separate statehood for Telengana. He has even gone to the extent of recommending the use of government advertisements as an inducement to turn the opinion in favour of a United Andhra Pradesh. How naïve he is. Rattled by the Hazare movement, the government is playing its old game by digging out cases against Hazare team members Prashant Bhushan, Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi. And I do not know why Manish Tewari who rescued himself from the standing committee should return to it? Is the government serious about the working of the standing committee? I did not like Kiran Bedi asking Agnivesh, earlier a Hazare team member, to prove his credibility. His public service goes back to the time when Kiran Bedi was a cadet in the Police Academy. And what secrets he could have divulged when every move of Hazare was transparent? It is in the government’s interest to create cleavage among people working for Hazare. Kiran Bedi or, for that matter, anyone else should not play into its hands. As for the judiciary, the members of different parties are peeved over the obiter dicta of judges’ while hearing a case. Such remarks never make part of their judgment. For example, a Supreme Court judge said a few days back that people would teach a lesson to the government. This was a realistic assessment against the background of the countrywide anti-corruption movement. It is apparent the government and the Opposition have not liked the remark. But should Parliament go overboard to counter it? Giving vent to their annoyance, members of a House panel of Parliament have recommended to the government to set up a mechanism to scrutinise the declaration of assets by the Supreme Court and High Court judges (what about the Cabinet ministers who too have declared their assets?). But the bizarre proposal is that the media should be prohibited from publishing names of judges under probe. This reminds me of the days of the Emergency (1975-77) when no judgment could be published without clearance from the authorities. Whether names are published or not, they soon become talk of the town. All this should not in any way affect the independence of the judiciary. Hazare did well to keep it separate from the ambit of the Lokpal. After all, the Lokpal pronouncements are subject to a judicial review. How could, therefore, the judiciary come under the Lokpal? Yet, the judges should shed their sensitivity over what forms the contempt. There is a lesson in how Lord Chancellor in the UK treated a remark after a judgment. The remark was that he was an old fool. His reply was that he was indeed old. As for fool, it was a matter of opinion. He let the matter rest at that. High Court and Supreme Court judges in the subcontinent should take a lesson from Lord Chancellor’s attitude. They use the rule of contempt of court at the drop of a hat. The authority should rarely use it but never against the media. The two are on the same
side.
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Sunset days! W.B. YEATS has said, “An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless soul clap its hands and sing.” Let me tell you, I am over the fence of 75 years, and want to share a secret: it is not really true that you get old in mind; you simply grow old in calendar years. In fact, with age you group up! My age-fellows ought to look into their hearts. Apart from growing up and getting refined, they become mellower. True, there is a bit of panting, a tardiness in limbs, a protesting back which makes one bend once to pick two things from the floor, but these are trifles for the body to tackle. The other being that gives body its life, does not show a crease or a creak — nor will it do! Many members of the seventy-plus club are secretly uneasy about their farewell. They resent death which is breathing down their necks. They ought to pat themselves on being safe, having steered clear of many ailments of middle years. After crossing the 75th year, my own reaction is one of astonishment. How could I possibly get so far? I have reached a plateau from where I look not on debris of the past years but glories of sunset days. Is it not something of a feat to have lived for three-fourths of a century? Every dawn finds me more filled with wonder and better qualified to draw joy from it. Until now I had not fully known the joy of having gold-dust of time. Is this not the wider window on the world, this feeling of mellowness, gentleness and kindliness? I stand on the sideline and watch my children and their children fulfilling the dreams I could not. Nothing is more satisfying than this. I have thus fulfilled myself as a human being! I am free from humdrum activities that by their very monotony rust the soul. Now, there is a surge of memories that comes breaking in on my inner silence, this sober delight, the unheard music. This is all-pervasive lightness. I get up with the ‘crowing cock’ not because sleep has deserted me but because an intense eagerness to live draws me out of bed. Despite my protesting body, I go out in the neighbouring park, spend about an hour there, swing and sway my limbs. I see some old colleagues. How old they look! I drop off at night before 10 in the same way — a secret sweetness swaying me down. Morning brings tea with mint and tulsi. It is followed by the newspaper, voice of the people, which puts me in touch with the outside world. It has an incredible amount of astonishing, absurd, rational items. Because of the time, fragment of eternity, at my disposal, I even go through the editorials. Sometimes twice! Tomorrow is my future. The beauty of future is that it comes one day at a time and anyone can bear the burdens of old age for 24 hours. Another name of future is “it is possible.” Why not turn our fading strength to things — a crowning recollection of our happiest moments, a final gleam of
sunlight?
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The debate on targeted killings and extortion in Karachi is not only bringing a bad name to the metropolis, it is also administering an unwarranted insult to its great inhabitants.
Karachi
justifies in many ways its claim to be a post-feudal city. Its dominant culture, to which a preponderant majority of the population subscribes, is defined by an urge to create/produce something that can be marketed. Everybody, from a coolie to an industrial baron, is engaged in utilising all his time to do something, to produce something that will enable him to maintain his family, augment his resources and climb higher in society. It is this urge that has enabled a large number of people, coming from various stocks and professing different faiths, to raise Karachi to what it today is. And this largely by the dint of their hard work, often in spite of the powers that be. The essence of this culture is the high value attached to time - much higher than perhaps in Lahore (still wallowing in feudal habits) and surely higher than in Islamabad (the city of opium-eaters where time has little value). The public dismay at any enforced suspension of work - caused by a call for hartal or disruption of power supply - is to be seen to be believed. Whenever a strike is called, workplaces have to be closed and vehicles kept off the road to avoid heavy losses. But everyone remains keen to break the ban. As the evening approaches and the vigilantes retire to report success to their superiors, the vendors rush to their posts, shops reopen and streets come alive with fast-moving, noisy traffic. In this culture, until some years ago, people were producers and consumers, sellers and buyers, service providers and customers, employers and employees. Their relations depended on the quality of goods and services and the level of job performance. The ethnic/linguistic identity of the other party did not matter. Then a virus entered this culture according to which good partnership was possible with only one of 'us' and not with 'them'. This virus has surely affected a sizeable part of the population but it is not strong enough to destroy the city's overall tradition of productive activity. Karachi's second culture, the most sublime of the three, is identified by its huge strides in the area of philanthropy and social service. Even before independence, Karachi was known for its public-spirited individuals - men like Shahanis, Jamshed Nusserwanjee Mehta and Abdullah Haroon - and it had more institutions of public service than any other town in Pakistan. Despite everything that has happened in the country, Karachi still leads in this field. The Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplant, the Edhi Foundation, the Citizens Foundation, the Aga Khan University Hospital and the Urban Resource Centre, to name only a few, are institutions any country should be proud of. And there are scores of other associations and organisations that are offering help and relief to the needy. Since Karachi is facing threats to its multicultural identity, perhaps the most relevant example of its culture of social service is the Orangi Pilot Project. The months-old lawlessness has tested the mettle of Akhtar Hameed Khan's successors in all the areas of their work - schools, health, micro-credit and urban facilities (water supply, drainage, etc) and they have come out with flying colours. They are helping provincial and local governments with surveys, maps and technical assistance in remodelling urban settlements and designing new ones. Above all, they have offered models of multicultural settlements. Everyday many of their workers travel from one 'ethnic zone' to another on their way to office. They do not claim to be free from fear, only their commitment to their mission is stronger. Here is a framework for restoring peace and order in Karachi. (Other cities are not barred from profiting from this model.) The third culture of Karachi has once again been brought into focus during the recent rains. There were traffic jams on main Sharea Faisal. Many vehicles had to be abandoned by the roadside. The young ones out to collect booty removed radios and other valuable parts from many of these vehicles. Worse, there were reports that trained hawks swooped down upon stranded carriers and deprived helpless travellers of cellphones and jewellery. This is the culture that inspires every evil that is being discussed today - extortion, protection money, ethnic hatred and wanton killing. Everybody knows how the seeds of this obnoxious culture have been sown. When a boy in his teens is asked to knock at every door and ask for contribution to a fund needed to buy bullets, or when he is told to collect bhatta from a shopkeeper, he loses all capacity to differentiate between good and bad. And when a gun is put in his hands this marks the beginning of his transformation into a serial killer. If one can get a degree without attending a course or a monthly salary without doing any work you will soon get a crop of criminal-minded young men whose lust for plunder grows as they advance in age and need more resources to meet their more expensive lifestyle. There is little point in trying to discover who the original culprits were because now a free-for-all situation cannot be denied. Two other facts also cannot be denied. First, those already afflicted by the culture of thuggery cannot easily be reclaimed, because they do not know anything else. Time alone will rid society of these thoroughly ruined beings. Secondly, this culture will continue to receive recruits so long as their employers can enjoy the fruits of their brigandage. The future not only of Karachi but Pakistan as a whole will be shaped by the success of Karachi's two traditional cultural strands to extirpate the virus of the third culture. Or by their failure. Tailpiece: Pakistanis do not lose their sense of humour whatever the circumstances. A TV channel ran a strip quoting the chief justice that by holding its session in Karachi the Supreme Court had reactivated the government agencies. The accompanying visual showed several security vehicles escorting the CJ's car. And the following exchange between two passengers was overheard in a bus. First passenger: "Altaf Hussain says if the army, ISI and MQM join hands there will be no reason to be afraid of even a superpower." Second passenger: "But who will protect us?" By arrangement with Dawn,
Islamabad
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Window on pakistan IT is not only in Afghanistan where the extremist Taliban movement is on the ascendant. In Pakistan, too, it has been gaining strength despite the US drone attacks being carried on unabated. For the past few months it has acquired a new dimension in Pakistan. There have been renewed attacks on schools for girls in the tribal areas where the Pakistan Army some time ago launched a massive drive against these merchants of death, misusing the fair name of religion. Now reports have it that last Tuesday Taliban activists, armed with rocket-launchers and hand-grenades, targeted a bus carrying school children in the Khyber Agency area, near Peshawar. Four children and the bus driver died on the spot and 14 youngsters and four adults were injured. Their crime: they belonged to the Kalakhel tribe, which had organised a "lashkar" to take on the Taliban with assistance from security forces. The tribal people must be provided all kinds of security so that they continue their drive against the Taliban. On the second day of Eid in the Bajaur Agency area, a large number of youngsters were kidnapped to punish their parents for helping the security forces in the fight against the extremists. According to Dawn, 27 of these kidnapped young men are yet to be freed. In an editorial comment, the paper says: "The tactic is a markedly different one from the previous attempts at sowing terror in Pakistan and weakening the ability of the state to act against it…. In both cases, innocent children and young men were made deliberate targets. The messages are clear: the Taliban no longer have qualms about attacking children, and those who dare to resist the group or work with the state will be putting their own children — and those of their fellow tribesmen — at serious risk." In the opinion of The News, "history tells us that terrorism has never been defeated by military force alone, without a powerful counter-narrative being developed and deployed." Religious organisations in Pakistan must assist the state in eliminating the scourge of the Taliban in the interest of peace and stability in their country and the rest of South Asia. No religion teaches killing or kidnapping of innocent people on any pretext. Ghulam Akbar, Editor-in-Chief of National Herald Tribune, rightly pointed out in an article last Thursday, "How can anyone killing an innocent child be the follower of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) who had forgiven even his enemies after the conquest of Mecca." Handling the problem of extremism is not as simple as it appears. The Taliban and other extremist forces have been surviving in Pakistan because the establishment has never endeavoured wholeheartedly to eliminate then. The Taliban cannot be defeated so long as Pakistan wants to keep it alive in Afghanistan to achieve its unrealistic strategic objectives.
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Arresting moral decline Pakistani
society today exhibits all signs of decline. The institutional structures of the post-colonial administration have become redundant. They do not respond to the needs of a modern and free democratic polity of the information age. The state which is a declared nuclear power is run like a mediaeval principality. We find ourselves in a state of social abandonment and political chaos. If you are not part of the patronage culture, you will be killed by the anonymous ‘target killers’ and your body will litter the street. Whenever an innocent person is killed, tortured or raped, a part of Pakistani self is scared and mutilated. A shameful silence and withdrawal from the painful reality of social and political breakdown follows. We need to reverse the public discourse on this ever-increasing sense of despair, insanity and abandonment. We have got to work on public ethics in order to reverse the decline in governance. Let us face the reality squarely. What is the most fundamental task of a government besides tax collection, appointments of diplomats and ministers? In my humble opinion, it’s the maintenance of a just and peaceful social and political order. If a government cannot protect its harmless and armless citizens, then it must engage in deep soul-searching. It must reassess the ethical grounds of its being a government. If government functionaries are not accountable to moral and legal imperatives, how then can we expect its just functioning? What we find instead is a differential application of both law and ethics in society. If you are part of the culture of patronage then you have access to every resource. If you are not part of this fabulous system of reciprocal favouritism, you are simply doomed. You have no respect and self-esteem. You will always be at the lowest ebb of the food chain. We inherited the mantle of an elitist-driven colonial administrative system from the British Raj. That system evolved from the ashes of a decadent Mughal, darbar-centered administration. The British-added civil service, military organisation and legal institutions were designed to meet the needs of the foreign rulers. The police system which was put in place also perpetuated fear and domination of the same privileged classes in the post-colonial era. We have continued with that legacy of fear and domination. The decline in personal ethics has a direct bearing on management of organisations, society and state institutions. We have to learn again to say ‘no’ at home so that we can save the state from further chaos. By arrangement with Dawn,
Islamabad
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