The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

GPA ruling timely
It may curb black money

The Supreme Court ruling that the general power of attorney (GPA) will not give the buyer a valid ownership title of an immoveable property should be welcomed as it should reduce frauds, “benami” property deals, the flow of black money into real estate, litigation and evasion of stamp duty. The use of GPA, which is quite common in northern states, including Delhi, is, however, valid in “genuine” cases such as between blood relations. The GPA is often used to sell illegal property like a house or flat located in an unauthorised colony or within the “lal dora”.

In Chandigarh until recently the allottee of a flat or plot obtained from the administration at a concession was not allowed to sell it for a particular period to curb profiteering. This encouraged property transactions through the GPA and caused a substantial loss of revenue to the UT administration. Black money was used to purchase property without getting it transferred in the buyer’s name and paying a hefty stamp duty. Though the practice has been discouraged in the UT, it is still common in Delhi and the National Capital Region. The compulsory sale agreement registration will curb the use of unaccounted money and tax evasion. This is expected to further depress property prices in an already sluggish real estate market. High rates of interest on home loans have dampened the demand for housing. But the setback may be temporary.

The court has clarified that this is not a new law or a new interpretation of the law but reiteration of the well-settled legal position that property transactions carried out on the basis of a GPA are not complete transfers of ownership. The provision of GPA has so often been misused that the apex court has rightly cleared the confusion. The chaotic and fast-growing real estate market in the country needs uniform, transparent laws and a regulator to enforce the laws and provide the needy an easy access to affordable, fraud-free housing.

Attack on Bhushan
It is not enough to condemn the cowardly act

The country has a history of tolerating vandalism, hooliganism and assault on people. It is more than likely, therefore, that the publicity-seekers who assaulted senior Advocate and a prominent member of the civil society’s movement against corruption, Prashant Bhushan, will be treated with kid gloves and let off with a warning or token punishment. After all, that is exactly how the law-enforcing agencies have treated, in the past, people who have vandalised exhibitions, disrupted discussions, set controversial books on fire, attacked writers and assaulted others. Their usual alibi were the absence of firearms involved in the violence, intense provocation and patriotism. While not much is known about the handful of people who beat up Bhushan in his chamber within the premises of the Supreme Court, they were quick to make use of mass media to claim that they had ‘taught a lesson’ to Bhushan for speaking in favour of a plebiscite in Kashmir. Describing such views as unpatriotic, they felt it was their patriotic duty to humiliate the activist.

The hooligans, not unexpectedly, sought to distance themselves from the Shri Ram Sene and Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena to which they purportedly belonged and claimed that the decision to assault Bhushan was spontaneous and their own. But the manner in which the attack was carried out and the way in which pamphlets attacking him were distributed indicated that their action was not only pre-meditated but also enjoyed the support of at least a section of their respective organisations. That the two organisations have not deemed it necessary to condemn the attack is yet another pointer to their complicity. There may not be too many takers for Bhushan’s call for socially boycotting them but the full vigour of the law must bear down heavily on the culprits and the organisations as that is the only way to reverse the growing and disturbing trend.

Some might find it tempting to suggest that the activist is himself guilty of promoting intolerance and demonising people, who hold diametrically different views in the fight against corruption, as unpatriotic. India, however, has survived as an open, inclusive and a remarkably tolerant nation and must learn to cope with the explosion of mass media and the bewildering variety of conflicting viewpoints.

Thought for the Day

Life is simple, it’s just not easy. — Anonymous

ARTICLE

Myanmar is becoming Burma
A good opportunity for India
by B.G. Verghese

Myanmar seems to be returning to Burma. The good news has trickled in after talks between Aung San SuuKyi and the new civilian President, Thein Sein established a framework for national reconciliation and graduated democratic reform. A political amnesty is on the anvil and moves are afoot to liberalise trade and investment regimes. The new government has invited Burmese refugees who fled the country after the military takeover to return and assist the process of national reconstruction.

Perhaps even more significantly, work on the $ 3.6 bn 3600 MW Myitsone dam on the upper Irrawaddy, under construction with Chinese assistance, has been suspended as being “against the will of the (Kachin) people)”. The decision was announced in Parliament and suggests that the Burmese leadership is not going to kowtow to its giant neighbour which has established a major presence in the country during the past 30 years of isolation and sanctions. This does not bring Chinese collaboration to an end by any means as numerous other large hydroelectric, hydrocarbon, port and other infrastructure projects are moving forward.

It does, however, suggest that the new regime is mindful of ethnic minority and ecological sensitivities. After years of ceasefire based on a policy of live and let live, the regime sought to integrate ethnic nationality armies into the Myanmarese armed forces on the eve of the last elections by declaring them national border guards under the command of theTatmadaw. Most refused, and four insurgencies have resumed in consequence. Aung San Suu Kyi has appealed for restraint, a further ceasefire and peace talks, to which the regime has not been entirely unresponsive.

This too marks a potentially significant development as its resolution will determine whether Burma is to be a truly federal state, with ethnic nationalities enjoying considerable autonomy, or remain a largely centralised polity at war with itself. Suu Kyi’s father General Aung San, the Father of the Nation and first Prime Minister, had negotiated the Panglong agreement with the minorities in 1948. The one issue on which it broke was on the interpretation of whether the option to review federal ties after a decade implied a choice of independence or only a re-jigging of the federal arrangement. It was on the identical issue in regard to the nine-point Hydari agreement that the Naga leader, Phizo, broke with the Indian state.

The Thein Sein government is seeking foreign investment and collaboration in every field. It is a country with enormous land and natural resources (minerals, bio-diversity, hydropower and hydrocarbons) but currently lacking in human capital — administrative, entrepreneurial, institutional, scientific — after 30 years of military rule. It is because of this that it has farmed out major development projects, including plantations, to China, its ASEAN neighbours, Japan, India and others. Only a small fraction of its 39,000 MW hydro-potential has been harnessed though almost 14,000 MW worth of projects have been signed up (especially with China on the Salween). With little domestic demand as yet, most of this power will be exported to China, Thailand and the ASEAN grid, and to adjacent Nagaland if the 1200 MW Tamanthi project, part of the Chindwin cascade, comes to fruition with Indian assistance.

India’s major project so far has been the Kalewa/Kalemayo-Tamu (Moreh) highway (along which the projected Indo-Burma-ASEAN trade has been stymied for lack of trade facilitation measures on the Indian side). An even larger project under implementation is the multi-modal Southern Mizoram-Kaladan River-Sitwe Port corridor which will provide India’s Northeast an ocean outlet. The Kaladan Corridor may, alas, go the way of the Kalewa-Tamu Road unless concurrent steps are taken here and now by both governments and all concerned actors — transporters, entrepreneurs, bankers, freight forwarders, hoteliers and others — to concert action and get their act together.

Around 1998, Myanmar had offered extensive wastelands to India to grow rice, pulses and palm oil on renewable 30-year leases. Thailand and Malaysia signed up. India was unresponsive. Whether such leases will again be on offer and will be acceptable to the ethnic minorities is uncertain. However, it is something that could be explored on the basis of cooperative partnerships with local ethnic groups, the Burma government and the Indian state or private entrepreneurs as a means of coupling ethnic settlements in Burma with income and employment generation and the development of much-needed infrastructure.

Hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation, onshore and offshore, is another area that holds out considerable promise.

Burma has had a long and close association with India and has applied for SAARC membership, which Delhi supports. The country is also a member of ASEAN of which it hopes to become rotational Chair in 2014. It is in transition and holds a geostrategic position of high importance as a bridge between SAARC, ASEAN and China.

Rather than be a passive spectator or late actor, India should move energetically to engage the new Thein Sein administration to assist and encourage its transition to full democracy, ethnic reconciliation and economic and social reconstruction at all levels, governmental and non-official. Aung San Suu Kyi studied in Delhi and is greatly revered here and has high regard for this country. India’s relations with the military regime have also been maintained at an even keel and the military leadership too trusts India as a non-intrusive neighbour and long-term friend.

Why does the government and credible civil society institutions not invite delegations of Burmese parliamentarians, trade representatives, ethnic nationality groups and security analysts to visit India and talk to their counterparts and potential collaborators here? Scholarships and seats in training institutions should be readily on offer as this is perhaps Burma’s greatest need. Charter flights should be organised both ways to promote tourism and understanding. And high-level Indian political and trade and investment delegations should visit Burma as early as possible.

The Indo-Afghan strategic partnership agreement signed on the occasion of President Karzai’s visit to Delhi need not be a model but could point a direction. Afghanistan is in flux. America’s Af-Pak policy has failed and it is now locked in a huge muddle and spat with a defiant but bewildered Pakistan that knows it needs to redefine itself. This again presents India with an opening and an opportunity to further its engagement with Islamabad as much as with Kabul and jointly with both. Pakistan’s concerns about winning strategic depth in Afghanistan against India are unreal in concept and substance. India is no threat to Pakistan, which is its own worst enemy.

MIDDLE

Of men and husbands
by Mahesh Grover

Marriages are made in heaven, solemnised and endured on earth. Indian marriages imply an “enduring bond” spanning seven lives, just short of two lives that a cat has and the thought of spending this period with one partner may not sound palatable to some of those entwined today but come the festival of “Karva Chauth”, the entire womanhood of the country is engulfed in a display of faith, piety, and reverence.

It is likely to tickle a male chauvinist who may gloat over the sight of a woman undertaking an arduous fast for him but a glimpse into a woman’s perception of man ‘as a man’ and ‘as a husband’ may puncture quite a few inflated egos. Sample these:

“Women were brought up to believe that men were the answer. They were not. They were not even one of the questions.” — Jullan Barnes

“Women love scallywags, but some marry them and then try to make them wear a blazer.” — David Bailey

“Take my word for it, the silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it takes a very clever woman to manage a fool.” — Rudyard Kipling

“There is, of course, no reason for the existence of the male sex except that sometimes one needs help with moving the piano.” — Rebecca West

“You may marry the man of your dreams, ladies, but 14 yeas later you are married to a couch that burps.” —Roseanne Barr

“I never married because there was no need. I have three pets at home which answer the same purpose as a husband. I have a dog which growls every morning, a parrot which swears all the afternoon, and a cat that comes home late at night.” — Marie Corelli

“The men that women marry/And why they marry them, will always be/A marvel and a mystery to the world.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“A husband is what is left of a lover, after the nerve has been extracted.” —Helen Rowland

“Chumps always make the best husbands. When you marry, Sally, grab a chump. Tap his forehead first, and if it rings solid, do not hesitate. All the unhappy marriages come from the husbands having brains.”— P.G.Wodehouse

“I think men talk to women so they can sleep with them and women sleep with men so they can talk to them.” — Jay Mclnerney

“If you cannot have your dear husband for a comfort and a delight, for a breadwinner and a cross patch, for a sofa, chair or a hot-water bottle, one can use him as a Cross to be Borne.” — Steve Smith

Never mind; forget what women think of men and their husbands, the fact is that Karva Chauth is a reminder to men that your wives still love you enough so as to want to pray for your well-being at the cost of themselves embracing discomfort.

So just go on and match her spirit.

OPED — NEIGHBOURS

Pak milItary is the real beneficiary of US aid
After a decade of engagement between the US and Pakistan, what emerges from both countries’ perspective is that post-9/11 US aid has been focused mainly on carrying out counterterrorism operations, not helping the Pakistani people or the economy
S. Akbar Zaidi

The Pakistani military has skilfully exploited the pathology of too big and too important to fail.

IT is not much of an exaggeration to state that Pakistan has always been an aid-dependent country. Estimates suggest that the gross disbursement of overseas development assistance to Pakistan from 1960 to 2002 (in 2001 prices) was $73.1bn, including bilateral and multilateral sources.

Almost 30 per cent of this official development assistance came in the form of bilateral aid from the US, the largest single bilateral donor by far. Assistance of this magnitude was made possible by the fact that Pakistan's leadership, especially its military leadership, clearly aligned itself with the US during the Cold War.

US aid to Pakistan was vital during the 1960s. It helped play a significant part in numerous development projects, food support and humanitarian assistance through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other mechanisms. By 1964, overall aid and assistance to Pakistan was around 5 per cent of its GDP and was critical in spurring Pakistani industrialisation and development. Not only was aid vital in the 1960s, it was also focused on civilian economic assistance.

Pakistan Army Chief Gen Ashfaque Kayani

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 resulted in increased US development and military assistance as Pakistan became a frontline state in the war against Soviet occupation. Large and undisclosed amounts of money and arms were channelled to the Mujahideen fighting the Red Army in Afghanistan through Pakistan's military and its clandestine agencies, particularly the ISI. While this 'aid' was not meant directly for Pakistan's military, there is ample evidence that significant funds meant for the Afghan Mujahideen were pocketed by Pakistani officers.

US assistance during 1971-2001 did not put Pakistan on a path to self-sustaining growth, nor did it bring about any real value in terms of America's own Cold War objectives. The expulsion of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan with strategic help from Pakistan was a major gain for Washington, but the Afghan campaign also ended up strengthening the praetorian state in Pakistan while doing little to aid its people. After September 2001, the nature of the US aid to Pakistan relationship changed primarily to purchasing Pakistan's cooperation in counterterrorism. In 2002-10 (and not including commitments such as the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009), the US gave Pakistan almost $19bn, or more than $2bn on an average each year, with twice as much allocated in 2010 ($3.6bn) than in 2007. During 2002-08, only 10 per cent of this money was meant for Pakistani development, and as much as 75 per cent of the money was explicitly for military purposes. In more recent years, the share of economy-related aid has risen, but it is still less than half. It is important to state that the primary purpose of aid to Pakistan has been counterterrorism, not economic support.

Since 2008, there has been a rethinking in the nature of US assistance to Pakistan. The first major step was the promulgation of the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Bill, which commits $7.5bn in non-military aid to Pakistan over five years. However, it is still not clear when and how the legislation will actually start delivering aid to Pakistan. The Christian Science Monitor reported that only $285m of this money had been spent by May 2011.

After a decade of engagement and assistance between the US and Pakistan, what emerges from both countries' perspective is that post-9/11 US aid has been focused mainly on carrying out counterterrorism operations, not helping the Pakistani people or the economy, or building democracy. This assistance has not achieved the counterterrorism objectives of the US or Pakistan, even acknowledging that the objectives have been inadequately defined. It has had the effect, however, of strengthening the praetorian state further - thus reinforcing the very weaknesses of Pakistan's democracy that the Americans decry.

The question asked in Islamabad, as well as in Washington, as to what benefits US aid brings to Pakistan, is being answered as follows. In Washington, the question being asked post-Bin Laden is: what is or has the US received in return for the $20bn aid given to Pakistan over the last decade? And the answer seems to be 'not very much'. In Islamabad, the question being asked by politicians and civil society members is similar: what has US aid delivered for the people of Pakistan? The answer again is 'not very much, except that the military has benefited the most'.

Both Pakistan and the US have reason to be disappointed with the results of American aid. Though the US hoped that this assistance would encourage Pakistan's army to help in the war on terrorism in the border regions of Pakistan, there has been no real evidence that the Pakistani army has been on the same page as the US administration in this regard, or that the government and military feel as strongly about Al-Qaida and the Afghan Taliban as does the US administration.

The Pakistani military has been the main beneficiary of aid from the US, exploiting the pathology of too big and too important to fail. Since military aid has been two or three times as large as economic aid, the US government has strengthened the hand of the military in Pakistan's political economy, sidestepping the elected civilian government because there has been more trust, unfounded, no doubt, in the ability of the Pakistani military. There is an urgent need to shift the relationship away from a myopic focus on the military towards a more productive use of aid. Such a shift might just strengthen democracy in Pakistan as well.

— The writer is a political economist
By arrangement with Dawn, Islamabad.

Sindh’s elite working against masses
Meer M. Parihar

Education plays a pivotal role in creating awareness. Is Sindh's ruling elite committed to educating the masses? A report says that though there are over 40,000 primary schools in the province, only 10,000 are operative. Teachers are posted to almost all the schools but classes seldom take place. The status of girls' education is poor, even more so in the rural areas: more than 90 per cent of female teachers are from the towns, and most of them visit rural schools occasionally, merely to update the attendance registers. The situation in secondary schools and higher-education institutions is equally shocking.

The poor state of the education sector should be considered against the backdrop of the movement in the late 1960s concerning Sindh's provincial status, led by the educated middle class. The awakening of the province's middle class was perceived as posing a threat to the status quo. Reactionary forces colluded with the province's feudal class to crush the rise of leadership from the middle class. Since then active workers of student organisations and middle-class political groups have been targeted and there are reports of torture, disappearances and extra-judicial killings.

Sindh's ruling elite has not just kept the people deprived of education, they have also failed to take concrete measures towards human-resource development that could help people find work in sectors other than agriculture that is already saturated and can no longer withstand the pressure of unchecked population growth. Many consider government jobs as a source of livelihood but although thousands of people are appointed in these posts every year, most appointments are made without taking merit into consideration.

Indeed, many argue that most of these posts are not actually required but are created to afford opportunities to the ruling elites to strengthen and expand their vote banks.

This is the only province where direct recruitment to lucrative posts, bypassing rules introduced in the early 1970s, has not stopped. From time to time, the Sindh Public Service Commission (SPSC) is assigned this task but is reported to manipulate examination results to declare candidates that have failed as having passed. (An inquiry into such fraud is pending with the Sindh anti-corruption establishment.)

The process of erosion of the civil bureaucracy's authority which started in the 1970s has reached such a pass that in the Sarfraz Shah murder case, the acting chief secretary admitted the administration's failure before the Supreme Court. The administration of districts - the basic unit of governance in the province - is being handled by the ruling elites through a handpicked bureaucracy. Nothing moves without a nod from the local feudal lord. The helplessness of local government functionaries was witnessed in the aftermath of last year's floods. There were even allegations that powerful landlords diverted the waters to save their own holdings, at the cost of the safety of millions of other people. Meanwhile, their role in the denial of water to small and tail-ender farmers is an old story.

Sindh's rural economy is controlled by these elite classes. The majority of the farmers pledge their crops to obtain fertiliser, seeds, pesticides, etc, at exorbitant prices: the interest rates range between 5 and 15 per cent a month. The real beneficiaries of the boom in agriculture are not the tillers but the middlemen and their backers.

A province that has fertile soil and is rich in fuel and mineral deposits has a rural poverty graph that continues to rise. It has become a safe haven for the sale of spurious medicines and pesticides, and adulterated farm inputs and food items. The use of narcotics is growing, and the people are stalked by disease and despair.

A World Bank report states that "The deepest and most pervasive poverty in the country is in rural areas, and it is worse in the areas that have been considered 'feudal' such as Sindh". In this province the landholdings of the feudal families have multiplied instead of having decreased. The conditions that prevail in lower Sindh's rural areas are such that, as has been said before, it seems the clock stopped ticking here centuries ago.

Given this situation, is it possible that change will come? The educated middle class has either joined the elite in robbing the people or become disillusioned. The urban middle class, which historically spurs on the struggle for change, has mainly chosen to share power with the feudal elite. The masses, meanwhile, are caught in a vicious cycle of poverty. This has been so methodically engineered that rural society has reverted to tribalism, where the killing of women under the pretext of karo kari is justified as a tribal custom.

In order to perpetuate its own authority, the ruling elite has systematically undermined institutions, propped up status quo-friendly individuals and selected groups, institutionalised corruption and tacitly engaged the communities in ethnic tribal warfare.

According to social activist Tasneem Siddiqui, the fundamental elements for change are "effective social organisation, passion for change and the perseverance of ordinary people". All these are lacking in Sindh. Can one still hope for change?

— The writer is a social activist.
By arrangement with Dawn