O P I N I O N S

EDITORIALS

Maya wave
BSP’s rainbow coalition wins the day
IT is nothing short of a revolution that has happened in Uttar Pradesh. The victory of the Bahujan Samaj Party, which has won a clear majority on its own, is cataclysmic in many respects. The party under the leadership of Ms Mayawati has upset all electoral calculations and showed how erroneous psephologists could be.

Uncalled-for advice
Kalam could have kept it to himself
President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam has a long track record of tendering sage advice to his listeners. But he should have avoided advocating a two-party system in the country, that too while speaking at an official function to mark the 150th anniversary of 1857 in the Central Hall of Parliament.

Miscarriage of justice 
Bombay HC fiat on Pareira welcome
THE Bombay High Court’s directive to the Mumbai Police Commissioner to examine lapses in the investigation and prosecution of the Alistair Pareira hit-and-run case is welcome. Its order that no concession can be made to the State for such insensitivity in a case where seven persons were killed because of Pareira’s callous driving last November suggests that there was miscarriage of justice which needs to be rectified.

• Thought for the day

ARTICLE

Mullahs on the march
Civil society in Pakistan under threat
by Sushant Sareen
A COUPLE of weeks ago, all across Pakistan the so-called “civil society” finally came out on the streets to protest against the creeping talibanisation of the country. The immediate trigger for the protests was, of course, the stand-off at Lal Masjid, where the students and administration of two madrasas in the heart of Islamabad have defied the writ of the state and started to enforce their brand of Islam on the citizens of the city.

 

MIDDLE

Mother’s Day
by Anurag
Mother’s Day brings to mind the beautiful legend of a Roman matron Cornelia. A widow of modest means but with social position, she moved in the company of the rich and famous. Among these was a woman whom one might describe today as “catty”. Flaunting an almost vulgar array of her own jewellery she asked, “And where, Cornelia, are your jewels!”

 

OPED

Modi’s Gujarat is a blot on India, but Cong won’t move against him
by Kuldip Nayar
THE BJP should feel humiliated, if not ashamed, of what has overtaken the government in Gujarat. Hardly does a day pass when a skeleton does not come out of the state chief minister Narendra Modi’s cupboard or dug up from one place or the other. The latest is that the Gujarat government has admitted before the Supreme Court bench about a fake encounter.

‘The police are worse than the Taliban’
by Chris Sands
Kabul – Abad Khan has spent much of his life on Afghanistan’s roads, driving a truck through some of the most beautiful and hostile terrain in the world.The work is hard but it gives the 30-year-old and his colleagues a view of this country rarely seen or heard about, and it is a view they are increasingly finding they do not like.

Inside Pakistan
Threat of emergency
by Syed Nooruzzaman
What began as a series of rallies in protest against the suspension of Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry has grown into a major movement to expose the misdeeds of the government in Islamabad. President General Pervez Musharraf, it seems, has been alerted by his intelligence agencies to put a stop to it or else his survival in office may be seriously threatened. Hence the talk of imposing an emergency by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.

EDITORIALS

Maya wave
BSP’s rainbow coalition wins the day

IT is nothing short of a revolution that has happened in Uttar Pradesh. The victory of the Bahujan Samaj Party, which has won a clear majority on its own, is cataclysmic in many respects. The party under the leadership of Ms Mayawati has upset all electoral calculations and showed how erroneous psephologists could be. In the first election she fought after the death of BSP founder Kanshi Ram, she has proved that his choice of successor was well thought of. Unlike the three times she became Chief Minister when she was dependent on the support of other parties, there will be no such limitations this time. What’s more, she will be in a commanding position to choose allies and Independents should she decide to broadbase the support for her government. The victory owes itself to the grand coalition of Dalits, Muslims and Brahmins she engineered to perfection. Her government will stay as long as these groups stay glued to one another.

The Samajwadi Party can take comfort in the fact that it emerged as the second largest party. The support Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav still enjoys among Yadavs and Muslims in some areas of the state helped the party attain the No. 2 position, which is, otherwise, of little consolation. The verdict was decidedly against him and his party, which had nothing to show off for governance except the tall claims mouthed by an ageing actor in a multi-crore-advertisement campaign. Elections, unfortunately for the SP, are not won through advertisement campaigns. It goes to the credit of the Election Commission that it ensured that power could not be misused to save the SP from defeat. Small wonder that Mr Yadav has blamed the Election Commission and found solace in the drubbing the BJP and the Congress received.

Among all the parties, it is the BJP which has suffered the most. Forget its ambition to come to power or at least emerge as the single largest party, its performance is the worst since the Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992. Its strategy of polarising the voters on communal lines as manifested in the controversial VCD it brought out and the emphasis it laid on Hindutva clearly backfired. It did not realise that such a divisive agenda did not have many takers among the voters who were more concerned with basic issues of governance. As for the Congress, Mr Rahul Gandhi’s first major campaign has clearly come a cropper despite the hype given to it by sycophantic Congressmen.

Uncalled-for advice
Kalam could have kept it to himself

President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam has a long track record of tendering sage advice to his listeners. But he should have avoided advocating a two-party system in the country, that too while speaking at an official function to mark the 150th anniversary of 1857 in the Central Hall of Parliament. The controversial nature of his comments apart, the speech is bound to raise unsavoury questions about his locus standi in the matter. The Head of State is supposed to be a titular head who should not be making such utterances, which are better left to the people and their elected representatives. The President has to be above all political debates.

Even otherwise, there are many holes in the “vision” that he has unfolded. In a country of the size and diversity of India, a two-party system cannot be enforced from Delhi. It has to grow and take roots in the soil on its own. After all, it is the people who have to decide whether they want to patronise two major parties or a number of smaller ones. The two-party system is desirable but can’t be made to order. The President’s suggestion can be unfair to the small parties, of which the country has a large number. No wonder, the Left parties and several others are upset over the President’s avoidable remarks.

And what about the States? Many of them are governed by none-too-large regional outfits. In a country with so much of diversity prevailing in the social and political fabric, it is difficult to prescribe a two-party system for it. No doubt the plethora of parties has led to a situation where the government is held to ransom by minuscule coalition partners but the remedy does not lie in going for a two-party system. Some day, the voters may themselves come to realise that the small parties are not good for the country and the States. Then they may decide to vote vehemently for two or three major parties or combinations. In any case, small parties have their uses as well. They take up the wishes and aspirations of the smaller groups. In fact, such parties came into prominence mainly because the larger ones like the Congress had became distant from the grassroots. Perhaps the tide will turn again to the President’s wishes. 

Miscarriage of justice 
Bombay HC fiat on Pareira welcome

THE Bombay High Court’s directive to the Mumbai Police Commissioner to examine lapses in the investigation and prosecution of the Alistair Pareira hit-and-run case is welcome. Its order that no concession can be made to the State for such insensitivity in a case where seven persons were killed because of Pareira’s callous driving last November suggests that there was miscarriage of justice which needs to be rectified. Pareira is the son of a powerful Bandra businessman and, obviously, the police botched up the investigation to bail him out. There is a striking parallel between this case and the Delhi Police’s questionable role in the Jessica Lall and Priyadarshini Mattoo murder cases. Like the Delhi High Court ruling in the two cases, the Mumbai High Court’s timely intervention proves how media pressure and strong public opinion can help restore people’s confidence in the system.

Interestingly, Sessions Judge Ajit Mishra, who is accused of giving a lighter punishment to Pareira, has resigned. His exit with over two years of service left raises disturbing questions on the fairness of the trial and suggests that there was miscarriage of justice. The judge may have acquitted Pareira of the principal charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder for want of enough evidence. But the case will have to be re-investigated to ascertain how and why Pareira was given a milder punishment.

With the High Court having raised many serious questions, the prosecution needs to do a lot of explaining. For instance, the judges asked why the prosecution had not examined any of Pareira’s friends, who had witnessed the incident? Why were only 18 of the 40 witnesses examined? More important, the judges asked Pareira how he managed to deposit Rs 5 lakh for his bail within 30 minutes of the sessions court judgement. In the interest of the criminal justice system, the Mumbai police would do well to follow the High Court’s directive in letter and spirit and probe the case afresh so that Pareira gets the appropriate punishment for his crime.

Thought for the day

Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you. 
— Elbert Hubbard 

ARTICLE

Mullahs on the march
Civil society in Pakistan under threat
by Sushant Sareen

A COUPLE of weeks ago, all across Pakistan the so-called “civil society” finally came out on the streets to protest against the creeping talibanisation of the country. The immediate trigger for the protests was, of course, the stand-off at Lal Masjid, where the students and administration of two madrasas in the heart of Islamabad have defied the writ of the state and started to enforce their brand of Islam on the citizens of the city.

Lathi-wielding students from these madrasas are going about threatening shopkeepers selling music and movie CDs, asking barber shops to close down, issuing edicts to women on what to wear and how to behave in public and warning them of consequences if they don’t follow their orders.

Emboldened by the weak and compromising attitude of the state and encouraged by the domino effect that their demands are having around the country, the mullahs of Lal Masjid have announced that they will continue along this path until Shariat law based on Quran and Sunnah are imposed on the whole country.

Until the Lal Masjid episode, the Pakistani “civil society”, which is also the elite of the country, always saw talibanisation as someone else’s problem. As far as they were concerned they could pretty much do what they felt like without anyone ever bothering them. The obnoxious Hudood laws or the plethora of other laws and regulations designed to usher in “Islamisation” really didn’t affect them. But now the mullahs are getting too close for comfort.

As a result, the “civil society” (mostly NGO sector, which after the Fauji Foundation is perhaps the second largest industry in Pakistan) is feeling compelled to try and put up at least a modicum of resistance before the mullahs start dictating their lives. But in a face-off against the 3M alliance (Mullahs-Military-Muslim League) that dominates Pakistan, the Pakistani “civil society” doesn’t stand much of a chance.

The bottom line is that the “civil society” in Pakistan just doesn’t have what it takes to confront and defeat the Islamists. True, Pakistani “civil society” has some exceptionally brave and committed people with the courage of conviction to stand up against the onslaught of the mullahs. But their numbers are infinitesimal and their influence marginal.

Compared to the “civil society”, the Islamists are better organised, are more committed to their beliefs, and have little to lose. The Islamists have the arms, ammunition and training to force their point of view on the people and if required their storm-troopers are even willing to take on the State. On the other hand, the civil society depends on the state’s coercive apparatus – army, police and paramilitary forces – for its protection. But what if the state is either too weak or too compromised and sympathetic to, if not aligned with, the cause of the Islamists?

For all its talk of “enlightened moderation”, the fact is that the Pakistani establishment has been pandering to and surrendering to the demands of the Islamists. A prime example is the manner in which the Muslim League chief Shujaat Hussain has handled the Lal Masjid crisis. Instead of unequivocally condemning the actions of the extremists holed out in the mosque, Shujaat has accorded enthusiastic approval to their demand for imposing Shariat by saying that since we are all Muslims its our constitutional duty to ensure that the laws of the country are based on the Shariat.

He has not only assured them that the state will take no action against their blatant and brazen violation of the law, but also accepted the demand that illegal mosques which were razed by the civic authorities will be rebuilt by the State.

Add to this abject surrender reports that the ISI has assisted jihadis of the Jaish-e-Mohammad in joining the agitating mullahs of Lal Masjid, and the confession of the religious affairs minister Ejaz-ul-Haq that he helped in getting of charges of terrorism dropped against the Lal Masjid clerics, and the complicity of the state agencies in promoting radicalism becomes clear.

If anything, this is exactly the pattern that the state has followed when it comes to dealing with the Islamists. The deal with the Taliban in Waziristan, the blind eye to activities of terrorist outfits like Jamaatud Dawa, the impunity with which the jihadi press churns out its poisonous propaganda, the acceptance of the activities of the Taliban in the Pashtun belt, all stand as a testament to the appeasement policy being followed towards the Islamists by the Pakistani establishment.

The Pakistani civil society suffers not just from the lack of support from the state; it is also losing the battle of ideas to the Islamists. After all what does the civil society offer to the masses in Pakistan except old and tired slogans. The civil society swears by democracy which has been completely distorted and discredited by not just the “real democrats” aligned to General Musharraf but also by the “sham democrats” belonging to the opposition. The civil society talks of rule of law which everyone in Pakistan knows has never existed. In any case when weighed against the “rule of God” offered by the Islamists, the concept of “rule of law” doesn’t stand much of a chance.

The civil society promises an independent judiciary. But the judiciary in Pakistan is totally compromised and dysfunctional and unable to provide even a modicum of justice. On the other hand the Islamists are running their own private courts which give quick and easy, even if rough and ready, justice to the people. The civil society talks of liberal values. But this is seen as promoting vulgarity by the masses. The civil society is unwilling to take an unambiguous stand in favour of keeping religion out of politics and promises a mish-mash of Islam and democracy. The Islamist, on the other hand, promises pristine Islamic system.

Interestingly, it is not only the civil society that is feeling the pressure from the Islamists; the growing power of the radical Islamists has even caught the mainstream religious parties’ alliance – the MMA – in a bind. The political maulanas confront a dilemma quite similar to what the Akalis faced vis-à-vis Bhindranwale. They realise that if the radicals are not stopped, their politics will be over. But they are finding it difficult to politically, ideologically or theologically counter the Islamists, especially since they too demand the imposition of Shariat law in Pakistan.

In a rather feeble attempt to stop the march of the Islamists, all that the political mullahs have been able to do is to announce that while they support the demand for imposition of Shariat, they oppose the means adopted by the radicals to achieve this demand!

Caught in the tussle for power between the civil society on one side and the jihadis on the other is the vast majority of ordinary Pakistanis. But the mass of people in Pakistan has little stake in the current system and any change, even a revolutionary change, holds far greater promise than the promises being made by the same clique of elite who have ruined the promise of Pakistan in the last six decades. In any case, it is pointless to expect the people of Pakistan to take any position on the current tussle for power because their history has taught them to lie low and let the storm pass over. Only this time, the storm will wreck havoc not just in Pakistan but around the world, which still has its eyes tightly shut to the silent revolution sweeping through Pakistan.

MIDDLE

Mother’s Day
by Anurag

Mother’s Day brings to mind the beautiful legend of a Roman matron Cornelia. A widow of modest means but with social position, she moved in the company of the rich and famous. Among these was a woman whom one might describe today as “catty”. Flaunting an almost vulgar array of her own jewellery she asked, “And where, Cornelia, are your jewels!”

Cornelia called two of her young sons into the room and affectionately laying her hands on their broad shoulders replied, “These are my jewels.”

In a New Orleans cemetery, a monument represents a ship in the midst of a stormy sea; a mother and a child clinging together on the vessel. On the base is an inscription saying they were drowned on July 4, 1900. They were sole survivors of a large estate, and the lawyers racked their brains as to under whose name the estate be administered, the mother or the daughter. The court decreed in favour of the child, reckoning she went down last because the mother would hold her in a place of safety to the end!

Fast forward to the 21st century where internet ruling our mindspace and time tends to redefine the values and wisdom cherished since times immemorial. Visit salary.com and, lo and behold, “What is your mom worth?” welcomes you. Defining a mother’s 10 job titles as housekeeper, day care centre teacher, cook, computer operator, laundry machine operator, janitor, facilities manager, van driver, CEO and psychologist, the portal equates “mom job” to an annual salary of $138095 though working moms could earn an additional $85939 !

Now moms and their families can use the mom salary wizard to create their own mom paycheque which can be printed and e-mailed to family and friends for Mother’s Day, proudly proclaims the portal which is sponsoring a national contest to reward America’s moms for their hard work and parenting activities. The contestants would also receive Chief Mom Officer business cards.

Even as some would read a lot of meaning in this approach, others may find it devilishly demeaning. Amen.

It was 150 years ago in the US that Anna Jarvis organised Mother’s Work Day to raise awareness of poor health conditions in her community. Her daughter’s dogged determination eventually succeeded in getting Mother’s Day declared as a national holiday observed on second Sunday of May. In due course she was pained by the day’s sentiment being sacrificed at the altar of greed and profit. In 1923, she went so far as to file a lawsuit to stop observance of this festival but to no avail.

Even as we celebrate Mother’s Day on May 13, I would like to remind the fathers that the most important thing that they can do for their children is to love their mother.

OPED

Modi’s Gujarat is a blot on India, but Cong won’t move against him
by Kuldip Nayar 

THE BJP should feel humiliated, if not ashamed, of what has overtaken the government in Gujarat. Hardly does a day pass when a skeleton does not come out of the state chief minister Narendra Modi’s cupboard or dug up from one place or the other. The latest is that the Gujarat government has admitted before the Supreme Court bench about a fake encounter.

One of its officials has reconstructed the incident after the court’s order and found it was murder. The official showed courage in bringing the whole thing to light despite government pressure. One Muslim lady accompanying her husband – both were killed in November 2005 – was hacked to pieces and the body burnt. And the police doing so, hailed the act as desh bhakt.

This case of a fake encounter is not the only one to show that the Gujarat administration has ceased to follow the norms of a democratic state. There is hardly any report which does not mention the deliberate killings of Muslims in the 2002 riots and their deplorable plight after having been ousted from their homes and lands.

Human rights activists say that a climate of alienation and fear has been deliberately fostered among the Muslim minority since the violence. The alienation has been corroborated by the findings of the Sachar Committee, a central government-appointed high level panel, mandated to look into the “social, economic and educational status of the Muslim community in the country.”

In its latest newsletter, the Amnesty International says: “Five years on, the Government of Gujarat remains unrepentant for its failings to protect the Muslim minority and to ensure that victims obtain justice, truth and reparations.”

The newsletter further adds: “The complete failure of the Government of Gujarat – itself accused of direct complicity in the violence which left over 2,000 people dead – is further evident in its persistent unrepentant attitude, as shown in their non-recognition of those still internally displaced by violence and by its failure to provide basic amenities to ‘relief colonies’.”

The secular credentials of the Congress cannot be doubted, but one suspects its political motives. The party seldom takes a bold stand against communalism even though the speeches of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi are replete with phrases which denounce it. There is hesitation, if not fear, to take on the BJP.

The equivocal attitude by the Congress has practically silenced the unequivocal ones. The general impression is that the Congress may collect information and even prepare a dossier but will not take any action. It is simply afraid to join issue with the BJP as is the case in Gujarat where the party government is ruling.

In fact, the centre has given the Gujarat government many certificates for being “the best state” in the country. Deputy Chairman Planning Commission Montak Singh Ahluwalia has hailed it as “No 1 state.” True, the yardstick of the Manmohan Singh government is economic development. Surely, there are other norms to measure a state’s progress. If people are killed or ousted from their homes in the name of religion, the state is nothing but a lawless territory where religious buccaneers roam as headhunters.

Take the fake encounter. The three police officers involved were arrested only when the finger of suspicion was directed at the government. In fact, this is a case of vicarious responsibility. When the government headed by Modi reportedly “directs” them to indulge in “the patriotic act” the chief minister and the cabinet are responsible for it. The BJP leaders still pretend to be ignorant of Modi’s administrative activism against Muslims. But that is natural because Modi’s acts fit into the anti-Muslim policy of the RSS-controlled party.

There was nothing wrong in the demand for a CBI inquiry although the set-up is only a central government department. Why doesn’t the Congress suggest President’s rule in Gujarat? What more should happen in the state to indicate that the constitutional machinery to protect the minorities has broken down? Many state governments have been dismissed in the past on lesser grounds.

It appears that the BJP is trying to duplicate the Modi policy in two other states it is ruling – Rajasthan and Mahdya Pradesh. The stories of atrocities against Christians in Rajasthan and Muslims in Madhya Pradesh only underline the belief that the party is determined to scare the minorities for its agenda of Hindutva.

There is a case for taking stern steps against the party which mixes politics with religion. Our secular polity has no place for it. The bill which the centre proposes to bring before parliament talks about banning religious parties. But what about those which operate under non-religious names, but are religious in appeal, like the BJP?

Eminent educationist Amrik Singh has brought out a book, Hindu and Muslim Divide in India, to discuss the same question. He comes to the conclusion that the RSS has revived its 1925 agenda of polarisation, when the organisation came into being. He argues that the BJP, which is a political arm of the RSS, has intensified its efforts to widen the gap between Hindus and Muslims because it finds the two communities coming nearer to each other despite the BJP agenda.

When Mahatma Gandhi addressed a prayer meeting soon after reaching Delhi from Sialkot in Pakistan, he said that “Hindus and Muslims are my two eyes.” How does Modi’s government or, for that matter, the BJP’s parochialism measure up to that observation? The Mahatma and Jawaharlal Nehru etched a secular ethos on the minds of the Indian people during the independence movement. Why is the Manmohan Singh government halting in its pursuit of those principles?

Gujarat is the state where the Mahatma was born and where his ashram is still frequented by thousands of people from far and wide. None from the Gujarati community on the whole, living in India or abroad, has ever raised his voice against the lawless and soulless state. Their conscience has not been pricked over the violence in 2002 because they believe that after the “burning of some sewaks” on a train at Godhra, everything that the Modi government does is justified.

Every Gujarati, man or woman, must introspect and hail either Nathuram Godse who killed the Mahatma or denounce the Modi government to uphold the honour of Gandhiji. The rest is a matter between the Gujaratis and their conscience.

‘The police are worse than the Taliban’
by Chris Sands

Kabul – Abad Khan has spent much of his life on Afghanistan’s roads, driving a truck through some of the most beautiful and hostile terrain in the world.

The work is hard but it gives the 30-year-old and his colleagues a view of this country rarely seen or heard about, and it is a view they are increasingly finding they do not like.

Deteriorating security across Afghanistan means the country’s roads are now rife with bandits, illegal checkpoints and corrupt officials.

“We pay all our bribes to criminals and they are criminals who wear police uniforms,” Mr Khan said. “In the daytime they have very smart police uniforms, then in the night they become Taliban and chop drivers’ noses and ears off. No real Taliban do this.”

Truck drivers are an important barometer of the security situation in Afghanistan, as their work means they experience life across the country.

When the Taliban first rose to power in the mid-1990s, it was in part a response to the rampant lawlessness on Afghanistan’s roads, which had been dominated by the illegal checkpoints of warlords.

Travelling anywhere was a gamble, and leading figures in the transport industry supported Mullah Mohammed Omar’s fundamentalists because they longed for security. According to today’s truck drivers, history is in danger of repeating itself.

“The difference between when the Taliban were in government and now is the same as the difference between land and sky,” 61-year-old Haji Mohammed Amin said. “Now we are sick of life and if we are sick of life, how can we enjoy it? What is the meaning of life for us? At that time it had meaning, now it is nothing.”

Violence has increased across the country this spring, and colleagues of Mr Khan and Mr Amin have been among the victims. This Monday, a trucker was injured in Kandahar by an improvised explosive device.

During March there were a series of deadly attacks on Afghans transporting goods for foreign troops. In one incident, the decapitated body of a trucker was found dumped in the southern province of Zabul. But, most notoriously of all, at least three drivers had their noses and ears cut off this month in the eastern province of Nuristan.

While officials say attacks such as these are the work of the Taliban, the truckers often refuse to believe the insurgents are responsible. Even when they do blame them, they still insist the police are a bigger threat. Truckers say bribes are usually between 50p and £30 and that policemen brutalise the drivers and vandalise their vehicles or simply syphon off their fuel.

Mr Khan and Mr Amin were sitting with some colleagues waiting to eat lunch by Jalalabad Road in Kabul, the scene of a number of suicide bombings. The men gathered there hated and feared the police. One, called Rahullah, described how he paid bribes to three different policemen on a single night. “It’s my dream that ultimately the government will be run by the Taliban, but we will still get financial support from the Americans,” the-father-of-five said.

Pakistan-based truckers began a strike last month over the increased taxes and roadside extortion here. Anwar Ali, a 23-year-old Pakistani, was one of those intending to take part in the strike. He carries fake documents to show he is working for private businessmen, when in fact he often transports goods for the US military.

He had seen trucks set on fire by insurgents and did not want to take any chances. But the militants were the least of his worries. “Forget about the Taliban, our biggest problems are with the police,” Mr Ali said.

As Asif Hemat, a 27-year-old trucker, added: “This is the worst time I have ever experienced in my life.”

By arrangement with The Independent

Inside Pakistan
Threat of emergency
by Syed Nooruzzaman

What began as a series of rallies in protest against the suspension of Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry has grown into a major movement to expose the misdeeds of the government in Islamabad. President General Pervez Musharraf, it seems, has been alerted by his intelligence agencies to put a stop to it or else his survival in office may be seriously threatened. Hence the talk of imposing an emergency by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.

But as the media sees it, if the government really goes ahead with this extreme step, it will only further complicate the situation. The News commented thus: “The government needs to understand that the political opposition is only doing what all oppositions would do, anywhere in the world: taking advantage of perceived weaknesses of the government. And the weakness is not the fact that so many people are out protesting on the streets but rather that such a situation has been created by mostly unpopular actions taken by the government.”

In the opinion of the paper, “the talk of the possibility of imposition of an emergency is to send a veiled warning to the protesters and supporters of the Chief Justice that their time may be up if things get out of hand”.

The Daily Times pointed out that “if the Prime Minister thinks that by declaring a state of emergency he can somehow stifle the people and ensure longevity for his beleaguered regime, he may have another thought coming.

“Indeed, he should not forget that when the Supreme Court allowed General Pervez Musharraf to rule without an election until 2002, it made its decision conditional to the retention of all fundamental and human rights enshrined in the Constitution. In an unspoken way, that conditionality still holds, and if the Prime Minister is even thinking of breaking it he should carefully weigh the consequences of taking on the supreme judiciary on this note too.”

The Times warned the government that “an emergency is bound to be accompanied by violence and will end in violence with unpredictable results”.

Going by the views of Business Recorder, “the possibility of imposing an emergency has also not been ruled out by the Chief Justice, as he told his audience in Lahore that Articles 3 and 4 of the Constitution cannot be suspended even during an emergency.” The courts are bound to ensure the rule of law under Article 4.

Anyway, “what would happen then if the President proclaims an emergency suspending the fundamental rights but the superior courts insist on upholding them, drawing full strength from the top judge’s interpretation.? That is a dilemma that may confront the government should it persist in its apparently incremental approach”, laments the Recorder.

Lahore’s growth pangs

Any mega-city has more problems than could be expected by the planners at the initial stage. But cities like Lahore, with a rich history, throw peculiar challenges to the authorities. The Nation of April 29 sought the opinion of many experts in its efforts to focus on the crisis caused by the uncontrolled expansion of the cultural capital of Pakistan.

Nayar Ali Dada says, “Urban planning is a very delicate and sensitive issue. If it’s not handled in terms of the past and the future, then a mess is created. So, the city becomes a hotchpotch mainly due to decision-making which comes in piecemeal and has no continuity. This is what has happened to Lahore.

“Cities can’t be turned into museums; cities have to grow and the development is driven by market forces.”

According to Dr Anis A. Siddiqi, “Lahore had a master plan but unfortunately it was never taken into consideration. It has never been referred to. The document lost its value amid the chaos that was created by the dismissal of various governments. Surprisingly, the master plan has never been referred to as the relevant document.”

Dr Mahmood Hussain says, “The biggest flaw in this master plan is that it has no room for the poor. Eighty per cent of the Pakistanis live in one-room houses. No one is thinking of them.”

In the opinion of Sajjida Vendal, “There is unchecked commercial activity going on in Lahore. This problem was documented in a study which showed that the government was the first one to violate the bylaws. Another recent such example is that of Defence... Now they have shifted to a commercial area, but that is an indication of how the government starts violating the laws.”

Lahore definitely needs greater attention of the authorities to take care of its growth requirements, as most of those who have expressed their opinion through the columns of The Nation want to stress.