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Goan circus Assets, not burdens |
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Towering Jumbo
Pakistan needs federalism
The fugitive
School education a failure in Haryana Oxford debates secularism – and Bilawal Inside Pakistan
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Goan circus IT was only seven months ago that Mr Digambar Kamat took over as the Chief Minister of Goa following the Congress’ victory in the Assembly elections. However, politics in this small state is so fluid that political stability has always remained a distant dream. The resignation of three ministers and the threat of the Nationalist Congress Party to withdraw support have landed the government in a crisis. In two quick decisions, the government first got the Assembly adjourned and then prorogued it on Thursday to prevent voting on the Goa Appropriation Bill 2008 in the House. Clearly, with over nine legislators of the ruling coalition in the 40-member House having decided to vote against the Bill, the government would have fallen. The crisis also underlines the Chief Minister’s inability to run the government in close cooperation with his allies, notably the NCP. Mr Kamat claimed the other day that his decision on the rollback of SEZs had the backing of all the allies. A bigger worry for the Congress is the role of business lobbies in the current crisis. Small states like Goa where a single member can make or mar the government are vulnerable to pressures of all kinds. Unfortunately, Goa has witnessed 16 governments in 17 years. Despite the Anti-Defection Act, defections have become common. Party labels and affiliations have no meaning when MLAs switch sides all too frequently. They have the least respect for the Constitution which they swear to uphold. Successive governors, including the incumbent, Mr S.C. Jamir, have abused their powers to bail out the ruling party. Worse, Speakers, too, followed suit, instead of functioning as impartial referees. Very recently, Speaker Pratapsinh Rane restored the voting rights of two Maharashtra Gomantak Party members and a Congress legislator. The decision followed an agreement between the Congress and the MGP under which the MGP MLAs would withdraw their petitions in the Supreme Court challenging the suspension of their voting rights. The present crisis should be resolved in the best traditions of democracy — by adhering strictly to the Constitution.
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Assets, not burdens WE all know the threat posed by the declining sex ratio, with boys far exceeding girls. But statistics never express the full horror of a systematic elimination of girl children in the womb or soon after the birth. One major reason is the age-old fixation for a male heir. It is made worse by a purely economic factor. In a male-dominated society, a girl child is considered a drain on the family finances. Child labour is officially banned but it is very much a harsh reality. A male child can add a few coins to the family till; a girl isn’t considered even that “useful”, although many of them are doing much more than what boys do for the household. A welcome new scheme of the Ministry of Women and Child Development seeks to remedy the situation by offering to give over Rs 1 lakh to families that guarantee their girls grow up to be 18. Perhaps this move will give them a stake in the survival of the girl child and curb the incidence of female foeticide. There is optimism that the pilot project to be started in 11 blocks of Punjab, Haryana, Bihar, Orissa and Jharkhand — five states which happen to have the most skewed sex ratio in the country — will be a success and can be expanded to the whole of India some day. That will be money well spent. The results have been very encouraging in countries like Brazil, Nicaragua, Columbia, Chile and Mexico. Every effort must be made to ensure that this money, to be given on various occasions like birth, registration of the girl child, after every immunisation, every year till completion of elementary school, enrolment and till completion of secondary and higher secondary education and for remaining unmarried till the age of 18 years, does not fall a hostage to red-tapism. How the equally well-meaning “shagun” scheme in Punjab was botched is still fresh in public memory.
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Towering Jumbo ANIL KUMBLE seemed both triumphant and bashful as he held up the cricket ball at the WACA in Perth, acknowledging the applause. The 600-wicket milestone was clearly approaching at a good clip for India’s greatest bowler. When it came, the leg-break taking Andrew Symond’s leading edge, bounding off wicket-keeper Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s gloves, and into the waiting hands of state-mate Rahul Dravid, there was joy all around. That it has come in a match where India is doing very well indeed would make the personal triumph all the sweeter. But then, this is familiar territory. The man is a match-winner, if nothing else. Kumble’s last 200 wickets have come in his last 40 Tests, and that is a tribute to the man’s well-known tenacity, his athleticism, and a skill that is still improperly understood. Anyone who has fancied his chances against Kumble, under mistaken assumptions about what leg-break bowling, or indeed any bowling, is all about, has had to bite the dust. As Anil himself put it, it is simply about creating doubt in the batsmen’s mind. And Anil is a master there — he harnesses whatever turn and bounce are available to him on the wicket, and plugs away at the batsmen, nagging at him till the mistake is made. In 41 Indian triumphs, including the one featuring that memorable 10-wicket haul against Pakistan at the Ferozeshah Kotla in New Delhi, Kumble has taken 279 wickets at a superb average of a little over 18 runs. He has reached the 600-wicket mark quicker than fellow leggie Shane Warne, taking two Tests less in which to do it. Only the Australian, and Sri Lankan off-spinner Muthiah Muralitharan are ahead of him, both in the 700 club. Considering the way he is going, Jumbo may well make it there as well. Whether he does or not, he is sure to win matches for India along the way.
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We cannot seek or attain health, wealth, learning, justice or kindness in general. Action is always specific, concrete, individualised, unique. — Benjamin Jowett |
Pakistan needs federalism
Prolonged
crisis in Pakistan has exposed flaws in its policy of countering terrorism. As its most trusted ally America supported this policy diplomatically and with lavish aid of funds and arms. One of the basic premises of this policy was that terrorism can be fought almost exclusively with arms. In the given situation, the liberal elements in Pakistan also did not find any alternative to army rule. Gradually, Pakistan started losing ground to terrorists. Far from containing them within the boundaries of Afghanistan, it could not stop them within its own territory. They exploited the discontent, particularly of Pushtoons, Balochis and the entire tribal belt of its northwestern borders and entrenched themselves with indigenous support and indigenous leadership. They asserted their presence in Islamabad where they operated from Lal Masjid till it was captured by the army. The fidayeen attacked as far as in Lahore where they killed 24 persons. On March 8 last, Musharraf opened a second front when he dismissed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Chaudhary Iftikhar Mohammad. It led to widespread protests by lawyers, human rights activists and other liberal members of society who were so far passively tolerating army rule, as a lesser evil than religious militancy. The reaction was most strongly felt in Punjab to which province Chaudhary belonged and which was the main base of the army and hence of Musharraf. The only place where pro-Chaudhary protests met some opposition was in Karachi by the Muhajir community to which Musharraf belonged. As the Pakistan army mainly comprised Punjabi and Pushtoon communities, both of which had been alienated from Musharraf for different reasons and as the army cannot remain immune from the sentiments of the community they belong to, role of the army and its chief suffered a drawback. Thus he had to bow to popular pressure and that of the Western allies and reinstate the Chief Justice. But the damage had been done. At that stage former Prime Minister and president of the Muslim League Nawaz Sharief thought it fit to fill in the vacuum and to symbolise the entire discontent, from liberal to extremist Muslims, under a broad-based alliance of All Parties Democratic Movement (APDM). Musharraf, for the time being, got rid of him with the connivance of Washington and persuaded Saudi Arabia to keep Nawaz Sharief in exile. By now Benazir Bhutto had become favourite of America and had also distanced herself from Nawaz Sharief-led APDM. The American policy makers who had by now realised the need for supplementing Musharraf’s rule with political support, brokered an understanding between her and Musharraf on the basis of power sharing when the latter would shed his uniform. But after landing in Karachi on October 18, she soon discovered that she could not fill the entire vacuum. Meanwhile Musharraf had created more difficulties for her as he dismissed all the judges of the Supreme Court and packed it with his loyalists. On November 3, he declared emergency. Under Saudi pressure, Nawaz Sharief’s return to Pakistan was also accepted. Fearing her isolation, she led demonstrations against the government and its actions including drastic restrictions on the media and large-scale arrests. She declared her willingness to join hands with Nawaz Sharief to campaign for restoration of democracy. She was detained for a while but released after the intervention of the Deputy Secretary, State Department of the USA. Musharraf has said that she had not honoured the agreement, according to which she had to return after election i.e. when he had manoeuvred to be re-elected as a civilian president. She could then be his Prime Minister. This arrangement would then have projected Benazir as a stooge of Musharraf and America, both object of hostility in Pakistan. But the way she functioned, she did emerge as a credible leader of Pakistan. The circumstances under which she was assassinated after addressing a large public meeting in Rawalpindi on December 27, multiplied her popularity. Whether or not Scotland Yard, whose services have been enlisted by the Pakistan government will be able to unravel the mystery surrounding the tragedy, most of the people in Pakistan point finger at Mushrrarf. Some accuse his government of not providing her proper security, others hold him directly responsible for getting his political rival eliminated. Musharraf’s popularity is at its lowest ebb whereas a martyred Benazir has become far more popular than when she was alive and has established her relevance. The distinctive feature of election campaign which her successors in the party have also adopted was her emphasis that Pakistan was a federation. In her address to public meetings in Balochistan, she promised to restore autonomy to it, end exploitation of its resources by the central government and condemned killing of its popular leader Nawab of Bugti. She gave similar assurance in Peshawar for the status of NWFP. This is an alternative to the premise of the American policy makers who think that moderate Islam alone could neutralise extremist Islam. All ideologies, including religious ideologies, are often articulation or rationalisation of ethnic aspirations. They are like superstructure, in Marxist terminology except that the base is not class but ethnic identities. Why did Pushtoons, who were the most ardent followers of Gandhi, for instance, became the main ethnic base of Al Qaida? A better way of neutralising Islamic militancy among Pushtoons is, therefore, to recognise and satisfy Pushtoon aspirations, through appropriate constitutional and political means. Experience of Indian freedom movement would be very relevant in this context. All orthodox Ulema, including those belonging to Dar-ul-uloom Deoband and madrasas led by Maulana Azad, were allies of the secular national movement whereas M.A. Jinnah, who was least religious and most modern Muslim, along with Aligarh’s modern educated alumni, led the movement of communal Muslims for a separate Muslim homeland. He appealed to the urges of Muslim identity and not Islam. It proved that urge for identity was more important than appeal of religion. It was the emphasis by the Muslim League on a single identity based on religion that made it fanatic. No single identity can satisfy all human urges. Multiplicity of identities to which everybody belongs need to be recognised and satisfied for fuller development of human personality. An identity based on religion alone — soft or extremist — leads to parochialism. People and leaders of Pakistan and those who propose policies for it have, therefore, to realise that lasting peace and stability free of terrorism as also democracy in the country would be possible if urges of all ethnic identities are recognised and reconciled through a federal system. After all Bangladesh seceded from Pakistan when its demand for autonomy based on Bangla identity was not conceded. After alienation of NWFP and Balochistan for similar reasons, warning signals have already been sounded in Sind where, after Benazir’s assassination, anti-Pakistan and pro-Sindhi nationalism slogans were raised and some Punjabis were attacked. Asif Zardari rightly disowned these tendencies. Whatever be Benazir’s past, her last message is most relevant viz neither army nor soft version of religion — the twin premises on which American policies for Pakistan were based — can answer the challenge of terrorism. And federalism is a necessary condition for normalisation and unity of
Pakistan.
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The fugitive
The Roys (name changed) were what you would have called, “nice people”. In the early 30s they lived on Rajpur Road, Old Delhi, just across the Ridge from us. Roy was a senior official in the Audit and Accounts Service. He was admired and respected by his colleagues for his outspokenness when it came to a matter of principle. He was a gentle soul, mild-mannered and extremely knowledgeable. Without being in the least pedantic or pompous, he could talk on almost any subject, avoiding only one, the Indian freedom movement. Whatever his personal views in regard to it were, he kept them to himself. He often told my father that so long as he was in government service it would not be proper for him to comment, favourably or unfavourably, on the activities of those who sought to dislodge his masters. Mrs Roy was one of the most attractive Bengali ladies I have seen. Of medium height, fair of complexion, she had a soft, musical voice which she used to good effect in singing popular songs composed by Tagore, but only in the presence of relatives and close friends. The Roys were a happy couple, and contented. But they were childless. This deprivation, however, had not embittered them, or made them envious of friends who had large families. On the contrary, Mrs Roy went out of her way to be kind and generous to youngsters like myself. We were never allowed to leave her house before she had filled us with home-made sandesh or rossugulla, and Puja-time was always gift-time for us. Like my father, Roy was a non-smoker and abstainer. However, at their Sunday morning bridge sessions they enjoyed a glass or two of shandy, made of one bottle of beer to three of lemonade. It was in the fourth year of World War II that Roy’s career came to an abrupt end and through no fault of his own. A close relative of Mrs Roy, a young man who had joined the I.N.A., slipped out of Burma and was nabbed by the military police who took him to Calcutta. Somehow, he managed to escape from their custody and made his way to Delhi, taking shelter in the Roy’s house. Here, he was arrested a couple of days later by the C.I.D. From that day, Roy became a suspect. He discovered that his house was being watched, his mail tampered with and his telephone tapped. This came as a cruel blow to a man who had served an alien government loyally for more than 25 years. When he was superseded for the post of Deputy C.A.G. he handed in his resignation to the Secretary of his department, along with the sanad which had been given to him when he had been made a Rai Bahadur. The Roys packed up and left for Calcutta. After Independence, Roy was one of the leading lights in the movement set afoot to ascertain the truth about Subhash Chandra Bose. There was no question now of divided loyalties. I heard years later that the Roys had ended their days, peacefully, in
Shantiniketan.
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School education a failure in Haryana In
the opening remarks at the National Development Council meeting, convened recently to approve the Eleventh Plan draft, the Prime Minister observed that the increasing rural-urban divide, coupled with poverty, posed a serious threat. To guard against this the Eleventh Plan had allocated more than 50 per cent of the gross budgetary support to the key sectors of agriculture, health and education. A reasonably literate and sufficiently healthy working force is an important prerequisite to give boost to the economy. These important fields cannot be left to the private sector where profit making is the chief motivating factor. Here the primary responsibility lies with the state sector. As rightly pointed out by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, no country in the world has been able to educate all its children without state intervention. Sen observes that the deficiencies in basic education cannot be met by the expansion of private schools which have not been able to play that role anywhere else in the history of the world. Viewed in this framework, the school education system in the government sector in Haryana is a dismal failure. Since its inception in 1966 Haryana has made rapid strides in the quantitative growth of its school education system. The number of schools, from primary to senior secondary schools in Haryana, increased from 5,779 in 1966 to 18,691 in 2003-04, an increase of 323.42 percent. Total number of students enrolled into recognised schools in Haryana, both government and private, increased from 11,61,517 to 40,95,876 during the same period, an increase of 352.63 per cent. The expansion in number marks the beginning of the intrusion of private sector in school education in Haryana. The number of government schools from primary to senior secondary more than doubled from 5,448 in 1966-67 to 12,840 in 2003-04. The number of private schools increased from a meager 293 to 5,987 during the same period, a whopping increase of over twenty times. This phenomenal growth concerns only the schools recognised either by the School Board of Education, Haryana or the CBSE. It does not include the number of unrecognised private schools in the state whose number is mind-boggling. The process of rapid increase in the number of private schools began with the momentum gained by the process of privatisation and liberalisation, inducing the state to ignore its responsibility in the matter of school education leaving the field free for the private sector to grab the opportunity. The phenomenon has broadly two reasons behind it: parents’ growing disillusionment with the falling academic standards in the government schools and secondly the growth of career consciousness in society as an outcome of fierce competition with the advent of neo-liberalism. Parents are keen to given better quality of education to their children as far as possible. Thus, there is a mushroom growth of private schools in towns as well as in villages. In towns it is a flourishing business that involves big capital while in villages educated unemployed youth take recourse to this with small capital. The financial burden in a government school is nominal while the same varies from being substantial to burdensome in the private schools, depending upon the quality the reputation of a school. Teachers in government schools are better qualified and better paid while their counterparts in most of the private schools are ill qualified and ill-paid. Still the private schools have greater attraction as their delivery is qualitatively better and the educational practice in government schools is seen to be sub-standard. As a result, the government schools cater to the needs of students of weaker sections – SCs, BCs, marginal farmers, poor artisans, small time self employed workers etc. For instance, out of 212 students in Government Middle School, Medical Campus, Rohtak in the last academic session, 186 belonged to the SCs and BCs, the remaining too coming from economically deprived sections. The situation is not radically different in villages too. Thus, the government schools in Haryana have become a dumping ground for students of weaker sections of society. With cramped living conditions, largely illiterate parents struggling for day-to-day survival, lack of academic milieu around and several such other handicaps, potential of such students is not likely to be realised in the absence of competition being offered by students who are, to some or a large extent, free from such handicaps. Even a committed teacher is likely to get exasperated with this kind of stuff. In the field survey of government schools in Haryana, this author had elaborate interaction with teachers and heads of government schools in the state. Teachers have a litany of complaints. There is a shortage of teachers. If a school does not have a teacher to teach a particular subject, this adversely affects the result of a particular class even if other teachers are quite committed and painstaking. Then there are not enough funds to improve the infrastructure of schools. Dilapidated buildings, lack of potable drinking water, stinking toilets – the list is endless. There is no rational transfer policy and teachers tend to cultivate political links to get suitable posting. Recruitment of teachers is highly flawed, money and political push playing the decisive role.Managing schools is highly bureaucratised, as teachers have no say in decision-making bodies like the Directorate of School Education, the Education Board etc. Then there is burden of non-teaching work concerning elections, surveys etc. A sizeable chunk of teachers-estimate varies from 15 per cent to 25 per cent - have no commitment to their profession. They come to the school late, sometimes are on furlough, go to the class half-heartedly and teach, if at all, without preparation. A section of them constitutes unruly and indisciplined lot. Some of them have political links and flaunt this connection in a brazen fashion. A head finds him or her helpless before this lot and is afraid of being insulted if an attempt is made to pull up such elements. The government should provide the infrastructure, recruit teachers and manage funds for the upkeep of the infrastructure, the salary of the staff and other sundry items. The day-to-day management of the schools should be handled by a local committee comprising some members of the panchayat, parents’ body, social workers etc. This committee should disburse the salary of the staff and implement no work, ‘no pay’ principal if some teacher is on furlough. Such an experiment has been made in some states quite successfully. The writer is a member of the Haryana Administrative Reforms Commission
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Oxford debates secularism – and Bilawal In 1933, on the eve of war in Europe, a 275-to-153 majority of establishment-weary youths backed the proposition that “this House will under no circumstances fight for King and Country,” a resolution that a furious Prime Minister Winston Churchill denounced as “that abject, squalid, shameless avowal.” And a young Benazir Bhutto – known then for her lively debating skills, the long brunette hair that trailed halfway down her back and the yellow MG sports car she drove all over Oxford – stepped from the presidency of the union in 1976 to, a little more than a decade later, the leadership of Pakistan. Thursday, the Oxford Union commemorated its former president, assassinated in Pakistan last month, with a debate on the merits of secular government – a topic that proved as provocative in Britain as it might have in Pakistan. In the chamber was Bhutto’s son and heir to her political dynasty, 19-year-old Bilawal Bhutto Zardawi, whose return to Oxford as a first-year student has proved to be even more of a sensation than his mother’s. His return to Christ Church college last week was recorded by a pack of 30 or more photographers called in for a brief photo opportunity, even as police and university officials upped their security plans to guarantee his safety – and that of the students around him. “Go home, you endanger us all in Oxford by being here,” a reader wrote on the Web site of one local paper. “He is a brave man to take on the role, and they are also fighting the same crackpots we are,” protested another. Thursday’s debate proposition, “This house believes that the ideal state is a secular state,” was planned well before Bhutto’s death Dec. 27 but was ideally suited to become a memorial for her, said the family’s spokesman, Hasan Ahmed Bukhari Hasan. “It is of special interest, you can say, because Mrs. Bhutto believed so much in secular democracy and politics,” he said. In remembering Bhutto’s years at Oxford, where she studied philosophy, politics and economics between 1973 and 1977, former classmates described a young woman who was vivacious, brilliant and ambitious. She became the first Asian woman to preside over the Oxford Union only after losing once, and mounting a careful and energetic campaign. “One felt naturally drawn to the most colorful character of all the characters that Oxford had at the time,” said Alan Duncan, another former Oxford Union president and now a member of the British parliament. “She was amazing, fiery and fun. Standing at this dispatch box, she would enliven this chamber.... She absolutely took Oxford by storm,” he said. Bhutto outraged her fellow Oxfordians by drinking creme de menthe with milk, and delighted them by introducing rock music to the Oxford Union and painting the union president’s office pale blue. Author Victoria Schofield, a longtime friend of Bhutto’s, remembered meeting her as a new freshman in the Oxford Union bar; Bhutto immediately invited her to tea. Already a graduate of Harvard before she came to Oxford, “she was larger than life for all of us dull, ordinary undergraduates,” Schofield said. “That yellow MG perfectly encapsulated her personality, whether it was parked (illegally) on those double yellow lines outside the union, or driving, as I remember with terror, the wrong way around a London roundabout,” said Simon Walker, another former union president. From the beginning, Schofield said, Bhutto was committed to the ideal of “a secular, modern, democratic” Pakistan. Thursday’s debate underscored the extent to which the fault line between religion and state rocked both of Bhutto’s worlds, East and West. While the proposition for a secular state prevailed, 220-171, there were vigorous arguments against those who insisted the British state should not be allied with the Church of England. “Seventy-two percent of the U.K. population in the last census were prepared to declare themselves Christian. Why on Earth should those 72 percent, if they then choose to organise themselves and express that religious belief in a political fashion – who are you to tell them that they can’t do that? It’s just absurd. And you talk about dictatorial?” said Zahid Amin, former president of the Young Muslims Association. But others said it was illogical that a country in which citizens in one 2001 survey rated religion as the ninth most important aspect of their identity should give clerics guaranteed seats in the upper house of parliament. Some argued that secular states were better guarantors of human rights and stability. “We believe in liberal neutrality,” said Lewis Iwu, student union president. “The state shouldn’t endorse a particular view of how you live your life.” By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post
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Inside Pakistan The opposition politicians in Pakistan are a most worried lot. The latest cause for their uneasiness is the “Security advisory for political leadership” issued by the Interior Ministry. According to Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema (retd), the spokesman of the ministry, all the leading politicians of Pakistan face a threat to their life from terrorists. The intelligence agencies, as he says, want the political class to avoid “too much public exposure”. A write-up by Aziz-ud-Din Ahmad in The Nation (Jan 17) has it that Brigadier Cheema “has asked those contesting the elections not to depend on the measures taken by the government for their security but to fend for themselves, thus absolving the government of the responsibility for their security.” This “raises doubts about the sincerity of the government regarding the holding of elections on February 18. So do a number of other developments”, Ahmad points out. The so-called advisory, interpreted to be aimed at demoralising the opposition politicians, is being seen as indicative of a game plan. The caretaker government may postpone the elections again till the present anti-Pervez Musharraf sentiment gets weakened considerably. There are reports that the opposition parties, particularly the PPPand the PML (N), may sweep the polls if held in a fair and transparent manner. The Peshawar-based Frontier Post says, “Although the elections have been rescheduled from January 8 to February 18, campaigning for the parliamentary elections has yet to get going again.” If the government, at all, goes ahead with the elections, “they are sure not to be free and fair…” Talk of national government If the doubts over the fairness of the elections are not removed, the coming battle of the ballot may lead to a seriously chaotic situation, difficult to be controlled even by the Army. This seems to have prompted a search for a mechanism to prevent such a dangerous development. The debate over holding the polls under a national government should be seen against this backdrop. The opposition parties are bound to favour the idea because they have no faith in the present caretaker government. PML (N) leaders – which means Mr Nawaz Sharif and his brother Shahbaz Sharif – are on the forefront of the campaign for a national government. According to Business Recorder, it is “indeed, a very good idea, but in the existing political milieu it is stillborn, as it militates against the ground realities. Firstly, the very proposal has the inbuilt condition that the elections slated for February 18 would have to be postponed, possibly for as long as one full year.” No opposition party may be prepared for this as such a thought “breeds uncertainty, with the memory of General Ziaul Haq’s 90-day postponement ever remaining fresh in the pubic mind”. Mr Nawaz Sharif’s drive for a national government is believed to be linked to his changed election strategy. He wants to take on board the PML (N) allies like the Jamaat-e-Islami, Mr Imran Khan’s Tehrik-e-Insaf and others in the All Parties Democratic Movement. They will be ready to participate in the polls under a national government. “The PMLN, it seems, is placed in the middle of the two extremes (those boycotting the polls and the others already in the election arena) .... It might have perceived that if President Musharraf is really quaking on his throne, this might be the time to join the rejectionists and Pakistan’s civil society representatives like the lawyers to prise him from power and improve its own electoral chances”, as Daily Times points out. Threat from poppy crop The Taliban, which had come down heavily on those growing the poppy crop during its brief rule in Afghanistan, is playing an opposite role today. The extremist movement’s activists are now promoting poppy crop growing as it helps the Taliban to finance its insurgency. An editorial in Dawn (Jan 17), quoting the Punjab Anti-Narcotics Force, has it that “poppy cultivation is Afghanistan registers a 20 to 30 per cent increase every season. With an export value of $4 billion, the illicit crop accounts for 53 per cent of Afghanistan’s GDP…” Islamabad’s worry stems from the fact that “Heroin, which is produced from poppy, enjoys a lucrative market in the West as well as in Pakistan which happens to be a favourite route for drug smugglers.” The Musharraf regime’s anti-narcotics force “does not have adequate staff to check the illegal trade of opiates passing through Pakistan”, as Dawn points out.
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OXFORD, England – Since 1823, it has been a chamber of civilised, if sometimes outrageous, debate. In the shelter of the Oxford Union’s weathered mahogany wainscoting, long oak benches and high, leaded glass windows, Malcolm X called for black empowerment “by any means necessary.”