The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Petrol for peace
Trade to help cement Indo-Pak ties

India agreeing to export petrol, gas and diesel to Pakistan to meet the fast rising energy demand in the neighbouring country is a significant development from various angles. New Delhi’s decision comes soon after Islamabad agreed in principle to accord India the long-awaited Most Favoured Nation status and Pakistan allowing a large number of products that can be procured from India. Trade in petrol, which has strategic importance, will strengthen the move to develop a stake in shared economic growth. The two countries concentrating on their mutual economic advancement along with increasing people-to-people contacts will go a long way in improving their political relations. It is a pragmatic idea for Pakistan to meets its energy needs from its next-door neighbour instead of looking for supplies from far-off countries. The only hurdle that remains to be overcome is that of the specification --- petrol outlets in Pakistan sell Euro II grade fuel whereas India produces petrol that meets Euro-III standards.

Pakistan is able to fulfil only half of its energy requirements from its own sources annually as it has only 12-million-tonne refining capacity. Contrary to this, India exports 25 per cent of its 185-million refining capacity. The major beneficiaries of Indo-Pak trade in petroleum products will be large private-sector refinery players like Reliance Industries and Essar Oil. Public sector players like Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL), Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) and GAIL India too are in the race to reap the benefits of oil trade with Pakistan. HPCL’s plan for a 100-km pipeline to Lahore may be expedited now so that the company is ready to export petrol to Pakistan after the completion of its Bathinda refinery project.

GAIL India will soon be in a position to compete with other LNG exporters to Pakistan. It has commissioned a natural gas pipeline that will connect India’s west coast to Bathinda which can be extended to Lahore easily. Pakistan has no LNG terminal and it is expected to suffer an acute gas shortage by 2016. There is an excellent opportunity waiting for India in Pakistan which must be utilised.

Sins of drug cartel
Govt must stop this exploitation

The cartel of top pharmaceutical companies, with their global presence, requires a total of 10 million healthy test subjects each year to check the efficacy of their drugs on human body. In developed countries where the conditions for clinical trials are not ideal, some regulations ensure that a person who volunteers to undergo health risk for drug tests is paid up to $10,000 depending upon the duration. It is a different matter that people who are on drugs or are alcoholics volunteer for multiple trials, which is against the law. With recession in the economy and several other compounding factors, these companies are now looking at poor countries for guinea pigs. Also, the companies remain free of legal or financial obligations towards these subjects due to the absence of clear-cut laws on clinical trials on humans in poor countries. India offers the ideal ground with its pathetic irreverence for human life, made evident in the Union Carbide gas leak at Bhopal.

These companies are under tremendous pressure to develop new drugs. In the past 15 years, faced with the expiry of patents on best-selling drugs, big pharma companies have been in a frenzy to find new sources of profit. When the patent for a company’s blockbuster drug expires, it loses about 85 per cent of its lucrative monopoly. In a rush to put new drugs in the market, these companies distance themselves from the experiments on humans and the related responsibility by outsourcing most of their trials to private test centres across the world.

By creating this complex chain, the pharma companies shun their responsibility. No wonder, people who die in clinical trials in India do not know where to go for justice. In the wake of death of six poor women of Andhra Pradesh, the issue has once again come to the fore. It offers an opportunity to the Ministry of Health and Indian Council of Medical Research to frame appropriate rules and laws to protect people from becoming human lab rats.

Thought for the Day

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

— Francis Bacon

ARTICLE

Polity needs consensus
States deserve more powers
by Kuldip Nayar

STATE elections may not predict the shape of the next Lok Sabha in 2014, but they do reflect the mood of the electorate. UP, Punjab, Uttrakhand, Goa and Manipur which went to the polls indicate that the ruling Congress is declining rapidly. The party is nowhere in UP despite Indira Gandhi's family descending on the state in full strength. Punjab and Uttrakhand, which were expected to go to the Congress, have slipped from its hands. The party has been routed in Goa and the only consolation prize is Manipur where feuding factions do not allow a government to run for long.

In fact, the other national alternative, Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) has done only slightly better. It is third in UP, slightly above the Congress, and neck and neck with the Congress in Uttrakhand. The BJP can claim to be a winner in Punjab but that is because it is riding the bandwagon of the Akali Dal. Otherwise, the BJP has come down from 19 to 12 seats.

The obvious lesson to learn from the verdicts is that the national parties are losing space to those in the states, which represent local aspirations. The success of Mulayam Singh Yadav's Samajwadi Party in UP casts a shadow on the prospects of both the Congress and the BJP in a state, which has 80 Lok Sabha seats in a House of 543. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) of outgoing Chief Minister Mayawati looked at one time an avalanche of Dalits sweeping the rest. But the avarice had the better of her and she has ruined the chance of a Dalit ever becoming Prime Minister.

The Shiromani Akali Dal's return to power in Punjab strengthens the belief that the work at the grassroots is what counts ultimately. However, the victory for the Akali Dal, as that of the Samajwadi Party, sends a message to the Congress or, for that matter, to national parties that they can no longer ignore or bypass the state parties. Their consultation is essential before framing economic and social policies. The five-year Plan has to be built from below. Apart from ignoring the sentiments prevailing on the ground, the Congress had to pay dear at the polls for the scams and the price rise. The state parties have been able to convince the electorate that corruption and the high cost of living are not their doing but that of those who rule at the Centre.

It looks as if the states are waking up to the clout they have because of the following of their people. Odhisa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has already raised the banner of revolt against the Centre for possessing too much power. He has been supported by many Chief Ministers in his demand. Several Chief Ministers, including Mamata Banerjee from West Bengal, feel that the Centre must have the states in the picture when it establishes organisations which require the support of their law and order machinery.

The anti-terrorism set-up planned by the Centre did not have the prior consent of Chief Ministers. Still Home Minister P. Chidambaram convened a meeting of Chief Secretaries and Director-Generals of Police. Belonging to the all-India services and controlled by the Centre, both services are manageable. The Centre has to realize that the real state boss is the Chief Minister and he or she must be kept in the picture.

Whether a non-BJP and non-Congress front comes into being is a matter of conjecture, though there are signals of it. Yet there is no running away from the fact that the Central government apes to take action without even informing the states. Federalism is a buzzword. What it means is that more powers should vest in the states and despite the Sarkaria Commission report on Centre-State relations, New Delhi runs roughshod over the states.

I recall the advice of Ghous Bux Bezenjo, a Pakistani leader, who warned me nearly 40 years ago that India should learn from Pakistan and transfer all subjects except defence, foreign affairs, communication and currency to the states. This is what the Anandpur Sahib resolution of the Akali Dal said or was even once the demand of the CPM when it ruled over West Bengal. But the Congress haughtily rejected it without realising that there is no go from decentralisation.

The polity needs a consensus. It can be developed through humility, but not arrogance which has become part of the Congress culture. How can Prime Minister Manmohan Singh handle Parliament sessions if he or his party does not understand that the state elections have given the regional parties a new sense of confidence and they want to assert themselves?

The immediate problem that the ruling Congress faces is the election of President due in the middle of this year. Then there is the election of the Vice-President. The Congress cannot impose its choice on the parties and pick up non-entities for top positions. Regional parties will need to be wooed. In any case, a non-Congress person having ability and eminence will ideally fill the office of President. This requires all the tact and charm that the Congress can exert. But the party is too much haunted by a mid-term poll and looks pathetically clueless and without any new idea.

Some fear that a weak Centre may encourage fissiparous tendencies. This is wrong because the states are an integral part of the country. They do not want to turn up to Delhi for every small concession. Today they have to do it and they have resident commissioners to pursue their projects. Whichever party comes to power at the Centre feels it must rule like the governor-general of the British days. The people are more conscious of their rights. They know the value of their vote and this explains why almost 60 per cent of the electorate, more women than men, went to polling stations to exercise their franchise.

MIDDLE

Traumatic questions
by Manika Ahuja

I read with disbelief a strange directive from the government advising women not to work beyond 8 p.m. in Gurgaon. As if this was not enough, reports came that Falak, the two-year-old girl who had been admitted to hospital with human bites all over her body, was no more!

For me it was like going into a state of metamorphosis as my aesthetic being was shaking and the morning cup of tea fell from my trembling hands. Soon I regained my composure but the shiver turned into clenched fists. How could all this happen? I questioned myself and my anger turned into what poet Coleridge calls “willing suspension of disbelief”.

The feeling dawned on me that the authorities still considered women as a problem. The missive to direct them not to work beyond 8 in the evening had come after the gang-rape of a young woman. Will cars and trains too be a taboo as there have been cases when women were abducted and most heinous crimes committed in moving vehicles? Girls are being killed in the name of honour by parents and close relations. What have the authorities done to protect them? Many questions come to one’s mind. Will the authorities prohibit women from working even during day-time as there have been instances of women being harassed at work places during day-time too?

The pathetic state of the girl child is aptly mirrored in the newly-released data by the United Nations which notes that India is the most dangerous place in the world for her. A girl in the age group one-five years is 75 per cent more likely to die than a boy of the same age, according to the report. It suggests that China and India are the only two countries in the world where female infant mortality is higher than male infant mortality.

Another recent study conducted in Indian cities has shown that 51 per cent of Indian women feel unsafe travelling on roads and an overwhelming 73 per cent women surveyed expressed fear for their physical safety when travelling at night.

As I pondered over a volley of questions, I recalled the famous lines of the great bard, William Wordsworth, who described a girl as “a lovelier flower on earth was never sown” and went on to equate her with a “Mighty prophet! Seer blest!”

I believe Falak is off to a better world, much beyond the reach of her tormentors.

But why is all this happening? Was coming to this world as a girl our fault? Why impose dress codes and deadlines on us? Being a girl, I questioned myself as to when all this will end and girls will be able to live a life of dignity. What acid test do they still need to undergo so as to prick the collective conscience of the nation? The traumatic questions on being a girl continue to haunt me!

OPED — Neighbours

The biggest failure
Some critics of the government would argue that by not removing the military and the ISI from the political sphere completely, any talk of democratisation is empty, incomplete. While there is some weight in this argument, it ignores the complexities of a slow transformation in structural power relations in political transition.
S. Akbar Zaidi

UNDOUBTEDLY, the biggest success of the present government as it celebrates four years in power is precisely that: it is actually in a position to celebrate having completed four years in power.

It is not simply the fact that a government has retained power and been in office for four full years that is momentous — the Musharraf-Jamali-Shaukat Aziz elected government was also in power for more than four years — but that the Zardari-Gilani government’s four years have actually strengthened democracy in Pakistan. And it might just be the turning moment where Pakistan emerges from the baggage of a praetorian state, and embarks on the path to democracy.

There is still a very long way to go, but such a possibility does exist and the incumbent government as well as the opposition deserve credit for making the transition a possibility.

Of course, there is, as always, a huge possibility of backsliding and regressing into different forms of non-democratic, non-electoral authoritarianism, but one can at least talk about the processes of democratisation today, possibilities that we could not have imagined even in the recent past.

This major success of the incumbent government has been achieved despite great opposition to the government as well as to democracy by the older forms of authoritarianism such as the military, and new forms of challenges in the guise of extremism and militarism, as well as perhaps well-meaning but destabilising and threatening forms of judicial activism. To be able to ride out the storm of such pressures and intrigues goes to the credit of the government, the opposition and to parliament as a whole.

Of course, there are numerous other successes as well, such as the passing of the 18th Amendment, peace and economic measures with India, the National Finance Commission Award, and many other initiatives and measures over the last four years.

However, all such administrative and structural interventions, despite their tremendous importance and success, pale into insignificance compared to the continuation, strengthening and deepening of democracy.

Any military dictator could have taken administrative measures for better governance and delivery, as they have in the past, but democratisation usually takes place under the rule of electoral and democratic norms, institutions and actors, even though military dictatorships also play a role in instigating democratisation, as did the Musharraf government.

Nevertheless, despite some large and small achievements, there are, as one ought to expect, glaring omissions and failures as well. One could argue, perhaps overly optimistically, that the government has not further strengthened and deepened democratisation, that it has not been able to neuter the ISI and the military even though it had ample opportunity to do so.

Some critics of the government would argue that by not removing the military and the ISI from the political sphere completely, any talk of democratisation is empty, incomplete. While there is some weight in this argument, it ignores the complexities of a slow transformation in structural power relations in political transition.

Other failures which have been highlighted include the inability to leap on to a high-growth path for the economy, and the dismal resource-mobilisation efforts of the government, with the tax-to-GDP ratio now falling to a mere 8.6 per cent. While this government has not fared well in the way the economy has been managed, it has also not done as badly as many enthusiastic critics of the government continuously argue. Many of those who criticise the failed economic performance of this government were employed by the Musharraf regime as advisers and ambassadors, and have a politics perhaps not well-suited to the different norms of democracy and electoral politics.

Perhaps the biggest failure of this government has been its reluctance and inability to initiate and nurture an elected, decentralised, local government system. At one level, it seems surprising that a government committed to genuine decentralisation and to the democratic system would dither in taking democracy even further to the grass-roots, but the behaviour of this government only reflects that of almost all elected governments in Pakistan.

It is military dictators who hold elections at the local level of government, not democratically elected governments. Yet, if this particular government is being seen as the turning point in the consolidation of democracy in Pakistan, the absence of an elected local government undermines a deeper and fuller process of democratisation.

As we have seen in the past, local governments are essential as a means for further democratisation, for better service provision and delivery and even gender emancipation. As many as 36,066 women councillors were elected or nominated in the local government elections in 2001, with 24,528 in 2005. As much research on the local government in Pakistan has shown, elected local governments have played a pivotal role in the social, economic and political transformation in the country.

Of course, the federal government after the 18th Amendment would argue, correctly, that it has no role in determining local government elections in the country and that this is now — as has actually always been the case — the business of provincial governments.

There are numerous reasons why provincial governments are reluctant to hold elections at the local level, not least because this undermines the power, prestige and purses of the MPAs who contest all these with elected representatives at the lower sphere. Nevertheless, as the federal government has been successful in getting provincial governments to agree to numerous reforms, it should have played a more forceful role in getting agreement and commitment to decentralised, devolved, elected, local governments as well.

Is one of the biggest successes of this government — devolution under the 18th Amendment — responsible for its biggest failure, the absence of devolution under the elected local government? Or, like agricultural taxation, which is also a provincial concern, is this just another excuse?

The writer is a political economist.

By arrangement with Dawn, Islamabad

Harsh realities in Afghanistan
Irfan Husain

TRUTH, as the old cliché goes, is the first casualty of war. Thus, our generals assured us during the 1965 and 1971 wars with India that our forces were winning until the very end. In the first conflict, we were forced to accept a ceasefire, while in the latter, we suffered a shattering defeat.

The Americans are equally prone to this syndrome. General after general appearing on TV channels has assured their American audiences that the war in Afghanistan is going well. But after more than a decade of fighting with thousands of lives lost, and hundreds of billions of dollars spent, NATO forces have been fought to a draw. And a stalemate for western forces is simply untenable for any length of time due to increasing financial and political pressures back home.

President Obama has declared his intention to pull out the bulk of American troops by 2014, with the drawdown beginning later this year. Other coalition partners are packing their bags even earlier. In the wake of the recent burning of the Holy Quran and the berserk attack on Afghan villagers near Kandahar by one or more US soldiers, the official timeline is shrinking rapidly.

During a visit to Washington by David Cameron, the British Prime Minister and the US President wrote a joint comment in the Washington Post in which the two leaders spoke of an end to combat missions in 2013, with Afghan forces doing the fighting instead of coalition troops. In this scenario, foreign forces would play a training and support role. But after the recent bloody incidents involving US troops, President Karzai has demanded that foreign troops should go to their bases, and leave the fighting in the Afghan hinterland to his security forces.

Clearly, Karazai is playing to the gallery here. He knows full well that his soldiers and police are nowhere near the professional levels needed to take on the Taliban on their own. But he is echoing the deep anger people feel over the night raids that are carried out by Special Forces targeting senior militants. These tactics see foreign troops burst into homes where insurgents are suspected of sheltering in the dead of night, terrifying women and children.

One indication of how far the two sides have drifted apart came when an Afghan parliamentary group probing the recent killings of civilians in Panjwai district released its report.

According to this body, one soldier alone simply could not have killed so many people in two villages within an hour. The report, published by Daily Outlook Afghanistan, suggested that based on interviews with survivors, there could have been as many as 15 to 20 US soldiers involved in the carnage.

In an editorial, the same newspaper wrote on 17 March: “However, our political and religious leadership … who were calling for Jihad after the Quran burning incident, should not be hypocrite [sic]. Taliban kill civilians every single day. The other day, nine women and children were killed in an IED blast in Uruzgan. Yesterday there was a similar attack on civilians in Helmand. Their daily stories of atrocities never get condemned as it should be.”

It’s a similar story in Pakistan where we never tire of condemning US drone attacks targeting militants, but ignore terrorist attacks on our own people. But in Afghanistan, the implications of an early coalition pullout due to increasing tensions are obvious. As the editorial concludes:

“Seeing the series of unfortunate events, and the uncertain direction it is leading the situation, we are strongly fearful of a catastrophe ahead after 2014. The overconfidence shown and without a proper domestic strategy, President Karzai’s irresponsible statements have self-destructive implications.”

One of the main pillars of the US exit strategy is that Afghan forces will be ready to take on the combat role played by Nato troops over the last decade. It was estimated that the Afghan army and police would cost between eight and ten billion dollars per year, and this expenditure would be met by external aid. According to Steve Coll (What is Plan B? The New Yorker; 14 March 2012), the figure has been revised downwards to two to three billion dollars. Clearly, such a drastic cut will result in a proportionate shrinkage in the size of the Afghan armed forces. Ultimately, you get what you pay for.

Another fallout from the Panjwai killings is the pullout of the Taliban from talks with the Americans. These tentative contacts had caused a tremor of excitement among an American security establishment grasping desperately for straws. For an occupying force keen to declare victory and leave, these negotiations held the prospect of a dignified exit. But thus far, they have proved to be a mirage.

While the Americans placed a lot of faith in these initial contacts, the Taliban only wanted to talk about establishing a liaison office in Qatar, and the transfer of certain prisoners there from Guantanamo. The termination of these negotiations has left the US with only President Karzai to fall back on, and he is a frail reed at best.

In any case, he is due to leave office in 2014 as he cannot run for a third term under the constitution. General elections are due that same year, so to add to the confusion and demoralisation caused by the NATO withdrawal, Afghanistan will also go through probably violent and destabilising presidential and parliamentary elections.

By arrangement with Dawn