The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Going downhill
S&P issues a wake-up call

While lowering India’s credit rating outlook from stable to negative, Standard & Poor’s has not said anything new: growth is slowing, subsidies are ballooning and economic reforms lie in a freezer, thanks to a persistent political gridlock. However, the global rating agency’s growth projection for India at 5.3 per cent is overly pessimistic. Morgan Stanley expects India to grow between 6 and 7 per cent this fiscal. The other two major rating agencies – Moody’s and Fitch-- have also given India their lowest investment-grade ratings, but have avoided assigning the country’s long-term debt a negative outlook.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee is right in saying that there is no need to panic. There is also no need to ignore S&P’s wake-up call either. India’s growth, infrastructure building and stock market rallies cannot happen without major participation of foreign direct investment. Foreign investors do weigh rating agencies’ reports before taking important investment decisions. Not long ago India was a favourite investment destination of foreign institutional investors (FIIs). At a time when Europe was grappling with sovereign debt issues, the US struggling to keep up its recovery, global capital moved in the emerging economies like China, Brazil and India. Post-budget, foreign capital has started moving out of the country. None of the big-ticket reforms were announced in the budget. Instead, retrospective changes in tax laws unnerved foreign funds.

The financial data — inflation, fiscal deficit, import-export imbalance, a depreciating rupee and outward flows of domestic corporate investment – does not inspire hope. There is little evidence of political courage to curtail government expenditure on welfare schemes or subsidies on food and oil. Little effort has been made to make the domestic environment attractive for foreign investment. While high inflation may discourage the RBI from cutting interest rates, any sovereign debt downgrade for India will raise the costs of external borrowings for corporate India. A continued political deadlock over reforms is sending out a wrong message that no major policy shift would happen before the general election in 1914-- so eloquently expressed, and later weakly retracted, by Chief Economic Adviser Kaushik Basu in Washington.

A setback for Gilani
Pakistan faces fresh political crisis

The conviction of Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in a contempt of court case on Thursday was not exactly on expected lines. He faced six months in jail, but the seven-judge bench of the Pakistan Supreme Court sentenced him “until the rising of the court”. Mr Gilani’s crime is that he has not implemented the court’s ruling by approaching the Swiss authorities to start legal proceedings against President Asif Ali Zardari, accused of having his unaccounted money parked in Swiss banks. Mr Zardari had got rid of the cases against him following the implementation of the 2007 National Reconciliation Order (NRO) by former President Gen Pervez Musharraf. The General issued the NRO after a political deal struck between him and the slain wife of Mr Zaradri, Benazir Bhutto, which benefited the present President and over 8000 other persons.

The court, however, annulled the NRO in 2009 and asked Prime Minister Gilani to open the money laundering cases against Mr Zardari. Mr Gilani’s plea, however, has been that the President of Pakistan enjoys constitutional immunity and no criminal case can be launched against him. The court has rejected his argument, and the Prime Minister’s legal team will now file a review petition.

The matter, however, is not entirely legal. Pakistan Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry has his known grudges against Mr Zardari, who is also disliked by Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. Mr Gilani owes the position he occupies to Mr Zardari. If he acts against the President, Mr Gilani’s political career will get jeopardized. And by refusing to get the money laundering cases against Mr Zardari reopened he faces the wrath of the court and the Army. Mr Gilani finds himself in a very tricky situation. Now opposition parties will put pressure on him to resign as Prime Minister. Mr Nawaz Sharif has already asked him to step down after the court verdict. All this appears to be leading to a fresh political crisis. Under the circumstances, the PPP-led government may go in for a general election earlier than scheduled. Pakistan faces a very uncertain situation today.

Thought for the Day

Crave for a thing, you will get it. Renounce the craving, the object will follow you by itself. — Swami Sivananda

ARTICLE

Supreme Court’s sound verdict
Leave the Army well alone
by Inder Malhotra

THE country ought to be grateful to the Supreme Court for its sound and swift rejection of the petition against Lieutenant-General Bikram Singh’s appointment as the next Chief of the Army Staff. The filing of the public interest litigation on the subject was not sui generis or a stray episode. Sadly, it was inextricably intermixed with the steady degeneration of public life due largely to polarisation so acute as to poison the Indian polity. A subtext of this of a recent origin has been the descent of the Indian Army into dismal politics ever since General V. K. Singh became the first Army Chief to drag the government to court over his date of birth.

In all fairness, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government, taunted nationwide for being paralyzed, cannot absolve itself of blame for allowing the dangerous situation to first arise and then worsen. It was open to Defence Minister A. K. Antony to dissuade the General from adopting the wrong course. Not only did he fail to do so but also he took no steps to limit the damage even after the Supreme Court had rejected General Singh’s petition. Reminding him that he had committed himself more than once that his date of birth was 1950 and that the DOB controversy was closed, their Lordships had observed that the General’s attempts to “wriggle out” of this commitment was “not befitting a meritorious officer”.

No wonder that General Singh then pursued his own ends in other ways, with different groups within the Army officer corps and among ex-servicemen taking different sides, and Mr Anthony doing nothing. Until the General gave the media interviews alleging that a recently retired Lt-General had offered him a bribe of Rs. 14 crore and that he had mentioned this to the Defence Minister. What he did not reveal was that the incident had taken place nearly two years earlier, and that he had told the minister that he “did not want to pursue the matter”!

At this stage Mr. Anthony suddenly sprung into action and referred the “bribery bombshell” to the Central Bureau of Investigation. The CBI is now filing cases and raiding premises but neither the Defence Minister nor the Army Chief has found it necessary to explain why they both had sat on so serious an affair as the alleged Tatra truck scam for so long.

Unfortunately, this was not all. As usually happens in Indian politics, the date of birth of General Singh acquired caste overtones. Twenty Rajput MPs (the General belongs to this caste) sought a meeting with the Prime Minister who ducked it. Many have looked askance also at General Singh’s visit to Ballia to unveil the statute of Chandra Shekhar, a former Prime Minister, who had, incidentally, dropped his surname “Singh” early during his political career. Of course, Chandra Shkekhar deserves all the respect he is paid. But couldn’t the General, still in service and mired in controversy, have waited until after May 31?

Never since the days of Krishna Menon has the Army been dragged into the vortex of such unsavoury politics, and it was in this depressing context that the rejected PIL was filed. The seven petitioners, including a former Chief Election Commissioner and a former Navy Chief, all are honourable men. Their reasons for taking the action they did are best known to them. But, as it became clear during the day-long hearing of the petition, two of their manifest objectives were deplorable, to say the very least.

First, pretending as if the issue of Gen. V. K. Singh’s date of birth were still open, they virtually pleaded for a year’s extension for him. But the Bench stopped them in their track with the words: “There is no question of reopening the General V. K. Singh matter. It has reached finality here.”

Secondly, far more sinister was what is being euphemistically called the “communal element in the PIL”. What the petition actually says is the ultimate in irresponsibility. For, in it, and even more during oral arguments, the petitioners alleged that the former Army Chief and currently Governor of Arunachal Pradsesh, Gen. (retired) J. J. Singh, had so manipulated the “line of succession” as to ensure that another Sikh, Lt.-Gen. Bikram Singh, could become the Chief after Gen Deepak Kapoor and Gen V. K. Singh.

In this connection, resolutions of the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) and a fair amount of “langar talk” were bandied about. At this stage, Attorney-General G. E. Vahanvati intervened to say: “This Army has gone through a lot in recent past, does it have to go through more? The SGPC has been brought in … the Sikh element is brought in”. To this Their Lordships’ response was: “Very unfortunate. No, no, that we will not permit.”

Since nothing should be brushed under the carpet, let us face it that the Attorney-General was referring to the period after Operation Bluestar. Sikhs, who have always served the Indian Army valiantly in numbers out of proportion to their population, were enraged. Yet only raw recruits among them mutinied while the overwhelming majority remained disciplined. What makes this all the more praiseworthy is that the Sikh soldiery had harboured for decades the grievance that no one among them had headed the Army. Gen. J. J. Singh was the first.

Under these circumstances, can there be a greater disservice to the country and its supreme interests than to try to create a Sikh vs non-Sikh divide in the Indian Army that has always distinguished itself for its adherence to secularism and professionalism?

Finally, the propensity of Generals or their civilian courts to rush to courts of law must be given up. The procedures for the appointment of Service Chiefs are well established and are rigorously followed. Seniority among the Army Commanders has always been respected except in the solitary case of Lt.-Gen S. K. Sinha in 1983. He accepted the government’s decision gracefully without ever complaining. Let today’s generals learn something from him and from the legendary General K. Thimayya who — having resigned in protest against the manner in which Krishna Menon was treating him but having withdrawn the resignation at Nehru’s behest — never said a word and served the rest of his tenure with exemplary dignity.

MIDDLE

Friend of bachelors
by Harbans Singh Virdi

This is a recent phenomenon. Never has it happened in the past. There are long queues of bachelors seen outside the offices of a telephone company all over the country. Bachelors include singles, mostly unmarried young men and some old, who have been single so far with or without choice. But it does not include spinsters or single women. It is bachelors’ paradise all the way.

However, the long queues of bachelors are giving nightmare to the telephone company following a demand from the singles who have gathered outside the company offices not to seek phone connections which the firm is promoting. In fact, the bachelors are demanding to buy the dog, a pug puppy, which features in the company advertisement. The company officials are puzzled and have no answer to bachelors’ queries regarding the sale of dogs. Even some stray dogs were seen wandering amidst the perverted clients.

Since the time the pug made a debut on the idiot box in a phony ad, it has become a darling of the bachelors all over the country. Before the ad was shown, a puppy of this breed was easily available for about Rs 5000. But since the versatility of the pug puppy was advertised for establishing a connection with a female, the price for this puppy has skyrocketed. Desperate bachelors are prepared to pay even Rs 50,000. The breed has gone extinct in a matter of a few days; such is the craze for this dog.

But the bachelors’ love for the pug is not misplaced. It is no ordinary dog. It does what the parents of these bachelors have failed to do — find a suitable companion for their mates. It is this instinct of the dog which is pulling crowds of bachelors towards it like a magnet.

The company ad shows this dog with a flat mouth helping a young boy find his soul-mate. While the boy is standing alone in a park, the dog senses his need for a companion and runs to a young girl who is reading a book in a swing. The pug pulls away the scarf from around the neck of the girl who runs after the dog. But the intelligent animal hands over the scarf to the boy who lovingly returns it to the smiling girl. Once the contact is established, the rest is easy — everyone knows this.

Bachelors’ faith in the dog was further established when in the second ad the boy and the girl are shown basking in the warmth of each other’s company while the dog furiously guards the privacy of the pair by barking at the man who threatens to invade the privacy of the love birds.

It is these two ads on the idiot box which have stirred the imagination of some idiots, who made a beeline to the company offices. The company is in a great dilemma as it sells phone connections, not dogs.

When some TV reporters interviewed a few bachelors, they exhibited more faith in the dog than in their parents. Some bachelors have even threatened to sue the state government for providing neither jobs nor dogs.

OPED PAKISTAN

Pakistan should revisit its foreign policy with its neighbours at the regional level and with the US. This exercise must be realistic and aimed at improving the quality of life of ordinary Pakistanis rather than be tailored to appease the right-wing.
The path of isolation
Asma Jahangir

A view of the National Assembly of Pakistan

PAKISTAN remains in the dog house of the international community mainly because its rulers refuse to accept that violence and conflict within the country are escalating and have serious ramifications for the entire region.

Pakistan’s friends fear a severe economic meltdown and there are widespread concerns over continuing corruption which has also partly impaired governance.

Amazingly, while militant non-state actors are knocking down our doors and have successfully solidified their networks, our civil institutions are busy rubbing each others’ noses in the dirt — perhaps for sound reasons but the rubbing is excessive.

Constant political bickering keeps policymakers, the media, the judiciary and the public distracted from the risks we face.

Corruption is rife in all governments and institutions. Sadly, selective investigations often remain inconclusive. Ironically, most of those accused of corruption brazenly say they have been singled out, rather than plead innocence and prove it too.

Other well-intentioned spectators argue that accountability should be all-comprehensive and not limited to monetary corruption alone. It should be across the board and judged by an institution or body of people who have an unblemished past. There is no doubt that intellectual corruption or oppression can often be far more devastating for its victims. It demolishes societal values too.

But how far back can Pakistan dig into its past without being ripped apart? Or indeed do we still have honest brokers? While impunity must end so that the country’s wealth is no longer plundered and oppressors or dictators who play havoc with the future of a nation are not endorsed by unscrupulous civilians, such a venture will spare hardly anyone and sap all national energy.

These are tough decisions for any society, but must clearly be taken by the people of the country, rather than by former collaborators or those accused of corruption. Initiatives towards transitional justice only triumph when a society is prepared to accept its mistakes.

At the moment, claims of righteousness abound and exhibitions of greed have reached sickening heights. Any hope of arriving at the truth will only add to the heap of historical propaganda accumulated by us. Presently, the more pressing need is to secure a future that may be less painful, rather than go down with a swansong of half-truths.

The greater challenge for Pakistan is to keep the democratic cycle running, along with improving the abysmal state of governance. Most importantly, our leadership should fully comprehend, admit and face up to the challenges thrown at the country by militant non-state networks. The latter rule through divisions while the former is conceding territorial and political ground to jihadis of all types and nationalities.

It is reprehensible that any country should violate the territorial integrity of another; but it is even worse for a country to allow non-state intruders to dictate state policies under the threat of violence and for the government to swallow it meekly.Under the present circumstances, there are greater chances of the transition to democracy rolling back, rather than an improvement in this climate of political bickering. A reversal of the system will sweep with it all the so-called citadels of free expression, the rule of law and political democracy unless urgent and sustainable political and economic measures are taken.

Pakistan is slipping into isolation. Fatigue with the inertia shown by Pakistan’s leadership in putting its house in order is clearly visible in the international community.

Foreign investment has dried up and local industry is barely surviving without the supply of gas and electricity. The economic gains made by other countries in the region have simply passed us by because we have no policy to thrive on and instead live from day to day.

Growing economies produce the glue that strengthens nationhood, while depleting ones invite conflict and external intervention. The fissures in Pakistani society are once again apparent. The internal fracturing of the state as well as the external factors responsible for this must be urgently addressed and a few entry points identified for a solid start.

Pakistan should revisit its foreign policy with its neighbours at the regional level and with the US. This exercise must be realistic and aimed at improving the quality of life of ordinary Pakistanis, rather than be tailored to appease the right-wing.

At the national level, massive restructuring is required but priority must be given to monitoring and fine-tuning the process of devolution under the 18th Amendment. There are examples: Brazil had to put in place a federal investigating body to ensure that law-enforcement under the command of the federating units did not get away with human rights violations.

Similarly, the centre should retain policymaking on education and health. At another level, a constitutional court as promised in the Charter of Democracy should be seriously considered. Small causes courts, which are limited to addressing minor offences and disputes, should be reactivated at the union council level. The rising crime graph is disturbing. The professional skills of our police, especially in investigating crime, have to be sharpened. Resources spent on defence must substantially, though incrementally, be reallocated towards improving governance.

Elections should be held every four years so that there are ample opportunities for a fresh, more visionary leadership to get into the political loop. This could also rejuvenate the present archaic style of running political parties. Mechanisms set up for accountability and conducting elections should be completely autonomous and impartial.

The issue of Balochistan is complex and it deepens with each day of vacillation.

There are no easy solutions to the formidable challenges we face but the least people expect from those in positions of power is to keep the interest of the people above personal ambitions at a time when the country is almost collapsing.

The writer is a prominent lawyer and a human rights activist.
By arrangement with Dawn, Islamabad.

Disparity that defines protests
Asha’ar Rehman

EACH day, Lahore has at least a dozen protests where demands are chanted, a few heated arguments exchanged and a baton or two waved to contain the emotion.

A few breakfasts are ruined as the papers act as if they have nothing to flash but the images of demonstrators lying on the road or holding placards. Young doctors win, a group of lawyers has its way, but in many cases the protests yield little.

A large number of recent protests in Lahore have been about long hours of power suspension. These inspire little hope of relief. Amid the patriotic yet linguistically outdated calls by the chief minister that Punjab was getting ‘step-motherly’ treatment, the general feeling is that you cannot ask someone to give you what that someone doesn’t have in his store.

The federal government has failed to add a significant number of megawatts to the electricity grid. Ask a protester and he will tell you that he knows how futile his antics on the road actually are.

The story of a trader losing business has been repeated so many times that it is in danger of losing its bite. Invariably, the public is more worried about the road blockade due to a demo, and not too receptive to the demands of the protesters.

There are people who have played up the political angle. The power riots in Lahore and elsewhere in Punjab last week and the ones earlier are understood to be a part of some grand design by the Punjab government to destabilise a seemingly shaky set-up in Islamabad. Indeed, those with good eyesight have been able to identify PML-N workers acting as agents provocateurs among the rioters.

It is said the PML-N for the moment wants to keep these protests relatively small, keeping the option of inflating them at an opportune moment open.

When push comes to real shove closer to the election, a variety of more issues are going to be raised. Punjab appears all set to play the victim itself, with the movement for a Seraiki subah run by PML-N rivals making it a lot easier for the Sharifs to assert their politics in the upper Punjab areas they have traditionally controlled.

Still, that a series of protest demonstrations has to be sustained by some forward movement is evidenced in how difficult it is to sustain a protest in a particular area. The protest is moving horizontally from one city or locality to another, rather than rising vertically.

There are few cases where a group of power rioters — who perhaps lack political patronage — has staged a demo one day and then turned up for a similar show of anger the following morning. There is a protest demo in one area of Lahore one day and the venue shifts to another part of the city the next.

These are plain occasions — disorganised displays — to vent frustrations. Given the slogans for an end to discrimination in the distribution of resources, over reasons valid or not, they could be taken as much for sporadic exhibitions of anger against the growing disparity in society as a whole than events specifically bringing out the inefficiency of a government.

Quite often a government has to pay for the disparity in the ranks of a professional group. A group of young lawyers for example may be as much disturbed by their inability to match the influence and earning graph of some senior and some not so senior colleagues at the bar. Some of their recent resorts to violence to force the issue demonstrate that they have not quite been ‘empowered’ and rewarded the way they had expected during the free-judiciary movement.

Some groups of relatively junior lawyers have got together and they are forever asserting themselves not just against government functionaries such as the police but, before that, against their senior bar colleagues.

The seniors are thought to have already attained considerable professional success, which also brings them material gains that the juniors somehow cannot wait to acquire.

Often the senior lawyers are almost browbeaten into participating in campaigns they would rather avoid but for the pressure they are put under by the juniors or as yet the less-privileged fellow professionals.

A similar senior-junior divide exists among journalists. There are those who have benefited from the recent media boom and ‘performance-based’ criteria for deciding the worth of a professional that has come to be applied of late.

The new entrants as well as the old ones who have not benefited from the new criteria are as suspicious of journalists who draw high salaries as they are wary of newspaper managements, and ultimately of the government which they still hold responsible for protecting their rights.

The young doctors’ movement in Punjab also has at its base disparity between the young and more experienced doctors.

The young doctors do not trust the senior doctors when it comes to fighting for the rights of medical officers and doctors working as apprentices in public-sector hospitals.

The seniors have to mind their lucrative private practices on the side. In the past, they would create envy and command respect from those following behind them. Now these ranks want a quick share, if not equal to than at least proportional to the money the senior practitioners have come to make today.

There is a clear clash of interests between the well-known doctors who have a long queue of patients waiting outside the examination rooms in their private clinics and the young doctors at public-sector hospitals who toil and are bossed around, yet go unsung and un-remunerated for their labour.

This divide between the senior and junior among professionals — doctors, journalists, lawyers, etc — deprives the protest of ‘mature’ heads who could act as both guide and mediators for more durable solutions. A patch-up among fellow professionals is required. This is not easy to achieve given the rights the un-protesting have to protect.

The writer is Dawn’s Resident Editor in Lahore.