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Deadly virus Death of a dream |
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Russian ban: A blessing in disguise?
Their tea vs my ‘masala chai’
There are no winners in the game Perpetuating the fiction of the failed state
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Deadly virus The
world faces a deadly epidemic which has its epicentre in western Africa. Ebola, a virus disease, has already killed a thousand persons, and it is spreading from one country to its neighbours in Africa -Liberia, Nigeria, Guinea, and Sierra Leone - all have been affected by the Ebola virus. Now the World Health Organisation has stepped in to appeal for more help to the affected countries, as well as careful screening of all passengers flying out of the region. India, too, has set up procedures, and some passengers who travelled through the affected countries are now being screened. This must be strengthened, as there are a large number of Indians who live or work in those countries. By calling it the "largest, most severe and most complex outbreak in the nearly four-decade history of this disease," the WHO Director-General minced no words. But then, the world lost its leading expert on the disease, Dr Sheik Umar Khan, of Sierra Leone, last month. Unfortunately, it is only recently that the outbreak has been got international attention, and consequently, the aid and funds to the affected countries have just started flowing. The Ebola virus spreads by contact with the infected person or his/her bodily fluids. Adequately protecting health care workers by providing them with protective medical gear and disinfectants goes a long way in containing it. The disease has no cure as such, even though some affected persons have been given experimental drugs. Even as various unaffected countries gear up to protect themselves and to prevent the virus from travelling to other parts of the world, they must provide the affected nations with the means to contain the disease and help those who have been afflicted by it. The governments in West Africa must do their bit by raising public awareness, getting more trained medical personnel on the ground and putting more effort to trace the medical histories of the patients to warn others at risk. From one country it quickly became a regional crisis that can now spill over to the rest of the world, unless precautions are taken.
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Death of a dream Rajwinder
Kaur did not want to throw herself in front of a running train. She was young. She had dreams. And she wanted to live to fulfil them. Yet the 20-year-old state-level hockey player from Punjab's Sunam town committed suicide because her parents could not afford to pay for her education at a college where she could pursue her dream. Yes, she had a dream, a small dream: to study and excel in hockey. Rajwinder was no ordinary girl. Despite odds, she had achieved a distinction in hockey. But did anyone care? That distinction could not get her a small scholarship to pursue her studies and game. She did not know whom to turn to for help. So do many others like her. Her death is an indictment of society's indifference towards sports and sportspersons. Punjab can hold lavish kabaddi matches, but can't groom ordinary sportspersons or provide scholarships to promising students. College and university education has become expensive and gone beyond the reach of even middle-class youth. Rural youth are deprived of the basics of life like good education and a job. This is partly because of substandard education at the village and town level and partly because rural incomes have not risen enough so that parents can buy higher education for their children. It is not just a tragedy for Rajwinder Kaur's family alone. Many more young students and sportspersons must have seen their dreams getting shattered for want of a few thousand rupees. Rajwinder's parents of modest means had expressed their helplessness in sending her to a college where the hostel expenses were way too heavy for them. Many youth languish in Punjab, some move out of the state, others turn to drugs and quietly disappear. In civilised societies the state ensures that every child gets the best possible education. A welfare and responsive state would nurture all its daughters and sons. In Punjab the government has other priorities, like fighting for gurdwaras and building memorials.
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Thought for the Day
What I am looking for is a blessing not in disguise.
— Jerome K. Jerome
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Punjab loyalty IF any proof were needed of the deep and unswerving loyalty of the Punjab, and of its unflinching resolve to stand by the great and glorious Empire to which it is privileged to belong, Saturday's meeting of the citizens of Lahore furnished it is an eloquent and unmistakable manner. The large and representative gathering of people of all classes of the community, men belonging to different faiths and persuasions was imbued with one feeling of genuine loyalty and devotion to the beloved King-Emperor and his Government, inspired by one resolve to be of service to the Crown and the British nation at this great crisis. The Hon'ble Sir P.C. Chatterji, who presided over the meeting, struck the key-note when he said that during the last hundred and fifty years India had grown and prospered under the aegis of the British Crown and the British people. England's rule had been benign and its institutions liberal, and it behoved them, now that England was confronted with a great European crisis, to place their all at the disposal of their Sovereign and his Government.
Gold mania and the war LALA Sada Nand who was one of the speakers at the Lahore public meeting on Saturday made two excellent and practical suggestions for the consideration of loyal Indians. He said that they should not rush to Banks and Treasuries for the encashment of currency notes or for discounting Government Paper, and secondly that they should hand over the sovereigns and rupees they had with them to Treasuries and Banks in exchange for notes or invest their money in Government Paper. Well, that is a practical suggestion for all who have money and who are willing to demonstrate their firm belief in the British
raj.
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Russian ban: A blessing in disguise? Russia has hit back against the economic sanctions that the US and its allies had recently imposed on targeted Russian individuals and economic entities due to Russia's intervention in Ukraine. The Russian retaliation consists of a ban on food imports from the US and its allies and a possible ban on the use of Russian airspace for Western aircraft. It is particularly the ban on food imports such as meat, fish, dairy products and processed food from the US, Canada, Europe, Australia and Norway that has far-reaching implications for the global economy and politics due to the importance of food in everyday life anywhere in the world but more so for low-income households whose proportion of income spent on food is relatively high. The Russian ban would accentuate the global food crisis in the short run but in the long run, it may prove to be a blessing in disguise by triggering food policies in many countries, if not globally, towards food self-dependence and sovereignty. Since about 2007, the world has been witnessing a global food crisis mainly in the form of food shortages and a rise in prices. The four major causes of the rise in food prices are: global decline in area under cultivation for food crops due to a rising demand for land for growing bio-fuel crops; the rise in population; the changing pattern of food consumption toward non-vegetarian food among the growing prosperous middle classes in BRICS and other emerging economies, but especially in China that leads to rise a in the allocation of land for raising cattle and for growing cattle fodder; and big food speculators' role in causing temporary market shortages. The Russian ban on food imports from the US and other countries will cause many local and national dislocations in food supply and availability, and would force many readjustments in global food export-import structure. For example, Russia is likely to turn to Brazil for meat imports and possibly to New Zealand for imports of milk products. The food exporters from the US and other countries hit hard with this ban would try to find markets for their products in other countries. This will result in a rise in prices of some of these food products, especially in Russia, but also a decline in some others such as that of bacon from Canada that cannot be easily redirected to many countries, especially in the Middle East, due to religious taboo against bacon consumption among the Muslims and the Jews. The increased instability in the global food market will certainly cause many hardships but it is also likely to focus attention on the need for national food sufficiency and food security. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) and global agro-business corporations have been trying to push the doctrine and regime of unrestricted and borderless trade in food which has faced criticism from many national governments, environmentalists and food health specialists. The recent failure of the WTO negotiations due to India's justified demand to insist on inserting in trade agreements the right to secure food security by national food policies that include giving subsidies to national food producers has already brought to global attention the need for recognising the issue of food sovereignty. In order to deal with reduced food supplies from the West, Russia is bound to increase its efforts now to increase domestic food output which will further undermine WTO’s food policy. It is becoming increasingly clear that globalisation by pushing global trade in food has made many food-importing countries vulnerable to economic and political blackmail by food exporting countries. I have examined in depth in my book "Federalism, Nationalism and Development: India and the Punjab Economy" that the push for the Green Revolution in Punjab leading to increased food production came from India's need to seek autonomy from food dependence upon America when America had tried to subject India to political blackmail in the context of regional South Asian conflicts. Another imperative for local food dependence and food sovereignty comes from the huge environmental implications of growing international trade in food products. The global food industry has been systematically trying to influence the food habits of well-off consumers worldwide in favour of a variety of food products that de-emphasise the value of local food and glamourise imported food. The increased international trade in food as a result of consumption styles oriented towards imported food contributes to growth in transportation and gas emissions which, in turn, contribute to the biggest threat humanity is facing i.e. global climate change. From a healthy lifestyle point of view, it is now increasingly being recognised that food imported from a country thousands of miles away is subjected to a variety of preservatives to prolong its life and is of lower food value in comparison with the fresh locally produced food. This realisation is giving birth to a positive movement of growing local food markets almost all over the world. The argument in favour of food self-dependence, food security and food sovereignty is not an argument in favour of autarchy. On the contrary, the food sovereignty movement recognises the need for human solidarity in the form of emergency food aid in situations of natural disasters such as droughts and floods. Similarly, some geographical regions that have desert-like conditions deserve food support from other regions. Under normal conditions, most regions of the world are endowed naturally to produce food for local needs. The immediate crisis of instability in the global food market caused by the Russian ban on food imports from the US and its allies may, therefore, turn out to be a blessing in disguise by giving a push to local food production and strengthening the movement for food sovereignty. It may also lead to new global alignments between countries such as Russia, India and other emerging economies to question the WTO regime that tends to ignore the justified demand of many countries for food security. — The writer is a Professor of Economics at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK
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Their tea vs my ‘masala chai’ So, we had a small electric heater to do some basic cooking, a makeshift water-heating emulsion road, an iron and some more stuff which was not allowed. Out of the whole lot, the heater was very important as it helped us keep hunger and sleep at bay at all odd hours. Also, it being a girls' hostel, the gates closed at 8 pm and we were not allowed to go out after that. So the heater was really a lifeline whenever we felt hungry at night (and believe me when you live in a hostel, hunger pangs at night are a frequent occurrence). Maggi and 'chai', especially 'masala chai' boiled Indian style, were often the most favourite as these were the easiest to make. Since it was a hostel and our crockery options were limited, we used to drink tea in large steel glasses. So the hot, steaming steel glasses of 'chai' were the drink of life and came handy during the long winter nights. In fact, till today I have not been able to shake off this 'chai' habit, though large mugs have replaced steel glasses. But in those days this boiled strong 'chai', with 'adrak' (ginger) and 'saunf' (fennel) was almost an addiction and it was impossible to drink tea in any other way. It still is. During those days I had to go to England for a couple of months. The major problem or rather adjustment was of course about food. But even more than food, it was for the 'masala chai' that I was exhibiting withdrawal symptoms. Because you may find replacements for everything Indian abroad but how do you replace a teabag with our typical mix of 'chhotti patti-badi patti' tea leaves. You may boil a tea bag forever but the taste would never be the same. But here too our Indian 'jugaad' system came to my rescue. I would simply cut open two tea bags and boil them the Indian style to satisfy my addiction for fennel-flavoured 'chai'. One day, my hosts' neighbour came over for the elevenses. While they had their tepid English tea, I happily boiled and brewed my 'chai'. The neighbour asked me if I was having a different flavour of tea as the colour of my 'chai' was as Indian as me. Before I could reply, my hostess explained embarrassingly about my addiction to boiled tea and blamed my living in a hostel for having acquired this habit, as if it was a contagious disease I had contacted. I came back to India bearing the stigma of having acquired the taste for boiled 'masala chai'. Years later, I went for a book launch by chef Vikas Khanna, known as the poster boy of Indian cuisine in America. He has penned many coffee-table books for international readers. As I flipped through the glossy pages of his latest book, sitting pretty among many recipes was a recipe of cinnamon-fennel 'chai'. I could not stop grinning. Here was an Indian teaching 'firangs' how to make 'masala chai'. It has been a long wait but this inclusion has finally redeemed my so-called addiction. Thank you, chef!
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There are no winners in the game The
elephant is already in the room and surely by invitation this time. A panic-stricken civilian administration has handed over the security of the nation's capital to the army at its own peril.
The Triple One Brigade, whom we hear about mostly in times of military coups, is now deployed around key government installations. All this is happening as Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri threaten, separately, to force the government out through a “revolution march”, providing enough fuel to keep alive our ever-active rumour mill. The development is ominous nonetheless. One does not expect anything like the storming of the Bastille on August 14. Neither Khan's young brigade, nor Qadri's few thousand fanatical followers are the vanguard of revolution. But the government's own ineptness and paralysis is proving to be its unravelling. An absentee prime minister, a sulking interior minister and some other irrelevant members of the cabinet do not evoke much public faith in a crumbling power structure. True to his self, Nawaz Sharif plans to counter the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s (PTI) long march with unprecedented pomp and show on Independence Day, starting with a military parade and the hoisting of supposedly the biggest-ever national flag. Curiously, this military drill is not a routine part of Independence Day celebrations; it is taking place as the civilian administration has abdicated the responsibility of security of the capital, leaving it to the army to handle reported terrorist threats. This lends some credence to the opposition allegation that it is a deliberate move by the government to involve the military in the political conflict — with dangerous consequences. For sure, Article 245 has routinely been used in conflict zones in order give legal cover to security forces fighting insurgencies. But this provision has rarely been invoked in urban areas in times of peace. It was in 1977 that the army was summoned by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto at the height of the Pakistan National Alliance movement in Lahore and Karachi under Article 245. And that “mini martial law” was perhaps the beginning of the end of the Bhutto government. Article 245 was later also invoked by Nawaz Sharif in Karachi in 1998. Surely one cannot draw a parallel between the situation then and now, but the outcome may not be very different. What is worse this time is that the army has been called in even though there has not been any serious incident of violence or a law-and-order situation that cannot be handled by civil law-enforcement agencies. One wonders whether it is pure naivety on the part of the prime minister or whether he actually believes the army will come to his rescue in a time of crisis. Sharif needs to take a lesson from history for his own sake. One oft-repeated argument offered by the government is that the invocation of Article 245 was linked with the operation in North Waziristan meant to give legal cover to the troops dealing with any militant backlash. But why has this only been exercised in Islamabad? Why not Peshawar, Lahore or Karachi? Interestingly, the provision has been invoked more than six weeks after the start of the operation. Is there any explanation for why now? Particularly since there has been virtually no major terrorist incident in the city during that period that it would require extraordinary measures? It is now open season with Khan and Qadri having clearly pronounced their intention of bringing down the Sharif government. They may not be following a prepared script, but it is apparent that they cannot achieve their goal in a constitutional way. There is no way Imran Khan can force early elections with his party's relatively small presence in Parliament. He certainly would not have the support of any other political party for his demand. Early elections would only be possible if Sharif agreed to dissolve the National Assembly. But why would he do that with no serious challenge emanating from within the house? The only option left to Imran Khan is to increase public pressure through violent street protests. It is a big gamble that may have worked in a cricket match but surely not in the complex game of politics. Assuming that the PTI is able to mobilise hundreds and thousands of people for a prolonged sit-in and completely paralyse the capital. A protracted stalemate with the government unable to use the coercive power of the state would inevitably lead to complete chaos and anarchy. This would strengthen the military's position as the sole arbiter of power. Much before this stand-off, the military had already started reasserting its authority through rising tension with the Sharif administration on Musharraf's treason trial and a host of other policy issues. The public profile of the military leadership has further risen with the North Waziristan operation. The well-publicised picture of army chief Gen Raheel Sharif spending Eid with his soldiers on the frontline and with the IDPs in Bannu came as a sharp contrast to Sharif — missing from the scene and spending time between his two favourite destinations — Saudi Arabia and Murree. Sharif's lacklustre attitude has increasingly raised questions about his leadership capability. All that was certainly in Imran Khan's calculations when he decided to up the ante, declaring war on the Sharif government. It is not going to be that simple. He seems to be in a hurry to grasp power, but he may not be the winner in the endgame. Army intervention, which he may well be aware of, would not put him on the throne. There is no probability of early elections even if Imran Khan is able to create a situation for Sharif's exit. It will not be the politicians, but the generals who would then decide the future course. It’s yet another episode of the Pakistani political soap opera, a
tragicomedy. By arrangement with the Dawn.
Banking on the army
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Perpetuating the fiction of the failed state These
are familiar questions in Pakistan's current dark times: Is the state failing, has it failed, will it fail? These are all questions that have appeared in ink in Pakistani newspapers, fallen from the lips of new analysts, been scattered around by politicians. A centrepiece in the scientific analysis of governance, a sense of gravity, is invested in the idea; and, consequently, “state failure” is imagined as an objective standard against which existing inadequacies can be tabulated. In the chaos of Pakistani politics — the inveterate corruption, the endemic nepotism, the lack of oversight and objectivity — the prospect of standards, especially objective ones, gleams and glistens. In this climate of developing-nation despair, therefore, the term “failed” state has been embraced. Foreign commentators, many of whom make their living on their expertise on Pakistan's unravelling, have offered their own affirmations. Writing in 2012, following the immediate release of the Failed States Index 2012, Robert Kaplan — the chief geopolitical strategist for Stratfor — dictatorially declared: “Perversity characterises Pakistan.” Many of his ilk have happily followed suit, heaping all sorts negative terms, each supposedly attached to the pristine numerical objectivity of the “failed states measure”. As it turns out, the term “failed state” is a hoax designed precisely to capitalise on the insecurities of struggling sovereignties like Pakistan. In an article published in the Guardian newspaper over a year ago, commentator Elliott Ross exposed both the term's origins and the nefarious intentions for whose fulfilment it was coined. The term and the Failed States Index which accompanies it is the child of a man named J.J. Messner, a former lobbyist for the private military industry. Not only does Mr Messner not disclose this inconvenient fact about his past employment history, he also refuses to release any of the raw data that goes behind the index that he publishes. Despite this, many political scientists who are usually quite vigilant about trawling through each other's data to verify claims have accepted the presence of the index in their midst. As Ross explains, this is not an accident. The term itself was coined by two men, Gerald Helman and Steven Ratner, both employees of the US State Department in 1992. In an article appearing in Foreign Policy (which also hosts the dubious index, that has since been renamed the Fragile States Index), the duo argued that new countries emerging on the world's map were incapable of functioning or sustaining themselves as members of the international community. What these weak countries (which, it was implied, were near-delusional in imagining themselves as functioning equally in the international realm) needed was the “guardianship” of the Western world. This, in turn, would ensure the “survivability” of these poor hapless countries (Pakistan among them). In simple terms, the idea of state failure itself was premised on the assumption that weak or new states should allow and welcome intermeddling from Western overlords whose “guardianship” was really something to be grateful for. Unsurprisingly, in the years hence, the term has become a mainstay of justifying interventions and intermeddling via the “guardian” countries themselves or international institutions whose hold over global economics permits them similar licence. An attached plethora of jargon has emerged to support and affirm the concept, which is now alloyed with partners such as “ungoverned spaces”. All of them are geared towards the central purpose of defining countries in the developing world as crucially, inherently and ultimately lacking. The moral underpinning of this framing is that imperial overreach is not something dirty and unwarranted, colonial and corrupt, but necessary, even benevolent. The intervening states are grandfathering, helping along, assisting, and aiding. They are not meddling, provoking, or engaging in self-interested puppetry geared towards accomplishing their own strategic interests, positioning their pawns for their own proxy wars. Words and typologies determine the way we see the world and our own position in it. The dominance of the jargon of state “failure” means not simply the lens of the world averted from the moral wrongs that emit from intermeddling but also Pakistan's own image of itself. Poised against the idea that Pakistan is a “failed” country, the definition of nationalism or its attached patriotism becomes in turn equally deluded. If the world heaps the vacuous term “failure” in order to whitewash the strategic intermeddling of the more powerful on our borders, those opposing it imagine global isolation as a response. In this oppositional game, opposing the vocabulary of failure seems to require, in turn, a denial of all inadequacies, an imagined utopian purification all poised on a turning away from the world. The cumulative result is a double distortion, where actual problems are hidden away under the dictates of political gloss from within countries or from their would-be overlords without. In studying international politics and global demarcations, those who are or would-be analysts of Pakistan's condition, or of the post-colonial quandaries and infrastructural inadequacies of any developing country, must be wary of the vocabulary of development and global benevolence. In the proliferation of glib terms like “failure” and “rentier” and “ungovernability” are the mis-characterisations and deceptions of the new colonialism. Like the old, it presents the shadows of intervention as weightless and the obligations of aid as never, ever, nefarious. The arrangement of data, the selection of criterion, and the ranking of the always-wanting must, because of this, be open to epistemological questioning. The idea of the “failed” state is a fiction; digging out from its wreckage of selfhood and sovereignty requires not its discounting, but a double challenge that goes beyond both the incorrect characterisations of others and the real flaws we know to be our own. By arrangement with the Dawn. The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional law and political philosophy.
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Rafia Zakaria
I was living in a hostel in Panjab University during my post-graduation days almost two decades ago. During those days hostels provided very basic facilities. Not many things were allowed, especially electrical gadgets. But as is the wont of hostellers, they survive on the basic Indian philosophy of 'jugaad'. And the Sector 15 market supplied the rest, especially an interesting three-way-pin pre-fitted in a bulb holder, which allowed you to use many electrical gadgets with ease.
