Manzoor Isran's Blog

Politics of reconciliation

2011-10-07T00:34:00.000-07:00

By Manzoor Ali Isran

Reconciliation initiated by Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, with the aim to bring democracy back to the country, is showing apparent signs of strain and failure due to its alleged misuse on the part of ‘charming circle’ that surrounds President and Co-Chairperson of PPP Mr. Asif Ali Zardari.

Though the reconciliation had shown the signs of melting much earlier, severe blow to the concept have come with the recent fiery press conferences of Zulfikar Mirza recently, in which he has accused the party leadership for betraying the concept of reconciliation originally designed by MBB.

Prior to Mirza, so many senior and close associates of BB had cried over the mismanagement of reconciliation process. Aitzaz Ahsan differed with the leadership over the handling of lawyer’s movement for the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Ahmed Choudhery. Sherry Rehman opposed PPP policies with regard to media. Shah Mahmood Qureshi opposed the handling of Ramon Davis case. Senator Raza Rabani disagreed with the party leadership over its reconciliation with Q-League, whom President Asif Ali Zardari had called “Qatil League” in Naudodero soon after the assassination of MBB. Mirza differed above the over-reconciliation with MQM, which according to Mirza is the major source of chaos in the city.

Basically BB considered reconciliation key to the restoration of democratic process in the country. In this regard, she attempted to cultivate consensus amongst democratic forces on the one hand and on the other hand she negotiated with Musharraf about the transition to democracy. As a result, election were announced and held on Feb 18, 2008. But gloomy part of entire saga is that she lost her life at the hands of undemocratic and extremist on December 27, 2008. However, PPP won the election with majority of the seats. It formed coalition government at the center in Sindh and joined the government in Punjab and KPK as coalition partners.
If we analyze the original concept of ‘Reconciliation’ as discussed by BB in her book “Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West’, she basically tried to prove that there is no contradiction between Islam and democracy and the West should support democracy and democratic forces, instead of dictatorial regimes which are promoting the extremism and fundamentalist version of Islam in order to blackmail West. Furthermore, she also talked about reconciliation within the country amongst all the democratic forces in order to strengthen democracy and democratic practices.
She viewed reconciliation in broader spectrum and wanted to reconcile the contradiction within political forces in order to have viable socio-economic and cultural, legal and administrative order where civilians will have supremacy. Through reconciliation she wanted to establish good governance as way to the attainment of political stability, social justice, and economic parity amongst different classes of the society, legal equality in the eyes of law and administrative competence and efficiency.

Being visionary leader, she wanted to create healthy society by removing class conflict from the society through the establishment of egalitarian social system providing people with better chances of upward social mobility through the availability of education and health facilities.

But the attainment of egalitarian society is impossible without economic equality and opportunities to be provided to people at their door steps. For the economic prosperity of people, jobs are a key to be realized through investment in the industrial and agricultural sector all the way through public-private partnership.

Economy does not grow if country is rocked by political crisis. Pakistan’s major issue so far has been the unresolved national question. It is haunting the concept of national cohesion, integrity and unity since the creation of Pakistan. Unwillingness on the part of ruling classes to resolve this issue is the major hindrance in the creation of viable and strong Pakistan after the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971. BB realized the importance of this issue and she conceptualized reconciliation in cultural terms to allow people cultural freedom to construct their identities according to their customs and traditions. She wanted to have dialogue amongst different nationalities or ethnic groups constituting Pakistan to sort out identity crisis. This question has reared its head again and people are talking about different provinces to be created whether on the basis of ethnicity, administration or culture, history and geography.

But the important question is: national question cannot be resolved without constitutional guarantees with regard to the rights of different nationalities in the constitutions on the basis of ‘peaceful co-existence. In this regard BB was even ready to reconcile the constitutional provisions to protect the rights of different federating units. Nonetheless, the credit goes to present regime for bring 18th amendment under which power have been devolved to the provinces by scrapping concurrent list.

Largely, BB wanted to reconstruct and redefine the relationship between state and society to reconstruct and reorient politics in a way to pull Pakistan out of the morass of political instability, social and economic chaos characterized by the growing poverty and polarization. She wanted to achieve the core functions of state system such as good governance, minimization of corruption, building institutions, maintaining law and order in both rural and urban areas, providing justice to everyone and ensuring the welfare of the most vulnerable sections of the society.

Unfortunately, she was removed prematurely from the political scene and the mantle of power fell on the shoulder of her husband Asif Ali Zardari.

If we honestly and objectively assess the tenure of Asif Ali Zardari in the light of the reconciliation concepts unveiled by MBB, it is not only dismal for the common folks on the streets but causing frustration in the rank and file of the PPP. The common perception is that party has totally been hijacked by what critics call ‘charming circle’ of the President and politics revolves around the power rather than principles, for which BB laid down her life.

Nothing has been done with regard to the political stability, rule of law, delivery of social and economic justice. People are still languishing in the prison of poverty and lawlessness where the life and limb of people is not safe. Look at rural and urban Sindh which has been rocked by the terror of rain and reign of terror. It is all due to negligence of the regime to pay any attention towards the welfare of people and take institutional measures to improve law and order situation in urban areas which invariably are controlled by mafias.
rule of law and good governance where people would be able to empower themselves politically and economically and thereby would be able to enhance their capacities to live
To sum up, BB conceived reconciliation as a tool to bring and deepen democracy, coupled with descent life. Such dreams of BB have been thrown to the dustbin of history as PPP top leadership is busy in securing power at the cost of its core philosophy of “roti, kapra and makan”. It is just sad!

Reconstructing Pakistan

2011-08-16T03:50:00.000-07:00

By: Manzoor Ali Isran

As Pakistan has completed 64 years of its age, nation is still grappling with the fundamental issues of poverty, unemployment, inflation, bad governance, corruption, growing social and political polarization, dilapidating educational and health system and last but not least the worsening law and order situation that has turned Karachi from economic hub to killing ground where death squads are roaming around freely killing people at their will.

These all factors nullify the very idea behind the creation of Pakistan. Basically, there are two myths behind the creation of Pakistan. According to first one that Pakistan was created by the Muslims of the subcontinent to lead life free from the domination and influence of Hindhus keeping in view their experiences in different spheres of life.

Second myth says Pakistan was created as bargain between bunch of Muslim elite, consisting of politicians, merchant classes and bureaucracy, and colonial powers, with the purpose Muslim elite would secure their perks and privileges and in return colonial master would use Pakistan as its military outpost for proverbial ‘great game’.

The first myth does not hold ground in the wake of hegemonic order imposed on the state of Pakistan where the concern of the poor were relegated to the dustbin of elite and state emerged more mercantilist using the economy to strengthen state and power of the elite while ignoring the welfare of poor. State joined US-sponsored military pacts in order to secure military hardware from US and adopted laissez-faire economic model under which it allowed Harvard Economist to develop economic models integrating Pakistan within the global capitalist economy. In this regard, elitist educational institutions like IBA and PIDE were established to produce future class of development economist and CEOs to run economy and business in line with the principles of free market economy.

Under this model, state patronized merchant capital and as result 22 families were created, holding 86% of national wealth. This policy of state created regional inequalities which clearly fostered economic disparities between two wings of Pakistan.

On the political front, the gang of three – Ghulam Mohammad, Iskander Mirza and Ayub Khan – imposed their own hegemonic model of administration banning the political parties under Elective Bodies Disqualification Order (EBDO), patronized the class of industrialists and feudal who were loyal to the administration, subverted constitution, subjugated judiciary and controlled all lever of powers in order to increase the longevity of their power.

No doubt, all dictators from Ghulam Mohammad, Iskander Mirza, to Ayuba, Yahya, Zia, Musharraf have played havoc with democracy, a fundamental ideal of Pakistan, on which basis it was created. All the systems and measures they took negated the very essence of democracy and negated creation of Pakistan.

When General Musharraf was removed as result of ‘Black Coat Movement’, elections were held on Feb 18, 2008 and new democratic government took over power, most of the pro-democracy forces believed that it was new dawn for the democratic and developmental Pakistan. All the undemocratic actions of Musharraf will be rolled back, people will be empowered, power, resources, health and education will be distributed to the grassroots level without discrimination, governance will be democratized, corruption will be minimized, jobs will be created through the public-private partnership, especially in rural areas, law and order situation will be improved, more investment will flow into health and education and industry to create jobs in both rural and urban areas. But nothing of the sort has happened except NFC and 18th amendment in the constitution giving autonomy to the provinces but in real terms this autonomy has yet to be materialized.

64 years have passed and existing hegemonic order has given nothing except mayhem and misery to the common people and we are stuck in the vicious circle of political instability, poverty and violence. So keeping in view this situation, let us replace the existing hegemonic order with people-centered order ensuring protection of rights and identities of people according to their geography, culture and history.

HEC: Holy cow or culpirit

2011-04-18T11:27:00.000-07:00

By:
Manzoor Isran
Anam Tanveer

The Higher Education Commission (HEC), a supra body of higher education, answerable to no one and dictating its terms to the universities by pulling the financial strings, has been rescued by Supreme Court (SC) for the time being from devolution to provinces till a new legislation is promulgated.

HEC has survived the devolution stroke temporarily but the team of doctors, headed by Dr Javed Laghari, are required to work hard to survive and stay where they are right now -- that is, Islamabad. Dr Leghari is fervently spear-heading the movement by appearing on different talk shows along with using effectively social media such as Facebook and Twitter to mobilise the students, teachers and civil society against the government decision to devolve higher education. The latter is based on the 18th amendment passed unanimously by the parliament.

However, the democratic government at the center is seems adamant to go ahead with the decentralisation of higher education, considering that it can be better run and managed by the provinces if all administrative and financial powers shifted to the same.

There are two views about the government decision -- those against it say that the devolution of HEC is not part of the 18th amendment and it is protected by federal list; if anything it is a way for the government to settle scores with the HEC because the latter conducted the verification of fake degrees of the parliamentarians. I, however, am not inclined to buy this argument. If the government wants to settle scores, it can do so by removing Chairman Laghari and appointing in his place someone who has a soft spot for the government.

HEC critics have different views and they argue that the commission was created in 2002 by General Musharraf, with a view to project his image as a nation builder who brought qualitative change in the state of higher education. For this purpose, its budget was increased exponentially and all required powers and tools were given to HEC to overhaul the system of higher education in order to make it efficient and competitive. For this purpose, HEC introduced range of reforms such as setting up a digital library, hiring foreign faculty and introducing scientific research projects designed to tackle industrial, agriculture problems. It also launched the PhD Faculty scheme by making it mandatory for university teachers to have PhDs.

For the enforcement of its reform package, it adopted the monetarist approach on the pattern of the notorious ‘Structural Adjustment Programmes’ of IMF. This meant that universities were only funded if HEC conditionalities were implemented. Like SAPs, that have produced economic poverty in developing countries, the HEC reforms produced academic poverty, fake degrees, financial indiscipline, and corruption in most academically and administratively ailing universities. The HEC stance, based on the notion that ‘one size fits all’ and prescribing the ‘same medicine’ to each suffering university, played havoc with the system of higher education, breeding unprecedented corruption rather than bringing any fundamental change in the system of governance.

It was ridiculous to note that universities bereft of basic research infrastructure worked on expensive mega projects just for benefit of a few individuals who happened to be well connected to the ‘project mafia’ in HEC.

According to critics, mega projects, involving huge spending and thought to be a sophisticated way of siphoning off money on part of the HEC-University bureaucratic elite, failed to have any effect on the standard of teaching and research due to the rampant misuse of funds on the part of some universities, to which the HEC turned a blind eye. Its monitoring system was poor and evaluation utterly reckless. The main problem with HEC’s policies was that they were input-oriented and did not seem to be focused on the output.

The HEC often quantified its success by citing a rise in the number of publications and production of PhDs, without recognising the fact that these are nothing but mere pieces of doctored plagiarism. Most of the academics believed that the emergence of plagiarism was due to HEC’s hasty approach under which it hysterically pursued the goal of producing at least 1,500 PhD per year, without realising whether or not material conditions existed for such an adventure.

Interestingly, to achieve this number, HEC imposed the condition of PhD on existing faculty for promotions. So in order to meet that condition, teachers resorted to ‘quick-fix’ techniques of getting PhD degrees through cut-and-paste methods. As a result, the epidemic of plagiarism reared its ugly head and has emerged as an institutionalized business. There exist mafias operating from Karachi to Peshawar in different public and private sector universities. This mafia has ghost writers who write PhD dissertations on the payment of handsome amounts of money. The members of the mafia are well-connected to the administration of universities and wield huge political clout. Such activities basically tend to subvert the reformatory agenda of the HEC that it unveiled after its genesis in 2002.

Apparently, it seems impossible for the HEC to control plagiarism in the absence of any fool-proof mechanism. And whatever cases have been reported are due to the teachers’ rivalry. Unfortunately, HEC has so far has developed no mechanism to control it.

The failure of HEC is mainly attributed to two reasons. First, HEC adopted typical IMF-like monetarist approach while totally neglecting the nagging issue of governance in universities where reforms had to take place. It gave rise to unprecedented corruption and little was done to arrest its spiraling growth. Its monitoring system was so flimsy and fragile that it never attempted to ensure transparency and accountability in the management of its mega projects in which billions of rupees were involved. This phenomenon virtually led to the emergence of ‘millionaire vice chancellors’.

Another reason is the existence of the dual structure of higher education – financially universities are under the HEC and administratively they are under the provincial governors who happen to be representatives of the Federation of Pakistan. The HEC has no administrative control over the university; it has no control over the appointment of vice chancellors and governance of the universities as they happen to be the autonomous institutions with their own governance structure consisting of the senate, syndicate, academic council etc. Currently in Sindh, the posts of Vice Chancellors are sold through auctions and highest bidders are appointed as VCs and through HEC funds they pay ‘Bhatta’ (extortion money) to Chancellor office. HEC has totally turned blind eye to such practices. Instead of making hue and cry against the devolution, it should mobilize civil society and media against the selling of VCs posts in Sindh. Accroding to reports, the post of VC in Sindh University has been sold from Rs 40 millions. The question is: where from VC will get Rs 40 millions? The answer is from HEC funds given in the name of development.

Many academics believe that the dual structure is responsible for the creation of bad governance and corruption as the HEC has no control to impose fiscal discipline except requesting the governor/chancellor to do the same. I remember when the auditor general of Sindh, Nasreen Mehdi had written a letter to the HEC for taking action against the then vice chancellor of Khairpur University for committing gross financial irregularities; the commission did not do anything except for writing a letter to the chancellor himself. Not surprisingly, the latter did not do anything either for political reasons.

In the end, I would suggest that the PPP government has been elected by the people and has got mandate to reform the system of higher education either fully centralising, transferring powers of appointment to the vice chancellor as suggested in the model university act or devolve HEC to provinces fully. I don’t buy the argument of HEC chairman that provinces are ineligible and incompetent to manage the affairs of Higher Education. Undoubtedly, there are talented people a galore but appointment of such people is political issue and I hope PPP regime will show political will to make appointments on merit in order to achieve the goal of good governance which is key to institutional building.

Why Pakistan is predatory state

2010-07-10T04:49:00.000-07:00

By Manzoor Ali Isran

Introduction

Pakistani state is said to be typical predatory state. Instead of promoting peace through participation of people in the political and economic process, it is tends to promote violence and militarization of the minds of people by resorting to merciless killing of its own people who did not commit any crime except demanding their own constitutional rights to rule according their own wishes. This is the story of mass killing in East Pakistan in 1971, Baluchistan 1973 and during Musharraf period or currently Tribal Areas.

The indiscriminate killing of estimated 3 million Bengalis, including intellectuals and professors of Dhaka University, at the hands of Pakistan military has all the attributes of genocide comparable to holocaust in which around 6 million Jews were persecuted by the Nazis in the name of the purification of German nation. The people of East Pakistan were more patriotic and democrats than the people in West Pakistan but their crime was that they demanded devolution of power to provinces in the light of 1940 resolution, on which basis the Pakistan was created. Refusal to give them rights on the part of security establishment in West Pakistan pushed Bengalis to launch separatist movement which finally culminated into the breakup of Pakistan in 1971.

More or less is the situation nowadays in Baluchistan and Tribal areas where army is engaged in arresting, torturing and killing its own people. The death of Akbar Bugti is the glaring example of the brutalization of Baluchistan where the political matters are being resolved through military means. Though there is difference in the nature of insurgency in Baluchistan and Tribal area , one thing is clear that people don’t want to see the Islamabad to control, dictate and direct the destinies of masses. People of Baluchistan are struggling for their own rights of having ownership of their resources and administration. Their land and resources have been grabbed by outsider. Gawader port is example where most of the land has been sold to outsiders and their natural resources have been auctioned by the central state to multinational at throw away prices.

Tribal areas are facing the same situation where the hearth and home of people are being bombed and peace-loving people of FATA are being forced to leave their homes in search of safety. Historically, tribes living there has been loyal to Pakistan but unfortunately the security establishment time and again used them for the realization of ‘strategic depth’, a utopian goal of conquering Afghanistan and turning it into the Seattleite state of Pakistan to be used as sanctuary for the training of Mujahedeen who fighting in Kashmir. Up till now hundreds of thousands of innocent people have been killed in Swat and Tribal Areas as result of military operation and suicide bombing carried out by Taliban as retaliation.

So, the insurgencies in both Baluchistan and Tribal areas have become the bleeding wound of security establishment of Pakistan. And being students of Social Sciences, I don’t think they will end through military operation. Govt. needs to take political initiative, though some measures have already been taken. For example, In case of Baluchistan, Agaz-e-Haqook Blauchistan package has been announced, envisaging more funds and more powers to the sons of soil. And, in case of Tribal Areas democratic government has announced 3D policy – Dialogue, Development and Deterrence. This policy seems to be working but there is need to speed up the process of development in order to provide people with necessary socio-economic infrastructure so that minds of the people can be demilitarized.

State versus Nation
But the important question that is haunting the liberal minds: why Pakistani has become predatory state, killing its own people, instead of becoming democratic state promoting the values of freedom, respecting human rights, working for the welfare of common people who are mostly deprived of basic amenities of life, maintain law & order and provide people justice.

To find out answer to this question, let us discuss and analyze the nature of Pakistani state because it is the nature of state and state system that determines the relationship between state and nation which is consisting of different linguistic, cultural and ethnic groups.

Ernest Renan, a French philosopher and writer, disputes the primordial view that nations are somehow natural based on common race, religions, language or geographical zone. He presents the theory of national consciousness based on the foundation of collective memories of past glories and collective forgetting of past defeats and internecine massacres . While judging Pakistan as nation in the light of Renan’s national consciousness theory, I am sorry to say that Pakistan is a state without nation. Nations are not made overnight. They evolve with the passage of time by developing common culture and common national consciousness based on caring and sharing. Further, Renan puts strong argument that cultures are not given to people by nature but rather are constructed through collective action and reinforced through the manipulation of collective consciousness . Therefore the lack of common culture has resulted into the polarization of the society along with ethnic and sectarian lines and providing ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’ an opportunity to sale the ethnicity and sectarianism in the political market at the cost of the national integrity and unity. And this all has been done by military dictators, right from Ayub to Musharraf. They played havoc with the federation of Pakistan by using it to promote their own parochial interests, turning the Pakistan into ‘failure or weak state’.

Often, we have seen historically that weak states face problem of multiculturalism to handle, when there is cut throat power politics amongst different political groups on the basis of ethnicity, language and economic interests, there are no institutions, there are no organized political parties, there is no rule of law and there is no constitution and whatever attempts were made in the formative years with regard to the constitution making were sabotaged and subverted. Any mishandling results into the civil wars and mass killing. Past century is replete with such examples – Algerians against French, the Biafrans against Nigerians, Acehnese against Indonesian, Basque against Spaniards, Tibetans against Chinese, Palestinians against Israel, Afghans and Iraqis against Americans, Bengalis, Baluch against the state of Pakistan. Handling of multicultural society needs well defined political system, ensuring the protection of legal, economic and political rights of different groups that constitute nation. But unfortunately, Pakistan does not have that system and whatever attempts were made in the early years were sabotaged by the combo of civil-military bureaucracy because they were fearful that if political system based on the values of democracy and empowerment of different ethnic groups was formulated then the military Bonaparte will have no room to manipulate the system in their own power.

However, in order to understand the nexus between ethnic wars as result of ethnic resentment, let me cite here Horowitz’s resentment theory that argues that backward groups in economically disadvantaged regions have the greatest level of resentment and therefore highest motivation to seek session… this is because backward groups in backward regions have the greatest need for the restoration of self-esteem, and they are consequently willing to pay the highest cost at the earliest moment to regain it through the establishment of their own state .
While analyzing the situation in former East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, Baluchistan and South Waziristan, in the light of Horowitiz’s theory of resentment, there has been high degree of resentment against the state persecution of political groups who have remained in the forefront for demanding their rights in the light of 1940 resolution and vision of Quaid Azam, envisaging the establishment of democratic, developmental state on the basis of constitutionalism, with complete autonomy and devolution of powers to the federating units. 1940 Resolution says that India should be grouped to constitute “independent States” in which the constituent units should be autonomous and sovereign.

But this dream of Quid Azam and spirit of 1940 resolution went sour, when Pakistan became the cauldron of political struggle between the centre and different federating units, unleashing political, economic and social chaos and shredding the unity and integrity of the country and finally resulting into its dismemberment of Pakistan after the killing of around 3 million Bengalis through the acts of genocide against the people of East Pakistan who were more peace loving and rendered more sacrifices than any ethnic group for the creation of Pakistan.
But it is unfortunate that the spirit of 1940 resolution was corrupted when objective resolution was passed in 1949. It replaced the word sovereign and autonomous units and presented establishment of centralized state with Islam as state religion. It was clear cut deviation from Jinnah’s liberal and democratic Pakistan. It was all done under the influence of religious parties who were vying for the establishment of theocratic state. It sowed the seeds of religious disharmony and future chaos on the basis of sectarianism.
According to some studies, the passing of objective resolution was not without the intention on the part of some self centered quarters to realize their petty interest at the cost of the country’s unity. It laid down the basis for discord and resentment between centre and provinces, especially people in East Pakistan felt betrayed and marginalized due to the skewed policies pursued by Islamabad. The Bengalis were treated with much jaundice by their counterparts in West Pakistan. They were denied of their due economic rights. Apart from economic and administrative injustices, one of the most divisive issues confronting Pakistan in its infancy was the question of what official language of the new state was to be. Quaid Mohammad Ali Jinnah while yielding to the demands of refugees from Bihar and Utter Pradesh declared Urdu as official language. This declaration caused ripples of anger in East Pakistan, Sindh Baluchistan and Punjab, with the feeling that their languages were given second class status.

While addressing students in Dhaka University in 1948, he declared Urdu as national language and rejected the demand of Bengali people to declare Bengla as second national language of Pakistan. The argument of Jinnah was that “without one state language no nation can remain solidly together and function” . I think this was show of shortsightedness on the part of politician like Jinnah. He must have known that Pakistan was not one linguistic community, rather it was multilingual and multicultural society, divided by geography, and imposing one language of refugees on the rest of the country was like playing with fire. It was the languages issue that mobilsed the masses and finally forced the National Assembly to designate Urdu and Bengali and other such other languages as may be declared to be the official languages of Pakistan.

In most of the cases languages serves as proxy for national identities . And this is true in case of people of East Pakistan; they felt strongly for their language which they want to be recognized as national language. But, under the state discourse, the Pakistani state forcefully presented Urdu as general will of people in both the wings and language of the elitist political centre was imposed on the provinces that finally led to the resentment which quickly turned into violence . The Bengalis of East of Pakistan constituted a majority (as estimated 54 percent) of Pakistan entire population but their language was not given the status of national language. That was the turning point in the whole movement of separation.
We have studied in political science that politics is about agreements, accommodation, cooperation and above all living and sharing together. But in case of relationship between the two wings of Pakistan, we did see that there was lack of caring and sharing due to growing mistrust between the hegemonic civil-military bureaucracy of Western Wing and political parties of East Pakistan. They wanted weak centre and strong provinces and majority rule under the principle of democracy. And that was one of the reasons that democracy was not favoured as political system by the hegemonic security establishment of West Pakistan in the formative years.
However, the shrewd and cunning civil and military bureaucracy, appointed Prime Minister from East Pakistan such as Nazimuddin, Mohad Ali Bogra, Chaudhery Mohammad Ali and Hussain Shaheed Suhrawardy with the aim to deal with the growing weave of nationalism in the Eastern Wing, demanding equal distribution of power and resources on the basis of population.

Just to quash this demand and counter the numerical majority of East Pakistan, in 1955 one unit was declared by amalgamating all the provinces into one province called West Pakistan. Further, the continuation of injustices being committed against the people of East Pakistan finally led to declaration of 6 points by Shaikh Mujeeb Rehman. These are

1. The constitution should provide for a Federation of Pakistan in its true sense on the Lahore Resolution and the parliamentary form of government with supremacy of a legislature directly elected on the basis of universal adult franchise.
2. The federal government should deal with only two subjects: defence and foreign affairs, and all other residuary subjects shall be vested in the federating states.
3. Two separate, but freely convertible currencies for two wings should be introduced; or if this is not feasible, there should be one currency for the whole country, but effective constitutional provisions should be introduced to stop the flight of capital from East to West Pakistan. Furthermore, a separate banking reserve should be established and separate fiscal and monetary policy be adopted for East Pakistan.
4. The power of taxation and revenue collection shall be vested in the federating units and the federal centre will have no such power. The federation will be entitled to a share in the state taxes to meet its expenditures.
5. There should be two separate accounts for the foreign exchange earnings of the two wings; the foreign exchange requirements of the federal government should be met by the two wings equally or in a ratio to be fixed; indigenous products should move free of duty between the two wings, and the constitution should empower the units to establish trade links with foreign countries.
6. East Pakistan should have a separate militia or paramilitary forces.

Six points were not only rejected by West Pakistan political and military leadership by saying that the six points amounts to treason. And this was used as pretext to carry out military operation codenamed Operation Searchlight which was designed to curb the Bengali nationalist movement by taking control of the major cities on 26 1971. Dhaka University, which was the epicenter of the movement, was the main target and whole of Dhaka was in flames by the night. According to International media reports around 3 million people are cold bloodedly murdered . But this figure has been contested by Hamood-ur-Rehman commissions finding, according to which around 26000 people were shot down by Pakistan military .

Military operation, instead of curbing the violence produced more violence and anarchy in East Pakistan to the extent that situation went out of control and proved to be last straw on camel’s back. Shaikh Mujeeb was arrested; special tribunal was established to try him for treason. But the severity of the resistance was such Military could not process case and in the meantime Shaikh Mujeeb declared the independence of Bangladesh. As such the dream of Pakistan as viable and democratic state based on two nation came to an end.

Most analysts see the military operations, killing thousands of people in East Pakistan, Baluchistan and Tribal areas as a part of the failure of the Third World states to settle nationality/ethnic problems in the post-colonial era. There are some studies that show that such states as became independent after decolonisation with weak political systems and fragile socio-economic structures still suffer from ethnic enigma, political polarisation and lack of national cohesion . And Pakistan belongs to the category of states where large ethnic communities co-exist within the same territory, but without having strong feeling about belonging to the same nation. That is why some studies call Pakistan a ‘state-nation’ rather than a ‘nation state’.

According to another opinion, the reason for Pakistan being a weak state was due to the kind of ideology that came to dominate the national political landscape after its creation as state nationalism, rather than popular nationalism with a strong foundation in civil society. The lack of initial congruence between state and nationalities, forming Pakistan, has often negatively impacted upon economic and social development, mainly by diverting resource from development efforts to conflicts between state and ethnic groups. The conflict in Baluchistan and Tibal Areas is a political and economic drain on national unity and resources.
Here the study of Christopher Clapham offers very plausible insights into the lack of congruence between state and nation: a distinguishing feature of the post-colonial states just after independence was a combination of power and fragility. He argues that states were powerful on account of their well-organised civil-military bureaucracies, which they took over from the colonial rulers. But they were at the same time fragile because these bureaucracies have to exercise their power in societies which were not integrated political communities . It was, therefore, of great importance for these bureaucracies and the new political rulers to initiate an integration process, i.e., nation-building process.

Analysing Pakistan’s situation in the light of this study, it was unfortunate that after Pakistan’s creation our ruler focused more on state-building rather than nation-building. The state-building policy was aimed at territorial integrity, if necessary by force. Indian animosity was shown as the main reason for this. This helped military-civil bureaucracy and new elite class to grab power through extra-constitutional means, resulting in the marginalisation of political forces from corridors of power and death of democracy.

National integration was scarified at the altar of rulers’ personal ambitions and, hence, the creation of national feeling sufficiently widespread and adequately strong to unite vast majority of the population within the same political community was overlooked. Instead, politics was ethicised.

Conclusion

Basically, Pakistan was created as democratic state committed to the welfare of common people but due to imagined Indian threat state was turned into security state and became dependent on US for its military assistance. The people who talked about their rights under 1940 resolution were dubbed as enemies and subjected to torture and killing. Pakistani state need to change its security concept in the light of new challenges thrown up by the force of globalisation and the emergence of new social and political forces on the domestic front.
The concept of national security has undergone much change since the end of the Cold War and the rising tide of globalisation making the national borders irrelevant.
Pakistan needs to address new emerging issues of human rights, identity, nationality, economic insecurity, population movements, religious intolerance, construction of controversial dams, etc. President General Musharraf himself had admitted that Pakistan faces more internal threats to its security than external ones.

For better understanding, if we disaggregate national security, it is divided into state security and societal security. The former is based on territorial security whereas the latter is centred on the identity. Weakening of territorial security, due to influences of globalisation, has left identities ever more exposed and threatened.

Therefore, whenever the identities of people, whether religious, sectarian, political, ethnic or cultural, are threatened by the state, people react by fighting back. In this regard, the loss of East Pakistan in 1971 is a glaring example. This also holds true in the case of Baluchistan and Waziristan where people are fighting for their rights to protect their identities and socio-economic and political rights.
We need to shun the militarised concept of security and expand its horizons by incorporating the principles of freedom, human rights, welfare, socio-economic justice, and empowerment of the marginalised. Unless this is done people will be justified in thinking that it is their own state, not the enemy from outside, that is the primary security threat.

It is hoped that a security policy will be developed that is guided by national needs based on socio-economic justice and adherence to rule of law. Otherwise, not only will our national security be in jeopardy but the country’s very survival will at stake. We have already seen states more powerful than Pakistan crumble under the weight of declining economies, alienation of people and soaring military expenditure.

References & Notes
-----------------------------------------
Imtiaz, Historicizing 1971 Genocide, Genocide, State versus Perosn.
Blauch Insurgency is more nationalist designed to realize the rights of people of Baluchistan whereas the insurgency in Tribal area more state patronized.
David D. Laitin, 2007, Nation, States and Violence, Oxford University Press
Ibid
Ibid
http://pakistaniat.com/2007/03/22/march-23-1940-pakistan-day-resolution-lahore-qarardad-minto-park/ (11/4/2010)
Imtiaz, Historicizing 1971 Genocide, Genocide, State versus Person
http://www.mongabay.com/history/bangladesh/bangladesh-transition_to_nationhood,_1947-58_pakistan_period,_1947-71.html. (April 13, 2010)
On Feb 22, 1952, a demonstration was carried out in Dhaka in which students demanded equal status of Bangla. The police reacted by firing on the crowed and killing two students. A memorial, the Shaheed Minar, was built later to commemorate the martyrs of the language movement.
David D. Laitin, 2007, Nation, States and Violence, Oxford University Press
http://www.mongabay.com/history/bangladesh/bangladesh- transition_to_nationhood,_1947-58_pakistan_period,_1947-71.html (April 13, 2010).
Virtual Bangladesh : History : The Bangali Genocide, 1971
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamoodur_Rahman_Commission (April 13, 2010)
Martinussen Joh, 1997, Society, State & Market, Zed Books, London
Ibid.

Branding Pakistan

2010-07-07T23:25:00.000-07:00

By Manzoor Ali Isran

Now days Pakistan as country is facing image problem in the global community; it is the country that is closely identified with fundamentalism, extremism, and terrorism. It is the country that is the incubator of jehadis. It is the country that is being blamed by international community for exporting terrorism in the world. It is the country that is ranked at 141 out of 177 countries. It is the country that is identified with rampant corruption and bad governance, over which global developmental and financial institutions have been showing their deep concern from time to time. It is the country that is frequently dubbed as failed state or dysfunctional state. It is the country where 62 million people living below poverty line despite being nuclear power. It is country that has totally deviated from the ideals on which basis it was created. It is the country where frequent human rights violations take place and women are raped daringly and paraded nakedly in the streets.

For this image of Pakistan, most of analysts blame the Brand Mangers working within security establishment of Pakistan. Over the time they have turned it from democratic and developmental state to security state spending more on defense and less on development.

However, image of Pakistan as ‘terrorist state’ draws serious concern from our youth who feels embarrassed and try to change this imagery by coming out with different ideas. Recently S ZABIST some students of MBA led by Anam Tanveer took a project “Branding Pakistan”.

Anam, in her research projects has given a practical example of the problems which are tarnishing the image of Pakistan in the comity of nations. These problems range from terrorism to the degeneration of education, health, governance, social justice system, asymmetric gender relationship, etc.

Anam is right when she says that our students are full of ideas, verve and vigour to change the destiny of the nation, provided they are given the right kind of environment where they can exploit their potential to benefit society.
Currently, Pakistan has one of the largest numbers of young people, with some 25 million people between the ages of 15 and 24. This constitutes a huge pool of productive workforce and can play a crucial role in social, political and economic development of the country. But this requires better political environment, just social order and equal economic and educational opportunities on the basis of equity and equality for everyone. And for this, the country needs liberal, democratic and plural political system.

Unfortunately we are living in a suffocating and close environment, which breeds hopelessness and disenchantment in our youth. Anam further argues that because of such suffocation most students are looking abroad for their future instead of utilising their potential for their country’s development. Political instability, growing insecurity and lack of job opportunities are some of the factors that force students to go aboard and settle there. To stop this brain drain, the country needs a stable socio-economic and political system, argues Anam.

Today our society looks like an inferno where poverty and violence are pervasive, driving youth to join the ranks of militants and take up arms instead of books. The creeping Talibanisation or the current state of insurgency in the resource-rich Balochistan and frustration of the youth in Sindh are the logical upshot of social and economic and educational injustices being committed by state institutions against the poorer section of society.

Poverty and violence are unequivocally consuming our youth in different ways and forms. We need to address this issue on a war footing. In this regard, the state must act quickly to bring reforms in public-sector educational institutions, which at the moment are in bad shape. That has candidly been admitted by Pir Mazharul Haq, provincial education minister, in his article, recently published in a local Sindhi daily.

In fact, any deterioration in education has not only internal consequences but external too. Our international allies and donors are apprehensive about the precarious nature of our education system and, according to them; this is one of the contributing factors in the proliferation of militancy.

In fact globalization integrates countries, economically and culturally and brings so many benefits to the countries in terms of trade, investment and labor moment from one country to other. But due to the bad image, country has suffered a lot. According some reports it has lost Rs 35 billion in tourist industry. Moreover, no new investment is coming to Pakistan due to violence and political instability. Pakistan is basically labor surplus country, mainly exporting labor to the Middle East, Europe, Australia and USA and etc but due to Islamic Fundamentalist image attached to the country, the labor is facing problems. The labor importing countries are unwilling to receive labor from Pakistan and they prefer to import labor from either from India, Bangladesh and other countries in the region.

However, if we want to change the image of Pakistan, we need to pay attention to the ideas of youth and take practical steps to institutionalize them. This is a time we should not only listen to our youth but involve them in order to build progressive Pakistan. This way, we can only brand Pakistan as democratic, developmental peaceful state in global community.

Ugly face of Oil and Gas Companies in Sindh

2010-02-26T04:37:00.000-08:00

By Manzoor Ali Isran

As the economic activities of MNCs are expanding throughout the Third World countries, the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is emerging as quite interesting field of study. It is being taught both in business studies and social sciences where students learn about the social responsibilities of corporation.

Basically Corporate Social Responsibility is the continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large.

Further, CSR is about capacity building for sustainable livelihoods. It respects cultural differences and finds the business opportunities in building the skills of employees, the community and the government. CSR is about business giving back to society.

But unfortunately, in most of the Third World countries multinational corporation are not honoring CSR, largely due to weak governments headed by corrupt politician and rent-seeking bureaucracies, which often fail to implement policies on CSR. The government, instead of protecting human rights is protecting corporate rights and their brutal exploitation.

To take one example from among many from Sindh, where about dozen oil companies are operating in the drilling of oil and gas in different districts but ironically none of the companies are honoring CSR and are blind to human needs.
Sindh is oil and gas rich province, producing almost 72% of total oil& gas production of Pakistan but economically it is still one of the backward provinces, with soaring poverty, high rate of unemployment and widening inequalities between rural and urban Sindh.

Recently, I was invited by Participatory Development Initiative (PDI) to attend seminar on CSR at Regent Plaza. It has always been my passion that we should provide opportunities to our students to participate in such seminar and get firsthand knowledge about the activities of MNCs. So I requested the organizer to allow me to bring some students to participate. They kindly agreed and allowed me 5 students to participate. I was so happy over this and asked BS Social Sciences students and finally Dilaira, Kiren Waheed and Batool Aqil, Sanam Kalhoro and Sana Iqbal participated.

Seminar started with speeches of the people hailing from Dadu, Badin and Ghotki where oil and gas companies are operating. It was firsthand knowledge we got from people at grassroots and first victims of corporate brutalities.

They shared with us harrowing stories of the suffering of the people caused by unethical activities of oil companies in total contradistinction to CSR. For example, according to CSR, oil companies have to spend 1% of their earnings on the development of the local areas to establish schools and hospital and building roads but nothing of the sort is happening. They opined when oil and gas were explored, they thought that poverty in the region would be history but on the contrary it was increasing and they were poorer today than before the discovery of oil and gas. People from outside are being given preference over the local people in employment and oil & gas companies have in cahoots with government illegally occupied land in the oil and gas producing areas. They told that people were being put behind bars for their resistance against violation of CSR by these companies.

Further, organizer told us that according to CSR, the oil companies are supposed to give production bonus to be spent on the development of the area. But to the consternation of audience, production bonus was given to federal government. PDI took initiative to talk to Sindh government which was quite negligent of bonus production. Finally, after long advocacy and struggle Rs 2.5 billion were given to Sindh government and surprisingly that money is still lying in the coffers of Sindh government, not being spent on the socio-economic development of oil producing districts.

More chilling was the documentary prepared by the Oxfam GB in collaboration with PDI, exposing the ugly face of oil & gas Companies ruthlessly exploiting the land and lives of people. The documentary showed how poisonous chemicals are being released into the water, converting sweet water into bitter one causing lethal kind of skin diseases to men, women and children. It was harrowing and blot on the face of companies.

What we learnt from participating in the seminar was that the people of Sindh need to launch aggressive awareness campaign throughout the province, especially in the universities, to pressurize oil & gas companies to fulfill their social responsibilities.

After seminar, I asked my students to give me feedback, which I want to share with you.

Dilaira Mondegarian
“It was surely an eye-opening Seminar. I'm so proud of my province now and it was definitely worth waking up at 8 in the morning on my day off. Thank you so much. I've already started the process of awareness; my father was my first target”

Kiran Waheed

"Sir, it was a great experience and we're very grateful to you for providing us with an opportunity like this. Though a major chunk of the seminar was in Sindhi, we still learnt a lot about CSR and b/c of the facts they provided us with we learnt even more. It was truly fun and enlightening. Thank you"

"We hope for and look forward to more opportunities like this where we can hear the voice of the people and get an insight on what is actually happening not just in Sindh but in Pakistan as a whole so we can take spread awareness and take a stand! It was a very enjoyable experience”

Batool Aqil

“Yes sir we enjoyed it, it was interesting to know how multinationals exploit people and resources and we also plan to present this topic in class”

I feel if our youth thinks in that way, days are not far off to bend corporation on their backs to fulfill their social commitments by following CSR in letter and spirit.

How IMF generates poverty

2010-01-10T21:11:00.000-08:00

By Manzoor Ali Isran

IMF has released the fourth tranche of $ 1.2 billion as part of 11.3 billion stabilization programme offered by IMF. This is being heralded as recognition of government’s efforts to follow IMF policies which are designed to bring macroeconomic stability in the country.

Pakistan joined structural adjustment programme amid economic crises caused by spike in the international commodity prices, including oil, in the international market and wrong economic policies of Musharraf regime. It had devastating impact on the economy and politics.

The new democratic government, which was installed as result of Feb 18 election in 2008, faced uphill task of fighting against the problem such as flight of capital and dwindling foreign exchange reserve. And the major task it faced was to restore the confidence of local and international investors in the economy by creating stable political environment conducive for investment and Business.

To overcome the looming economic crisis, govt. formulated three prong strategies. First, it would approach the friends of Pakistan group for economic assistance. Second, it would seek loan from private international lenders on low interest rates. Third, it would go to IMF and get loan under Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP). But because of the harsh conditionalities of IMF, govt. preferred to seek assistance from friends of Pakistan. In this regard, President Asif Ali Zardari himself appealed to the international community for Marshall Plan type of economic assistance for rehabilitation of Pakistan economy in order to fight effectively against terrorism.
But, because of the unstable nature of the political system, riddled with bad governance and political corruption, friends of Pakistan, headed by US, advised Pakistan to seek loan from IMF.

Being left with no option, government grudgingly joined Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in Nov 2008, under which IMF approved 7.6 billion bailout package. Since then it has been following the IMF conditionalities in letter and spirit, despite the fact that common people and poorer sections of the society are being hit hard. Under IMF conditionalities, Islamabad has withdrawn the subsidies, increased the oil prices, and taking steps to liberalize economy, deregulate the market and privatize state enterprises.

As a matter of fact, it is hard for any democratic regime to implement IMF programmes because democracies are committed to resolve people’s problems through the equal distribution of resources whereas IMF programmes not only stall the equal and equitable distribution of resources but are designed in a way to cut the demand by increasing interest rates, withdrawing subsidy and cutting expenditure and imposing austerity measures which in return generate poverty and misery.

When Bolivia was facing the same situation in 1985, its inflation shot up to 14,000 percent. To slay the inflation, the regime of Hugo Benzer hired the services of Harvard young economist Jeffery Sachs, young Harvard economist, who advised government to adopt neoliberal prescriptions, suggesting austerity and price increase in the prices. He proposed tenfold increase of oil prices and range of other price deregulation and heavy budget cuts, elimination of food subsidies and cancellation food controls, 300 percent price hike in petrol prices as a part of his ‘shock therapy’.

Interestingly one of the Bolivian official compared shock therapy with bombing of Hiroshima. According to him “we have to be pilot of Hiroshima. When he was dropping the bombs, he did not know what he was doing but when he saw smoke, he said “Oops, sorry. What we have to do, launch the measure and then say “Oops, sorry”.
It was kind of shock and awe of Bolivian people which was based on principle of seize the control of environment and nub the senses and understanding of masses to resist.
As a result of neoliberal economic policies, unemployment rate increased 20 percent. Furthermore the impact can be judged from the fact that state running mining corporation alone was downsized from 28,000 to 6000 employees. Wages were down to between 40 to 70 percent, per capita income was down from $ 845 to $789 in 1995. Small elite became far wealthier while large portion of working class were discarded and marginalized from economy.

Recently Ukraine after so called orange revolution is facing the same grime situation which Bolivia went through in 1980’s where people are suffering from tuberculosis TB as a result of IMF programmes.

It may be recalled that Ukraine applied to IMF for emergency loan to the tune of $16.4 billion in 2008. The purpose of IMF loan is explicitly to stabilize the Ukraine currency and support the Central Bank and not help the economy or the population.
According to Cambridge University study conducted by Professor David Stuckler, there is close link between IMF conditions and sharp rise in incidence of TB, a disease related to severe poverty conditions and lack of public health infrastructure.

A study analyses data in 21 countries in central and Eastern European countries that involved with the IMF for different amount of time after 1989 and borrowed different amount of money.

"We found TB rates were falling or steady before the IMF programmes began, and rose during the IMF programs," then fell again afterwards to almost the rate they had been before the IMF, says Stuckler.

The reason the Cambridge scientists found was that IMF loans uniquely demand less government spending, fewer doctors per person, and a cut of nearly half in the number of people with TB that received Directly Observed Therapy, or DOTS.

It may be recalled that Ukraine applied to IMF for emergency loan to the tune of $16.4 billion. The purpose of IMF loan is explicitly to stabilize the Ukraine currency and support the Central Bank and not help the economy or the population.

Here in Pakistan IMF programmes have ravaged the lives of people due to soaring inflation, increasing employment and rising tide of poverty because of the withdrawal of subsidies, deregulation of prices and increase in oil prices, despite the fact that oil prices per barrel have come down in international market.

According to the study of Prof. David Stuckler, structural adjustment programmes produces poverty and poverty produces diseases like TB. Here in Pakistan data shows that every year almost 300,000 new TB patients are add up to existent prevalent cases. This is very grim situation and the major cause of such gruesome picture is the unavailability of the cure which is attributed to cuts in health expenditure under IMF programmes.

Keeping in view the negative impact of IMF programmes, government is advised to review its economic policies.

Pandemic of plagiarism

2009-11-21T01:41:00.000-08:00

By Manzoor Ali Isran
Published in Dawn, 21/11/2009

Honestly speaking, plagiarism is spreading like cancer in the body of our academic institutions and it seems that it has turned into a pandemic. Those who introduced the idea of research and PhD as compulsory for university professors, perhaps, didn’t realise the fact that research, without plagiarism, is only possible in those institutions where the values of academic honesty, integrity and accountability are strong but such values are very weak in our higher educational institutions.

Unfortunately no attempt has been made so far to strengthen those values and every one seems to be out adopting short cuts to make a fast buck.

In fact, plagiarism is of two kinds here in Pakistan; one is committed by students in cutting & pasting material from internet for their assignments and the other one is resorted to by the teachers for writing their research articles and PhD theses. This kind of plagiarism got boost after Dr. Atta-ur-Rehman as chairman HEC introduced the conditionality of PhD for promotion of teachers in the universities with the aim to raise the standard of education, in the wake of criticism after 9/11 that Pakistani educational standards are weak and institutions are producing students who easily fell prey to the catchy slogans of jihad. The other objective, though fanciful, was to produce as many as 1500 PhDs per year in order to put Pakistan in the league of top 500 universities.

Like Dr. Ali, teachers from other universities have been writing and drawing the attention of HEC towards plagiarism. But unfortunately, HEC previously brushed aside such criticism by saying that there was no plagiarism. However, whatever the cases of plagiarism so far unearthed in different university are due to the intra-teachers rivalry as most of the teachers think that the university administration in order to favour their lackeys get them undue favours by being soft on the matters of plagiarism and promotions.

I myself pointed out this problem when I was in Shah Abdul Latif University that the university had become the incubator of plagiarism where the local teachers in collaboration with professors from other universities were indulged in the practices of plagiarism. For example, one professor from the University of Dr. Ali produced four PhD in one go as he wanted to get HEC professorship. If such theses are sent abroad for checking, as it is the condition, these theses will certainty be rejected. In some cases, candidates don’t know about the title of the thesis, just written by someone else.

As I have been told by a friend recently that Sindh University, Jamshoro, also suffers from the same scourge of plagiarism. According to him, scores of cut- and- paste PhD theses written even by the ghost scholars have been awarded, the highest academic recognition, the doctoral degrees. The holders of these fraudulent Ph.Ds have been given the additional charges of directorships of the study centres or even deanships. Such PhDs have been given preference over the senior professors with PhD from one of the prestigious university of UK, having written couple of books and scores of articles published in the journals of international repute. This is pity.
However, to curb the plagiarism, the Higher Education Commission has framed some strict rules and evolved plagiarism detecting software. Further, in order to eliminate plagiarism at its campuses, the University of Punjab dismissed 15 senior academics including the departmental heads who were involved in this heinous academic crime. Karachi University purged 3 offenders.

The independent minded and honest scholar, Professor Jawed Laghari, the Chairman of the Higher Education Commission should take personal interest in this matter in order to improve the standards in the public sector universities, and for this he should order the anti-plagiarism software checking of all the theses written after 2003 and send for evaluation to foreign countries in order to restore the credibility of research and PhD degree in Pakistan.

KLB and sovereignty

2009-10-26T09:29:00.000-07:00

By: Manzoor Ali Isran

No foreign aid bill has generated as much heated debate in the country as Kerry-Lugar Bill, under which civilian government is going to receive non-military aid to the tune of $1.5 billion a year and 7.5 billion over five years solely for socio-economic development.

Apparent reason for controversy are the conditionalities attached with the bill, which grossly restrict the Pakistan government not to indulge in nuclear proliferation, stop exporting militancy to neighbouring countries such as India and Afghanistan and civilian oversight of military. Such conditions are seen by some quarters as an attempt on the part of US to undermine the sovereignty of Pakistan.

But before discussing further whether KLB is encouragement for democracy or encroachment on sovereignty, let me discuss what sovereignty is, to whom it belongs and who has violated it. I think these are important questions which need to be answered and understood.

Honestly speaking, sovereignty has lost its Westphalian virginity in the age of globalisation. It is no more absolute, it is perforated, eroded or shared. According to Jan Schotle, Globalisation has rendered the old core principle of sovereignty unworkable, both juridically and practically because states regulatory capacity has ceased to meet the criteria of sovereignty, at least in legal books. Undoubtedly, the global powers have created the global structures of knowledge, production and security where it is difficult for small and weak states, like Pakistan, to stay out and make independent policies, except to surrender their sovereignty in order to meet their social, economic, social and security needs and develop.
It is unfortunate that since the genesis of Pakistan, our ruling elite has adopted typical mercantilist policy where internal wealth and external aid was utilized for the security of state, instead of socio-economic development. And this policy is continuing till this day. The major factor for adopting such policy was the Indian hostility which pushed our military bonapartist to mortgage sovereignty and serve as satellite of US to fight against the spread and expansion of communism. This is very much clear from the following statement of Ayub Khan that Pakistan would accept to be the client state of US if it came to the rescue of Pakistan against India aggression.
Coming back to the question of sovereignty, there is no doubt that it belongs to people. They are sovereign and this concept got thumping legitimacy after French Revolution when politics shifted from palaces to masses. So, if sovereignty belongs to people, then we have to examine who has violated it since the creation of Pakistan. I am sorry to say that in the light of historical evidences it is the Army that has not only violated the sovereignty of Pakistani people but sabotaged the democratic process in the country that was created on the basis of democratic ideals envisioned by Quaid Mohammad Ali Jinnah.

First blow to sovereignty of the people came when super bureaucrat of Pakistan, Ghulam Mohammad dissolved the constituent assembly in 1953, second blow came when the one unit was created in 1955 to create parity with the people of East Pakistan, the third blow was delivered when martial was imposed in 1958, fourth blow came when the first democratically elected govt. of ZAB was overthrown by Zia in 1977, sixth blow came when BB regime was dissolved by GIK in 1990, seventh blow came when GIK dissolved the regime of Nawaz Sharif in 1993, ninth blow came when Farooq Laghari sacked the regime of BB in 1996 and last blow came when Musharraf sacked the govt. of Nawaz Sharif in 1999.

The continuous contempt and disrespect for people’s mandate has invariably contributed towards the weakening of democracy and federation of Pakistan. Sovereignty is important ingredient of democracy; with out which it can not flourish. In democracies sovereignty is the empowerment of people. But here in Pakistan, the sovereignty of people has continuously been trampled down rampantly and shamefully.
To me, sovereignty, in terms of real politick, is less legal and more political concept. It is the overall capacity of the state to protect its authority within territorial boundaries of the state and such capacity could be measured in terms of its institutional, economic and social clout. Pakistani state does not have that clout and capacity due to the fact that it has not invested enough in the social and economic capacity building of the society and people. I wonder when people talk about the sovereignty when 62 million of people are living below poverty line, state has failed miserably and shamefully to provide education and basic Medicare to our children, due to which millions of children loose their lives every year or wander in the streets and thoroughfares as beggars. According to 2009 Human Development Index, Pakistan is ranked 141 among 182 countries on the basis of life expectancy, educational attainment and adjusted real income. Literally, we are killing our future, yet we are talking about sovereignty.

To get out of such enigmatic situation, there are two ways to strengthen Pakistani state by carrying out the process of national building but for that we need resources, which can either come internally in the shape of revenue generation through taxes or externally in the shape of aid. We have very narrow tax base. According to figure, we have 2.2 million registered tax payers out of 180 million population and only 1.2 million people pay taxes, out of which 80% are salaried class. Facing such dismal situation, government has no option but to rely on external borrowing or aid. And that borrowing or aid always comes with strings in the shape of Kerry-Lugar Bill.
I think there is no harm in surrendering partial sovereignty for time being in return for economic assistance provided it is utilized prudently on the capacity building of masses. But for that we need democratic, accountable and judicious governance system which, I think, at the moment is absent. There are host of example where the countries initially surrendered their partial sovereignty but later on regained. Japan and Germany are glaring example. After the WWII, these countries were under the foreign occupation, with defeated armies, demoralised people, devastating socio-economic systems and no institutions at all. But Germany and Japan very soon regained their sovereignty by building intuitional and investing in the capacities of the people and infrastructure. By sixties, they not only bridged the productivity gap with US but challenged its economic domination. The reason behind that success was the proper utilization and management of aid and internal resources, accompanied by national spirit to work and develop motherland.

In Pakistan, we need such spirit and nationalist leadership, with the commitment to invest more in the people to enhance their capacities so that they can play important role in democratic build up. Under the current circumstances, democracy in Pakistan can only be strengthened with the support of global community as the people internally lack capacity due to weak socio-economic base and fragmented and fragile civil society.

Finally we should welcome the Kerry-Lugar Bill because it calls for strengthening of democracy, welfare of the people and supremacy of parliament.

Sindh budget and development

2009-07-05T23:10:00.000-07:00

By: Manzoor Ali Isran

(Dawn, July 5)

SINDH is suffering from the deep scars of economic, social and academic poverty. Hardly has there been any attempt by governments to remove those scars, and these have been getting deeper and deeper.

However, after getting a democratic regime, the people of Sindh cherished the hope that their economic wounds would be healed and the days of unemployment and poverty would end soon.

But this has proved to be mere utopia. Still problems like unemployment are acute and deep-rooted. No attempt is being made to create institutions (industry) to generate jobs.

Hardly is there any industry, and whatever existed has been destroyed due to the worsening law and order situation.

The middle class, the backbone of the economy, is dwindling and flocking to big cities for the safety of their lives and economic survival.

Agriculture, which has the potential to provide jobs to the majority of people, still remains neglected and underdeveloped.

Recently, the Sindh government presented Rs327bn budget which, according to critics, is more elitist and does not offer any solution to the deep-rooted problems of Sindh. For example, there is no sustainable plan to tackle the issue of employment, though the Sindh government has earmarked Rs2.5bn to impart training to 41,000 youths. The question is where 41,000-trained youths will end up.

The other sector which can employ a big chunk of educated youth is the oil and gas sector.

But it is not yet willing to give preference to the local population for high-grade jobs on the ground that local youth is not equipped with the kind of skills companies require.

However, a cursory look at the Sindh budget shows that the government is less committed to social development. This is apparent from the funds (Rs24bn) allocated to law and order. On the contrary, Rs6bn and Rs5.23bn have been allocated to education and health.

These are peanuts given the level of academic poverty. This negates the vision of Benazir Bhutto who always maintained that sustainable democracy needed an educated and healthy middle class.

I believe money alone cannot ensure development as long as it is not accompanied by other factors like political commitment and an effective governance system.

According to critics, the PPP appears to be doing little in this regard. As a result, there is a yawning gap between rural and urban Sindh in the sphere of education, health, infrastructure, industrialisation, etc.

Rural Sindh is bereft of any industry. The security issue has adopted horrible proportions to the extent that even MNAs and MPAs have left interior Sindh and are permanently living in Karachi.

Basically, development is a local phenomenon, especially when there is a worsening law and order situation. It prevents outside investors to come and invest.

While confronting this situation, there is a need for local investors to come forward, invest, and establish agriculture-based cottage industry to generate employment.

In this regard, the scheme of the Sindh government to provide microfinance is good. The newly-emerging educated youth will be provided loans to open up small and medium-sized businesses in different cities of Sindh. But the entire process needs transparency and accountability.

This way Sindh can overcome the issue of underdevelopment and bridge the proverbial rural-urban divide. However, it needs unwavering commitment and action on the part of the Sindh government and committed leadership, not mere budgetary promises.

Bridging the rural-urban divide

2009-06-29T07:22:00.000-07:00

By Manzoor Ali Isran

Published in Dawn (EBR, July 29)

Basically a budget is a package of economic measures aimed at realising the goals of economic and social development.

But the concept of development has now changed tremendously; gone are the days when development used to be seen in terms of increase in per capita income or growth.

Now, the development is measured in terms of human development in which the social indicators like literacy, health, life expectancy, etc., are used as effective tools.

Amratya Sen, the noble laureate, has gone further and sees development as freedom. And in his model of development, Sen links development with political, social and economic freedoms. Development cannot take place unless the social choices are offered to people to participate in the whole process of developmental activity.

Sen further links development with governance and human rights and these two values can only be realised in democracy because it is the democracy that ensures the protection and realisation of fundamental rights.

While judging the Sindh budget 2009-10 in context of Sen’s observations, it is less likely that the provincial government is going to achieve the targets it has set, especially for the rural development. One reason is that it has allocated meagre funds for the social development. For example education has been given around Rs6 billion and health Rs5.23 billion in comparison to Rs24 billion for worsening law and order.

However, the silver line on the dark horizon is that the Sindh government has launched Benazir Bhutto Youth Skill Development Programme for training 41,000 youths who will receive stipend ranging Rs4,000 to Rs7,000 per month.

For micro-financing scheme, Rs2.5 billion has been targeted. This scheme is designed to facilitate self-employment of youth. To empower women, the government plans to distribute around 41,000 acres of farmland.

The schemes sound great on paper but they will not have any tangible impact to change the lives of common people unless implemented transparently. And for that an effective accountable, democratic and judicious governance system is needed.

The question is: where the 41,000 trained youths will end up since there is no industry to absorb them, especially, in rural Sindh. Karachi has millions of young men and women looking for proper jobs due to current wave of recession worldwide. The government has announced that it will create jobs, especially in education and police, but these jobs are not given on merit and are available to those who have political connections.

Development cannot be realised through money alone, it has to be coupled with other factors such as political commitment and effective governance. The PPP regime is not so committed as to bring the rural Sindh at par with urban areas. The rural-urban divide, widening, is visible in education, health, infrastructure, industrialisation, etc.

The system of education in Sindh is decaying and recently the education minister has blamed bureaucracy for it. The minister threatened that if teachers were not going to teach, the government schools would be privatised.

With no improvement in governance in Sindh after February 18 election, there is a serious problem of law and order and security. It is severely affecting investment, economy and development. The rural middle class is shrinking and leaving for cities. Rural Sindh is totally bereft of any industry. Occasionally, MNAs and MPAs visit their constituencies where their people ask for jobs and security.

Basically, development is local phenomenon, especially when there is worsening law and order situation. It prevents outside investors to come and invest. There is a need for local investors to come forward and establish agro-based cottage industry to generate employment. The microfinance scheme is good to encourage educated youths to open up small and medium businesses. But they need security of their assets.

Fighting terrorism with aid

2009-05-27T01:37:00.000-07:00

By Manzoor Ali Isran

Many people think that foreign assistance/aid is panacea to eliminate terrorism. But this is not the case, if country is beset with bad governance, rampant corruption and uneven distribution of resources.

We have seen so many countries around the world failing to uproot terrorism despite being given massive doses of financial assistance. The reason is simple: lack of good governance and corruption that eats away the major chunk of foreign aid which, otherwise, is meant to go into raising the social infrastructure, a necessary condition for wiping out poverty and extremism.

May be the frogleap theory of Susan George, a leading political economist, sound true that developing countries, like Pakistan, need western capital and technology to develop and overcome the causes of extremism. This is true to some extent. But as a matter of fact, Western capital and technology cannot bring a change unless there is no effective system of governance in place to ensure the proper distribution and allocation of resources.

So the governance system and type of the regime – democratic or dictatorship – basically determines the outcome of the aid as long as elimination of poverty and fight against terrorism is concerned. If regime is democratic, accountable, and judicious and tends to fairly distribute aid, it becomes successful in eliminating the root causes of terrorism. If not, the case is otherwise. For example, Egypt and Pakistan, despite being major recipient of US aid, have failed to contain the winds of extremism due to massive corruption.

This is true that a base of current wave of extremism and terrorism was laid down during the period of General Zia who received massive economic aid as a result of Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. Pakistan was declared as “frontline state”, and was offered $400 million in military and economic aid – an amount Zia spurned and contemptuously termed “peanuts. When the Ronald Reagan administration took office in Jan 1981, the level of assistance increased exponentially to the volume of $4 billion, of which 57 percent was economic aid and the rest military aid. Unfortunately, instead of spending on the rehabilitation of the displace people; the whole money was pocketed by the ruling coterie, consisting of military, civilian, feudal and central Punjab’s urban industrialist class.

More or less same happened during the period of Musharraf after 9/11. He received massive US aid - around $12 billion. But due to the absence of any judicious redistributive political and economic system, all the money was siphoned off by the political and military clique which surrounded Musharraf. I have always been saying that legitimacy tends to be the underbelly of every dictator. By legitimacy, they get legal title to rule. Such legitimacy is either sought from courts or kings parties who play the side kick role to provide urgently required legitimacy. Musharraf created Q-League for that purpose and it received all the required patronage and hefty funds were placed at its disposal.

If we assess the role of foreign aid in relation to the elimination of extremism, there are poor results. All money was lined by the corrupt cabal headed by Musharraf. In the end, we saw the rise of terrorism to the extent that militant and extremist groups finally challenged the writ of govt. in Swat, let alone Bajaur and other areas of FATA. Musharraf, to large extent, used Islamist terrorism as tool to prolong his rule.

Currently, President Asif Ali Zardari is seeking foreign aid too. He has returned home from the whirlwind tour of US and UK and France, bagging lot of aid - US $1.9 billion, UK 640 million pounds and France 12 million Euros. Before that, President has been to Saudi Arabia, China, and Japan, where the meeting of the Friends of Pakistan took place and pledged to give Pakistan $5.28 billion, seeking more aid to rebuild socio-economic system.

President Zardari believes that without foreign assistance Pakistan cannot fight against the militants, who are being funded by foreign powers hostile to Pakistan. Therefore, he is asking for aid package like Marshall Plan, which US offered for the reconstruction of Europe after WWII to rebuild Europe.
President is right to some extent but foreign aid won’t help in the elimination if there is no effective governance system in Place. Further, it places some amount of restriction on the recipient country, resulting into the loss of the sovereignty, which creates backlash from populace.

At the moment Pakistan’s governance system tends to be in shambles because there is no accountability and there is rampant political interference in the administration. President talks a lot about the Marshall Plan but the fact is that countries like Germany and Japan, which were totally devastated by the war focused more on the governance system and fair distribution and allocation of resources. As a result, by 1960 these two countries not only bridged the productivity gap with US but challenged its economic monopoly of the world.

President Asif Ali Zardai must focus on giving the country democratic, accountable and judicious governance system, which is a key to the elimination of the causes of terrorism. If his regime does not do so, terrorism will continue to haunt us and our future generations.

Obama’s concern

2009-05-10T23:48:00.000-07:00

By Manzoor Ali Isran

PRESIDENT Obama, while addressing the press on the occasion of completing 100 days of his presidency, showed his concern over Pakistan’s inability to deliver basic services like health, education and rule of law. According to him, it is because the government is fragile, lacking fundamental administrative capacity to work for the majority of the people. As a result, it breeds alienation and extremism.

President Obama is right to some extent but for the existence of such conditions his country must share the blame equally, as its policies, over the years, of supporting dictators have contributed towards weakening the political and civilian institutions, virtually making them trash to deliver to the people.

Likewise in Indonesia, US supported Suharto regime which was involved in the merciless killing of between half a million to a million people besides looting every single penny IMF and World Bank provided. IMF provided around $45 billions to Suharto regime but when Suharto was toppled down, as result of people’s movement in 1998 after ruling 35 years, and IMF conducted the study about the property of Suharto family, it was estimated at around £37 billions.

In Chile, elected regime of Allende, was replaced with that of brutal dictator of the world, Augusto Pinchot, who not only turned Chile in the laboratory for testing the neoliberal embryo, developed by Milton Friedman in the Chicago University, but subjected Chilean people to political and economic shock therapy, resulting into the gruesome violation of human rights and thousands of people were tortured and killed and democratic institutions scuttled.

In Iran the democratic regime of Dr. Musdaq was toppled down by CIA and finally replaced with Mohammad Raza Shah Pahlavi. The so-called liberal regime of Shah did not do much for the people’s welfare and finally paved a way for the political and social change, due to inhuman brutalities of SAVAK, and in 1979 Khomeini spearheaded the revolutionary change in Iran from the suburbs of France.

In Pakistan, the role of US has not been different form rest of the world where it has supported what it calls ‘friendly dictators’. It has aided and abetted the dictator of every stripe just for the sake of its own interest, though at the cost of the development of democratic institution. Now this fact is being admitted by various US lawmakers. Recently, Hilary Clinton was more candid when she said that US was reaping what it sowed in Pakistan, referring to the adornment of Pakistan, with millions of Jihadi after Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan and finally disintegrated.

US backed dictators, from Ayub to Musharraf, tried every thing possible to deprive people of their democratic identity, because they though that the consciousness determined by democratic identity was detrimental to their interests.

So to undermine the democratic identity of the people, the security establishment, in collusion with US, promoted religious and ethnic identities and used it as tool to weaken the democratic and liberal forces in Pakistan. Talibnisation and other nationalist movements, therefore, are the logical outcome of the religious politics promoted by dictators. It has badly polarized society, of which reintegration needs years of hard work and committed political leadership to involve people in the mainstream politics and development.

Briefly, since the Pakistan has been ally of US, every attempt has been by the US administration to undermine the democratic institution because it thinks that democratic politics and democratic regimes are not suitable as far as the realization of its interests is concerned.

I don’t think without having viable and strong democratic dispensation; the basic necessities of life, which President Obama talks about, can be achieved. But democracy and democratic institutions can not flourish without sovereignty. There is closer nexus between democracy and sovereignty.

However, history is replete with the facts that US has not respected the sovereignty of the people of Pakistan with regard to their decision making. It prefers to deal with dictator rather than elected representatives, a demonstration of typical cold war mentality that the tide of communism could only be thwarted by supporting dictators wherever it was possible. It has always supported the regimes led by General and technocrats which often result in the failure, leaving behind the trail of poverty, bad governance, and polarization and widening inequalities between rich and poor. And today whatever problems – unemployment, education and health and etc – democratic regime is facing, are the result of the wrong policies perused by the dictatorial regimes, duly supported by US. So, US can’t escape the blame.

In the end, I shall urge the Obama administration that instead of criticising and pressuring the fledgling democracy and looking for other options, it should work to support the democratic regime and help it in such areas as governance, building institutions and investing more in health and education, because to fight extremism Pakistan needs, what Benazir Bhutto once said, “healthy and educated middles class”. After all investing in health and education is good economics. Hope $1.5 billion US aid will go into those areas.

Real future of Pakistan

2009-04-18T23:40:00.000-07:00

By Manzoor Ali Isran

THIS is apropos of Bina Shah’s article, ‘Real future of Pakistan’s (Dawn, April 7, 2009), in which she highlighted the work of her social science students at SZABIST, Karachi. I appreciate her efforts at preparing students to write thought-provoking research projects on the complex nature of socio-economic issues being confronted by our society. She also heads the Writing Centre here at SZABIST to further facilitate students to improve their writing skills.

As Ms Shah quoted, students in their research projects have given a practical example of the problems in the field of education, health, governance, social justice system, asymmetric gender relationship, etc. Even some students have asserted that only revolution can bring about a positive change in society and give relief to the common man.

This clearly shows the burgeoning frustration and mistrust of students with the existing system which has not only become outdated but also junk and toxic, lacking capacity to offer any solution.

Ms Shah is right when she says that our students are full of ideas, verve and vigour so as to change the destiny of the nation, provided they are given the right kind of environment where they can exploit their potential to benefit society.

That they are potential reformers and builders of the future is evident from the recent movement of the lawyers where the young among them formed the backbone of the movement. Briefly, they are the backbone of economy, politics and defenders of democracy and constitutions. We need to strengthen this class by investing more in education and health.

Currently, Pakistan has one of the largest numbers of young people, with some 25 million people between the ages of 15 and 24. This constitutes a huge pool of productive workforce and can play a crucial role in social, political and economic development of the country. But this requires better political environment, just social order and equal economic and educational opportunities on the basis of equity and equality for everyone. And for this, the country needs liberal, democratic and plural political system.

Unfortunately we are living in a suffocating and close environment, which breeds hopelessness and disenchantment in our youth. Saba Khalid, a student, argues that because of such suffocation most students are looking abroad for their future instead of utilising their potential for their country’s development. Political instability, growing insecurity and lack of job opportunities are some of the factors that force students to go aboard and settle there. To stop this brain drain, the country needs a stable socio-economic and political system, argues Ms Khalid.

Today our society looks like an inferno where poverty and violence are pervasive, driving youth to join the ranks of militants and take up arms instead of books. The creeping Talibanisation or the current state of insurgency in the resource-rich Balochistan and frustration of the youth in Sindh are the logical upshot of social and economic and educational injustices being committed by state institutions against the poorer section of society.

Poverty and violence are unequivocally consuming our youth in different ways and forms. We need to address this issue on a war footing. In this regard, the state must act quickly to bring reforms in public-sector educational institutions, which at the moment are in bad shape. That has candidly been admitted by Pir Mazharul Haq, provincial education minister, in his article, recently published in a local Sindhi daily.

In fact, any deterioration in education has not only internal consequences but external too. Our international allies and donors are apprehensive about the precarious nature of our education system and, according to them, this is one of the contributing factors in the proliferation of militancy.

However, with the introduction of democratic regime, we had sanguine hope that the education system would be streamlined and corruption would be checked, but we are witnessing the opposite — the ‘democratisation’ of corruption and alleged auctioning of posts like EDO, chairmen of boards and vice chancellors.

As a result, there is mushrooming of copy culture and sale of degrees. The recent media reports of rampant cheating in Karachi are glaring signs of colossal impending decay. We need urgent action to arrest this situation from further deterioration.

And if we don't do that, we will be losing our talented youth which, I firmly believe, could be the vanguard of progress and builder of new democratic and progressive Pakistan.

Confrontation harmful for democracy

2009-03-05T07:17:00.000-08:00

By Manzoor Ali Isran

The political tussle between the two major parties PML (N) and PPP is seemingly pushing the country towards the brink of another bout of political instability, which, honestly speaking, the country can ill-afford at this point of time when it is facing a host of social, economic, political and security dangers internally and externally.

Basically, this situation has developed due to the disqualification of Sharif brothers by the Supreme Court of Pakistan and their reaction to the decision and imposition of gubernatorial rule in the proverbial kingdom (Punjab) of Sharifs, given to them by Gen. Zia, with the design to weaken PPP after the assassination of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.

Sharifs are allegedly accusing President Asif Ali Zardari of pressurising the apex court to get them disqualified and thereby ostracizing them from the current political process. To protest against their disqualification and imposition of Governor Rule, they have been calling people for mass protests throughout the central Punjab, which is considered to be the bastion of their support and power base.
So far, according to some reports (Dawn Feb. 28), they are not receiving that much response as they were expecting to bring out people in millions on the streets to bring the major cities of Punjab to a standstill.

In democracies, however, every individual has a right to protest and express his/her views in peaceful manner, but the way in which Sharifs are conducting themselves and expressing their views totally contradicts the democratic values and norms. For example, in Shaikhupura rally, the language used by Nawaz Sharif for PPP Co-chairman was unbecoming, and he openly called for civil disobedience. I think this is quite indecent on the part of the leader of the one of the biggest parties and twice elected prime minster of the country, and also the former chief minster of the biggest province of Pakistan.

Such attitude is reminiscent of the past when Sharifs confronted with PPP in the centre in the nineties, which resulted into the collapse of democratic system in the country. This time too, such attitude is harmful not only for the democracy but for the country’s national unity and integrity. Mina Mohammad Nawaz Sharif is a national leader and he has to show some semblance of maturity in trying times and this is the test of his leadership. On the contrary, I would say Asif Ali Zardari showed more maturity and sense of national responsibility by raising the slogan of “Pakistan Khapi’” after the assassination of BB when whole Sindh was in the flames emotionally and physically.

Democracy and democratic rule are unavoidable for the integrity of the country, but unfortunately due to the internal pettifogging amongst our political elite, democracy has suffered a lot, and because of that different dictators from time to time have not only damaged democracy but also weakened the institutions which are supposed to strengthen and consolidate democracy.

In fact, the stabilisation and consolidation of democracy is very much dependant on the political leadership. It has to be honest and public-spirited. It must have initiative, imagination and courage to see and foresee the needs of the people and problems of their country. Ironically, such leadership is not available in the country.

John Stuart Mill, an English philosopher, had rightly said in his book Representative Government that democracy can not flourish where sectional and parochial interests are stronger than national interest. And today Mill sounds relevant in our context where our national political leadership is after the pursuance of its own petty agenda at the cost of national interests, which otherwise requires all the political parties to be one and show national unity in the face of internal and external challenges the nation is facing today. Pitiably, nothing of that sort is happening
Today Pakistani society stands politically polarised, and each political party is trying to outsmart each other in the political race. Having difference of opinion is a good thing and this is the beauty of democracy. But uprooting the democratically elected government in the name of independent judiciary by riding on the shoulders of the lawyers’ movement is not a healthy sign. I have been the supporter of the lawyer’s movement right from the beginning and have been writing in these pages, but now lawyer’s movement is losing the semblance of its neutrality, especially after the meeting of Ali Ahmed Kurd with the political parties, seeking their support to participate in dharna (sit in) in Islamabad.

There are no two opinions about the independence of judiciary and restoration of deposed Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. He must be restored but if his restoration does not take place for any reason, democracy should not be harmed and scuttled. The process of democratisation must move on and this way democracy can only remove its imperfections and grow as a strong force for survival and progress of the country.

So, instead of indulging in the binge of confrontation where there is every possibility that the sibling of democracy may get trampled down, we should go for national reconciliation to defend and promote democracy in the country where it has been bleeding for more than sixty one years. Hope sanity will prevail and our politicians will find solutions through democratic means to heal the wounds of bleeding democracy, instead of uprooting it.

Where is the academic freedom?

2009-03-02T06:13:00.000-08:00

By Manzoor Ali Isran

It is unfortunate that in our country the new wave of academic terror has been unleashed against those academics who expose the administrative and academic irregularities in different universities. The very purpose behind such bullying is to silence them from writing in the national press on the deteriorating state of affairs in some of the universities.
These affairs, no doubt, are the direct outcome of the inefficient handling of the university affairs on the part of inapt vice chancellors appointed on the basis of political consideration, rather than merit. And this has become common norm of our polity and major cause of academic downfall.

The primary purpose of universities is to advance our understanding of life, the world and the universe. It is to discover truth, to transmit as much of human understanding as we can from one generation to the next and add as much new knowledge as we can to the existing store of human knowledge.

For the realisation of such goals, academic freedom must constitute the core objective of our educational policy as it is true that academic freedom and freedom of expression go to the heart of the university education, to the rights and responsibility of the university administration, to the nature of teaching and scholarship. It is a freedom we share only on the campus; in classroom — it encompasses a student’s right to learn and a professor’s right to breathe easily.
Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of environment in the universities which presents more the look of Orwellian society where academic freedom is suppressed brutally. Recently I wrote a letter (Nov. 23rd, 2008) in response to an excellent article by Dr. Pervez Hoodhboy and pointed out some of the problems and suggested some structural reforms in the system of higher education, especially with reference to universities in Sindh.

But unfortunately, bureaucracy in the universities, especially in SALU has no gall to tolerate the constructive criticism and respond to my suggestions. Contrary to that I have been served with show cause notice, accusing me of using highly defamatory and unparliamentarily language that contains false and baseless allegation designed to lower down the prestige of educational institutions in the public eyes ...and finally show cause letter accuses me of blaming Chancellor’s secretariat for appointing vice chancellors in the universities through ‘auction’ and favouritism. Show cause also threatens me of the penalty because while serving in SZABIST I have lien there in SALU for the period of three years.

I feel really appalled at contents, tone and tenor of the letter, which is more threatening and designed to silence me from exercising my fundamental right to free speech guaranteed in the constitution of Pakistan.
We are living in democracy which is about giving and protecting the academic freedom of teachers but it seems that still their is continuation of dictatorship in some of the institutions like Shah Abdul Latif University where the administration of Dr. Nilofer Shaikh while trampling the democratic norms is out to harass and intimidate the most vocal and articulate section of the society. I don’t think democracy will flourish without academic freedom, which is more about the accountability which university administration does not want at all. In fact, if we take away the right of academic freedom form teachers then there will be no difference between the universities and religious seminaries – universities are the place where reason, logic and other sciences are being taught to find the truth.

As mentioned earlier, the letter was written in response to an Article written by renowned educationist Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy on the role of various authorities in the administration of Universities. I only elaborated it by offering various suggestions in order to improve the deteriorating academic situation in Sindh varsities. The letter, in no way, maligns or defames anybody; rather it should have been taken as a healthy sign to improve the educational standards.
Unfortunately, the Universities are considered by the authorities like sub-ordinate government departments instead of statutory bodies having their independent status and person. Universities have their own institutions and rules under which teachers enjoy full academic freedom. Unlike other government bodies, teachers have statutory role. They take part in the elections of Senate and Syndicate, debates and policy-making in the university and cannot be expected to act like cows and sheeps.
The University teachers have every right to express themselves on the matters of policy and planning in their institutions. This statutory right of teachers to speak not only on university affairs as guaranteed in University Act and Code but on country affairs as well. In democratic countries like US and UK counties think tanks are mostly based on Professors but in Pakistan it is vice versa.

What I have written is within my right to free speech and academic freedom and can never constitute misconduct under any law of the land. The contents of the letter are wholly reasonable and contain factual situation at the campuses. Instead of focusing on the causes of corruption and maladministration, the University administration is wasting its energies on window dressing. This will stifle independent opinion which is hallmark of academia and research.

HEC’s performance and policies

2009-02-18T07:36:00.000-08:00

By Manzoor Ali Isran

APROPOS of Dr Pevez Hoodbhoy’s letter, “HEC’s performance and policies” (Nov 7), I agree with what Dr Hoodbhoy said but would like to add that it would be more realistic to blame academic deterioration on the Governor’s House than on the HEC, though the latter shares some blame for poor decision-making and monitoring with regard to the resource allocation and their utilisation.

According to my study, universities are facing acute problems of governance than anything else caused by the mismanagement of university affairs on the part of vice chancellors and their cohorts.

However, the policies Dr Attaur Rehman adopted have turned universities into factories producing fake and ‘cut and paste’ PhDs, with plagiarised dissertations.

There are numerous examples that PhDs produced during the period of HEC conditionalities are not only lacking in basic knowledge of the subject but cannot write and speak a single sentence of English, even in some cases candidates don’t know about the topic of their thesis as they have been written by somebody else.

Pathetically, such people have been promoted to the post of professors without any interview in the university being headed by the first ‘woman vice chancellor’. And to our dismay, they have been appointed chairmen of departments in which they do not hold the basic degrees, in violation of the University Act, by displacing legitimate incumbents. If this is the state of affairs, the standard of education will never improve and we will not be able to compete regionally or globally.

The other scheme of the HEC, i.e. research projects, has also failed in some of the universities to produce the required results: the reason being lack of proper manpower and management.

These projects were the main source of corruption used by VCs to secure their positions. Strangely the HEC ignored such happenings.

As a matter of fact, macro-level reforms do not guarantee micro-level stability if these reforms are executed in top down manner, without involving other stakeholders. The HEC mostly introduced macro-level reforms without taking into account the issue of governance at micro level in the universities.

The HEC often talks about Universities Model Act, but hardly has it ensured its implementation in a transparent fashion. For example, the appointment of VCs is being made on political grounds through the search committee, which is formed by the governor under his discretionary powers.

There are examples where the VC’s post was auctioned to highest bidder. In some universities, consortiums were made to bid for the post of VCs.

Such VCs do little to build their institutions academically and administratively. Shah Abdul Latif University is a glaring example where there is no full-time registrar, director of finance and controller of examinations for almost one year.

Unfortunately, politicians of the area are more interested in getting appointments of drivers and clerks than working to improve the governance of the university.

Universities need fundamental micro-level reforms, without which steps taken at the macro level will not produce the desired results. For this there is a need to take some steps such as making the search committee autonomous, withdrawing the governors’ discretionary powers to appointment VCs and scrapping the dual structure of higher education — on the one hand, the Governor’s House mans universities administratively and, on the other hand, there is the HEC providing funds.

This duality is the main cause of the malfunctioning of universities and needs to be ended forthwith.

Handling terrorism

2008-12-26T01:30:00.000-08:00

By Manzoor Ali Isran

AFTER the Mumbai terror attack, the chemistry of war on terror is fast changing and every peace-loving person whether in India or Pakistan is vociferously condemning it and demanding more cooperation between Islamabad and Delhi for the sake of peace and economic prosperity in South Asia.

It is good that finally sanity has prevailed and things are getting cooler. Thanks to sagacity demonstrated by Pakistani democratic government by pursuing diplomatic course and intensive international diplomacy carried out by the US and the UK which finally prevented the possibility of war between two nuclear neighbours.

Despite initial success on the diplomatic front, there is further need to build on this and address the core issue of terrorism between India and Pakistan, which has roots in the non-resolution of the Kashmir issue. India is a democratic country and should calmly think over that if the people are denied of their rights and their identity is mutilated, then they would resort to desperate actions like the one that took place in Mumbai on 26/11.

Terrorism, by and large, is social a phenomenon and it is true that in societies where there is no justice and there is frequent violation of fundamental human rights, people frustratingly resort to violent methods as a means for realisation of their inalienable rights.

And the history of Kashmir is replete with such blatant violation of fundamental human rights as a result of Indian hegemonic designs, denying the Kashmiri people the right of self-determination duly sanctioned by UN resolution passed from time to time.

Essentially Kashmir is a political problem which needs political solutions but Indian democracy has so far failed to offer and resolve it in accordance with the aspiration of the majority of the people.

Democracy is not about suppression of the people’s fundamental rights but it is largely about respect of the people’s rights and broadly about crisis management and empowerment of the people to decide things as they want. But in the case of Kashmir the people have been disempowered and have landed in a state of desperation and hopelessness.

I don’t think that the issue of terrorism between India and Pakistan can be resolved without addressing the key issue of Kashmir but unfortunately there is less realisation on the part of Indians of this reality that they have to take concrete measures to put an end to this chronic issue.

In fact, already there is a framework available in the shape of the Shimla agreement signed by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi and the president of Pakistan, Z.A. Bhutto, in Shimla on July 3, 1972, which binds both the countries to resolve political issues through dialogue and diplomacy. Let us have look at some of the provisions:

i. That the two countries are resolved to settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations or by any other peaceful means mutually agreed upon between them.

ii. That the prerequisite for reconciliation, good neighbourliness and durable peace between them is a commitment by both the countries to peaceful coexistence, respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, on the basis of equality and mutual benefit.

iii. That the basic issues and causes of the conflict which have bedeviled the relations between the two countries for the last 25 years shall be resolved by peaceful means.

iv. That they shall always respect each other’s national unity, territorial integrity, political independence and sovereign equality.

It is abundantly clear that the Shimla agreement provides a comprehensive mechanism for the resolution of controversial issues through negotiations but unfortunately in Pakistan after the overthrow of the first elected government of Z.A. Bhutto, different dictators, first Zia and then Musharraf, terribly messed up with the Kashmir policy by mixing it up with the Afghan policy in desperate search for the proverbial ‘strategic depth’.

Instead of solving it through political means, they supported the private religious groups for carrying out jihad in order to liberate Kashmir. This policy has backfired and has proved very costly for Pakistan, especially after 9/11.

Some ray of hope has arisen with the establishment of the democratic government, and President Zardari has offered a number of peace overtures to the Indians in recent interviews to the Indian media but still the Indian security establishment is doubtful about the control of security establishment of Pakistan by President Zardari. They still nurture the view that the civilian government is not calling the shots in Islamabad.

The need of the time is that the Kashmir and Afghan policy is demilitarised, and the civilian setup in Islamabad is fully empowered to take all decisions. This alone will help to reduce the level of terrorism, as well as normalise relations between India and Pakistan.

Is an era of market capitalism over?

2008-10-27T02:40:00.000-07:00

By Manzoor Ali Isran

Every country is bracing for the worst as the world finds itself on the precipice of another global financial disaster after the Great Depression. The situation has raised a fundamental question: is the era of market capitalism over and we are going back to Keynesian capitalism in which the state was at the centre of development? The action on the part of the US government offering the bailout plan to rescue the Wall Street Bankers and UK government's action of buying 60 percent and 40 percent share in the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds TSB by injecting the liquidity to the tune of 20 and 17 billion pounds, respectively, subscribe to the view that the state is back and this move by some political economist is considered to be partial "nationalisation" and burial of Thatcherism and neo-liberalism.

Starting from a tiny embryo at the University of Chicago with the philosopher-economist Friedrich von Hayek and his students like Milton Friedman at its nucleus, the neo-liberals and their funders have created a huge international network of foundations, institutes, research centres, publications, scholars, writers and public relations hacks to develop, package and push their ideas and doctrine relentlessly. Now, it is the dominant ideology based on the market economy and serving as the main pillar of the capitalist economic globalisation.

There are a host of conspiracy theories that the current crises have been manufactured by neocons in an attempt to reassert American ascendency in the world politics and economy in the new century. In this regard, first they attacked Iraq under the pretext of finding Weapons of Mass Destruction. The purpose of the whole game was to occupy Iraq, control its oil reserves and cow down Iran through 'Rambo' tactics. But neocons failed in their first adventure. The war in Iraq has cost US heavily and according to Noble Laureate Prof. Stigliz it is 3 trillion dollar war which is having very devastating impact on the US economy.

According to economist and critic F. William Engdahl in his recent article titled "Behind the Panic, the Wall Street Bankers are desperately out to reshape the future of global banking system through creative destruction. In this regard, they want to change the face of European Banking through panic incited by a well designed strategy in order to force the collapse or European Banking system and then buy at fire sale valuations. The idea being to "create three colossal global financial giants - Citigroup, JP Morgan, Chase, Goldman Sachs, and add to that Bank of America and make it more foursome. Then use their collective "muscle to ravage European banks, advance their global agenda over the coming years and dominate world finance and increase US hegemony in the new century".

That's the scheme, and Engdahl calls it "a fight for the survival of the American Century." Built on "the twin pillars of American financial (and military) dominance," but the game is far from over. "Battle lines are drawn." EU nations have their own ideas. Stabilization and recovery plans as well that differ from Washington's and look much sounder. It remains to be seen where things are heading and whether competing nations can work together and do it effectively. They haven't much time.

It should be noted that the financial crisis trigged by the oil cries of 1973 and debt crisis of 1980's were also well managed and manipulated by US in order to reassert its dominant role in the global economy through Structural Adjustment Programmes of IMF. These programmes forced the developing countries to devalue their currencies, open their economies to outside world, privatise public assets, lay off worker under the downsizing scheme, cut development expenditure and withdraw subsidies from the food item and essential utilities like water, gas and electrify. SAPs have affected poor the most.

Whatever the final outcome of the current financial tsunami, human dimension of the crisis must be taken into account but unfortunately whatever G-7 countries have done so far have bailed out the Wall Street Industrial capitalism, not the poor working class who are in need of help on the part of the rich.

Keeping in view the anarchic and exploitative nature of capitalist market economy, it is better idea to replace the current international financial system with the better one, respecting people, not capital and reinstating the role of the state regulating market so that it should not trample down on the welfare of the marginalised sections of the society around the world.

Guarding democracy

2008-08-26T22:51:00.000-07:00

By Manzoor Ali Isran

With the ignominious departure of Musharraf from the scene of Pakistani Politics as a result of the impeachment move, the burden of guarding and strengthening democracy inexcusably lies with the politicians. Any kind of internal political bickering amongst political parties, especially between PPP and PML-N, is bound to severely damage the fragile seedling of democracy which has been acquired after long but collective struggle of civil society and democratic forces. Now, it is time for politician to show some kind of maturity to the world that they are capable of not only managing democracy but addressing the pressing socio-economic issues of people in more democratic and egalitarian manner. Really, it is their litmus test.

I have been arguing in these columns that democracy is not only about voting and election, but it is also about the protection of liberties and freedoms, respect for legal entitlements and the guaranteeing of free discussions and uncensored distribution of news and fair comment. Indeed, even elections can be deeply defective if they occur without giving the different sides adequate opportunity to present their respective cases, or without giving the electorate the freedom to obtain news and to consider the views of the protagonists. Democracy is a demanding system, and not just a mechanical condition (like majority rule) seen in isolation.
In order to guard and strengthen the bud of democracy, however, PPP regime has to take two important measures immediately.
First it has to restore the judges as soon as possible because this happens to be the national demand and has emerged as one of the public good of our society. Any delay on the part of PPP-led democratic government will cost it hugely in terms of loosing the good will of the people. In addition to that, democratic government should take further steps to strengthen judiciary by giving it more independence and autonomy as being voiced by PPP Co-chairperson from time to time. The restoration of the judges will certainly boost the morale of the judges who will work more vigorously for delivering justice to the dispossessed like Munoo Bheel and many others. And it goes to the credit of deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, who through his pro-poor policy, delivered justice to people at their door-steps by taking suo motto actions. In fact, the restored and rejuvenated judiciary can serve as bulwark against any attempts to sabotage the democratic process.
The second step should be about the strengthening the civil society as it goes to the credit of the civil society movement spearheaded by the undeterred lawyer’s community and duly and honestly backed up by the media, which ultimately paved way for the down fall of the Musharraf. Basically Musharraf lost the moral game when he attempted to ambush deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry on March 9 but failed due to his ‘courageous No’ and his that ‘no’ really led to the unity of the civil society with black coats serving as vanguards and galvanising the whole fibre of the civil society. Common people, peasants, workers, students, teachers, doctors were up in the arms agitating in every town and city in the nook and corner of the country against the cavalier action of the dictator, suffocating the country and suffocating the veins of the judiciary just for the sake of his own cocky ego of which main purpose was to continue to rein the country in command and control fashion by defying all the democratic norms. Yet he called it democracy.

The biggest and rare contribution of lawyer’s movement is the creation of new ‘social capital’. It has brought together different section of the society form Karachi to Khyber and from Quetta to Kashmir under one umbrella. The existence and availability of the social capital is quite essential for the democratisation process to initiate in the country like Pakistan where the level of social capital is very low, and whatever existed was destroyed by different dictators by polarising society along with ethnic and sectarian lines. If civil society is strong, vocal and articulate I don’t think there will be dictatorship again in this country. But for making the civil society strong and vibrant, democratic regime needs to invest more in education and health in order to have more educated, healthy and active civil society which finally can serve as major line of defence against any Bonapartist attempt to derail democratic process.
Besides, the democratic government has to take steps to restore the constitution of 1973 as it has been severely mutilated by rouge dictators from time to time and ensure that the country is being run in accordance with its provision. Democracy with out constitution is what Plato said a ‘rule by mob’. Democracy as political system is about accumulation of power, whereas constitution is about citizen’s liberties and placing more restriction on all the levers of the power, provides the system of checks and balances and ensures fundamental rights of people to be respected.

Hope our politician will show maturity and take steps to develop consensus to steer the country towards more democratisation so that it does not fall back in the hand of dictatorship again.

What makes Pakistan 'dysfunctional state'

2008-08-14T23:01:00.000-07:00

By Manzoor Ali Isran

With the ranking of Pakistan as failed state in the top ten by Foreign Policy and Fund for Peace, once again the debate has been triggered in the country that why Pakistan being nuclear power and one of the major recipient of international aid since its genesis is not coming out of the ‘failed state’ syndrome.
Simply the failed state is one which has shattered social and political structure, due to which it fails to achieve five key internationally recognized standards such as freedom, human rights, welfare, order and justice. These standards determine the success or failure of any state now days. Most of the states failing to achieve these standards are declared failed states and such states are mostly located in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
While judging Pakistan in the light of these standards, we can safely assume that Pakistan is flawed or dysfunctional state, as some analysts put it, if not failed one keeping in view the current state of affairs of the country where the state has miserably failed to protect the life and limb of the common people. The reason for such failure is mostly attributed to the two factors, 1) absence of any viable political system. 2) Absence of constitutional liberalism. In the absence of these two values Pakistan is fast moving towards the Balkanization in view of the simmering dissent in the provinces of Balochistan, NWFP and Sindh and lack of the capacity and will on the part of state to tackle the pressing socio-economic problems that are driving people to the new level of desperation. There are cases where people are suffering from hunger, malnutrition and lack of basic Medicare. The force of hunger is such that the people in the poverty-ridden areas are being compelled to sell their organs for the sake of family survival.
It is for the time that the cases of hunger have been discovered in the city of Karachi and Lahore. Never before such cases were reported in the history of 50 years, argues noted researcher and development economist Dr. Qasir Bengali. This is the plight of the cities where most of the development and investment is taking place under the neoliberal policies, the situation is more grim in the rural areas where poverty, hunger and malnutrition is more acute and deep forcing the people join the ranks of dacoits and robbers. .
As a matter of fact, modern states can not function with out any viable political system (democracy) and constitutional liberalism. History is witness that the states which had functioning political system but did not exercise constitutional liberalism had collapsed and finally disintegrated. Take an example of former Soviet Union. Despite having coercive administrative apparatus, it failed to maintain the semblance of unity once the restructuring was undertaken by Gorbachev under the policy of Perestroika and Glasnost. Boris Yeltsin too ruled Russian not differently than his communist predecessors, he bypassed parliament and ruled through notorious decrees. Likewise, the states of Eastern Europe crumbled like pack of cards in the aftermath of the Cold War. State after state collapsed and disintegrated on ethnic lines. The reason was that the ruling elites did not respect the constitutions that guaranteed the fundamental rights of people and right of freedom of express freely.
Coming back to the state of Pakistan, since its genesis it has failed to chart out any political system for itself though it was created on the basis of the ideals of Quaid Azam, envisioning democracy as the best political system and underpinned and guided by the strong constitutional and liberal ideals, protecting the fundamental rights of all the citizens, irrespective of cast, color and class. The democracy as political system is marked by free and fair elections, rule of law, a separation of powers and the protection of basic liberalities of speech, assembly, religion and property. But unfortunately in our land of pure mostly the election held under the supervision of agencies are fraudulent which often produce inefficient corrupt, shortsighted, irresponsible government dominated by special interests and are incapable of adopting policies demanded by public good.
For example the election of 2002 was one of heavily rigged election in favor of Q-League candidates and this was disclosed of by the then DDG, ISI General (retired) Ihtasham Zameer in his interviews with private TV channels, which was wieldy reported by the newspapers. Q-League govt. was the most corrupt and inefficient government in the history of country. It was used by Musharraf as side kick to give façade of legitimacy to his illegitimate rule in the face of growing opposition inside and outside the country. However, to ensure the survival of his illegitimate regime and its survival, he through strong arm tactics tried to subdue every party and intuitions that posed modicum of threat to his dictatorial (mis) rule.
The action of March 9, and Nov 3 were blackest days in the history of Pakistan where around sixty judge of Supreme and High Courts were imprisoned. It was just done to save his illegitimate rule being threatened by the judiciary that it might declare his election of President by the last assemblies as null & void. He installed his puppet supreme court under the PCO just to hire and fire it. It was really the murder of the constitution of Pakistan in the modern age where in the civilized world constitution is considered as sacred document. It is the constitutional that brings and protects the democracy, but democracy does not seem to bring constitutional liberalism, argues noted scholar Fareed Zakaria.
It is unfortunate that the county which was created with owed objective that the democratic forces would chart out the destinies of the nation is dominated by ubiquitous establishment. The so called elections held under the auspices of agencies has led to increasing theocratisation of the society, eroding long-standing traditions of secularism and tolerance. This is evident from the 2002 election in which NWFP was handed over to religious conglomerate knows as Muthida Majlis e Amal ( MMA).
In the end, I would argue that strong and unchecked centralization will undermine the democracy and weaken the federation. Therefore, it would be in the interest of the country and federation to devolve power to grassroots level and empower people so that they can realize heir potential for the welfare of the country as whole. In order to realize that goal, it is essential, we embark on the path of constitutional liberalism in order to promote the process of democratization and pull the country out of the ‘failed state’ syndrome. Constitutional Liberalism is not about the procedure for selecting government but rather government goals which seek to protect the fundamental human rights and right of individual to live descent and dignified life. In order to have constitutional liberalism, it imperative for the democratic government of premier Ifitkhar Gilani to take steps to remove the tumor of 58 2(b) from the body of the constitutional and restore the Nov. 2 judiciary which can play the role of vanguard to ensure the smooth and functioning of 1973 constitution.
The deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Choudhry is right when he says “The nations and states based on dictatorship, instead of supremacy of constitution, rule of law and protection of basic human rights are destroyed. There is no more concept of dictatorship… and nations which do not learn from history and repeat mistakes have to pay the price”. And that price is ‘Failed State’
Hope our present rulers will listen to the words of Justice Choudhry.

Fixing the judiciary by shock & awe methods

2008-08-01T23:29:00.001-07:00

Manzoor Ali Isran

IN the sordid history of Pakistan, it is unfortunate that politics has always taken front seat and featured in the functioning of the executive and judiciary. As a result, there has been total institutional breakdown, constitutional crisis and political chaos, bad governance and rampant corruption. Ruling military elite has created a political cartel in the shape of Muslim League-Q, consisting of divergent political groups and individuals, to serve as a façade of legitimacy.

The fate of this cartel depends on how much political and economic patronage military regime can afford to provide. Such a patronage has, over the years, given birth to a political system that is based on corruption and coercion. In fact, corruption is functioning as a lubricant to keep the system moving. For the survival of such a system, the regime needs a pliant judiciary, not the one headed by the likes of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. It is therefore in this context that every Bonapartist, whether military or civilian, has adopted the policy of “shock and awe” to fix and make judiciary subordinate to the executive.

The president‘s action to call and humiliate the Chief Justice of Pakistan on March 9 is being seen by most of the political analyst as part of the “shock and awe” policy hatched 53 year ago by some unscrupulous elements to sabotage the nascent judicial, constitutional and democratic structure of the country as these elements were afraid that if Pakistan became a democratic polity with political power concentrating in the hands of people, they would not be able to pursue their own petty interests.

Undoubtedly, suspension of the CJP has led to an unprecedented uproar and massive protests across the country. In every town and city, the legal community and the forces of civil society are up in arms over the issue, agitating against the Chief Justice’s suspension, calling it malaise and unconstitutional. There is little doubt that the legal community has demonstrated a rare show of unity in the history of Pakistan showing an unshakable commitment to defend the CJP and the independence of judiciary against any cavalier attempt to undermine its freedom and autonomy as enshrined in the Constitution under the ‘doctrine of separation of powers’.

The driving force behind this unity is the pro-poor stance of the CJP. He took decisions that provided justice and sense of empowerment to the marginalized sections of society, poor men, women and children against the brute force of the state. After watching some children shown with handcuffs on TV channels, he had immediately asked the senior civil judge of Hyderabad at midnight to go to the police station concerned and get them freed. It was he who provided justice to poor Munoo Bheel who was running form pillar to post knocking at doors of influential people for justice. The determination of the CJP not to surrender to the bullies of the military-led government has not only raised the honour, dignity and stature of the judiciary but also strengthened the forces of civil society who are struggling for the rule of law in the country.

Apart from that, he had many laurels to his credit. The most striking is the clearance of the huge backlog of cases in the Supreme Court. When he took over, there were a total of 25,808 cases, appeals and petitions, pending before the Supreme Court. Later, the figure went up to the 38,139 cases. The chief justice decided over 20,000 cases a year and reduced the backlog to 10,389. He is the only judge in the country who took 6,000 suo motu notices on issues relating to human rights abuses.

His landmark decisions or the cases he took up include hearing petitions against rising oil and pharmaceutical prices involving the interests of large multinationals, preventing public parks from being converted into exclusive (mini) golf clubs or commercial complexes, strictly enforcing building regulations and decreeing the demolition of elitist encroachments on public lands, prohibiting the cutting of forests in the construction of an elitist township known as New Murree near Islamabad, instituting inquiries into disappearances, providing relief to rape victims, banning forced marriages and the exchange of girls and women to settle disputes according to local customs. His memorable judgement was reversing the privatisation of Pakistan Steel Mills. He gave landmark verdicts on Basant and wedding feasts. These were the decisions that irked the government and led it to take a strange decision of making the CJP ‘non-functional’.

It is ironic that the suspension and manhandling of the Chief Justice at the hands of the security forces has come at a time when the country is desperately trying to improve its image abroad amid allegations that Pakistan has virtually become an incubator of producing jihadis and where women are frequently traumatised, civil liberties to common people are denied or abused by the security forces in the name of fighting against the extremism. The other allegations include the rise of fundamentalism and creeping Talibanisation, coupled with sectarian divide, alleged disappearances of dissidents at the hands of intelligence agencies, poor governance and rampant corruption and finally attacks on the press, the fourth pillar of the state. The attack on Geo TV channel is a glaring example of the state’s intolerance of objective coverage of events of national importance. No doubt, it has presented the country abroad in bad light.

Some analysts wonder at the present state of confrontation between the judiciary and the military which have often been seen as allies in the past. This confrontation shows that some strains have cropped up in their relationship which has otherwise been accommodative since the days when Justice Munir validated the dissolution of the Constituted Assembly by the then governor-general Ghulam Mohammad under the “doctrine of necessity” in 1953.

Since then civilian and military rulers in Pakistan, from time to time, have attempted to subjugate the judiciary, eliminate the political parties opposed to them and undermine the growth of constitutionalism in order to ensure their domination and control.

The coercion and palatial conspiracies sabotaged the political development on democratic lines in the formative years of Pakistan in accordance with the vision of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Basically, the problem between the independent judiciary and the state started with the latter’s total disregard of the law and the constitution and a major emphasis on authoritarian ways on the part of the civil-military bureaucracy, mingled with the personal desire of some misguided elements to grab power at the cost of national integrity, political stability and economic prosperity.

Further, to create a favourable institutional base, the military regime curtailed the role of the political elite, who resisted its rise to power, through the infamous Elective Bodies Disqualification Order (EBDO) in 1959. To intimidate and tame the bureaucracy, thirty one officers from the prestigious civil services, foreign office and police force were removed on the charges of corruption and inefficiency.

The judiciary suffered a severe blow during Gen. Zia’s military rule. He used the card of Islamizing the Pakistani society and suppressing the popularity and existence of Pakistan People’s Party to survive the storm that the latter may whip up and also to perpetuate himself in power for long time to come. He customized and tweaked every thing in that direction. And to realize this twin objective, he deemed it necessary to control and tame the higher judiciary. For that, he introduced Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) that damaged the entire façade of the judicial structure. The Supreme and high courts were rendered ineffective. Their judgments delivered against martial law decision were annulled with retrospective effect. The PCO also required the higher court judges of the four provinces to take fresh oath of office, demonstrating their loyalty to the new constitutional dispensation. The judges who were opposed to the PCO and the martial law regime were not offered new oath. And as a result, many judges resigned.

According to Hamid Khan, one of the CJP council members and former Supreme Court Bar Association president, when General Musharraf took over in October 1999, judiciary was the first institution to face the wrath of the military rulers. When military takeover was challenged before the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Musharraf and his fellow Generals feared that the apex court might give a verdict against the military government. They were desperate to seek legitimacy of their regime. When these cases were fixed for hearing by the Supreme Court, things came to a head. Judges were forced to abandon their oath to protect, defend and preserve the Constitution and instead take another oath under the Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) passed in October 1999.

As a result, the Chief Justice and five other judges of the Supreme Court did not take oath under the PCO and were forced to quit. On the other hand, seven judges led by Justice Irshad Hassan Khan, who were already hand in glove with the military rulers, took the oath under the PCO. He was rewarded with the office of the CJ of Pakistan.

The fact remains that the military’s confrontation with judiciary, an important pillar of the state, does not auger well for the national integrity, political stability, economic prosperity and growth of constitutionalism in the country. Even before the suspension of the CJP, Gen. Musharraf had himself conceded that the federation was weak and needs political consensus and cooperation of all the political forces in the country to have stable and prosperous Pakistan. But the action against the CJP on the part of the president has plunged the whole country into a judicial chaos, with serious political and economic fallout. And this time the legal community and the press are playing the role of a vanguard to oppose the domination of the military over the country’s polity and civil institutions. To pacify the situation, let me put it in Gramscian terms that the military as one of the dominant social groups in matrix of Pakistani society needs to give up its hegemony over other social groups. It must sacrifice its corporate demands and create a collective stake, and, finally, accord full respect to the constitution and independence of the judiciary for the sake of national unity.

Higher education in a mess

2008-08-01T23:27:00.000-07:00

THE system of higher education in Pakistan is poor, outdated and seems to be suffering from authoritarian and undemocratic management. As a result, it is moving in unchartered waters, without knowing which goal it is heading for.

By and large, our education system is feudalistic with its roots in the colonial educational set-up whose main purpose was domination, exploitation and accumulation. Clearly, education in our country, unlike in the West, was not thought of as a means of promoting democracy or spreading egalitarianism, or increasing social mobility. On the contrary, its role has been to maintain the status quo, strengthen the ruling class and produce better rulers in order to reinforce the ideology upon which power of the elite rested. Even a conservative educationist like Dr Ishtiaq Qureshi argues: “these institutions produce a corps of privileged elite, destined, because of its westernised training, the public service commission examinations being loaded in its favour, to rule over the despised ‘native Pakistanis’…..”.

According to Paulo Freire, education has a liberating function but in the context of Pakistan it has merely remained an inoperative part of our political system. The professed goal of education such as the development of physical and intellectual capacities of people, so as to make them autonomous, free, self-reliant entities, and to help them earn their livelihood with dignity, have never been part of our educational strategies.

The policies of the post-colonial, overdeveloped Pakistani state, dominated by civil-military oligarchy, have largely mutilated the liberating function of education and whatever educational policies were designed from time to time reflected the aspirations and interests of the elitist class, the aim being to control and dominate the universities. In this regard, the state has taken a number of steps, including the military and bureaucratic colonisation of the universities by appointing military men and retired bureaucrats as vice-chancellors of the universities in the “politically volatile” regions.

However, it is no surprise that in the universities riddled with corruption and sleaze, the appointment of the non-academics as vice-chancellors is solely guided by the security and political considerations rather than any desire to improve the governance and promote the quality of teaching and research. Maybe the appointment of a military man as the CEO of Balochistan University was made to handle the situation on the campus after the assassination of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti.

The appointment (and third extension) of a retired bureaucrat as CEO of Sindh University, Jamshoro, is largely believed to be part of the establishment’s move to manage and control the nationalist elements in Sindh University, Jamshoro, which is regarded as political nursery of Sindhi nationalist politics by the agencies. It may be recalled that the present incumbent was first appointed by the Zia regime in the wake of the MRD movement, and his term now extended by General Musharraf’s government.

To further tighten the control over the universities, the state has created a number of institution like Higher Education Commission (HEC) whose main holy grail is to regulate and control the universities in a way that ensures that their functioning is in line with the ideology of the present regime while ignoring the basic values such as autonomy of the universities and academic freedom of the of professors, which undoubtedly underpins the foundation of strong educational system. It is unfortunate that the autonomy of the universities and teachers’ freedom to express their opinions are currently under attack and every attempt on the part of the state is being made to suppress the growth of independent intellectual thought at the campus, for it is considered antithesis to its ideology of domination and exploitation.

The history of such attempts goes back to the days of Gen. Zia who considered liberal thought an anathema to his obscurantist ideology of “Islamising the society”, and thereby intended to change its fabric in order to prolong his personal rule. Those universities and professors who were opposed to his brutal rule were tortured, sacked or jailed. Dr. Zafar Arif of Karachi University is a glaring example. Beside, many professors such as Dr Hassan Askari Rizvi and Prof Mehdi Hassan left Punjab University, due to their nonconformist views and over the decision of the university administration to award doctorate degree to the dictator.

At the moment, the system of higher education, based on the elitist ideology, is leading to an educational apartheid in Pakistan. There exists a dual educational system right from primary to higher education; on the one hand there are institutions where only the offspring of the rich can study and on the other hand children of the poor get education of inferior quality form the poorly managed public sector universities.

To further strengthen the elitist education, new engineering universities, in collaboration with some of the industrialised countries, in the different industrial cities are being planned with exorbitant fee structure. Only the rich can afford such expensive education in a country where around 45 million people live below the poverty line. These universities will be producing engineers and managers for the new businesses in the elitist economy of Pakistan where only 20 per cent of the population consumes 80 per cent of the country’s resources and 80 per cent of the population lives on only 20 per cent of the resources.

The current HEC policies are totally skewed and tend to further widen the gap between educational standards being imparted by public and private sector universities. For example, the overemphasize of the HEC on PhD faculty under its ‘Quality Assurance’ scheme has resulted in proliferation of the culture of plagiarism and ‘cut-paste PhDs’ who can hardly write a correct sentence in English. As such higher education is becoming more degree-oriented rather than knowledge-oriented.

In this regard Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy is right when he says: “The implications of this mass-production of PhDs are dire. Very soon hundreds and, in time, thousands of worthless PhDs will be cranked out. They will train even less competent students. Eventually they will become heads of departments and institutions. When appointed gatekeepers, they will regard more competent individuals as threats to be kept locked out. The degenerative spiral, long evident in any number of Pakistani institutions, will worsen rapidly, and become infinitely more difficult to break”.

The mega projects, involving huge spending and seen to be a sophisticated way of siphoning off money on the part of the elite, are also failing to have any effect on the standard of teaching and research due to rampant misuse of funds on the part of some universities, to which the HEC has turned a total blind eye. Its monitoring system is poor and evaluation is utterly reckless. The main problem with HEC policies is that mostly its policies are input-oriented, not bothering about the output. The HEC often quantifies its success by citing the rise in the number of publications and production of PhDs, without recognising the fact that these are nothing but mere pieces of doctored plagiarism and cut & paste stuff from internet.

According to critics, the main cause of the failure of the HEC policies is that it has introduced reforms without reforming the governance of the universities which has given rise to unprecedented corruption, mismanagement and favouritism. So far it has paid scant attention to contain corruption and political interference in the universities, improve governance and ensure the transparency and accountability of its mega projects. This phenomenon has largely derailed the HEC reforms. However, credit goes to Gen Musharraf’s government for undertaking a range of academic reforms in order to overhaul the decaying educational system of higher education in order to cater to the needs of society. But, I don’t think these reforms will succeed until and unless basic structures of higher education are changed and made accountable to the democratic forces of the civil society.

For, it is democracy and democratic governance that provide fertile ground for the germination of ideas and knowledge, which serve as a basis of what historian Alvin Toffler calls “brain force economies” to succeed ours that could be called the “brute force economies.” And for the realisation of that goal, it is imperative that we remove all the controls that have been placed on education and let it play its liberating role in our society to breed independent thought and free human beings.

Politics of Kalabagh dam

2008-08-01T23:26:00.001-07:00

THE “frenzy and fever of KBD” as said by Mr Ayaz Amir in his column “A fever called Kalabagh dam” (Dec 9, 2005) has gripped the top brass of our rulers, and this time they seem unwisely determined to go ahead with it, come what may. It is tragic that our rulers do not believe in national consensus; such decisions have damaged the already fragile veil of national unity.

This was the case when one unit was created in 1958 against the wishes of the majority of Pakistanis. The formation of one unit sowed the seeds of mistrust and misgivings amongst the federating units, especially in the minds of the people of East Pakistan. The damage was colossal which finally resulted in the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971.

The decision to support Afghan jihad during the Zia years” gave the nation the gift of Kalashnikovs and heroin and ethnic polarization” whose consequences we have not yet outlived.

At a time when the nation has displayed a rare show of national unity fostered by the earthquake, President Gen Musharraf’s decision to raise the most controversial issue of constructing the KBD seems to be miscalculated and mistimed. Gen Musharraf has offered all kinds of constitutional guarantees to the people of smaller provinces on the KBD during his visit to Sindh.

How can people be expected to believe him when he himself has defaulted so many times on his promises? He held an allegedly rigged referendum under official patronage against the provision of the Constitution and declared himself president for five years. He promised that he would take off his uniform before Dec 31, 2004. People have become cynics and sceptical about the promises and policies perused by our rulers.

Conspiracy theorist believe that the bogey of Kalabagh has been raised as a political stunt to win hearts and minds of the people of Punjab for the coming 2007 election. But intellectuals and common people from Punjab are opposed to the construction of the KBD in the absence of national consensus.

Mr Ayaz Amir, in his column “Whither, once again, beloved Punjab”(Dec 23, 2005) has addressed the people of Punjab and asked them to raise their voice against anything that goes against the very grain of national unity and integrity of the country.

Instead of using the language of threats that Punjab won’t let any ruler to rule the country if the KBD is not constructed, we should use the language of peace and harmony to cultivate an atmosphere of peace and amity.

Dams should be constructed in the light of the recommendations made in the report headed by A.N.G. Abbasi — according to which Skardu and Katzara are the most suitable sites for the construction of dams — in order to cultivate, strengthen and preserve national unity.

National security redefined

2008-08-01T23:23:00.001-07:00

Mr Javid Husain, former diplomat, in his article article ‘National security redefined’ (Dawn, April 29, 2006), has redefined national security in the light of existing realities being faced by Pakistan internally and externally. Old notions of national security are being replaced by new ones based on the emergence of new challenges thrown up by the force of globalisation and the emergence of new social and political forces on the domestic front. Yet, it seems that Pakistan is not ready to adjust its national security policies to the changing kaleidoscope of the national, regional, and international political environment.

The concept of national security has undergone much change since the end of the Cold War and the rising tide of globalisation making the national borders irrelevant. Globalisation has changed the traditional concept and structures of national security with military at the heart of the security policies. National security has now been unbundled and mostly seen in terms of human, economic, and cultural terms rather than as mere defence of territorial space by the military.

Globalisation has constricted the state and diminished its capacity to produce security on its own. With the commercialisation of military technology and the emergence of private industrial military complexes, security has become a commodity and countries have to purchase it but at the cost of surrendering their sovereignty.

Pakistan needs to address new emerging issues of human rights, identity, nationality, economic insecurity, population movements, religious intolerance, construction of controversial dams, etc. President General Musharraf himself has admitted that Pakistan faces more internal threats to its security than external ones. While discussing the domestic roots of national security, Barry Buzan argues that states now have to worry not just about their military strength and the security of their ruling families, but also about he competitiveness of their economy, the reproduction of their cultures, the welfare, health and education of their citizens and the stability of their ecologies.

For better understanding, if we disaggregate national security, it is divided into state security and societal security. The former is based on territorial security whereas the latter is centred on the identity. Weakening of territorial security, due to influences of globalisation, has left identities ever more exposed and threatened.

As an ally of the US in the war against terror Pakistan has been exposed to several outside influences, including economic, social, cultural, political and military. Its societal security, which is deemed to be the prime responsibility of the state to provide, has collapsed and people feel more vulnerable and insecure than ever before.

Our rulers have cold-shouldered societal security while state security through the militarisation of state apparatus has dominated the national security agenda.

Therefore, whenever the identities of people, whether religious, sectarian, political, ethnic or cultural, are threatened by the state, people react by fighting back. In this regard, the loss of East Pakistan in 1971 is a glaring example. This also holds true in the case of Balochistan and Waziristan where people are fighting for their rights to protect their identities and socio-economic and political rights.

We need to shun the militarised concept of security and expand its horizons by incorporating the principles of freedom, human rights, welfare, socio-economic justice, and empowerment of the marginalised. Unless this is done people will be justified in thinking that it is their own state, not the enemy from outside, that is the primary security threat.

It is hoped that a security policy will be developed that is guided by national needs based on socio-economic justice and adherence to rule of law. Otherwise, not only will our national security be in jeopardy but the country’s very survival will at stake. We have already seen states more powerful than Pakistan crumble under the weight of declining economies, alienation of people and soaring military expenditure.

Selling energy giants to foreigners

2008-08-01T23:19:00.000-07:00

APROPOS of Dr Akhtar Hassan Khan’s article “Selling energy giants to foreigners” (Dawn, March 6, 2006), I agree with Dr Khan that while indulging in the binge of privatization and liberalization of our market, the government should be cautious in selling energy giants like PSO and gas companies to foreigners in view of the security risks involved.

Apart from that, the PSO and gas companies are not sick business units. As mentioned by Dr Khan, PSO possesses 65 per cent share of oil in the market and is competing very well against rivals through better customer-friendly policies and aggressive marketing. Its profit of Rs9.2 billion is robust.

It will be foolish to sell our energy assets at a time when the winds of economic nationalism are blowing across the world and most of the industrialized countries are also following this keeping in view the risks accompanying the neo-liberal orthodoxy of market liberalization, privatization and deregulation. In the march towards economic development, energy is emerging as the key to future sustainable economic advancement.

Politicians the world over are moving to protect the vital sectors of the economy from foreign takeovers.

President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin want to make especially certain that French energy companies are not taken over by foreigners as the European industry consolidates in anticipation of impending deregulation. So they have brokered a merger of two French energy companies to fend off a possible takeover by Italy’s largest power company.

When German power company Eon launched a $35 billion hostile bid for the Spanish utility Endesa, the Spanish government announced that it “will do everything in its power to ensure that Spain’s energy companies remain Spanish.”

Poland, too, is defying the European Commission by blocking Italian bank UniCredit’s bid for local Bank BPH. And its former masters in the Kremlin are declaring 39 “strategic sectors” off limits to foreign control.

In America, politicians led by Hillary Rodham Clinton have been in full cry against the takeover of P&O by Dubai Ports World, and are preparing to attack the planned takeover of UK-based Doncaster by another Dubai-based company — Doncaster’s plants in Georgia and Connecticut manufacture components for military equipment.

Almost alone among the worlds leading economies, Britain seems unfazed by foreign takeovers. London Electricity has gone to Frances EDF, Pilkington glass to a Japanese company, P&O to a Dubai-based company and mobile-operator O2 to a Spanish company. Only an attempt by one of Russias Putin-controlled companies to take over Centrica, a leading energy utility, is likely to be an acquisition too far.

These examples amply show that the very foundation of neo-liberal orthodoxy and Washington Consensus have been severely shaken in the context of market liberalization and privatization.

In the light of the examples cited above, our politicians and government are advised not allow the sale of PSO and gas companies to foreigners on ground of economic and strategic security reasons.

Corruption: NAB move

2008-08-01T23:16:00.000-07:00

National Accountability Bureau has taken a initiative, according to which NAB has decided to take suo motu action in corruption cases. This is a major policy shift on the part of NAB. The objective is said to be to expedite corruption cases and at the same time to arrest, if not eliminate, the vicious circle of corruption.

It is true that corruption is not limited to Pakistan but is a worldwide phenomenon. According to the World Bank, it is “the single greatest obstacle to economic and social development. It undermines development by distorting the rule of law and weakening the institutional foundation on which economic growth depends”. But still the level of corruption in Pakistan is alarming and needs to be fought through the adoption of a three-pronged policy: pre-emption, policing, and prosecuting.

Pre-emptive approaches are based on reform agendas seeking to prevent the emergence of “black market bureaucracies” where supplies of corrupt practices might be offered to third parties.

The policing approach rarely stands on its own, but the premise is that corrupt behaviour will be limited by the presence of a monitor, or at least a monitoring process.

The prosecutorial approach treats corruption like any crime, and to that extent it tends to focus on those acts that have been “juridified”, that is, made explicitly illegal and subject to some form of juridical process where the determination of guilt and imposition of sanctions are expected.

Corruption in Pakistan has taken different forms such as political corruption and bureaucratic corruption, and corruption as a mechanism of either “upward extraction” or “downward redistribution”. However, the main forms of corruption are bribery, embezzlement, fraud and extortion.

Political or grand corruption takes place at the highest levels of political authority. It takes place when politicians and political decision-makers who are entitled to formulate, establish and implement laws in the name of the people are themselves corrupt and use the political power they are armed with to sustain their power, status and wealth.

Tackling corruption in Pakistan, NAB was formed after Gen Musharraf took over the reins of power in 1999. If we analyze the performance of NAB, we find, according to its own statement, that 12 persons have been convicted during the last three months and 15 new cases of corruption have been filed with accountability courts (Dawn, Jan 18).

Realistically, these figures do not reflect a success story that could lead to a change of perceptions concerning corruption. In a country of over 150 million, a few hundred convictions and a few hundred investigations are a drop in the ocean. Convictions of low-ranked government officials do not change perceptions of corruption. There is not a single case of a high-profile politician having been successfully prosecuted by NAB.

Cutting of deals, especially in a non-transparent manner, and withdrawal of cases against high-profile politicians subsequently inducted in the government heighten the feeling that NAB is going the way of previous organizations, namely, the FIA and the Anticorruption Establishment set up under previous legislation.

In the final analysis, corruption has emerged as the real enemy of development and democracy. If the NAB chairman wants to curtail the rampant corruption, he has to take drastic measures to give up the selective approach to haunt and harass the opposition and let off the hook corrupt officials and supporters of the government, enjoying more perks and privileges than ever before.

Lessons from Saddam

2008-08-01T23:13:00.000-07:00

Anwar Syed’s article, in his article ‘Lesson from Saddam’ (Dawn, Jan 21, 2007), finds less likely that execution of Saddam is presented and projected by the Bush administration as a signal to Muslim rulers that if they do not submit to US hegemony, they will meet the same fate. He calls it poetic exaggeration as Bush does not have capacity to implement it. That is true but what can be expected of a person who seeks evangelical guidance to handle mundane affairs.

The US policy shows it has never hesitated even to kill people in large numbers to protect its global corporatocracy. Noam Chomsky says America is the leading terrorist state which killed and maimed thousands in Vietnam, Nicaragua and Iraq. Then there are millions of others who have been killed by US-backed dictators since World War II. This is how the foundation of US corporate empire has been laid.

This US policy has been revealed in John Perkins’ book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Perkins says how, as a paid professional, he helped the US cheat poor countries out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then take over their economies. He says: “We’ve built the largest empire in the history of the world. . . .. primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life . . . ..”

When the economic hit men fail, the next step is what he calls the jackals. Jackals are CIA-sanctioned people that come in and try to foment a coup or revolution. If that doesn’t work, they perform assassinations. In the case of Iraq, they weren’t able to get through to Saddam. His bodyguards were too good. He had doubles. They couldn’t get through to him. So the third line of defence, if the economic hit men and the jackals fail, is our young men and women who are sent in to die and kill, which is what we’ve obviously done in Iraq.

To protect and expand US empire, corporations, banks and American government work together and support every tin-pot dictator around the world. Saddam happened to be one who was raised to power and pampered by the CIA. He was discarded when his evil instincts became a source of embarrassment for them.

Besides Saddam, there are numerous cases where the CIA is believed to be involved in toppling or removing popular leaders like Mossadegh, Salvador Allende of Chile and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Shah Faisal and dictators like Ziaul Haq and others who felt betrayed by the US.

In the case of Zia, the CIA and leading American think tanks believed that he was promoting extremism through his support to Muslim fundamentalists who were opposed to US hegemony.

As for Musharaf, his fate hangs on the outcome in Afghanistan. The situation is very fluid across the Pakistan-Afghan border. Its intensity can be judged from the statement of US National Intelligence Director John Negroponte in a congressional appearance in which he said: “Pakistan is our partner in the war on terror . . .. However, it is also a major source of Islamic extremism . . . ..” The same apprehension has been voiced by new US defence secretary, Robert Gates, during his recent visit to Afghanistan.

Pakistan, however, finds itself in very uncertain situation where every patriotic citizen feels apprehensive about its future. God forbid anything untoward should happen and harm the very core interest of Pakistan.

Resurgence of civil society

2008-08-01T23:00:00.000-07:00

Manzoor Ali Isran

IN the life of nations living under a despotic dispensation, there comes a moment when all the suppressed classes of society, along with liberal forces, rise up against the system in an attempt to replace it with a just and egalitarian one.

In 1789, such a moment, a defining moment, came in France when the Third Estate (middle class and peasants) revolted against the tyrannical rule of Louis XVI, stormed and seized Bastille, the symbol of despotism, and finally the assembly drafted a new constitution that introduced the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, proclaiming liberty, equality, and fraternity.

In Russia, the regime of Nicholas II, the last Tsar, was dethroned in 1917 by the workers and peasants who put an end to the unjust order. In modern times, the Iranian people rose up against the tyrannical the regime of the Shah of Iran and deposed him in February 1979.

In Pakistan, though no such revolutionary change is likely to take place in the near future, a look at the internal situation as it is shaping up in Islamabad and across the country shows that some kind of a change is waiting in the wings. In particular, the legal community’s protest movement against the president’s March 9 action of making the Chief Justice of Pakistan ‘dysfunctional’ has at least created a situation which has mobilised the forces of civil society throughout the country in support of its demand for independence of judiciary.

It can, of course, prove to be a harbinger of restoration of civil and genuine democracy.

A prominent feature of the lawyer’s movement is that it has led to mobilisation of all the political forces under its umbrella. This is a positive development of far-reaching significance. The new activism has brought into question the character of present reationship between the state and society which needs to be redefined.

Although the lawyer’s movement is basically a professional battle seeking restoration of the CJP’s status and independent functioning of courts, there is little doubt that it has all the ingredients of turning into a political movement aimed at permanent withdrawal of the armed forces from the country’s politics and a return to the rule of law and democratic polity.

There are many instances in history when apolitical movements have turned into political movements. For example, Solidarity movement in Poland which started off as a social movement gradually adopted a political agenda and turned into a political movement and toppled the communist party rule.

The Solidarity movement, beginning from the Lenin Shipyards, Gdansk, Poland in 1980s, served as catalyst for an overdue political change in the Eastern Europe by mobilising civil societies across the region. Poland's worsening economic situation fuelled this revolt which later spread to Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania where pro-Soviet governments fell.

Iran is another example where initially its clergy opposed the growing influence of western culture and pro-western policies followed by the regime of late Raza Shah Pehlvi but later it turned into a political movement in which other groups of civil society and intelligentsia joined hands with Ayatollah Khomeini and finally the brutal rule of Shah of Iran came to an end in February 1979.

In Pakistan, soon after its birth, a language movement erupted in East Pakistan which sought recognition of Bengali as the second national language of Pakistan, along with Urdu. But when it was denied, it turned into a political movement and later culminated in six-point programme of Awami League which led to the creation of Bangladesh.

In the post-independence period in Pakistan, the forces of civil society remained sidelined. In fact, every institution that could strengthen the civil society and democracy in the country was severely suppressed on the pretext that democracy did not suit the genius of the people of Pakistan.

To deprive the provinces of autonomy, granted to them under 1940 resolution, one unit was created by merging all the provinces of West Pakistan to create parity against the majority of East Pakistan. The purpose was to maintain power in

the hands of West Pakistan bureaucracy and deprive the people of East Pakistan of their due share in power and resources.

Even after the break up of Pakistan, power-hungry rulers did not learn any lesson. They kept subverting the institutions that could keep the country united. After a short interval of civilian rule, again the country plunged into the dark shadows of military rule under Gen. Zia who hanged the first elected prime minister of Pakistan in 1977. In order to perpetuate his rule, he raised the slogan of Islamisation of society. To alienate the progressive forces of civil society, he co-opted the clergy and feudal lords to rule the country.

When Gen. Musharraf took over the reins of the country, it was expected that he would roll back the retrogressive policies of the past and take the liberal forces along with him to strengthen the civil society and democratic institutions. But he did not do so. He created a constituency for himself from amongst the forces of obscurantism and then used them to get some constitutional amendments to strengthen his personal rule.

To realise the goal of a vibrant civil society, there is a need to change the asymmetrical relationship between the state and civil society. And for that, the role of the media and judiciary is crucial. The lawyers’ movement is aimed at defeating authoritarianism, creating the rule of law in society and complete respect for independence of judiciary. The success of this movement is vital for the future of the country. The civil society groups, mobilised as a result, must play their due role in this historic struggle.

Weakening the country

2008-08-01T22:56:00.000-07:00

THE recent statement by President Musharraf that incompetent leadership weakens the country has unleashed a new debate that who is responsible for grave problems besetting the country, with a fluid political system and fragile institutions. AS we analyse the situation, we find that the problems the country is facing today are the direct consequence of Mr Musharraf’s policies, far removed from the ground realities. His decision to join the US-led war on terror and kick off fighting against the Taliban in the tribal areas or to start a military operation in Balochistan or the adoption of the devolution plan or the neoliberal economic policies, all these actions have greatly jeopardised the national security and harmed the unity and integrity of the country.

The rot started when Mr Musharraf joined the ‘war on terror’ without consulting the countrymen. Like Ayub and Zia, who exploited the American obsession with the growing threat and expansion of communism, Mr Musharraf exploited the Al Qaeda factor with much dexterity to his fuller advantage.

He offered the US support in its fight against Al Qaeda in tribal areas and in return received massive economic and military aid. But unfortunately his cronies lined up their pocket rather than spend on the welfare of the people who are still living a life of misery and mayhem.

Wars cannot be fought and won without the support of the masses. So, to create the facade of that support, Mr Musharraf patronised the Q-League, composed of the diverse political elements. So, in theory and in practice, Mr Musharraf handed over the political and economic affairs of the country to the Q-League clique and combo of civil and military bureaucracy. He militarised major civilian institutions and gave them huge benefits, including appointments on lucrative positions and awarded them lands and plots in Gwadar.

This action of the president invoked reaction and resistance from Baloch nationalists. To crush their opposition, the restive province was handed over to agencies and the operation was initiated, which finally resulted in the killing of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti and scores of others.

If a political system is corrupt, it can’t run without further oiling the gears of power. And for that Mr Musharraf hired the services of Shaukat Aziz. According to reports, his name was suggested by the World Bank in order to pursue the neoliberal agenda of privatisation, liberalisation and deregulation.

Moreover, while fulfilling the neoliberal agenda, the administration of Shaukat Aziz indulged in the binge of privatisation under which vital state assets such as banks, PTCL, etc., were sold at throwaway prices to the parties close to the regime. It was really a reminiscent of the era of Boris Yeltsin when in Russia the strategic state assets were sold to the members of the mafia capitalism for peanuts under the same neoliberal mantra of privatisation and liberalisation, pushing the country to the verge of economic disaster.

In summimg up, it can be safely said that the Musharraf regime created instability, economic chaos and energy crisis which have weakened the country a great deal in every domain of life. It produced sugar, cement, wheat and flour cartels whose blackmailing power was enormous to the extent that even NAB could not touch them.

Moreover, his reforms, whether educational or administrative, have failed to have any desired impact on society. Whatever the crisis country is facing today is the fallout of the eight years of misrule of Mr Musharraf and his comrades. He should accept it gracefully.

Educational system that delivers

2008-08-01T22:54:00.000-07:00

WITH the democratically-elected government in the saddle, it is hoped the system of higher education will be overhauled and cleansed of all the mess of last eight years of dictatorial rule.

In democracies education holds key to national progress. It is an important tool of social transformation. Unluckily, in our country the progressive character of education has deliberately been mutilated by the various dictatorial regimes.

Dictatorships always suppress the politically articulate classes of society and in this regard the students, being the most vocal segment of society, become the main target. During the Zia period education was neglected and the dictator virtually handed over universities to intelligence agencies.

Students unions were banned and academic freedom was curbed. Further to control the campuses, military generals and bureaucrats were appointed as vice chancellors, especially in universities which were centre of political struggles against his autocratic rule.

When Pervez Musharraf grabbed power in 1999, he continued with the same policies of Zia but in a different manner. He posed himself more in the light of populist and liberal dictator who was committed to democracy, rule of law, freedom of the media and development of education as key to national development on the pattern of authoritarian model of East Asia, in which education had been given top priority in the 1990s.

But the main difference between Mr Musharraf’s model and the East Asian model was of ‘governance’ – East Asian model of governance was more accountable, politically non-partisan and economically judicious whereas his model of governance was more partisan, corrupt and non-accountable.

However, to reform higher education, Mr Musharraf formed the HEC in 2002, giving it more autonomy and powers to unilaterally impose policies on public-sector universities. On the pattern of the notorious ‘Structural Adjustment Programmes’ of the IMF, the funding was conditioned with adoption and implementation of HEC conditionalities. Like SAPs, which have produced economic poverty in developing countries where SAPs are running, the HEC reforms have produced academic poverty, corruption and bad governance in most of the academically sick universities.

While implementing its reforms, the HEC has adopted ‘cookie-cutter approach’ of putting the Pakistani universities in the league of 500 world top universities overnight. The HEC stance, based on the notion that ‘one size fits all’ and delivering the ‘same medicine’ to each ailing university, has played more havoc with the system of higher education, breeding unprecedented corruption than bringing any fundamental change in the already dilapidating system, despite having spent billions of rupees on the mega projects.

It is ridiculous that universities which are bereft of basic infrastructure are running very expensive projects just for the benefit of a few individuals who happen to be well connected to the project mafia in the HEC. There should be proper auditing of the HEC funds.

The new democratic government should assign top priority to education because without a sound educational system the socio-economic condition of the people won’t improve. More than that, democracy won’t take roots and stabilise. For education, democracy and development are intrinsically interconnected and reinforce each other.

Benazir Bhutto was right when she said in her book, Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy and the West, that democracy cannot be sustained in the absence of stable and growing middle class .... and the first key to develop the middle class is to build an educational system that allows children to rise to a higher social and economic status than their parents.

In other words, an educational system that delivers hope and real opportunity is a prerequisite for democracy. It was for this reason that she had stressed the need for greater investment in education and health to produce more healthy and literate population.

The PPP government should take steps to improve governance so that the goals can be achieved as articulated by Ms Bhutto in her book.

The plague of plagiarism

2008-08-01T22:53:00.000-07:00

Manzoor Ali Isran writes on how the HEC reforms have contributed to the rise in plagiarism

AN interesting but intensive debate is going on in and out of academia around the rise of plagiarism in public sector universities. Its emergence is posing a serious threat to the Higher Education Commission reforms which are aimed at improving the standard of education. To be fair, plagiarism is not limited to Pakistan; it is a rather global phenomenon. Even the British government is accused of plagiarising the dossier on Iraq from the thesis of a US graduate student Ibrahim al-Marashi who published his work in September 2001. However, here in Pakistan, plagiarism is emerging as the underbelly of HEC and has posed serious challenge to its credibility as a body to enforce educational reforms.

The main purpose of the establishment of HEC in 2002 was to bring qualitative change in the state of higher education. For this purpose, billions of rupees have been spent in an attempt to overhaul the system and make it domestically efficient and globally competitive. In order to achieve this goal, HEC introduced range of reforms such as setting up digital library, hiring foreign faculty, introducing research oriented projects/schemes and launching an idea of ‘PhD faculty’, on the pattern of ‘Graduate Assembly’.

Despite all these steps, the rising tide of plagiarism, rampant corruption and management in HEC funded projects are emerging as new threats that are rocking the boat of HEC reforms. In this respect, the surfacing of plagiarism cases in big numbers illustrate that HEC policies are fundamentally flawed and therefore not producing any quality research but ‘doctored plagiarism’ or ‘cut & paste’ PhDs.

This is abundantly clear from the recent reports in which HEC itself has shown its grave concern over the proliferation of plagiarism. Most of the academics in the country believe that the emergence of plagiarism is the result of the ‘hasty approach’ of HEC, under which it hysterically peruses the goal of producing at least 1,500 PhDs per annum, without realising whether material conditions exist or not for such adventure, especially in the context of Pakistan where research facilities are scarce.

However, to achieve this number, HEC has imposed the condition of PhD on the existing faculty for promotions. So in order to meet out that condition for getting promotion teachers are resorting to ‘quick-fix’ techniques of getting PhD degrees through ‘cut and paste’ methods. As a result, the epidemic of plagiarism is on the rise throughout the country and it has emerged as institutionalised business. There exist mafias operating from Karachi to Khyber in different public and private sector universities. This mafia has got ghost writers who write PhD dissertations on the payment of handsome amount of money. The members of the mafia are well connected to the administration of universities and wield huge political clout. Such activities basically tend to subvert the reformatory agenda of HEC that it unveiled after its genesis in 2002.

Apparently, it seems impossible for HEC to control plagiarism in the absence of any fool-proof mechanism. And whatever cases have been reported are due to the intra-teachers rivalry, otherwise HEC has so far developed no mechanism to control it. Recently, HEC has taken action to establish local cells in the universities for this purpose but unfortunately the people who are running these cells are themselves involved in the practices of plagiarism. And moreover, the people who are heading such cells might not know any thing other than their own subjects. So, it is impossible to contain the mushroom proliferation of plagiarism.

While assessing the overall progress, it can safely be established that in spite of spending billlions of rupees on the number of mega projects/schemes being carried out in number of universities, the educational system is in chilling disarray, the standard and quality of research is crumbling and teachers are drifting away from their primary task of teaching and research. Quite a few of the motivated and dedicated teachers serving there are leaving and joining private institutions. This exodus is rendering public sector universities intellectually bankrupt and academically shallow. Whatever teachers left behind are either sidelined or victimised on personal grounds.

Therefore, the failure of the state universities has created a vacuum and that space is being filled by the private sector universities, especially in the market demanding subjects such as computer science, engineering and business administration. With the globalisation of economy, education is emerging as a hugely profitable business in the market today in the subcontinent and multinational corporations are hunting for quality graduates. India is fast becoming the hub of investment by high-tech businesses and companies like Microsoft, Intel and AMD. They are keen to invest there not because of low cost, which is 40 per cent below the US level, but due to the quality of graduates being produced by Indian universities.

In comparison with Indian universities and educational system, Pakistani universities, as well as its educational system, are weak at producing graduates not only lacking the competitive edge but also the confidence required for responsible jobs. How can such students be produced and nurtured in an environment which is marked by academic instability, administrative dishonesty, financial corruption and political interference?

If the HEC is serious about improving the standard of education, it has to change its approach and see education as a whole, without detaching higher education from college and primary education. Focusing only on higher education and leaving college and primary education to rot won’t bear positive fruits and it doesn’t matter how much money HEC spends. The government needs to lay focus on improving standard of education in the feeding institutions - colleges and schools.

Another problem with the HEC policy is that it is striving for quality without ensuring to have what Dr Grace Clark, executive director of USEFP, calls respectable knowledge base, intellectual integrity and academic and administrative accountability. These values are weak in our educational institutions and no attention is being paid towards strengthening them due to bad governance which in turn has given rise to financial mismanagement, corruption and favouritism.

It is unfortunate that instead of working as an institution committed to the growth of research and development, respecting the autonomy and resisting the militarisation/bureaucratisation of the universities, the HEC is dictating to the universities, periodically dishing out directives to the academically undernourished universities to follow its prescription about quality education and research, failing which the funds would be withheld (it may be noted that HEC provides funds to the public sector universities). This is bound to generate confrontation and ill-will between HEC and universities as recently Punjab University has threatened to take the matter of suspension of its budget to the Council of Common Interests (it may be recalled that due to case of plagiarism in PU, HEC has threatened to suspend its funds until PU sacks the teacher who is involved in plagiarising his thesis of PhD).

The HEC’s formula of ‘one size fits all’ will not work successfully until university-specific strategies are worked out as public sector universities are suffering from different problems since their size, intellectual and academic capacity, physical and technical infrastructure vary considerably. To diagnose these problems, the HEC needs to adopt participatory approach to involve all stakeholders and formulate policies keeping in view the peculiar nature of the problem each public sector university is facing.

As a matter of fact, every educational system has to evolve with in particular political system and it is the political system that finally determines the contours of educational system. It is unfortunate that Pakistan, for the most part of its life, has lived under military regimes and those regimes had neglected education right from primary to higher education. In such situation, putting our universities in the league of top 500 world universities overnight is like living in fool’s paradise.

The dilemma with the reforms initiated under the military regime is that these reforms do not work properly because the whole system is based on patronage and corruption. The accountability is lax and transparency almost non-existent. Overall, it is the political system that has to evaluate the performance of the institution and progress of the reforms; it has to hold people accountable in case of any failure or problems with the reforms not working. This thing is egregiously absent and there is no external accountability and evaluation of institution that is carrying out reforms by the democratic forces.

To address the issue of the declining standard of education and contain the proliferation of plagiarism, HEC needs to come out of what the noted academic Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy calls ‘fantasy world of power point presentation’. It must adopt a realistic stance in order to pull the Pakistani public sector universities out of the present morass. In this regard, the containment of political interference, improvement of governance, strengthening of accountability and freedom of teachers to criticise are vital steps to be taken, if HEC wants to reform the educational system.

Instead of exuding “irrational exuberance” that every thing is fine, HEC should take stock of ground realities and candidly accept that there are problems with its trajectories of reforms. It should withdraw the policy of PhD as condition for promotions as this is compelling teachers to resort to plagiarism. It should let research develop out of motivation, not compulsion. Further, there is no linkage between the PhD faculty and quality education as there are host of private institutions working with young non-PhD faculty that are still performing better than the public sector universities in terms of imparting quality education.

Democracy is the best revenge

2008-08-01T22:52:00.001-07:00

PEOPLE have given a great verdict against the military mullah - feudal alliance which has been working to sideline democratic forces. In the last eight years the nation did not get anything but flour crisis, power and gas outage, the rising unemployment, poverty, the widening rich poor gap, corruption, scandals, bad governance, political instability and institutional decay. All these have led to the weakening of the federation and state.

As a matter of fact, successful states are predicated on the five universally accepted principles of freedom, respect for human rights, welfare of people, law and order and justice. In the last eight years the political system adopted has failed to deliver these values. It has rather suppressed the freedom of the people, including civil society and the media. The respect for human rights has been dismal and the people are arrested and tortured without following any legal procedure.

Scores of people went missing at the hands of agencies and are still languishing in jails without trial. As regards welfare of the people, the regime has failed to fulfil even their primary needs, such as food, education and shelter.

The recent flour crisis is a glaring example of the regime’s failure to deliver to the common people.

The law and order situation is such that life and limb of the common people is not safe. The current spate of suicide bombings across the country, situation in tribal areas and Balochistan, the killing of Akbar Khan Bugti and the assassination of Benazir Bhutto recently are gruesome reminders of the disturbing law and order situation.

As regards justice, the situation is pathetic. Institutions that are supposed to deliver justice are being intimidated. The sacking of 60 judges of the higher judiciary is a case in point.

It is noteworthy that the anti-Musharraf verdict in the Oct 18 election is not without the struggle of civil society, especially the movement launched by the lawyers’ community after March 9. Because of this movement, people at the grassroots’ level got mobilised to seek their democratic rights.

It also goes to the credit of Benazir Bhutto that she returned home after eight years of exile and generated a huge pressure on the regime to hold the election. Basically, her politics was designed to generate internal as well as international pressure on the regime to hold a free and fair election, which finally proved to be the last nail in the coffin of dictatorship.

Hope when new government is formed in Islamabad, it would patiently take stock of the situation and will make efforts to correct the wrongs made by the previous regime of the Q League and redesign the whole structure of the state and its institutions in a way it must represent and reflect the aspiration of common people.

Mr Zardari’s politics

2008-08-01T22:50:00.000-07:00

Anwar Syed, in his s article, ‘Mr Zardari’s politics’ (Dawn, May 11, 2008) hypothetically accuses Mr Zardari of delaying the reinstatement because he does not really want it to come to fruition.

In support of his argument, the writer lists a number of reasons. First, the PPP would lose if the deposed judges go back to work, if the new judges return to their previous stations, or if the tenure and power of the chief justice remain as they are. Second, reinstatement would cause humiliation to President Musharraf. Mr Zardari does not want Mr Musharraf to be diminished further.

Third, Mr Zardari has not made clean break with the preceding PML(Q) as Malik Abdul Qayyum continues to be the attorney-general.

Fourth, Mr Musharraf went to China and concluded agreements with its government.

Fifth, Mr Musharraf, not Prime Minister Gilani, negotiated a gas deal with the visiting Iranian government.

Sixth, the writer also believes that Benazir Bhutto had made deal with Mr Musharraf which required her and her associates to support his retention of the president’s office.

Seventh, the writer also shows the pressure being exerted by outside powers, especially the US, on Mr Zardari to accept and work with Mr Musharraf whom US considers inevitable as far as war on terror is concerned.

I don’t think that these are the sound reasons due to which the PPP is avoiding to reinstate judges. Just these are drawing-room gossips. The basic difference between Mr Zardari and Nawaz Sharif is that the former does not want to pick the route of confrontation with the presidency at the time when democracy is still fragile because he thinks that any confrontation with the presidency may result in derailment of the democratic process. Further, Mr Zardari has suffered much in the past at the brutal hands of the establishment. Therefore, his party is avoiding resorting to any unconstitutional step that may trigger conflict.He rather wants to restore the judges through a constitutional amendment whereas Mr Sharif wants the reinstatement through a parliamentary resolution, followed by the executive order by the prime minister.

Historically speaking, Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin had similar differences in Russia after 1917 Revolution. Trotsky was one of the leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution. After Lenin’s death, he wanted to bring international proletariat revolution by exporting Bolshevik revolution around the world. But Stalin had differences with Trotsky on the ground that without consolidating socialist revolution inside Russia, international proletariat revolution could not be ushered in. Stalin finally won. He not only became successful in stabilising the socialist revolution inside Russia but also exported it in other parts of the world after World II, and the Soviet Union under his leadership emerged as a superpower.

Iran too faced the situation after the revolution in Iran in 1979. Some sections of the Iranian clergy wanted to export the Shia revolution but Khomeini opposed it and wanted to consolidate the gains of revolution first in Iran as it was facing threats from the US aimed at subverting the nascent Islamic Revolution. Iraqi aggression in 1980 against Iran at the behest of the US was the glaring example.

The political change that has come as a result of the Feb 18 election is viewed not less than any revolution as some one rightly remarked that Pakistan was reborn after the Feb 18 election.

So, instead of indulging in the binge of confrontation, democratic forces should work for strengthening democracy, institution-building and to address the pressing issues of food, electricity and unemployment being confronted by the common man, along with working on the restoration of the judges by hammering out a workable solution to the satisfaction of all stakeholders.

This is not time for populist politics but time to think as to how to strengthen democracy and work for democratic governance.

Latif University in the doldrums

2008-08-01T22:48:00.000-07:00

DEVELOPMENT of institutions holds key to national progress but unfortunately in our country no serious efforts have been made to build institutions. Instead, we have systematically destroyed them on the altar of personal gains. As a result, our institutions are decaying and have become a new source of our misery and mayhem.

One such institution that is facing chaos is Shah Abdul Latif University. It was basically established by the government of ZAB in 1976 in the backwaters of Sindh with the aim to provide students higher education so that this underdeveloped area can be uplifted and integrated with the developed parts of the country.

But this dream of ZAB has been turned into a nightmare due to the fact that Latif University has become the hub of every conceivable institutional vice due to reckless policies by different university administrations.

Indeed, this collusion of unscrupulous elements has severely damaged the development of Shah Abdul Latif University as a respectable institution and given rise to rampant corruption and mismanagement of its resources.

Its first project failed due to massive corruption in the construction work. It was the first example of its kind that the brand new campus was abandoned before a single class could take place. Today the plight of the university is not different.

It can be judged from the fact that it has become a factory of issuing fake degrees, and recently 72 fake degrees were issued to various people, including the son of a former prime minister belonging to Balochistan.

However, with the appointment of Dr Nilofer Shaikh as the first woman vice chancellor in Sindh, there was hope that the fate of Latif University would change.

But the administration seems to be more focused on the HEC projects, which are a major source of corruption in the university.

Various audit reports point to massive irregularities but no action is coming forth.

All expectations have so far proved to be mere pipe dream as the university continues to suffer from bad governance, favouritism and political patronage of teachers/employee groups loyal to the university establishment.

The worst example of political patronage and favouritism was witnessed recently when the university selection board, convened under the chairmanship of Chancellor Dr Nilofer Shaikh, appointed professors in BPS 20 when, in fact, the post of the professor has been upgraded to BPS 21 under the new HEC policy and there are different conditions for grade 21.

According to sources, these professors don’t fulfil the conditions for grade 21, so they are first appointed in BPS 20 and then will be moved to the next stage under the upgradation scheme announced by former prime minister Shaukat Aziz. But these teachers have already been moved from grade 18 to 19. And, according to a source, this upgradation facility cannot be availed twice.

Moreover, upgradation is not automatic but subject to fulfilling the conditions of higher grades as laid down by the HEC.

It is ironic that these appointments are being made under the old criterion which no more exits. According to one view, it is all being done to favour the teachers closely affiliated with the vice chancellor as these people don’t fulfil the new conditions.

Teachers’ bodies have criticised the university administration’s partisan action and demanded that all teachers who qualify under the old policy should be promoted instead of those unduly favoured.

The May 12 carnage and its fallout

2008-08-01T22:47:00.001-07:00

THAT May 12 will be remembered as one of the blackest days in the annals of our tragedy-ridden political history goes without saying. The scars caused by the senseless shooting spree on that day by terrorists of various hues have left indelible marks on the face of our national politics and the echoes of what happened on that day will continue to haunt us for long time. But its critical fallout is already becoming visible.

Despite accusations being endlessly hurled on the opposition parties for being responsible for the ugly carnage that turned Karachi into a ghost city, those at the helm of the affairs are now showing a great sense of unease as they begin soul-searching and look back to why and how it all happened. It is more than evident from the fact that many ministers are either shy of indulging in the offending blame game or are simply trying to come up with different explanations that may satisfy both their superiors and their own conscience. Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali’s resignation from the PML membership is a case in point.

Then, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement which played a lead role in grinding to halt the Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s caravan’s scheduled visit to the Sindh High Court at the behest of the federal government and the president in particular and, as a result, earned the notoriety for unleashing the reign of terror and deaths on the roads. That it is feeling too uneasy for its part in the tragic episode is evident from its high command’s three-day marathon meeting in London which reviewed the May 12 happenings and considered measures to salvage its reputation in the country, its appeal among its workers and its standing in the national politics.

So, the MQM has sought opinion of its rank and file about which option out of the three it has outlined be adopted by the party as future course of action. These are (1) withdrawing its ministers from the federal cabinet, (2) withdrawing its ministers from both the federal and provincial cabinets, but continuing to sit on the treasury benches and (3) quitting the ruling coalition and sitting on the opposition benches. But many doubt if any of the three options will be decided upon and carried out by the MQM leadership after receiving the feedback from its party workers. That the whole exercise is aimed at improving its image among the citizens of Karachi is the possible reason, many analysts are of the view. It is considered imperative for protecting its vote bank as the elections are now only months away.

The regime is already under great pressure from various sides. Looking from broader perspectives, one may say that the events in Karachi and other parts of the country, especially, the suicide bombing in Charsadda and another one in Peshawar and defiance of burqa clad girls at Jamia Hafsa in Islamabad have brought under severe challenge the writ of the state and already beleaguered government of General Musharaf. So, in light of these unpleasant developments, many question the viability of the current dispensation and the ability of the military-led set-up to run the political affairs of the country. Prof Stephen Cohen, an expert on South Asian affairs, in his recent comments has said that the political structure in Pakistan has to be rebuilt because the military is not competent to govern the country, being no substitute for organised political parties.

This requires a new social contract between the state and the people as the current political system does not consider the latter as one of the stakeholders and hence does not provide security to the common man. But the military general are more impatient to pursue the course of conflict and confrontation to eliminate the regime’s opponents.

In short, Karachi carnage will have serious socio-economic and political repercussions on the politics of Sindh and Pakistan, unless corrective measures are taken to defuse the hatred it has aroused among various ethnic groups against each other. For that, the government has to undertake confidence-building measures and involve all the stakeholders in creating durable peace and ethnic harmony in the city. Given the commercial profile, the city cannot afford to be shut down even for three hours, let alone three days ––– as planned by Pukhtoon Action Committee but now postponed for a fortnight –– as several millions’ bread and butter depends on their daily work.

The failure of the state, whether accidental or deliberate, to provide security cover to the people on May 12 has given rise to apprehensions among the people. The common perception is that the security aspect was deliberately compromised for the sake of political gains by the government.

Apparently, the government of Gen. Musharraf felt demoralised by the grand reception the Chief Justice got in the interior of Sindh, the NWFP and Punjab. So, it did not want to see similar welcome in Karachi and put pressure on its coalition partners (Muslim League and the MQM) to show their strength by holding counter rallies. As part of the plan, the MQM fanned out its workers around the city, Sharae Faisal was barricaded, airport and Sindh High Court were literally cordoned off, police was absent, a private TV channel was attacked and the CJ was held in virtual incommunicado at the Airport lounge for about eight hours.

The May 12 violence was in fact the result of confrontation between pro-Musharraf and pro-CJ parties. It has certain political dimensions. Since the president’s action to ‘suspend’ the CJ was politically motivated, the opposition parties began rallying around the lawyer’s movement which is, in fact, fast turning into a movement for democracy. The MQM committed a great mistake by becoming a tool of the authorities and hence indulging in the politics of violence which it claims was actually initiated by the other side. Being a middle class party, it was expected to be supporting the lawyers’ movement as the latter is also a middle class movement aimed at making the judiciary independent. Initially, it may be recalled that the MQM had kept itself at distance by saying that it had not been taken into confidence when the reference against the CJ was filed. But by suddenly jumping into the fray, it surprised, if not disappointed, even its supporters.

However, whatever has happened on May 12 in Karachi and the reaction it has aroused across the country has caused political damage, if at all, to the MQM and not to the opposition or the CJ’s cause. Since that day, the MQM has been under tremendous pressure and it was because of this factor that the governor of Sindh found it necessary to make a courtesy call on ANP leader Asfandyar Wali Khan at the residence of Shahi Syed to condole the deaths of ANP workers. Later, he made a similar call on Prof Ghafoor Ahmed, Syed Qaim Ali Shah and Maulana Fazlur Rehman.

Testing time for the coalition

2008-08-01T22:46:00.001-07:00

THE decision of the PML-N to withdraw its ministers from the cabinet has somewhat dampened the hopes of those who believed that the coalition of the PPP, PML-N and ANP would ultimately give birth to a strong and viable democratic system and bring to an end the long spell of dictatorship that had plunged the country into a political chaos, institutional decay besides creating the economic cartels whose wayward and selfish economic policies are mainly responsible for the food and energy crises the country is facing toady.

The people at large expected that the new government formed under the umbrella of People’s Democratic Alliance (PDA) at the centre would be able to tackle the pressing issues such as elimination of poverty, unemployment, and corruption by providing good governance. Soon after the formation of the government, the prime minister has taken bolds steps, giving some kind of hope that transition to democracy is underway. The release of judges, engaging militants in tribal areas in negotiations, release of Dr. Safdar Sarki and Akhtar Mengal, lifting of curbs on the media and withdrawal of the some the draconian clauses in the Pemra ordinance introduced after Nov 3, reviving students and trade unions, increase in minimum wage from Rs3,500 to Rs6,000 are some of the steps that give some kind of hope that the new government is unshakably committed to strengthen the democratic process.

Amid all such good work, the disagreement between the PPP and PML-N over how the deposed judges be restored does not bode well for the future of democracy in the country. The PML-N is overcommitted to the reinstatement of the judges and achieving it is a pre-condition for its cooperation with the PPP.

Basically, the strategy of Nawaz Sharif is based on the premises that restoration of the judges sacked by Gen Musharraf for standing up to him would prove to be the harbinger of genuine democracy in the country and also compel him to depart from the scene. Their brave defiance has, in fact, caught the political imagination of the masses. In recent months, lawyers’ movement has completely sensitised the Pakistani society. No wonder, the PML-N gave foremost priority to this issue in its election and political campaign. As a result, it swept across Punjab in the Feb 18 polls.

So, the PML-N entered into an alliance with the PPP at the centre and Punjab only on this issue. It made an agreement with the PPP at Bhurban meeting that judges would be restored within thirty days after the formation of the government in Islamabad. But this did not happen by April 30. The new deadline was set for May 12 which also did not realise. The failure of Bhurban, Dubai and London talks clearly show that there is a huge gap of perception between the two parties over the modalities regarding restoring the deposed judges.

The two parties have given a new, rare hope to common masses by narrowing their political differences over so many issues and developing a common understanding on so many matters. Their common enemy was and is Musharraf whose departure is their common goal.

However, it soon became manifest that Zardari is not keen to see the restoration of the judges, much less the way Nawaz wants. After leaving the cabinet, the PML-N has become suspicious of the PPP’s intentions and activities.

Whatever the nature of their differences, PML-N’s strategy is Musharraf-specific and that its joining the government at the centre was motivated by its desire to see the back of Musharraf. How this goal can be achieved is the main problem of Nawaz Sharif and his party. For him, there are two ways to get rid of Musharraf; either through impeachment by the parliament but for that PML-N needs two third majority, or through the restoration of the deposed judges. The last option is more feasible and workable for PML-N. Therefore, it wants the reinstatement through parliamentary resolution followed by an executive order by the prime minister.

Withdrawal of PML-N ministers from the cabinet is seen by some quarters as a move aimed at pressurising the PPP to reinstate the judges. At this point of time, Nawaz Sharif does not want to destabilise the PPP-led government as its consequences will be bad for democracy and can also have a negative effect on his own government in Punjab.

On the other hand, the PPP does not want to pick a confrontation with presidency as it can result in the derailment of the democratic process. Besides, the PPP has suffered a lot in the past at the hands of the establishment. It has lost two of its chairpersons and hundreds of its political workers in the struggle for democracy in the country. Therefore, it is reluctant to take any step that may trigger conflict and again plunge the country into another dark era of dictatorial rule.

Some analysts see ambivalence in this attitude of the PPP. They think that it is the NRO and back channel parleys that are holding PPP back from going ahead on the judges issue. The PPP leadership, especially Mr Zardari, fears, if deposed judges were restored, the NRO may come up before the Supreme Court and be annulled.

This state of affairs marked by speculation and uncertainty is damaging the credibility of the PPP. The leadership must make its position clear on the issue of deposed judges. There is a view that the PPP is facing a leadership crisis after the assassination of Ms Benazir Bhutto. Asif Ali Zardari has yet to come to grips with the leadership role. Initially, he took some bold steps such as not declaring himself a candidate for premiership or not contesting election which earned him good administration.

But now it seems that the entire decision-making process has been hijacked by the likes of Rehman Malik who, in the eyes of many workers, represent the interests of the presidency. Rank and file feel frustrated over the stance of the top leadership on key issues and resent the sycophants’ influence over the co-chairperson. They feel that their past sacrifices are being frittered away at the altar of the personal interests of some high-ups in the party.

In politics, time is important and if decisions are not taken timely, then opportunities are wasted. So, it is time for Mr Asif Ali Zardari to act, seize the opportunities and end the ambiguity on the restoration of the judges, otherwise the PPP is poised to suffer heavily. If this situation persists for long, there is every possibility that the PPP gets confined to the interior of Sindh in the next election.

Not moving away from dictatorship

2008-08-01T22:44:00.000-07:00

Manzoor Isran

IT is unfortunate that a country created on the basis of democratic ideals is endlessly suffering from the frequent bouts of martial laws, emergencies and PCOs. These extra-constitutional measures resorted to by the military Bonapartists have invariably kept the country in the cesspool of political chaos and instability ever since.

At a time when in today’s globalised world most of the nations are throwing away the yoke of dictatorship and moving towards democracy, the imposition of the emergency in Pakistan sounds strange and mind-boggling. Instead of moving towards democracy, as was being claimed, the country has moved towards martial law.

The Constitution has been suspended, human rights and civil liberties curbed, the judiciary mutilated and the independent judges have been removed and put under house arrest, the press has been gagged, lawyers and politicians have been put behind the bars.

Above all, the environment for the national reconciliation has been vitiated. And it appears that society is moving towards a greater polarisation with dangerous consequences for the unity of the country. There is every possibility that it may slip into anarchy. Analysts are drawing an analogy of today’s situation in Pakistan with the one that existed in Iran before the revolution of 1979 in which the suppression of the democratic forces at the hands of Shah regime facilitated the takeover by the clergy.

However, the apparent reason for staging double coup by ex-General Musharraf against his own regime is seen by many as an attempt on his part to tighten his faltering grip on the levers of power. His authority to use power in an arbitrary manner was mainly challenged by the Supreme Court of Pakistan headed by now again deposed Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry.

The 6000 cases relating to human rights abuses takn up on suo motto basis by the deposed Chief Justice brought into focus the harsh reality that the state had abandoned the poor as far as delivery of justice was concerned.

It was one of the reasons why he was suspended on March 9. But thanks to an aggressive campaign and continued agitation by the lawyers and civil society, the CJ was restored.

The reinstatement of Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, therefore, put him in a stronger position and enabled him to ractise more independence as far as the state’s excesses against the vulnerable sections of society were concerned. It was in this environment that the case about the eligibility of ex-General Musharraf to contest election of the president’s office was taken up by the court. The president, being unsure of a favourable judgment, got panicked to the extent that he found no option other than imposing emergency to somehow retrieve his presidency. He feared the court might declare him ineligible to contest election.

The Nov 3 declaration of emergency reveals, at least, one thing that the post-colonial state has totally failed to provide the country stable structures of good governance. And as a consequence, country is being ruled under an ad hoc arrangement of emergencies, coups and PCOs, which undoubtedly has given birth to so many constitutional, administrative, economic and political ills that afflict the country severely.

As a matter of fact, good governance cannot be achieved without having a well defined political system. It is pathetic that since the independence, Pakistan has no permanent well-articulated political system and the Constitution of 1973, that was made after long struggle and sacrifices, has totally been defaced by so many amendments brought about by various rulers to facilitate the perpetuation of their rule.

Gen Zia brought the eighth amendment to equip himself with powers to sack the assemblies and dismiss prime ministers under 58(2b). ex-General Musharraf brought 17th amendment, in collusion with holy fathers of MMA, to retain the post of COAS and President. Such amendments have totally undermined the smooth functioning of the political system.

Essentially, it is the Constitution that guarantees the survival of the political system as is the case of India where there is a functional democracy being duly protected by the constitution. But in case of Pakistan, so many deviations from the constitution have crippled the political system. And if we judge the Pakistani state in respect of these core values, one may find that it is either a ‘failed state’ or a ‘predatory state’, only protecting the interests of the ruling elite.

It is ironic that the country which owes its existence to the democratic struggle launched by the Muslims of the subcontinent to get freedom from the yoke of British colonialism and live as a free nation according to its own traditions has become a testing ground for various forms of dictatorial models of governance devised during the cold war period. These models were more security oriented and India-specific.

If we closely look at the governance models of three military rulers, namely, General Ayub Khan, General Zia and ex-General Musharraf, they have one thing in common; they all adopted the policy of selective co-option, collateralisation and containment. Under these models, the conservative elements were/are co-opted and political groups or parties opposed to military regimes were/are eliminated from the political theatre and civilian institutions such as independent judiciary, free press and liberal forces of the civil society were/are subdued.

Furthermore, each ruler created an artificial enemy to suppress the masses and deny them their fundamental political and economic rights. For example, till General Zia, the Indian animosity was the main reason to suppress the internal political dissent and create the unity in the ranks conservative ruling elite.

But now in the context of changing global scenario, the Indian animosity has been replaced by the rhetoric of 'War on terror'.

However, the damage caused by the three military rulers has been massive and colossal and each era has produced its own discontents in the shape of people’s alienation, hopelessness, disenchantment, bad governance, corruption, polarisation and extremism. The insurgency of Taliban in Swat and creeping Talibanisation are glaring examples.

The dictatorial and undemocratic policies of Ayub Khan sowed the seeds of Bengali nationalism which finally culminated into the dismemberment of Pakistan in 1971.

Zia’s military rule produced the extremism, heroin and Kalashnikov culture whose consequences society has yet to recover from. And Musharraf’s rule has promoted fissiparous and centrifugal tendencies, especially among the smaller provinces.The survival of this country lies in practising democracy and democratic governance.

University ranking

2008-08-01T22:37:00.000-07:00

THE recent HEC action of ranking universities is a good effort and will help improve standards of teaching and research. At least, the performance of universities has been brought under public spotlight.

This is a healthy sign and bound to promote vigorous competition amongst various public and private universities.

But the important thing is that the ranking should not be limited to mere adjudging the academic performance. Instead it should serve as a basis for holding universities accountable for poor performance and carrying out further academic and administrative reforms as there are many public sector universities which suffer academically solely due to bad governance, corruption and lack of accountability and transparency. Here Shah Abdul Latif University is a case in point.

Shah Abdul Latif University stands at number 20 — lower than its contemporary campuses such as Bahawalpur University, BZU, Multan, and Gomal University, Dera Ismail Khan. Shah Abdul Latif University has a history of bad governance and corruption to which, unfortunately, neither Islamabad nor Karachi has paid any attention.

There is an argument that deviation from established rules and procedure spawns bad governance and, in turn, bad governance breeds corruption, and corruption undermines development. This is true of SALU. Its first project fell victim to the evil of corruption and about Rs90 million was devoured by the monster of sleaze and fraud.

The brand new campus without a single class being held was abandoned due to faulty construction that caused huge cracks in the building and some of them were raised on the gutter pipes and collapsed.

After the failure of Shadi Shaheed project, it was expected that some system of checks and balances would be imposed on the university from Islamabad and Karachi. But nothing of the sort happened and the rot continues and deepens, playing havoc with the growth of the university and future of poor students.

Financial indiscipline is still a major problem faced by the university. A special audit party report 2001-2002, released recently, says: “There are lots of flaws and instances of misappropriation, non-observance of codal requirement, non-maintenance of accounts record and submission of false statement of accounts in the meeting of syndicate and senate due to lack of either internal check and control in the university”.

Despite this, no action has been taken against financial irregularities. The level of bad governance has reached the point where indiscipline and mismanagement are eating into the vitals of the university. Teachers are divided and run after perks and privileges only. They are used for the realisation of petty interests by the university administration. And those who dare to expose the irregularities and extra-administrative action of the varsity administration, they are victimised. This is having a negative impact on the healthy growth of the university as a viable institution of higher education.

Hope the HEC and the Governor’s House will wake up to the situation and respond accordingly.

Ranking of universities

2008-08-01T22:36:00.000-07:00

MY letter 'University ranking' (Oct 29) about Shah Abdul Latif University, Khairpur, bagging 20th position out of 23 in the HEC-conducted national ranking of universities has irked the university administration.

In this connection, I have been served with a letter asking me to explain why action should not be taken against "you as you have defamed the university". The letter further says that for articles, etc., to be published in any journal, newspaper or in any other written form, "it is necessary that sanction of the authority is first obtained."

This is sheer attack on the academic freedom and is tantamount to gagging the voice of teachers criticising the illadvised policies of the university administration, which have put the university just one point above the Malakand University and two points above the Kohat University since these universities have been established recently whereas Shah Abdul Latif University was established in 1976 as campus and upgraded to the full-fledged university in 1986.

My criticism for the sluggish performance of the university was not personal but rather sprang out of my desire that this university should improve. And without criticism it cannot get better as Malcom, an American black leader, put it rightly: "If you have no critics, you'll likely have no success".

But unfortunately the university administration is not ready to listen to criticism with receptive ears. The words of Winston Churchill may sound true when he says: "We need very strong ears to hear ourselves judged frankly, and because there are few who can endure frank criticism without being stung by it, those who venture to criticise us perform a remarkable act of friendship ....".

But this is not the case in our society where criticism is taken as a hostile act, instead of an act of friendship, and critics are subjected to every form of torture. Again, Churchill rightly says: "Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things."

A challenge for HEC

2008-08-01T22:32:00.000-07:00

IMDAD Ullah Mohammadzai has rightly pointed out in his article, ‘A challenge for HEC’ (Nov 18), that how the monster of politics at the University of Peshawar is playing havoc with the career of some of the hard-working teachers and thwarting the implementation of the Tenure Track System (TTS) for political reasons, due to which so many meritorious professors have been deprived of their choice to opt for TTS.

The alarming surprise the writer shows is about the immeasurable silence of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) to force the universities to adopt its prescriptions about the quality enhancement of educational standards.

I do agree with the writer that the attitude of the HEC is very much disastrous as far as its policies and their implementation are concerned. Indeed, the HEC bothers least about implementation and terribly leaves it to universities to do so.

Moreover, it is very unfortunate that those policies are selectively implemented by universities in collusion with the political leaders of the teachers’ associations/groups in order to favour their supporters. For these groups, a teacher is a mere voter, not professor. This is not less than shocking.

So, the relationship based on the bargaining between the university administration and the teachers’ groups often results in the miseries being suffered by the teachers who are not part of that bargaining process.

This too is happening in Shah Abdul Latif University. For example, the HEC has introduced a new policy about promotions but here too plans are afoot to give some teachers, who are in the good books of the university administration, triple promotions from grade 18 to 21 with the implicit consent of the Higher Education Commission in violation of its own rules, when other hard-working teachers are being selectively denied promotion under the same HEC policies.

I think if the HEC does not take notice of such naked violations, then teachers may take the matter to court and if it happens so, it would severely damage the credibility of the HEC as a body striving to jack up the quality of education.

I also appeal to the Sindh governor, members of the syndicate and members of the selection board of Shah Abdul Latif University to take notice of such irregularities being committed on the part of the authorities of the university.

Elitist private education

2008-08-01T22:31:00.001-07:00

AFTER watching the documentary “Being Indian” on the BBC about Indian private schools, I thought with great alarm about the state of public schools and the snobbish nature of elitist private education in Pakistan. The documentary showed how private schools in India play their role in educating children about the problems being faced by people living in city slums and ghettos.

The students are taught about democracy, constitution and the rights and responsibilities of citizens, especially the affluent classes, to address the problems of the poor living a miserable life in slums.

The documentary showed how students are involved in issues such as poverty, sanitation and housing faced by the marginalised section of society living on the fringes of big cities through projects. It was most touching to see schoolchildren walking through streets littered with garbage quizzing household folk about their problems and finding out from them the underlying causes of poverty.

The purpose of the whole exercise is to develop a pro-poor orientation in elitist Indian youth so that after occupying positions of power, this class can play a crucial role in poverty alleviation and economic development of slums. And this is what today’s Indian elitist class is doing, leading India as one of the contenders for the status of future superpower.

Just compare India’s elite school education with ours, which is more snobbish and selfish in nature and the curriculum is designed in a way it does not involve children from these elitist schools with the problems of slums. Children from these schools are ignorant of the slum problems.

I have not seen pupils of any elite school working on the project dealing with the causes of poverty-related problems in slum areas in any big city. It is because of that segregation and lack of interaction that our society is ethnically fragmented, socially class-ridden and politically polarised, putting our already fragile unity in jeopardy.

Adding to our woes is the public school system in our country which is literally lying in a state of decrepitude where workers of political parties are recruited as teachers as a result of political interference and collapse of administrative structure due to over-politicisation of education departments.

The quandary is such that even after 58 years of independence we have not yet decided in which language the child should be taught. These issues are very puzzling, to which our rulers and policymakers have paid no attention.

On the other hand, the school curriculum is changed from time to time keeping in view the political designs of our rulers. For example, during Zia’s era the whole education system was reoriented to suit the Islamic pursuits of Zia. Now, our new tsars of education after 9/11 are busy in constructing the whole education policy from primary to university level in a way as to placate our American friends and realise the goals of enlightened moderation through changes in curriculum.

Ironically, these policy tsars have ignored the fact that enlightened moderation is a political process which can only be achieved through political liberalisation and socio-economic justice. Nothing of the sort is happening.

We do everything possible to compete with India in terms of regional power politics and try to create and maintain that balance of power through a military build-up. Now, however, it is believed that there are other areas such as economics, education, IT, science and technology, culture, civil society organisation, democracy and quality of bureaucracy which can contribute significantly towards maintenance of balance of power.

The strengthening of these areas is critical to our national security and balance of power as future wars will not be fought militarily but economically and culturally. And for that matter we need to strengthen our base through the kind of educational system that can only promote national unity and integration.

Keeping in view the level of poverty and enormity of socio-economic problems, it is imperative that the tsars of our educational policy should wake up from their slumber and work to demolish the walls of educational apartheid we have raised in our educational system. We must work to reorientate the policies of the public and private sector schools to engage and educate our youth about socio-economic issues being faced by the poor living in city slums. This way we can produce more responsible citizens who will play a constructive role in the development and defence of the country.

Education budget

2008-08-01T22:29:00.000-07:00

THE government announcement, in the budget 2007-08, to raise the education outlay to four per cent of the GDP to improve the declining standard of education is a welcome move but not sufficient to rehabilitate the facade of the system that has been badly vandalised over the years due to sheer mismanagement of the resources allocated to the educational sector, rampant corruption and maladministration.

Available data suggests that despite high spending, enrolment has decreased in the public sector educational institutions.

At the moment we are spending less than two per cent of the GDP, which is considered peanut in the light of educational budget of our neighbours. India spends 3.5 per cent, Sri Lanka spends about five per cent and Bangladesh about four per cent, and their standard of education is far better than that of ours.

Personally I think this is a misplaced notion on the part of the government that with the injection of more liquidity the standard of education will improve. Increasing educational budget is a good thing but this does not serve as panacea as we have seen in the past that the injection of more liquidity has led to more corruption in the absence of a viable system of checks and balances, which can only be attained if there is efficient but democratic system of governance.

For example, Shah Abdul Latif University has suffered much in terms of its physical and human development. Most of the critics attribute such predicament to the increasing financial indiscipline and deviation from the codal formalities.

For instance, the special audit 2002, released recently, accuses the university of flaws and instances of misappropriation, nonobservance of codal requirements, etc. While cataloguing the details, the report maintained that there had been total of 50 cases of misappropriation, fraud and doubtful cases amounting to Rs703.359 million, 71 cases of violations of rules and nine cases of non-production of record.

The audit reports carried out during the years 2003-2004, 2004-2005 also accuse the university administration of misappropriation and failings in reconciling the accounts with the bank.

As a matter of fact, the only way to check such irregularities could be through computerisation of data and reconciliation with bank accounts to which university has so far turned a blind eye.

In the country where universities are allegedly auctioned like police stations and the highest bidder is appointed as vice chancellor, the proliferation of corruption is not an unusual thing to happen. But if the government wants to raise the standard of education in the country, it has to change its policies and treat the universities as centres of learning and research instead of using them as job factories to recruit the workers of political parties and appoint them as teachers and researchers.

To turn universities into centres of knowledge, however, it is imperative to initiate sweeping administrative reforms under which the appointment of the vice-chancellor must be made on merit rather than political consideration as political interference has ruined educational institutions, resulting in the declining standard of education and diminishing enrolment.

This can be judged from the fact that recently the Higher Education Commission has spent about Rs70 million on the strengthening of the Department of Computer Science, Shah Abdul Latif University, but shockingly no student has turned up for admission this year. The apparent reason is the poor standard of teaching and the practice of favouritism and nepotism while recruiting teachers.

HEC policies

2008-08-01T22:26:00.002-07:00

IN reference to the long list of HEC schemes being carried out in a number of universities, I would like to say that these plans can serve as a springboard to lift up educational standards provided their execution is transparent. No one will oppose the HEC’s efforts to put our universities in the league with other world-class universities. But here we should not overlook the fact that every education system functions within a particular socio-economic and political environment that determines the pace of academic development and interaction between universities and society.

Most of the top universities in the world are located in democratic counties where teaching and research is market-driven. Our country has lived primarily under military regimes that neglected education. In such a situation, improving our universities overnight is like living in a fool’s paradise. Sanity demands we should be patient and adopt gradualist approach. As regards the projects, most of these suffer from transparency and favouritism.

However, assessing the overall impact of the HEC’s catalogue of schemes, we have to quantify their success in terms of their impact on the standard of education. And for that we can apply any yardstick such as number of publications published in the journals of international repute, number of students registered for MPhil/PhD, especially in the departments where the HEC has invested heavily.

Here I shall illustrate an example of computer science department at Shah Abdul Latif University where the HEC has invested about Rs70 million under two projects, namely ‘Strengthening the Department of Computer Science’ and ‘Setting up Internet and Intranet’.

Under these projects, PhD and non-PhD faculties were to be hired and set up state-of-the-art laboratories where students would be produced to serve as pillars of our newly-invented term ‘knowledge-based economy’.

So, under the PhD faculty, a person with PhD in statistics, and that too from Brunel University, Middlesex, UK, which is not even included in Dr Atta-ur-Rehman’s cherished list of top 500 world universities for the year 2005, was appointed instead of PhD in IT or computer science as required under the rules.

As for evaluating the success of the department, no publication has been published in any journal of international repute despite the lapse of five years. No student has been registered for MPhil/PhD in the department under the supervision of any staff member. No contribution was made towards the computerisation of any administrative unit of the university, including library.

In the context of the criterion of PhD for promotions, the HEC has blocked the promotion of many teachers. In this situation the teachers, especially those who have already completed 20 or more years of service, have two options: either to retire in their current position or get quick-fix PhD degrees.

And most of the teachers are opting for the latter options. Therefore, the mass production of copy and paste PhD is under way. Research can only be promoted through motivation, not compulsion.

The HEC should take stock of ground realities, accept that there are problems with its trajectories of reforms and take measure to redress them.

Trouble at Jamshoro

2008-08-01T22:26:00.001-07:00

I WAS distressed to hear that my good friend of many years, Professor Mehtab Ali Shah, was in trouble, all the more so as I have a high regard both for Mehtab and for the University of Sindh at Jamshoro, which I visited some five years ago.

Ours is now a very small world. At lunch today in college I sought out Bill Kirkman, formerly the Indian correspondent of the The Times, thinking to tell him about the trouble at Jamshoro.

I found him sitting next to a colleague from Calcutta. Both had already heard about Mehtab’s predicament. These days there is no doing these things hole-in-the-corner. They are noticed and they affect reputation.

It is a small world in other ways too. When I visited Jamshoro, the subject of my lecture was the security interdependence of Britain and Pakistan. We learned last July that this was a more urgent matter than many here had realised.

It seems doubly absurd, therefore, that there should be a threat not only to a devoted scholar who endured considerable privation as he worked for his doctorate in Britain, but to a man who has, with scant resources, built up the department whose students proved their and his worth on the occasion of my visit by the vigour and perceptiveness of their debate and questioning.

Pakistan should be proud of such a man and keen to keep open the debate that he and others have fostered between our two countries.

I have read and am pleased to endorse the excellent letter in these columns by Manzoor Ali Isran. I am not master of the details of the substantive issue, but find it odd that there should be such a passionate argument about an extension of the period of university of study when the burden it would undoubtedly place on poor students could be dealt with in two ways.

Firstly, a system of certificates, diplomas and credit transfer should allow students to enter, leave and re-enter higher education as circumstances permit.

Secondly, costs can be reduced to some extent by distance learning. I have been a great admirer of the Arab Open University, which has allowed many — women most of all — who would otherwise have found it difficult to enter higher education.

Is there no room for diplomacy and reason here?

CHARLES JONES
Reader in International Relations, University of Cambridge, UK

Financial corruption in SALU

2008-08-01T22:22:00.000-07:00

RECENTLY, there have been interviews for the appointment of a new vice chancellor, Shah Abdul Latif University, Khairpur, amid allegations that the university, established as a campus in 1976 and upgraded to fully - fledged university in 1987, has not flourished as it should have been like its sister universities (BZU, Multan; Mehran Engineering University, Jamshoro, etc).

Shah Abdul Latif University was established in 1976 by the ZAB government to provide people education at their door steps and thereby trigger economic and social change in society that hitherto had remained neglected as far as socio-economic development was concerned.

For the development of phases I and II, grants of Rs150 and Rs92 million, respectively, were granted.

The apparent reason for the undergrowth of the university is said to be the cancer of corruption as it has prevented its academic and administrative organism to develop into the well - nurtured body of academic learning and teaching. Undoubtedly, corruption has been encouraged by political interference due to which vice chancellors are being appointed on the basis of political connections, not merit.

This phenomenon has ravaged the university to the extent in the recent ranking of the universities, conducted by the HEC, that Shah Latif University has performed very badly and secured 20th position.

One of the factors responsible for this situation is said to be the lack of discipline among teachers and the administration that are two wheels of the chariot, and if any one wheel is not functioning properly, the chariot will falter.

It is unfortunate that the vice chancellor appointed on the political basis has so far shown less drive to change the academic atmosphere of the university and, thereby, inculcate amongst teachers and the taught the enthusiasm about the learning and research.

Today, Latif University is facing an acute shortage of the facilities required for standard teaching and research. Not only is there dearth of books, journals, computers, but also of the proper environment where students and teachers can sit to realise their teaching and research pursuits.

This can be judged from the fact that there are only 10 computers in the central library for more than 5,000 students and 200 teachers and researchers.

Once Napoleon had said that if soldiers are not brave, discipline makes them brave. This maxim of Napoleon can be applied to our institutions as the lack of discipline is rendering them useless for delivering to the masses in terms of service.

The lack of discipline and the absence of any seriousness of purpose on the part of the university administration to work for the promotion and strengthening of educational standards have given rise to individualism where every person in the university is busy in seeking his own interest at the cost of the university.

Amid the doom and gloom scenario, I have still sanguine hope that the search committee, which consists of people who have impeccable professional integrity, and the governor of Sindh, being guided by the values of justice and merit, will appoint the new vice chancellor on merit and the one who is equipped with professionalism and capacity to develop the so far neglected university of upper Sindh, which caters to the educational needs of millions of young people, into one of the respectable educational institutions

Teaching in mother tongue

2008-08-01T22:19:00.000-07:00

Zubeida Mustafa, in her article 'Teaching in mother tongue' (Dawn Jan 10, 2007), has laid down the case of Nadia as a basis for the primary teaching to be imparted in the mother tongue rather than English.

That is a fine idea but there are so many cases where this logic may not apply. Here is the case of Rayan, which is opposite to Nadia's case. Rayan does not understand Urdu or any regional language of Pakistan, except English. The reason is when he was one-year-old, his parents left for the UK and stayed there for about seven years, during which Rayan got his primary education there but lost touch with his mother tongue.

When his parents came back to Pakistan, Rayan was admitted to a private school where he had to do Urdu. Rayan finds it difficult because he could not speak and understand it.

Briefly, Rayan is as much brilliant as Nadia but the dividing line between them is Urdu and English.

However, the two cases of Nadia and Rayan are different but highlight the common problem that has been hanging around for quite some time - the issue of medium of instruction at primary level. To break this deadlock, here I would suggest that only English should be declared compulsory as it is the international language and the language of business, market and jobs and Urdu/regional languages be made optional, to be left to the child to do any language in addition to English.

The problem is not with language but with the system and recruitment and training of teachers. Our educational system is over-politicised and class-ridden: hence suffers from political interference, bad governance, corruption and favouritism. Such evils are playing havoc with the education where children like Nadia suffer and their talent goes untapped.

There is an argument that for the survival of Urdu and regional languages, it is imperative that these languages be introduced at primary level as medium of instruction. I do not agree with such an argument as the survival of any language depends not on teaching at primary level but on how the material conditions and market support a language. In case of Pakistan, this material base is very weak or does not exit for Urdu and regional languages. And that is why all the languages, including Urdu, are becoming irrelevant and facing the prospect of doom, at least in the job market.

English has comparatively proliferated fast and transcended across the globe, it is not because of Shakespeare or his poetry but because material conditions, at home and abroad, supported its expansion and adoption by different nations living under the colonial system of the British Raj. In the subcontinent, the first thing British rulers did was to replace Persian with English as office language. The second step was to introduce English in schools as second language to create faithful ruling elite who would serve the interests of colonial rulers and produce a class of lower-level local functionaries to help in day-to-day administration.

This way the base for its expansion was laid down. Hindus lost no time to embrace the language but Muslims after initial hiccups adopted English, as there was no alternative for them if they wanted to be a part of British imperial economic and political system. This way English has progressed to the unparalleled status of global language.

The ruling class of Pakistan after its creation has continued with this colonial legacy faithfully. In fact, to follow this legacy is a necessity, given the initial integration of Pakistan within British, then US imperial framework of military and economic alliances and the nature of the global economic system that is emerging now.

Coming back to the language controversy, which is haunting Pakistan hard, since its genesis, I would say that it is not language that has created apartheid-like situation but it is the political system and socio-economic structures that have been raised by the combo of civil-military bureaucracy. As long as this alliance exists, I don't see any hope for a child like Nadia to rise and lift herself and her family out of the vortex of abject poverty.

HEC and reforms in higher education

2008-08-01T22:17:00.000-07:00

Though Higher Education Commission (HEC)talks lot about reforms in higher education, I doubt that the it is serious about tackling the problems of quality education being imparted by both public and private universities. And if it is serious then I am sorry to say that its policy is either flawed or misconceived. It should worry more about the precarious state of education in public sector universities than in private ones.

The HEC should ponder over the fact as to how private universities have mushroomed in such a short span of time. Probably, this is due to the space created by the failure of the public sector universities to impart quality education and meet the growing demands of students in different disciplines especially business administration, computer science, IT and engineering.

The educational standard and quality of research in public sector universities has totally crumbled and teachers are drifting away from their primary task of teaching and research. Quite a few of the motivated and dedicated teachers serving there are leaving and joining private institutions. This exodus is rendering public sector universities intellectually bankrupt and academically shallow. Whatever teachers are left behind are either sidelined or victimized on personal grounds.

The burgeoning growth of private universities is a natural phenomenon taking place world-wide which the HEC cannot contain. Even international institutions like the World Bank and WTO are pushing for privatization of education. With the globalization of economy, education is emerging as a billion-rupee business in the market today in the subcontinent and multinational corporations are hunting for quality graduates. And today one of the criteria for investment is the quality of human resource produced by the universities. India is fast becoming the hub of investment by high-tech businesses and companies like Microsoft, Intel and AMD. They are keen to invest there not because of low cost, which is 40 per cent below the US level, but due to the quality of graduates being produced by Indian universities.

In comparison with Indian universities and educational system, our universities, as well as our educational system, are weak producing graduates not only lacking the competitive edge but also the confidence required for responsible jobs. How can such students be produced and nurtured in an environment which is marked by academic instability, administrative corruption and political interference?

Honestly speaking, if the HEC is serious about improvement in the standard of education, it has to change its approach and see education as one whole, without detaching higher education from college and primary education. Focusing only on higher education and leaving college and primary education to rot won’t bear positive fruits and it doesn’t matter how much the HEC spends. Ultimately, universities have to get students from colleges and colleges from schools while education in schools and colleges is just decaying to which the government hardly bothers to pay any attention.

Another problem with the HEC policy is that it is striving for quality without ensuring to have what Dr Grace Clark, executive director of USEFP, calls respectable knowledge, intellectual integrity and academic and administrative accountability. These values are weak in our educational institutions and no attention is being paid towards strengthening such values due to bad governance which in turn has given rise to financial mismanagement and favouritism.

It is unfortunate that the HEC instead of working as an institution committed to the growth of R&D is operating as a corporation or bank, giving advice to academically sick universities to follow its prescription about quality education and research failing which its financial help will be withheld. This approach is repressive and is bound to fail to produce any concrete results. I strongly believe that the HEC’s one prescription formula for all will not work successfully until university- specific remedies are worked out as public sector universities are suffering from different problems since their size, intellectual and academic capacity, physical and technical infrastructure vary. To diagnose these problems the HEC needs to devise more teacher and knowledge-based policies, involve all stakeholders and formulate policies keeping in view the peculiar nature of the problem each public sector university is facing.

Given the scenario depicted above how can the standard of education be raised without possessing a credible system of accountability? I shall advise the HEC to stop publishing huge advertisements in newspapers and spending millions of rupees criticizing private universities. It should strive to diagnose the problem ailing the system of higher education, establish an iron-fisted processes of administrative and academic accountability, transparency and work to thwart political interference in universities which are considered job factories by politicians. This is the only way we can come out of this mess and catch up with our neighbour India. It needs political will and a changed perspective of thinking.

Frontiers of economic freedom

2008-08-01T22:14:00.000-07:00

Dr Mahnaz Fatima, in her article article ‘Expanding frontiers of economic freedom’ (Dawn, Economic and Business Review, Jan 5),has exposed the hypocrisy of the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal while setting the Index of Economic Freedom (IEF).

Basically, the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal are conservative institutions with the mission to promote the values of global capital and neo-liberalism at the cost of individual freedom of countries and their citizens. And the victim of such ruthless policies are the poor men, women and children in the Third World countries, as very ably highlighted by Dr Fatima.

Just to highlight the ugly face of the neo-liberal globalisation and how it tramples upon the freedom of poor people and countries while promoting the freedom of global capital and business to move around the globe without any hindrance, the ten commandments of globalisation prepared by some NGOs opposing the enforcement of Multilateral Investment Agreement (MAI) truly expose the ugly face of global corporate business.

To understand how global capital respects individual freedom of the people and countries, here are the ten commandments of globalisation.

For citizens: You shall have no right to livelihood, to work, to food, to water, to safe environment; you shall have no other identity or morality except that of being consumers on the global market place and you shall elect governments but the government’s role shall not be to protect you. They will protect corporations.

For governments: You shall give up all functions to protect your citizens and all duties and obligations required of your national constitutions; you shall consider your first duty and obligation to promote the freedom of transnational corporations and take away the freedom of your people; you shall take the environmental wealth of your country and citizens and hand it over for free to the transnational corporations.

For corporations/business: If you are small and local, you shall disappear and make way for transnational monopolies; If you are global, you shall demand absolute rights in every country to walk in and walk out as you find profitable; you shall destroy the environment and jobs everywhere to maximise your profits and returns on investments which will be the end towards which all governments and citizens must assist you as their highest moral duty.

Globalisation per se is not bad but the way it is being administered has created despair, despondency and underdevelopment. It is ridiculous: on the one hand, it promotes the freedom of capital to move around the world but on the other hand it curbs the movement of the labour by imposing tough immigration laws.

However, to make the globalisation work judiciously, there is a need for the change of global structures where the developing countries should have equal voice. And the same should happen inside the countries like Pakistan where poor men, women and children are denied the freedom of having equal access to all forms of productive assets -– education, employment, land, etc.

Need for political dialogue

2008-08-01T22:12:00.000-07:00

NOWADAYS the spin doctors of the Musharraf government seem to be putting too much spin on a dodgy political wicket to get the opposition out through smear and slight. The issuance of red notices to Ms Benazir Bhutto through Interpol seems to be a new one under the old hymn of corruption and accountability, a mantra that has almost lost credibility in the public eye.

The purpose behind the new move, according to some political analysts, is political. On the one hand, the Musharraf government wants to thwart any political alliance between Ms Bhutto and Mr Nawaz Sharif and, on the other, the government itself wants to have a deal with the PPP but on its own terms and conditions.

Many political analysts suggest that the purpose of the new spin is to deflect public attention from the messy situation in Waziristan, construction of the Kalabagh dam, military action in Balochistan and the American attack on the Bajaur Agency.

Our educational system is failing to attain its goal of quality research and teaching at both the primary and higher levels. Our judiciary has failed to provide justice to the most vulnerable sections of society. Our police stations are still serving as torture cells for innocent people rather than provide protection against outlaws aided and abetted by feudal lords in collusion with the police.

Balochistan has emerged as one of the major fault lines of our national unity, which needs immediate attention on the part of the government to have a dialogue with Baloch leaders to solve this problem through political means.

The latest but very ominous development is that the Kalpars, the sub-tribe of the Bugtis, settled in Punjab and Sindh since ages, are being shifted and settled in Sui under official patronage to counter Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti. This will definitely result in intra-tribal war which will have very dangerous consequences for national unity and solidarity.

It is noteworthy that the Musharraf government has also taken some positive steps on the foreign policy front on the range of issues — Gwadar where the Americans wouldn’t be happy with the Chinese presence, the gas pipeline from Iran which Pakistan wants and the Americans are opposed to and the nuclear issue where, despite US pressure, we haven’t allowed direct access to Dr A.Q. Khan. And on the domestic front, liberalization of the press to a large extent, secularization of the curriculum (though under American influence after 9/11), liberalization of the financial market and improvement in the economy are some of the steps that deserve commendation.

However, it is imperative for the Musharraf government to start a political dialogue with all political forces to foster national unity and set the direction for national development instead of maligning and vilifying the political leadership through political spin. This is the only way we can come out of the abysmal socio-economic and political conditions the nation is facing today.

Defeating terrorism

2008-08-01T22:09:00.000-07:00

LEADERS of the OIC at the Makkah moot have individually and collectively condemned terrorism and vowed to stamp it out from their countries. The message was the same from kings to dictators, calling for moderation, tolerance and rejection of extremist violence. But how terrorism can be stamped out is a sociological conundrum in the absence of any basis for the delivery of social justice, equal economic opportunities and political participation.

Muslim countries are suffering not only from a democracy deficit but also from excessive economic injustice, inequitable distribution of resources and exclusion of people from the political system at the grassroots’ level. The vast chunk of the masses still stands marginalized in mainstream political and economic activities. Most social scientists agree that terrorism is a symptom of the socio-economic and political malaise afflicting most Muslim societies.

The will to address these issues was absent from the OIC conference in Makkah. The lack of will to bring democratic reforms in most of the countries is serving as ground for ethnic and religious divisions and breeding terrorism and violence. Take the example of Pakistan, which itself is the main victim of terrorism and violence, due to the policies pursued by Gen Zia to perpetuate his role in the name of Islamization of society. This not only polarized society along ethnic and ‘biradari’ lines but also bred religious sectarianism.

Thus, today, our society stands divided with a big mass of the people excluded from the process of political and economic activity. The democratic reforms introduced by Gen Musharraf in the shape of city or district governments have failed to produce the desired results. Instead of creating a democratic and vibrant participatory system, the whole society has been feudalized, with concentration of power in a few hands. The poor still have no access to productive assets. No empowerment of the people is seen taking place. According to one opinion, the devolution is being used as a tool to legitimize the policies of the government instead of empowering the poor.

This is clear from the recently-held local body election in which powerful feudal lords such as the Jatois, Mahars, Chandios, Pirs, Unars and Syeds emerged victorious as district nazims with hefty budgets at hand. This very fact denies the tall claims of the government that devolution is designed to empower the vulnerable.

The military, political parties and civil society, though weak, are seen competing for political power. Many people accuse the army of grabbing political power to protect and further its own civil and corporate interests. According to a study, employment of the army in the civilian institution is seen as “military colonization of civilian institutions”. According to another study, interests of the army are not confined to civilian top jobs, but extend to industry and business as well in different sectors of the economy such as construction, security, mineral water, transportation, education, health, banking, airlines and defence production. And to protect these interests, the army needs political power.

If we are serious about defeating terrorism in Muslim countries, then we have to show the political will to democratize society, empower the people at the grassroots’ level and address their socio-economic needs with equal distribution of resources to create an egalitarian society which is the essence of an Islamic polity.

Who should head a university?

2008-08-01T22:06:00.000-07:00

Dr Tariq Rahman, one of the noted scholar and writer, in his article ‘Who should head a university?’ ( Dawn Nov 5 2006),candidly analysed the issue regarding appointment of non-academics (military men and bureaucrats) as CEOs (vice-chancellors) of the public-sector universities and the impact of such appointments on the academic and administrative life of universities.

However, in universities of garrison state like Pakistan, riddled with corruption and sleaze, appointment of non-academics as VCs is guided by security considerations rather than the desire to improve quality of teaching and research. Maybe the appointment of a military man as the CEO of Balochistan University was made to handle the situation on the campus after the killing of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti.

The appointment and third extension of the retired bureaucrat, as the CEO of Sindh University, Jamshoro, is largely believed to be a part of the establishment’s move to control nationalist elements in the university, regarded as a political nursery of Sindhi nationalist politics by the agencies. The present incumbent was first appointed by the Zia regime in the wake of the MRD movement, and now by Gen Musharraf’s dispensation.

Dr Rahman is right in a sense that the present paradigms of higher education invariably draw inspiration from colonial educational models of the British Raj where the educational system was intended to perform two main tasks. First, it was to create faithful ruling elite who would serve the interests of colonial rulers. Second, it was to produce a class of lower-level local functionaries to help in daily administration.

So, clearly education, unlike in the UK, was not thought of as a means of promoting democracy or spreading egalitarianism, or increasing social mobility. On the contrary, its role was to maintain the status quo, to strengthen the ruling class, to make them wiser and better rulers to reinforce the ideology upon which power of the elite rested.

Education has, therefore, remained subservient to feudal-capitalist structures. Its professed goal of development of full physical and intellectual capacities of the people, to make them autonomous, free self-reliant entities, and to help them to earn their livelihood with dignity has never become fully part of the educational strategies.

Educational policies of the post-colonial overdeveloped state dominated by civil-military oligarchy have crushed the liberating function of education and whatever educational policies were designed from time to time they reflect the interest of the elitist class.

At the moment, the system of higher education, based on elitist ideology, is producing educational apartheid in Pakistan where there exists dual educational system right from primary to higher education. On the one hand, there are elitist institutions where only the offspring of the rich can study and, on the other hand, children of the poor are getting education of inferior quality from the poorly-managed public-sector universities.

To further strengthen the elitist education, new specialised universities, in collaboration with some of the industrialised countries, in different industrial cities are being planned with exorbitant fee structure. These universities will be producing the new engineers and new managers for the new businesses in the elitist economy of Pakistan where 20 per cent population consume 80 per cent resources and 80 per cent population live on only 20 per cent resources.

The HEC policies tend to further widen the gap between educational standards being imparted by public- and private-sector universities. For example, overemphasis of the HEC on PhD faculty under its ‘quality assurance’ has resulted in the proliferation of culture of plagiarism and ‘cutpaste PhDs’.

I endorse the idea of Dr Tariq Rahman that the HEC should take drastic measures to reform the colonial practices in the field of higher education to get rid of public and private divide by improving the standard of education. Steps such as good management, appointment of a VC on merit, curtailment of political interference and introduction of iron-handed accountability are necessary to be taken. If we don’t do so, we are bound to doom as a nation.

Concern over harassment

2008-08-01T22:01:00.000-07:00

MY attention has recently been drawn to a letter by Manzoor Ali Isran (July 10) and another by distinguished scholar Dr Hasan Askari Rizvi (July 14) regarding Dr Mehtab Ali Shah, who is under some pressure by officials at Sindh University for expressing his opinion on academic and other matters.

I cannot have a fixed opinion one way or another about the substance of the issues themselves, but I do know that Dr Shah has a sterling reputation. I have known him for many years, and have used his work in my own writings about Pakistan and South Asia.

It now appears that Sindh University has fallen very far from the days when it was one of South Asia’s leading institutions. I visited the campus about 30 years ago, and found many scholars working to very high standards despite very difficult conditions.

These conditions seem to have worsened at Sindh, as well as at other Pakistani colleges and universities, which saddens me greatly. Pakistan’s redemption as a society and state must be rooted in the idea that open inquiry is not only tolerated, but encouraged. Dr Isran cites Robert Maynard Hutchins, who was head of the University of Chicago just before I attended that university, and there were many tales on campus of how president Hutchins defended the faculty, and the student body, from the McCarthyism of that era.

A country as complex and as diverse as Pakistan must encourage expressions of opinion, on all matters, and let them contest in the marketplace of ideas.

I believe that many of my American colleagues who know and respect the scholarship of such professors as Dr Shah would be very disappointed if he (like other world-class scholars in Pakistan) is further harassed. I will follow this case closely.

STEPHEN P. COHEN
Professor-emeritus,
University of Illinois, & Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution,
Washington, DC, USA

Developing democracy

2008-08-01T21:28:00.000-07:00

There are some writers who suggest that to safeguard the future of democracy all parties and politicians should come up with reasonable proposals and create an atmosphere of mutual trust for holding the next elections.

This looks simplistic. We should address the core of the problem affecting the growth of a democratic culture. The major dilemma is rooted in democracy’s conceptualisation. In Pakistan, democracy means different things to different people.

We have three concepts of democracy prevalent in Pakistan. The first is peddled by the military — a combination of military as patron, political parties as clients and the masses nothing more than mere voters. This concept of khaki democracy was first introduced by Ayub Khan under the guise of Basic Democracy.

Now this concept, in recycled form, is being reinforced by Gen Musharraf who, in an interview with the CNN recently, clearly mocked at western democracy and maintained that Pakistan had got its own culture and environment where western democracy could not work.

A problem with this kind of democracy is that it creates polarisation and exclusion and, finally, political instability, constitutional crises and institutional decay, which we are witnessing nowadays.

The second is the elitist concept of democracy wherein civil society and the bourgeoisie play a crucial role. Mr Z. A. Bhutto had a good chance to make this succeed by integrating the rural masses and the urban bourgeoisie.

But his nationalisation programme alienated the bourgeoisie and created a rural-urban divide and finally urban bias. The main opposition to Bhutto’s rule came from the urban bourgeoisie that ultimately led to his downfall in 1977.

To counter the PPP after Mr Bhutto’s hanging, Gen Ziaul Haq created his own constituency consisting of the bourgeoisie, mullahs and nationalists whose popularity was ethno-centric. This served as a severe blow to the growth of a genuine democratic culture.

The third and final concept is people-centred or people’s democracy. This concept has yet to take roots in Pakistan where intrigues and conspiracies hatched by the military-civil bureaucracy in collusion with the elite is the norm of the day. Yet the day has to dawn when people will be the ultimate sovereign of Pakistan.

Real democracy is one which empowers and integrates the marginalised people into mainstream political, social and economic activity. To say that just by developing a consensus amongst political parties true democracy will be ushered in is a pipe-dream.

Civil society has to mobilise itself to capture the political space created by dictatorial rule in the form of deprivation, despondency, marginalisation and disempowerment of the masses.

Dictatorship at work

2008-08-01T06:03:00.000-07:00

OFTEN Myanmar and Pakistan are cited as the only countries ruled by military juntas (Thailand has joined their ranks recently).

After the end of the Cold War, it was assumed there would be no room for dictatorial regimes to survive as neo-liberalism emerged triumphant over communism. The end of communism as competing ideology was heralded as “End of History” by US scholar, intellectual and writer Francis Fukuyama, which purported that capitalist liberal societies are the end-product of the historical process.

However, that has proved to be mere neo-liberal wishful thinking and now the world is being overtaken by Huntington’s theory of ‘Clash of civilisation’ where the Chinese and Muslim civilisations are mainly cited as main challengers to the economic, technological and cultural domination of western or Christian civilisation.

In the post-Cold War period, the emergence of civil society as strong force to push for the democratic reforms and establishment of democracies in the formerly communist countries of Eastern Europe and around the world was hailed as victory for the democratic forces.

Sadly, civil society has suffered severe setback after 9/11 and state again is emerging as a strong force in the global politics, and life under the oppressive military regimes is becoming more of what Thomas Hobbes says “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short,” where civilian liberties are being crushed under the pretext of war against terrorism and extremism.

However, in the sea of democracies, there are certain black spots (military dictatorships) and some of them are aided and abetted by the West, even now. And it holds true that under the military-dominated rule, social marginalisation, economic inequalities, suppression of political freedom and trampling down of human rights and rampant corruption are natural corollaries. In most cases, military-dominated societies are marked with sharp contrasts — on the one hand, there is a class which lives a life of opulence and ostentation and, on the other hand, there is a class that lives a life of misery, hopelessness and despondency.

Recently I was terribly struck by life in Myanmar, marked with huge contrast, after watching two video films on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com).

The first video was based on a leaked ‘home video’ of the wedding in July of Thandar Shwe, the daughter of the junta’s senior general, Than Shwe. The video now available on YouTube http://www.youtube. com/watch?v=DJxREGhmA]c) revealed a ceremony suffused with classic nouveau riche bad taste, more reminiscent of aristocratic Versailles than of one of the poorest countries in the world.

On the other hand, the other film showed the reality of Myanmar: misery, marginalisation, death and destruction. It contained extensive footage of Karen villagers on the border between eastern Myanmar and northwestern Thailand.

According to footage, the Myanmar military has burned 4,000 villages in eastern Myanmar in 2006 alone. The Karen’s armed struggle, the longest-running fight for independence in the world, has been going on since 1947. It helps to make Myanmar the most conflict-ridden country in Southeast Asia.

In Myanmar the army has been ruling for a long time. A mass execution of student protestors in 1988 first brought international attention to the oppressive regime and led to a democratic election during which the National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who is in prison for more than 11 years, won 80 per cent of the parliamentary seats. However, the dictatorship refused to cede control, imprisoning many of the democratic leaders and further tightening its control.

Thirty-nine Democratic members of parliament have since died in prison and another 17 are still imprisoned.

Some peace activists and pro-democracy campaigner’s blame French giant Total for supporting Myanmar regime for its oil and gas interest.

Total Oil is the fourth largest oil company in the world and one of the biggest foreign investors in Myanmar. Its joint venture with Myanmar’s dictatorship earns the military regime hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

Widespread rights abuses have been associated with the Total pipeline, including forced labour, torture and rape. Also, tougher European Union sanctions against Myanmar have been blocked by the French government in its effort to protect Total’s interests in the country.

In this sense YouTube has exposed more of the truth of Myanmar today. Behind all the fine words and all the fine jewels, the Myanmar people continue to suffer the depredations of a criminal regime.

Transition to democracy

2008-08-01T06:01:00.000-07:00

PPP Senator Dr Javed Leghari ’s letter, ‘Way ahead (Oct 26), takes exception to the criticism of NRO by Dr Haider Nizamani in his article, ‘Facilitating return of Bhutto’, and terms it a step forward towards democracy.

I agree with Dr Leghari that the NRO should be seen positively as it would pave the way for some kind of reconciliation amongst all political forces for bringing about a democratic transition. National reconciliation is needed now, and all democratic forces should be allowed to carry out their political activities so that we can have a vibrant competitive political culture after years of political suffocation.

The absence of national consensus has given rise to political instability which, in turn, has produced socio economic problems and religious extremism, which is emerging as a potential threat to national integration.

At one stage, this political instability culminated in the dismemberment of the country in 1971 and now it is fast spreading to the mainland with horrible consequences (read the recent report of Newsweek).

I believe these problems cannot be solved without democracy which gives people a sense of empowerment and ensures an even distribution of resources, thereby they can raise their capabilities.

To raise the people’s capabilities, it is essential to have transition to democracy from authoritarianism. In this regard, the PPP has taken a pragmatic approach by having some kind of negotiated transition, rather than stick to confrontation in which there was every possibility of the extremist forces hijacking the whole democratic movement.

Even in the global context, if we look at the situation in some of the countries where there was confrontation between the democratic forces and dictatorship, the transition to democracy has been achieved through negotiation. For example, in Indonesia when there were suppression, protests and clashes between the masses and the security forces and the economy was about to collapse, where the common people were finding it difficult to have respectable living despite the tall claims of high growth which was profusely appreciated by the IMF and World Bank, Suharto left power, and democracy was restored in the end.

Therefore, once under harsh military rule, Indonesia is a success story in transition to democracy in Asia. Many from inside and outside the country agree it is still a long way to go but the foundation of democracy has been laid down since the downfall of the former leader, Gen. Suharto. And this process is being consolidated slowly and gradually. In the five years since the fall of president Suharto, Indonesia has had three presidents B. J. Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid, and Megawati Sukarnoputri all of whom took power by democratic means.

Another example is of the Chile where Gen Pinochet ruled the country from 1973 to 1990, during which period hundreds of thousands of democratic and civil society forces were subjected to abduction, torture and killing. But, finally, Pinochet agreed to abandon power as a result of the pressure coming from grassroots mobilisation by civil society forces.

But in the case of Pakistan, liberal forces, who support the cause of bottom-up democracy, feel suspicious in case any attempt is made by some political forces to restore democracy as a result of negotiation or deal between the elitist classes. And their scepticism is rooted in the fact that in the past such experiences have failed. And mainly the example of post-Zia democratic model, mainly consisting of troika — president, prime minister and COAS — is cited.

However, whatever the political merits or demerits of the negotiation between Benazir Bhutto and Gen Musharraf, I would still say Ms Bhutto presents the democratic face of Pakistan and it is incumbent on the liberal forces to extend their full support to her in her quest for democracy.

Undoubtedly, the PPP has paid a heavy price for that. ZAB laid down his life, his two sons were assassinated and Ms Bhutto has personally suffered enormous trials and tribulations at the hands of anti-democratic establishment.

Finally, if forces like Dr Haider Nizamani want liberal democracy to flourish, then we need to support Ms Bhutto, or else fascist forces, in league with some elements in the establishment, will grab power and marginalise the millions of Pakistanis who are already living a life of misery and mayhem.

Resolving Balochistan crisis

2008-08-01T05:24:00.000-07:00

The situation in Balochistan is very grim. The government of General Musharraf instead of adopting the path of negotiation has resorted to the use of the language of force. Zubeida Mustafa wrote a very nice article entitled ‘What next in Balochistan?’ (July 19). The next day the government responded with more bullets, bombs and gunship helicopters and pounded what it called the ‘farari’ (fugitive) camps in hilly areas of Harnai, Sibi and Kamro-Wadh. It was followed by the statement of President Musharraf in a televised speech to the nation that rebel sardars would be fixed to restore the writ of the government.

This statement has dampened the hopes of those who were expecting that the president would resort to conciliatory tone, given the new situation in the subcontinent after Mumbai train blasts.

Most analysts see the Balochistan issue as a part of the failure of the Third World states to settle nationality/ethnic problems in the post-colonial era. There are some studies that show that such states as became independent after decolonisation with weak political systems and fragile socio-economic structures still suffer from ethnic enigma, political polarisation and lack of national cohesion. And Pakistan belongs to the category of states where large ethnic communities co-exit within the same territory, but without having strong feeling about belonging to the same nation. That is why some studies call Pakistan a ‘state-nation’ rather than a ‘nation state’.

According to another opinion, the reason for Pakistan being a weak state was due to the kind of ideology that came to dominate the national political landscape after its creation as state nationalism, rather than popular nationalism with a strong foundation in civil society. The lack of initial congruence between state and nationalities, forming Pakistan, has often negatively impacted upon economic and social development, mainly by diverting resource from development efforts to conflicts between state and ethnic groups. The conflict in Balochistan and Wana is a political and economic drain on national unity and resources.

Here the study of Christopher Clapham offers very plausible insights into the lack of congruence between state and nation: a distinguishing feature of the post-colonial states just after independence was a combination of power and fragility. He argues that states were powerful on account of their well-organised civil-military bureaucracies, which they took over from the colonial rulers. But they were at the same time fragile because these bureaucracies have to exercise their power in societies which were not integrated political communities. It was, therefore, of great importance for these bureaucracies and the new political rulers to initiate an integration process, i.e., nation-building process.

Analysing Pakistan’s situation in the light of this study, it was unfortunate that after Pakistan’s creation our ruler focused more on state-building rather than nation-building. The state-building policy was aimed at territorial integrity, if necessary by force. Indian animosity was shown as the main reason for this. This helped military-civil bureaucracy and new elite class to grab power through extra-constitutional means, resulting in the marginalisation of political forces from corridors of power and death of democracy.

National integration was scarified at the altar of rulers’ personal ambitions and, hence, the creation of national feeling sufficiently widespread and adequately strong to unite vast majority of the population within the same political community was overlooked. Instead, politics was ethicised.

The policy to ignore nation-building has serious consequences today for the country. And for that, strengthening of democracy and democratic institutions is essential for any potential transformation. This would not only increase communication between different stakeholders in the state and the civil society, but would also correct the civil-military relations’ imbalance that, at this point, is strongly tilted in the military’s favour, argues Dr Ayesha Siddiqa-Agha, a leading security analyst.

The situation, nonetheless, is pregnant with dangers and people are drawing conclusion and comparsions. Recently, I had discussion with a friend from Balochistan who complained that the Baloch are being treated in the same manner as Israel treats Palestinians and Hizbollah in Lebanon: submit, surrender and disarm, otherwise face the decimation, destruction, dislocation and humiliation.

He added that like Palestinians today the Bugtis, Marris and Mengals have been uprooted and forced to live in squalid conditions of rugged mountains or in the barren plains of Sindh with their relatives.

He avoided drawing parallels between the Baloch and Palestinians and Hezbollah but said the tone and tenor is same in Islamabad and Tel Aviv. This line of thinking is not savoury for the country.

It is time Gen Musharraf tackled national issues through political means. Let us, therefore, initiate political dialogue with them in the greatest interest of national unity and integrity.