Life is tough for most Pakistanis, and by the looks of it, it is going to continue to get tougher over the next few years
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By Dr. Faisal Bari
Countinued on page 2
Presented a historical opportunity, the parliament has failed the people in questioning the military By Hashim bin Rashid The National Assembly was presented a historical opportunity last week: to define the limits of the military’s role and to bring it under public scrutiny. It lost it. The chief of the InterServices Intelligence (ISI) has offered to resign, the Air Chief admitted that by the time they learnt of the helicopter raid (1 km from PMA Kakul), the helicopters had crossed the border on their way back, the military chief was seated nervously and would head out for a smoke. The army’s top brass stood before the parliament for trial
– as it should be. And there was some genuine questioning. The citizenry was waiting to hear its representatives question its guardians for a failure to defend national borders, for a failure to locate a sworn enemy, for its double standards in the great game against ‘terrorism’ for which citizens had borne the brunt. Over 20,000 civilians are reported to have been killed by suicide attacks alone. The number of casualties for the Taliban offensive in North Waziristan and the Pakistan army offensive in Swat is still unaccounted for. And Osama bin Laden, for whom the war was being
waged, was found in close, secure quarters by American soldiers in Pakistan’s heartland. And Pakistan was not told for fear of a leak (from the intelligence agencies). And thus the army was being questioned in parliament by the elected representatives of the people. A bemused parliament: But the elected representatives failed the people. While it was rather reading ISI chief’s statements before parliament, but the response of parliamentarians was disturbing. Pasha was said to have acknowledged ‘intelligence
failure’ and then told the parliament it was too early to disclose the ‘network’ that kept bin Laden safe in Abbotabad. And parliament did not say a word. Pasha was said to have offered to resign. But no one from the NA even stood up to accept the token gesture. Pasha then is said to have offered a ‘rousing’ criticism of the USA. And parliament thumped the chamber. During the counter-questions, the same parliamentarians were said to have both riled the military for its industrialhousing complexes and inaction and praised it for being a premier institution and the force that unites Pakistan.
To those with a half a memory came as a surprise that the Pakistan army who had been stocked up by the US since the early 50’s and was historically its biggest arms supplier and client. In a rendition of the history of American relations with Pakistan, Pasha said the United States had let Pakistan down at every turn since the 1960s, including slapping sanctions on the country in the 1990s. The military and American dependency: To the contrary, a recent report carried in the CS monitor revealed that out of
Illustrated & Designed by Atif Rafi
Keeping sacred cows sacred
2 The Partition and its many complexities 4 The Talpurs’ last stand
hough the discussions right now are all about Osama bin Laden and errors of omission and commission and the role of the military in Pakistan, this next week the talk will revert to Budget 2011-12 to be presented in the first week of June. And although military budgets are important in that discussion too, but there are other important issues to focus on as well. On the economic side, Pakistanis have a lot to worry about. The lack of growth and income generation (growth target will be 3-4 per cent), lack of gainful employment opportunities, persistent high levels of inflation (target will be in 12-14 per cent range) are and should be very worrying. Inequalities, in income and wealth, keep increasing and poverty, when incomes are more or less stagnant and inflation is high, is bound to rise. Life is tough for most Pakistanis, and by the looks of it, it is going to continue to get tougher over the next few years. Government budget presents a bleak picture. The government raises only 8-9 per cent of GDP as taxes while it spends around 20 per cent of GDP every year. And this is when we do not spend enough on many necessities such as health, education, infrastructure provision, and energy generation. The gap between revenue and expenditure is mostly filled with loans from abroad and/or through creation of inflation (printing of money, domestic borrowing). But our loans are now at a level that borrowing internationally, especially from multilaterals, does not seem to be too viable. Look at the dialogue with the IMF and where it is going – nowhere so far. In fact, the latest IMF press release notes in dire tones that our foreign debt might be becoming unsustainable and needs careful management. The government’s response is cutting expenditure to an extent, continue to create inflation and redouble efforts to borrow from abroad. But before we talk of cuts and how they are likely to play up in the upcoming budget, a word on existing expenditure patterns. On the expenditure side, the current picture is tremendously lopsided and discouraging. If we spend around Rs400 billion per year on defence, this is more than one-third of what we raise as taxes. If other ‘hidden and not so hidden’ expenditures of military that are put in the civilian budget are also added to this, such as the expenditure on pensions, the figures will look much worse. And if we add any/all subsidies that go to the military, the picture becomes gloomier. On top of it, a large chunk of the ‘assistance’ that comes
from USA goes to the military, and the joke that ‘other countries have armies, while in our case the Pakistan army has a country’ seems to have a tinge of realism. After paying for defence and debt servicing, nothing much is left for health, education, and other essentials. In fact, allowing for usual levels of corruption in the system, the amount that reaches the ordinary citizens is a pittance. And now to expected expenditure cuts. The way institutions and interest groups are embedded in the political economy of the country, as shown by the current pattern of expenditures, is definitely going to impact the issue of expenditure cuts too. On the tax side, if the government has not been able to tax the rich over the last 60 years, it is unlikely that it will do so now. One should thus not expect much progress on a progressive income tax, on taxes on wealth, and even agricultural income tax. Though the government is under tremendous pressure to raise tax revenues, it also has limited ability and/ or credibility to impose new taxes. So the government is likely to announce that it will not impose new taxes in the budget but at the same time by removing various exemptions and changing tax rates it will try to raise more revenues. Given that more tax revenues from the people, whether they come from new taxes or from change in tax rates or removal of exemptions, will effect the people the same way, meaning less take home for them, the people will end up paying more. And given the inability to widen the tax net, it is likely that it will be groups that are already paying taxes who will end coughing up the extra as well. On the expenditure side if the military has been getting a huge chunk of the budget, Osama debacle or not, the military and individuals allied with that interest group are going to ensure that cuts in expenditures do not hit the military at all or as little as possible. It is currently health, education, social sector expenditure that is hugely inadequate. This will continue to be the
the review
More pain for the poor
Sunday, 22 May, 2011
the review
The Partition and its many com By Prof. Aziz-ud-Din Ahmed
A
ccording to Narindra Singh Sarela, the Partition was the result of a great conspiracy hatched by the British to divide and set against one another the people of the subcontinent for the purpose of preserving the economic, political and strategic interests of the imperial power. The book is written as a rebuttal to an equally biased and extremist point of view which considers the Partition as the culminating point in the political struggle of the Muslims of India. Conspiracy theorists, who flourish particularly well in South Asia, try to present simplistic explanations of complex social and historical developments. One may agree with the writer that an influential circle in the British establishment was supportive of the division of India, particularly after Gandhi’s refusal to support the British efforts in the WWII. But the theory of divide and rule does not explain the still continuing separatist movement in Kashmir or the unending Hindu Muslim tensions in India which led to the carnage in Gujarat in 2002, killing more than 1,000 from both sides. What Sarela fails to realise is that conspiracies cannot create division among millions of people unless there are major causes that keep the pot boiling. Sarela’s claim that the British supported Muslims against Hindus after the 1857 War of Liberation has been disputed by one writer after another, from Sir Syed Ahmad Khan to well-known Bangladeshi social historian Dr Sufia Ahmad whose book “Muslim Community in Bengal 1884-1912” published in 1996 is a well
documented refutation of this point of view. It has been brought out by a number of researchers that there were enough internal factors that continued to divide the Hindu and Muslim communities despite attempts to bring the two communities together. The Hindus had been frequently maltreated under the Muslim rule and they naturally idealized as heroes those figures who led the struggles against the Central Asian Muslim invaders. Again it was easier for the Hindu aristocracy and business community to change over from Persian to English as the medium of instruction and official transaction than for Muslim aristocracy. The Hindus were thus more easily integrated in the colonial system and made greater progress in education, trade and official jobs. This led to demands for quotas and separate electorates by backward Muslim communities. The successive Muslim rulers from Central Asia had created a Muslim bureaucracy in the capital cities of India. Deprived of perks and privileges after the demise of the Mughal empire, scions of the defunct bureaucracy still considered themselves to be different from and superior to the Hindu population. They continued to retain their Iranian, Arab or Central Asia identity as part of their names and regarded Urdu as a symbol of Islam. To assert their identity they insisted on the sacrifice of cows in disregard of the majority’s sensitivities. On the basis of these cultural differences they claimed that they constituted a different nation which had a right to rule. In Muslim majority provinces, however, more vital socio-economic factors divided the population. In Punjab, the Muslim majority peasantry
which supplied the bulk of the fighting force to the colonial army had to be provided protection from the Hindu banias who were increasingly grabbing their land. This was done through the enactment of the Land Alienation Act (1901), a measure highly unpopular among the Hindu business class. L a t e r , M u s l i m s demand for quotas for admission in government institutions and in jobs was accepted in the teeth of strong opposition from the leaders of the urban Hindu community. There were fears that a strong centre under the Congress rule could cancel these measures. Thus gradually there emerged a support for not only Pakistan but also maximum provincial autonomy to preserve the privileges enjoyed by the province’s
Title: “The Untold Story of India’s Partition: The Shadow of the Great Game” Author: Narindra Singh Sarela, Urdu translation: Zafarul Hasan Peerzada, Publishers: Takhliqat, Lahore, 2010. Pp 560, Price Rs 600 majority. As Dr Sufia Ahmad has brought out, in Bengal socio-economic factors gave rise to the concept of an identity of Muslims of Bengal not only separate from the Hindus but also from the
More pain for the poor
02 - 03
Sunday, 22 May, 2011
From Page 1 case. In fact, even on the development side, the deepest cuts will probably come from programmes and projects that were to benefit the poor of the country. If the government is under pressure to keep the budget deficit down, and it is, it will be looking to cut expenditures. It is hard to cut expenditures from ongoing and current projects. For example, government is being run, expenses are being made, and salaries are being paid. Cutting any or all of it is hard as it needs a rationalization plan. Similarly, if there is a 700,000 strong army, it is going to need money for salaries, equipment and for maintaining a certain state of readiness (which is under question after the OBL debacle). So, cutting current expenditures is hard. But on the other hand development expenditures are either on new projects being proposed or on those under construction. It is easier to not start or delay new projects, and/or slow down the projects underway. So whenever cuts have to be made, development becomes an easy target. And we can expect this in the upcoming budget. The poor depend more on government providing services. It is the very poor who send their children to public schools and visit health facilities, also depending on provision of water and solid waste removal and providing security. If development expenditures from such areas are cut, the poor will clearly be hit differentially and harder. To control deficit, the government has already announced cut in subsidies in various areas. This will lead to consumers paying higher prices. If subsides are
It is unlikely that this government will have the guts to do the right thing and impose cuts on the military or tax the rich non-targeted and are wasting money instead of helping the needy, it is definitely better for such subsidies to be removed and instead to have better targeted subsidies. But sadly the process is never transparent and free of corruption and nepotism in Pakistan. It is not yet clear which subsidies are going to be targeted for removal, but again it is likely that the subsidies going to the weaker groups will be prime
candidates. And the replacement with better-targeted subsidies is not going to happen. Larger subsidies have gone to bailing out PIA and Steel Mills and other public sector enterprises than what the federal government spends on health or education, and we need to arrest this bleeding. But it has to be done in a way that the enterprises become viable and sustainable. Forced privatization is not the solution. Since the issue of restructuring/privatizing state owned enterprises has come up in discussions on the economic agenda with the opposition as well as other stakeholders, national and international, one hopes that the federal government will take due cognizance of the issue in next year’s budget. Over the years, as deregulation, privatization and liberalization of the economy has continued, determination of prices of many things have been taken out of the budget. It might still be the government determining the prices, like in the case of gas, petroleum products, electricity (two per cent increase in electricity price has already been hinted at) and so on, but these are outside of the budget now. So, in line with promises we are making to international lenders and to keep fiscal deficit in control we are likely to see over the next few months increases in the prices of these products too, though not as part of the budget. The government’s poor economic situation limits its ability to offer any incentives for jumpstarting
many myths and the reality mplexities The Dr. Rahman has succeeded in removing some of the muck from the face of our identity, rest of the Muslims of India. It was a Muslim and Bengali character of the community that first led it to support Pakistan and when denied its rightful place in Pakistani society paved the way for the creation of Bangladesh. In Sindh, the Muslim community found its development stunted by lands being increasingly taken over by the Hindu banias. Social development suffered badly due to Sindh having been made part of the Hindu dominated Bombay Presidency after the British takeover. Despite there being sufficient cultural integration between the Muslim and Hindu communities, here too there was a perception of being separate from the Hindu community as well as from the Muslims of other provinces. Demand for Pakistan in Sindh was predicated therefore on maximum provincial autonomy. In the NWFP, the Hindus possessed practically no land and were a small minority. Despite the unhappy memories of the Sikh rule, there was no perception of threat from the Hindus. The Red Shirts leadership therefore felt it had been stabbed in the back when the Congress decided to agree to the division of India and a referendum in the NWFP. In his memoirs, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan has bitterly accused both Gandhi and Nehru for betraying the Red Shirts and forcing a referendum on them over whether they wanted to join Pakistan or India. The book has built a case of Britain agreeing to the Partition to be able to win the Great Game. This is how some influential quarters in Britain might have thought. But keeping the internal socioeconomic rivalries, the creation of Pakistan alone could have ensured the social development of the majority in the provinces that became components of the new country. Gandhi too had realised, as the writer himself concedes, that it was futile to oppose the demand and was agreeable to the Partition provided it took place after the departure of the British. The translation is fairly good. It is, however, not known if the contradictory stand on Jinnah’s “fundamentalism” on pages 86 and 94 is to be ascribed to the writer or the translator. First it is stated that Jinnah wanted to run Pakistan as a modern, western style democracy while five pages later he is branded a Muslim fundamentalist in western dress.
and one hopes the process will continue
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By Javed Asghar
ruth is stranger than fiction. That may be one reason why books on history are popular. Histories, however, serve a bigger purpose. If we are not exposed to histories of other lands, then we become like those blind men, who are placed around an elephant and asked to describe it by touching it from their stationary positions. Not knowing our own past is even more dangerous, because then we face a crisis of identity. And this vacuum is then filled by presentation of an alternate ‘history’ by dictators and their apologists with the sole purpose of retaining their hold over the country. In Pakistan, all students are forced to learn this alternate ‘history’ through social study text-books. However, thankfully, books continue to be published for the general readership, which help us to differentiate between myth and reality. One such book is the subject of this review. This publication is on the history of Urdu and is written by Dr. Tariq Rehman, Director, National Institute of Pakistan Studies, Quaid-e-Azam University. Dr. Rehman digs deep into the past and shows that Urdu and Hindi, the main languages of Pakistan and India, grew out of the same basic language which prevailed from Peshawar to the western edge of Bengal, with only dialectical differences, at the time of Turkish invasions in the eleventh century. The newcomers named it Hindi or Hindvi, after Hind which was the name they gave to the sub-continent. All these mutually intelligible dialects picked up words from the languages of the newcomers, but the one around Delhi (Khari Boli) probably picked up more words than others, and came to be identified with Hindvi or Hindi. As it spread to Gujrat and the Deccan, it also became known as Gujri, Gujrati and Dakhni. In the eighteenth century, it was called Rekhta. The British gave it the name, ‘Hindoostanee’. By the end of the eighteenth century, the British compiled a dictionary of it and also provided it with grammar. By about that time, Muslim elites of Delhi and Agra began using a Persianised form of
Hindustani and called it Zuban-e-Urdu-eMualla, the language of the Exalted City; referring to the city of Delhi. Subsequently, the name was shortened to Urdu. Thus Dr. Rahman has been able to refute the conventional view that Urdu developed in military camps of the Muslim conquerors when their languages came in contact with local ones. This wrong notion has been buttressed by the fact that Urdu means camp in Turkish. Similarly, another falsity that Urdu originated in areas which lie in presentday Pakistan has also been exposed. Dr. Rahman’s investigations further show that there is nothing sacrosanct about Urdu being considered a language of the Muslims, and Hindi of non-Muslims of northern India. Hindustani could have served the purpose of both communities. However, I disagree with Dr. Rahman when he says that the language divide created animosities, which continue to poison relations between the two countries. In my opinion, the relationships between the two countries would have been normal had Pakistan not become a dictatorship. Selfpreservation is the top priority of a dictator. For this he makes the administration overcentralised so as to better control the people, and he also creates a foreign enemy to further keep the people in line behind him. Dictator Ayub Khan started the ’65 war, Dictator Yahya Khan, in preventing the Bengalis from getting their democratic rights, ignited the ’71 war. Zia became a tool in the proxy war in Afghanistan that we 30 years on are still suffering from. A would-be dictator started the Kargil war. India was an aggressor too, once, when it captured 1000 Sq. miles of Pakistani territory in the snow desert of Siachen, again when a dictator was in power. Though most of the wars as mentioned above were started by Pakistani dictators, the irony is that this increased the perception of Indian threat in the mind of the common man and a direct corollary was the longevity of dictatorships. It is in the interest of both countries to have good neighbourly relations as this is the only way to alleviate poverty and ignorance from their midst. Fortunately, we are a democracy now, but unfortunately, the leadership
Title: From Hindi to Urdu A Social and Political History Author: Tariq Rahman Publisher: Oxford University Press, Karachi Rs1095; Pages 395
follows the army in respect of foreign affairs and defence. The army’s fixation with the perceived Indian threat, does not allow it to move more troops to North Waziristan and Kurram agencies to recapture that part of our homeland which is under control of a motley crew in Al-Qaeda, Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Taliban. Meanwhile, innocent Pakistanis continue to be killed in large numbers every other day by suicide bombers etc. and precious resources continue to be destroyed, not to mention the waste on security. Dr. Rahman has succeeded in removing some of the muck from the face of our identity. Hopefully, the process will continue until we are able to say: “We are proud to be Pakistanis, and we do not need an enemy to remain united.”
Keeping sacred cows sacred economic activity and to get growth going again. The new growth strategy of the government seems to be based on the hope that ‘unleashing’ markets will be by itself enough to get growth going in the country. This is highly unlikely. Initial conditions, of labour, entrepreneurship, and technical know-how are too weak, cost of doing business too high, there are too many issues of incomplete markets, asymmetric information and skewed incentives for this to happen. And the situation is worsened by the fact that the government will be forced to cut development expenditures too like it had to do in the current fiscal year. It is true that the government has limited options. One should not be cynical enough to believe that the government is out to hurt people. But it is also the case that given the financial difficulties we are in, the government has to raise more money and cut expenditures and given the realities of our political economy, it is the weaker, less organized and less powerful interest groups that are going to take the brunt of the tax initiatives and expenditure cuts. So, the poor should expect prices to go up for most items, inflation to remain high and services, such as health and education, to deteriorate. While the middle class should expect to face increased prices and also cough up more in taxes. It is unlikely that this government will have the guts to do the right thing and impose cuts on the military or tax the rich. All this will be harder to take when the economy is growing slowly and incomes are also stagnant but this is how the cookie is going to crumble.
From Page 1
From Page 1 $20 billion of US aid dispatched to Pakistan since 2002 (and the war of terror, as I like to phrase it), two-thirds of the American aid has gone to the military. What this suggests is that it is not civilians that need American aid as desperately as the Pakistan military does. Moreover, despite this huge chunk of aid being funneled to the Pakistan army, it has continued to ask for defence budget hikes throughout the last decade. It cannot have it both ways: use American aid to keep itself function and then stand before parliament and condemn the US. And thus ne of the most damning aspects of the parliamentary hearing of the military was the very strategic attempt by representatives of the military to pin responsibility on the parliament for determining the future of a relationship (with the US) that had been historically cultivated by the military itself: in
the 50’s, in the 60’s, in the 80’s, and in the 00’s. But parliament and parliamentarians were not able to sufficiently counter-force. It was ironic: the army gave parliamentarians the right to take foreign policy in their control. The army presented to the parliament the right to determine the military and ISI priorities. And parliament balked at the task. And the strange sets of politics that Pakistan is used to, continued. The road to nowhere: On one side, jingoistic lawyers (purportedly paid by the agencies) have responded by pushing a petition in the Lahore High Court asking the court to declare the army chief the Pakistan army’s supreme commandor – and not the President. On one side, Pakistan’s community of lawyers
showed its fundamentalist turn by holding in-absentia funeral prayers for the slain Al Qaeda leader at the premises of almost every major court in the country. And there was no one to stop them. No Supreme Court justice or High Court justice condemned them. On one side, the Jama’at ud Dawa began to lead a pro-military, anti-India, pro-Osama campaign in the centre of our cities and went unchecked. On one side, the daily afflictions being in Pakistan began to augment. Petrol prices went up, milk prices went up, outages went up. Pakistan is caught within deep ideological and material conflict. But when presented a chance to correct a wrong, its representatives have balked again. And thus the sacred cow remains the sacred cow. And our day-to-day problems continue.