Are Indian media’s ‘Dirty Dozen’ really dirty enough? by Jawed Naqvi
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Jawed Naqvi
Monday, 15 Mar, 2010
We could be witnessing a rare and overdue shift in the Indian media’s approach to issues that were hitherto seen as taboo. It is not common in this era of easy jingoism to find journalists, with their own notions of patriotism and nationalism, questioning axioms of state policy towards, say, its intelligence outfits. This ice has now been broken. A tentative though absorbing discussion was held and it signalled a new beginning, which probably needs to be emulated in other regions of South Asia, more so in ISI-dominated Pakistan. Hopefully the Indian initiative will be followed with relentless persistence for it to bear fruit. It should not be abandoned like a tricky news report that got spiked because it would be inconvenient for powerful interests.
It is not often that a former head of India’s Intelligence Bureau (IB) is seduced by the media into revealing his worldview at a public forum where he ends up saying something both revealing and potentially embarrassing to the system he served. Take the revelation the other day that of the IB’s many tasks its foremost duty was to protect the state at any cost, even if it required taking thousands of Indian lives. The blunt message had a blood-curdling ring to it even if it did seem to match with the state’s current ruinous path of bludgeoning the weak into submission to serve the powerful. It is not often that a group of Indian journalists come together to bell the proverbial cat and ask the question whether it was not time that the secretive foreign spy agency RAW and the domestic IB were made accountable to the public, to the parliament. Who are the people who made the rare discussion possible?
In April 2008 a dozen energetic men and women, veteran journalists all, created a group in Delhi they called Foundation of Media Professionals (FMP). They contributed a hundred thousand rupees each to get the project off the ground. If it works out, and there is no known reason why it shouldn’t, after an impressive array of public debates on a clutch of forbidden subjects the group has managed to organise, it could be pioneering a renaissance of sorts the media need to boost their credibility, not just in India, but across South Asia.
Since the old breed of Indian journalists that mesmerised and spurred many of us into becoming members of the profession were largely led by those who had a bad “social reputation” so to speak, it would be useful to know how the founder members of Delhi-based FMP measure up to their peers in this vital acid test. Those were men and women who would not easily find a landlord to rent them a house because they were perceived as wayward, men who would be shunned by a girl’s family if they asked for her hand because they had a reputation for erratic nights at the press club and therefore with not enough stable income to “settle down” in life responsibly.
These were accusations of course with a tiny, almost negligible, grain of truth about men and women who were thus tarred mainly because they were not willing to be co-opted by a system they had sworn to stalk and expose. Their “shadowy” reputation hinged of course on their ability to irreverently quiz the system’s political and bureaucratic representatives. This attribute probably became a hindrance in their marketability in the middle class marriage market (if they were in it in the first place) or in finding a roof over their heads. That the Feroze Gandhi effect on national politics had not completely waned in the seventies helped the cause of journalists, who saw Nehru’s son-in-law as an icon for probity and scrutiny in politics. It is tempting to call the founding members of the FMP Indian Media’s Dirty Dozen.
That the Nehruvian state has given way to what may be called a Narendra Modi-friendly state – not only because of a huge rightwing slide but because of the enormous corporate backing and brazen collusion with big business it now commands – has added to the responsibilities of the FMP in shepherding the discourse and the struggle for a truly free and independent media. It may begin by asking the IB chief which state was he serving – Nehru’s or Modi’s? The group’s intentions seem transparent enough. However, given the ease with which so many media NGOs have sprouted on both sides of the Murdochian intervention, domestically and in a cross-border sense – some with clearly dubious agenda of shoring up the system instead of questioning it – the FMP will be watched closely before a fair assessment can be arrived at.
In its own words the FMP’s philosophy is transparent. It says: “Though we are traditionally referred to as journalists, we have decided to call ourselves differently to emphasise the importance we place on professionalism, so that we can be true to our vocation as watchdogs of society. This is not a forum for the media executive who might be into marketing, management or space selling. Nor is membership open to amateurs, for whom journalism is a hobby and not the main source of income.”
FMP believes journalist cannot be politically neutral. “Ours is not a sterile craft that seeks merely to entertain or inform. We confess to just one prejudice: liberty.” To pursue this single-minded agenda the foundation promises to be non-partisan, while welcoming members of all political persuasions.“Our intention is to strive towards the nobility of our calling and its high-minded purpose. We will try to inculcate and amplify best practices. We will debate issues impinging on our profession.” The group – which so far has a poorly designed website – says it would recognise and reward excellence but I think that should be its least important pursuit.
Last week it invited India’s Home Secretary G.K. Pillai and a former diplomat known to be a hawk on Pakistan to explain why the country needs to filter foreign delegates who are invited here to participate in public seminars and academic discussions. What was the need for a regime that smacked of thought police? It was comforting to thus learn from the interaction that there was no real or credible reason for India to stop people from coming to the country to exchange ideas on politics, science or any subject under the sun. The fact that the same people could get a visitors visa with far less harassment belied the security ruse that was being lamely given.
At a time when the Indian media seems to have lost the plot it once flaunted as a major asset (Feroze Gandhi, remember?) and as its credibility gets rapidly eroded and when it is beginning to be seen as an adjunct of the state and its many corporate collusions, a group of a dozen journalists who question the drift is reason to rejoice. But are the Dirty Dozen dirty enough to take on the challenges that a power-drunk and increasingly wayward state poses?
jawednaqvi@gmail.com
All this focus on Karzai by Zafar Hilaly
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Monday, March 15, 2010
Zafar Hilaly
Sophistry and illusion is what Mr Karzai peddles on his visits abroad. Politics for him is the art of dissimulation. It is not that he lies; he just does not tell the truth. His description of India as a “close, good friend” in contrast to Pakistan, which he described as a “brother,” nay “conjoined, inseparable twins,” may have endeared him to his Pakistani audience. But it did not explain why the two brothers opt for fratricide rather than brotherly love when it comes to settling their differences.
Or, perhaps for a change, Mr Karzai did mean what he said when he described Pakistan and Afghanistan as twins; because separating “conjoined, inseparable twins,” so that both may have an independent existence, is a very difficult medical procedure leading, more often than not, to the demise of one twin or the other. And that of Pakistan, as presently constituted, has been an old Afghan demand and is what Mr Karzai in the dim recesses of his mind must dearly want.
Of late Mr Karzai has been eager to distance himself from America. His cabinet appointments and those to the Election Commission, in defiance of American opinion, reinforce such a perception. So too the welcome he afforded Ahmadenijad in Kabul last week. And the platform he provided the Iranian president to pummel the Americans, even as Robert Gates was telling his forces in Marjah why they should risk their lives to keep Mr Karzai ensconced in Kabul. All this must have irked Washington. As does Mr Karzai’s outspoken willingness to talk to Mullah Omar, who has a multimillion bounty on his head.
But much of Mr Karzai’s utterances are posturing. And indeed, to many at the press conference in Islamabad, his responses sounded as if he believed that half of his audience were fools and the other half hypocrites. Nevertheless, his remarks throw into relief the very contrasting approaches of Karzai and the Americans to the question of engaging with their adversaries.
To Karzai, and many in our part of the world, merely because Mullah Omar has committed or condoned unspeakable crimes does not render him beyond the pale. For the West to go on prattling about what is or is not acceptable when peace and reconciliation is the goal appears hypocritical. As Albert Camus asked, “How many crimes has (the West) committed merely because it could not endure being wrong.”
Perhaps what scares the Americans more is Karzai’s “reconciliation and reintegration” initiative. They fear that in his enthusiasm to reconcile with the Taliban he may end up appeasing Al Qaeda and giving the two second wind in Afghanistan. But Washington need not worry. Karzai desperately wants to keep his job; nor does he want to forfeit his life. The fact is that Obama and Karzai are stuck with each other. It’s far too late for either to disown or forsake the other.
What was surprising during the visit was the importance our government attached to a leader who is, after all, an American satrap. Turning out the entire cabinet to receive him at the airport, along with the chairman of the Senate, seemed excessive. Why bother about Mr Karzai whose power does not extend beyond the porch of his presidential palace in Kabul when Pakistan has ready access to his masters? Or, was this because Mr Zardari is enamoured of Mr Karzai, who like him, is an accidental president and both have the same mentor. Or, merely that Mr Zardari, wanting to appear hospitable overdid it? The answer is none of the above.
From the very inception of his presidency Mr Zardari has made it a point to show special regard for Mr Karzai. By inviting Karzai, the only foreign leader to share his joy on the occasion of his oath-taking, he sent a powerful message to Karzai and his own establishment that he had not only discarded Musharraf’s distaste of Karzai but also, more importantly, that he meant to ensure that the establishment’s very manifest suspicions of the Karzai regime would no longer influence Pakistan’s Afghan policy. This was probably part of the deal that allowed Benazir Bhutto to return, and Mr Zardari wants to live up to it.
Had Mr Zardari not been under such an obligation, new to the job or over-confident about his ability to bring about change, and less prone to act first and think later, he would have known better. Mr Zardari seems to have developed a fetish to become wise after the event.
He will soon discover that our establishment shares not a mite of Mr Zardari’s enthusiasm for the Northern Alliance coalition that Mr Karzai leads. And when it becomes known that the awarding of contracts to Indian firms for the construction of strategic highways bordering Pakistan are exclusively due to Mr Karzai’s personal intervention, and contrary to the advice of his own counsellors about riling Pakistan further, their suspicions will grow and harden.
To make matters worse, there exists in Pakistan the profound and widespread conviction that India has been targeting Pakistan from Afghanistan with the express or implied concurrence of Mr Karzai. And, frankly, it was difficult to believe, as Mr Karzai claimed, that he is ignorant of India’s antics. When Mr Karzai, as he once said, can keep abreast of the going rate charged by the handlers of suicide bombers through his intelligence chief, he must surely have tapped the same source for an inkling of what India is up to in Balochistan.
Shorn of verbiage and nuance, the driving force of Indian and Pakistani foreign policy has been the maxim “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Mr Karzai, who holds an Indian degree in political science, did not need help to arrive at the conclusion that his very pronounced Indian tilt would drive Pakistan towards his adversaries, including the Afghan Taliban. It is another matter that India, ah! perfidious India, abandoned Mr Karzai and supported his rival Abdullah Abdullah in the Afghan presidential polls. But, then, that is India’s wont.
As the present operation driven by the US surge splutters on and months elapse before the next one targeting Kandhahar gets under way, it seems best for Pakistan to maintain a correct rather than an effusively close relationship with the Karzai regime. If we are to have any leverage with the Afghan Pakhtun, as we claim and at times boast we do, how does showing our considerable affection for the Karzai-led Tajik-dominated regime help? Moreover, it is impossible to envisage the participation of the Taliban in a Karzai-led setup, which is presumably why, as rumour has it, we are contemplating a future coalition being headed by Mustafa Shah, the son of the late King Zahir Shah. For us, Mr Karzai has no future, only a doubtful past. And, if truth be told, Afghanistan needs his services as much as Italy needs the mafia.
At the cost of appearing repetitive, one should stress that the present is the opportune time for Pakistan to forge friendly relations with all the players of the Afghan domestic scene, rather than to identify with one or the other. We, no doubt, made a decisive contribution to the outcome of the anti-Soviet jihad. But we lost the peace and, in the process, as we now discover, spawned the rise of a phenomenon that, if victorious, would be as destructive (politically, morally and ideologically to our way of life and to progressive Islam) as the Mongol hordes that swept into Mesopotamia in the early 13th Century were to Islam and Arab civilisation.
Rather than focus exclusively on Karzai we should support people and processes that can unite Afghanistan. “How is it possible,” the late King Zahir Shah once asked me in Italy, “that a country like Pakistan with a sophisticated state structure supports a one-eyed, uneducated and barbarous mullah?” And, were he alive today, he may well ask, “How can you support an Afghan quisling in preference to the legitimacy that my lineage offers?” One had an answer of sorts then, but would have no answer today.
The writer is a former ambassador. Email: charles123it@hotmail.com
Peace is what the people wish for
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Monday, March 15, 2010
For many decades, peace activists of Pakistan and India have known — and some recent surveys carried out by the Jang group of Pakistan and the Times group in India have confirmed — that very large majorities of the peoples of India and Pakistan ardently long for a state of permanent peace between the two countries.
I have been actively promoting peace between Pakistan and India for the last twenty-one years and can solemnly state that the peoples of the two nations would like to move freely from one country to another. If the visa restriction cannot be done away with immediately, they would like visas to be given at the border just as it is done between Nepal and India and Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
The easing of the visa regime would not be doing something remote from the mind of the two governments. Only a few years back India had introduced procedures to issue visas at the Attari border. However, the scheme was abandoned because Pakistani citizens couldn’t cross the border on foot without permission from the ministry of interior.
Nearly a decade ago, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif once told the Indian high commissioner at Islamabad that Pakistan would like to do away with the formality of visa between the two countries. According to the high commissioner, when he related the prime minister’s wish to the foreign secretary of Pakistan, the latter’s reaction was “I hope you tried to dissuade him”. I also remember the Indian prime minister, late Mr Chandrashekar telling me that he had promised Prime Minster Nawaz Sharif at their meeting in Chennai (or perhaps Colombo) that if the Pakistani prime minister were to announce the end of the visa regime on reaching Pakistan, as he said he would like to do, India would do the same the next day.
It’s not only the peace-desiring leaders of the two countries, but also the large majorities of the people of India and Pakistan who want freedom of means of public transport, for example, buses, cars and trucks etc. to ply from one country to another on showing international carnet, as persons do by showing the passport. They long for the freedom to buy and sell from and to the other country, the unrestricted exchange of books, newspapers, films etc. between Pakistan and India, the freedom to artists to perform in the each other’s countries and the freedom to enroll, teach and carry out researches in the educational and technical institutions of the other country.
Last month, I travelled from Lahore towards Wagah via GT Road to cross the border on foot and saw the road to India being widened to an amazing width with service roads on the two sides, a green belt in the centre along with a modern drainage system. From Wagah to Amritsar I witnessed identical activity on the Indian side of the border on the same grand scale as I had seen in Pakistan. Apparently, the two countries seem to be investing tens of billions of rupees in the development of road networks and in acquiring large chunks of land on the border for building customs enclosures and other facilities for trading on a grand scale.
On the one hand we observe concrete preparations going on for normalisation of relations in not too distant a future, but on the other hand it is sad that the decision-makers in both countries seem hesitant to take any substantial steps towards implementation of their declared aim to achieve durable peace. They seem willing but remain indecisive.
The two governments do not seem to realise that if they were to concede to their people the facilities of free travel, permission to trade freely, use transport etc as described above, the Indians in Pakistan and the Pakistanis in India would be just like visitors from other countries of Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas. They will be no more dangerous than the mischief-makers and terrorists of their own countries. In any case the terrorists from foreign countries do not enter the target country through visas.
Every student of Pakistan-India relations is convinced that the leaders on the two sides fully realise that for India and Pakistan to prosper peace is the only option. They cannot afford to settle their differences by going to war or by remaining belligerent on a long-term basis. They have little scope of solving their appalling internal problems and at the same time nourishing their disputes with each other. Ignoring the siege of the pressures of narrow, short term national interests, they have to cease acting like nationalist political leaders and take the plunge like the great statesmen of a great subcontinent.
The writer is a former finance minister.
Networks by Chris Cork
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Monday, March 15, 2010
Chris Cork
There is more that works here than doesn’t. Somebody had put the wrong cheque in an envelope addressed to a colleague – so she got mine and I subsequently got hers. We talked on the phone and emailed and agreed to exchange envelopes via courier rather than send the cheques back from whence they came. Problem sorted in minutes flat and cheques in the right hands within twenty-four hours. Twelve days ago I lost a key part of a model aircraft I was building. It was not a part I could make for myself from scratch so I threw myself on the mercy of the manufacturers – who are in New Zealand. A week after contacting them there arrived a letter with the part safely taped inside it. Problem sorted rather quicker than anticipated. If nothing else, the internet, telephone, courier and regular postal services all appeared to be working rather well. And then there was the matter of children’s literature.
Like many of my colleagues, I have the Facebook site running all day in the background. It gets used to update breaking news and pass bits of gossip around, but also for occasional serious discussion. Amongst recent discussions has been one about the paucity of locally produced books for children, particularly in English. Go into any English medium school and the children in the kindergarten classes will almost always be using imported storybooks, imported nursery rhymes and an imported set of cultural references that are almost entirely irrelevant or just plain meaningless. Go into the school library and look for teenage fiction in either Urdu or English that is written by local authors – you will struggle to find any. Look even harder to find locally-written books in the library aimed at the five-to-eight age group. There will be any number of ‘foreigners’ in the library, many of them familiar like Enid Blyton, but how many of you can off the top of your head name a popular Pakistani children’s author writing in either English or Urdu?
Enter the Facebook network. My first impression of Facebook (…or ‘FB’ as we like to say) was that it was a ‘kids’ thing. Zippy teenagers exchanging trivia. Wrong. So long as you are careful about whom you select as your ‘friend’ – and there is another debate to be had about the nature of cyber-friendships/relationships – you can meet and interact with a diverse and interesting group. My family in UK are mostly there, as are long-term friends in the ‘real’ world, but it is the ‘friends’ I will never really know or meet that form the bulk of my rarely-added-to list of cyber mates. To get through my personal firewall you need to be a print or electronic media practitioner and it was a contact with a well-known TV ‘face’ that pricked my ears – and days later turned into what I expect to be an interesting friendship because the person in question is a writer – who writes for children.
Other networks were quickly deployed and a couple of days after our first interaction I was in possession of a book of contemporary children’s poetry (which I will review elsewhere) that pressed all the right buttons culturally and in terms of relevance to the world that the children of Pakistan live in. In less than a week the networks I am a part of or whose services I employ had ensured that I got paid, rescued my latest symphony in plastic and put in my hands what is potentially a valuable educational tool. Pretty good going for a failed state, don’t you think, Dear Reader? Tootle-pip!
The writer is a British social worker settled in Pakistan.
Email: manticore73@gmail. com
Two’s company: Brand power by S.M. Shahid
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S.M. Shahid
Sunday, 14 Mar, 2010
“Smart shirt you’re wearing this morning. Is it branded?” asked Babboo.
“Don’t know — never bothered to check the tag! My daughter sent it from the US,” I replied.
“Let me see!” Babboo got up, held me by the neck and pressing my head down, read aloud the inscription on the tag behind the collar: Polo Ralph Lauren… timeworn appearance and comfortable feel…”
“Kya kar rahe ho yar! Are you mad? Why is it so important for you to know what brand my shirt is?” I cried.
“Very important!” he said casually. “Brand makes the man — and a gentleman is known by the brand he wears!”
“Shut up! I am sick of your antics, and I am sick of hearing this word ‘brand’. Have you any idea how the branding business started?”
“How?”
“Why, haven’t you read the book, or seen the movie, in which they chase and catch young able-bodied Africans from the countryside of Western Africa and load them in Spanish ships to be dispatched to America where they are publicly auctioned and stamped on the shoulder with red-hot iron. THIS was branding!”
“Oh?” said Babboo.
“Yes, and they ‘branded’ their cattle too with red-hot iron, so that no one would claim them to be his, or take the risk of stealing them.”
“You mean they treated the able-bodied Africans not any better than their cattle?” asked Babboo.
“Don’t act like a nitwit — as if you don’t know!”
“But you must agree that it was a sure-shot way of identification.”
“Stop it! You’re getting on my nerves.”
Babboo knows to what extent he can stretch the kajj bahsi. So he became quiet. However, it is not possible for him to remain silent for long. He started to mumble: “An interesting word — branding! Not only you brand things, cattle or even men with hot iron, you brand them with words too: ‘I can rightly brand you as a money-launderer; you can wrongly brand me as a terrorist; we both can brand our clean-shaved neighbour as a mullah!’ Then, the sheer romanticising and glorifying of ordinary products by giving them impressive brand names! Hogger — the great American Khaki; Cherokee — the weekend wear with a spirit that is all American.”
“The discussion on brands has not yet concluded,” Babboo replied stubbornly.
“Fine! Go ahead!”
“I read somewhere that now they are sending out Brand Ambassadors. Is this what our foreign service has been reduced to?” he asked.
“This has nothing to do with our Foreign Service, you fool. Brand Ambassadors are people who enter into long term exclusive contract with marketers for projecting their brands in the media,” I informed my friend.
“But in your time — I mean when you were rotting in the profession of advertising — this was done by copywriters and visualisers.”
“In my time there was little advertising and very little media. Secondly, General Ziaul Haq was in the saddle and he had a liking neither for advertising nor the media. However, and interestingly, he turned religion into a brand.”
“Tell me, when did this concept come?”
“What concept?”
“Concept of ‘branding’, concept of ‘brand development’, ‘brand managers’, ‘brand ambassadors’?”
“You see, historically speaking, in the wake of the Industrial Revolution came mass scale production and development of various products; in their wake came consumerism; in its wake came the development of media. Soon a time came when mass communication and brands started to walk happily, hand in hand. Everything generic was swept under the carpet and people were made to buy products and services offered with fancy but meaningless names. They became so accustomed to it that now if they wanted detergent, they asked for a particular brand — even though they ended up buying some other brand! And if they wanted a diaper, they asked for a particular brand! Now they didn’t care to know where the product was conceived, born and brought up. It’s like forgetting the family background and, instead, feeling great being called by funny names…”
“Perhaps a time may also come when they’ll have ‘branded politicians’,” Babboo interrupted me.
‘They are already branded.” I said.
“Yes, you are right. Come to think of it, what is PPP, what is MLN, what is MQM, what is JI but brand names, though unlike the Africans who were stamped on the shoulder, our politicians are not branded!” Babboo has the ability to come up with strange ideas.
“Times have changed. Now, there are better ways of identifying the herd. The primitive way of identifying which cow belonged to which rancher no longer exists. Now the rancher can tell his cows from thousands of miles,” I said.
“Who are you talking about?”
“I am talking about the rancher called Uncle Sam who can recognise and control his cows sitting thousands of miles away?”
“What about the Holy Cows?” he asked.
“They have immunity!” I said.
“But even they are branded, aren’t they? People keep branding them as this, and that, and what not, all the time.”
“Yes, but without branding them with… you know what!” I said. The argument, mercifully, came to an end.
shahidsm34@gmail.com
Glory, piety and politics by Nadeem F. Paracha
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Nadeem F. Paracha
Sunday, 14 Mar, 2010
Many young Pakistanis, who in their reactionary worldview cannot relate to the conventional make-up of the long-bearded and mullah-looking hawkers of intransigent ideas, have found their man in the dashing (Che Guevara-meets-Saladin) shape of Zaid Hamid. But this phenomenon does not begin or end with Mr Hamid.
Back in the early 1990s the army and the intelligence agencies of Pakistan were high on the way they — with the cosy help of US and Saudi money and weapons — assisted Afghan Islamists in defeating the Soviet Union. Consequently, not only were the victorious Islamists sure of turning each and every Muslim country into an Islamic state, this fantasy was also harboured by a host of their comrades in the Pakistani intelligence apparatus
The disastrous economic, political and social fall-outs of Pakistan’s involvement in the so-called Afghan jihad were conveniently blamed (by the agencies and their mouthpieces in certain sections of the media) on the return of civilian politicians. In other words, had Gen Ziaul Haq not been assassinated and democracy not returned to Pakistan, the country truly could have become the strongest bastion of Islam.
This was the message the military-establishment seemed to have been giving in the face of the struggle that Pakistan’s democratic parties such as the PML-N and the PPP were locked in during the 1990s. It was a struggle that was a combination of their own blunders and what was clearly an attempt by certain resourceful remnants of Zia’s Afghan jihad to keep both the parties constantly reaching for one another’s throats to stay in power.
On the social level, when a generation of young Pakistanis who had gallantly fought against the military dictatorship of Ziaul Haq in the 1980s came of age, this generation was replaced by a more inward looking batch of young Pakistanis who were successfully made to feel repulsed by the whole concept of populist democracy. With Pakistan’s two main political parties looking exhausted by being made to play a continuous game of cat and mouse with the establishment, the new generation of young Pakistanis began to look elsewhere.
Instead of finding a tad more rational and progressive avenues of expression and belonging, this generation, already brought up on the glorious myths of jihad and Pakistan’s frontline role as the ‘saviour of Islam’, eventually found itself venturing into spacious drawing-rooms buzzing with a new kind of Islamic preachers. These preachers were largely apolitical, perhaps disgusted by the populist mindsets of the country’s rural and working-classes, and they went straight for the emerging youth of the new middle class.
Their message has absolutely nothing to do with the kind of reformism contemporary Muslim thought is in a dire need of. On the contrary, what these preachers, ranging from the likes of Farhat Hashmi to Zakir Naik, do is to continue upholding traditionalist, frozen tracts of Islamic history and law; they dress them up with modern bourgeois symbolism. In other words, the message remains the same traditionalist, but the way this message is delivered has now changed.
The seeds of neo-religious traditionalism disguised as ‘modern Islam’ were thus sown, and a contemporary identification tool for a number of not-so-clear-minded middle-class youth was discovered. Hijab and beard became ‘cool’; so did the idea of trendy and hip looking folks sounding like 21st century versions of Abul Ala Mauddudi, or worse, yuppie adaptations of Mulla Omar! The tragic 9/11 episode, Bush’s diabolic invasion of Iraq, another military dictatorship in Pakistan, and the rise of the Taliban in the country, all this (and more), eventually began to politicise the otherwise apolitical wave of neo-traditionalist piety, attire and thought that had started sweeping across large sections of Pakistani middle-class.
TV personalities like Zaid Hamid and Aamir Liaquat, and politicians like Imran Khan and Munawar Hussan, are pegs of this new trend, mixing neo-traditionalist trappings of exhibitionistic piety, dress and claims with political discourses that may sound populist and radical, but in fact they are nothing more than the kind of reactionary and myopic mindset that sections of Pakistan’s military establishment started being plagued with during the Afghan jihad under Zia and after. Today society stands clearly polarised.
On the one side are those we call the masses and who play the most direct role in politics of democracy; whereas on the other side are large sections of the middle class whose youth it seems have completely fallen away onto the right, lapping up fanciful myths of glory and power and punchy reactionary oratory that is fed to them by the new set of preachers, private TV channels and fringe politicians. This class, believing in pious and patriotic proclamations expertly wrapped in delusions of grandeur and conspiracy theories, stands completely isolated from the ongoing masses-based democratic process that is underway.
This continues to fall inwards; it is a psychological introversion that may well be making a number of educated young men and women hold somewhat xenophobic, chauvinistic and at times completely irrational ideas about glory, piety and politics. And what’s even more worrying is that maybe very few of them are aware of the bundle of spiritual and ideological dichotomies that the emerging trend has turned into.
Population policy: will it work? by Huma Yusuf
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Huma Yusuf
Sunday, 14 Mar, 2010
The best news Pakistanis have received in the past week comes in the form of the National Population Policy 2010. The policy recognises that demographics are the key to promoting economic development and security in Pakistan. It also prioritises family planning — particularly in an effort to promote birth spacing — as the best strategy for achieving ambitious population targets (2.1 births per woman in 2025).
In many ways, the story of Pakistan is one of a failure of family planning. Although the Family Planning Association of Pakistan was set up as early as 1952, we have seen a five-fold increase in our population between 1951 and 2009, from 34 million to 171 million.
The urgent need for revamped family planning service delivery cannot be understated. Although 96 per cent of married Pakistani women are aware of at least one modern contraceptive method, only 22 per cent are currently using modern contraceptives, while another eight per cent use less effective traditional methods. One quarter of married women want to wait before having another child, or do not want more children, but are not using contraception. And 24 per cent of married women admit that their last child was mistimed or unwanted.
Many Pakistanis bemoan the prevalence of abortion here (a 2004 Population Council study estimates that there are 890,000 abortions annually), but this too should be understood as a shortcoming of our government’s family planning service delivery. According to the 2006-07 Pakistan Demographic Health Survey, 65 per cent of women who had an abortion were over the age of 30, while 80 per cent had more than three children. In this context, the population policy’s emphasis on family planning is a welcome paradigm shift.
The focus on birth spacing — up to 36 months from the current 33 — is also laudable. After all, the language of birth spacing, as opposed to birth control, will win over more Pakistanis to family planning initiatives. Women perceived the famous ‘do bachey hi achey’ campaign as the state’s attempt to dictate how many children they could have.
A call for birth spacing, however, does not have those implications. Beyond innumerable health benefits, an emphasis on intervals between pregnancies helps decouple family planning from other social and moral obligations — women who space births cannot be accused of absconding from maternal responsibilities, denying their husbands offspring, or shirking their religious duty to procreate.
No doubt, those who drafted the policy have the right idea about how to reduce the population growth rate. But implementation is another factor altogether. The policy calls for improved service delivery, increased availability of contraceptives and the expansion of service delivery from urban to rural areas.
Endless bureaucracy may, however, thwart these efforts. Family planning initiatives are overseen by both the ministries of health and population welfare in addition to social marketing and civil society organisations. Without robust plans for integrated service delivery and public-private partnerships, good intentions may never convert to action.
Moreover, the population policy does not include specific directives for the improvement of the Lady Health Worker programme, which is tasked with family planning service delivery, but has a high turnover, few resources, and is plagued with poor training and inefficiency.
The policy is also short on innovative solutions to address myriad shortfalls in service delivery. For example, little attention is paid to the fact that men must be included in all family planning initiatives. And while there is a call to engage religious leaders in spreading information about contraceptives, no concrete plans for training, outreach and counselling through mosques or madressahs is put forward. There can be no doubt, however, that such campaigns are necessary: one study states that ‘psychosocial’ issues, including a husband’s opposition and perceived religious condemnation, account for 50 per cent of barriers to contraceptive use reported by women.
Ultimately, even the most progressive and proactive policy document will not successfully reduce the population growth rate if women are not simultaneously educated. It has been well-documented that higher literacy rates for women result in increased female decision-making power, better awareness and understanding of health services, altered marriage patterns and renegotiated household dynamics — all of which are essential for family planning to become common practice. On a more practical level, too, contraceptives cost money; educated, working women will be better situated to access modern contraceptive methods. Given that Pakistan’s teeming population is the root cause of many problems — from unemployment to inflation, crime to militancy — one hopes that implementing the population policy registers high on the government’s to-do list.
Adrift in a sea of pollution by Ardeshir Cowasjee
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Ardeshir Cowasjee
Sunday, 14 Mar, 2010
Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Iftikhar Chaudhry, sitting this past week on the Karachi bench of the Supreme Court (SC), with brother Justices Chaudhry Ijaz Ahmed and Ghulam Rabbani, whilst hearing a human rights case of 2006 concerning the death of one child and burns inflicted on 19 others in the SITE area and injuries to 15 children in Orangi, directed the Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) to remove all toxic waste from industrial areas within seven days.
The agency has its work cut out. Aside from notified industrial zones such as SITE, Korangi, F.B. Area, Port Qasim, EPZ, Landhi, North Karachi, etc, the city is fast developing into one large conglomeration of unlawful cottage industries within the residential and commercial areas of Saddar, Liaquatabad, Gulberg, Baldia, Shah Faisal, North Nazimabad, Orangi and Korangi.
Hearing a further three human rights cases pending since 1992 which dealt with poisonous industrial/municipal effluents being discharged into the sea, the bench directed the attorney-general of Pakistan to monitor and report regularly on the measures being taken by the Karachi Port Trust, Karachi Water & Sewerage Board, SITE, Defence Housing Authority, the cantonment boards, the city government and industrial estates to contain marine pollution.
The CJP stated: “There should be self-accountability by the business community. If a factory owner cannot fulfill the required laws, he should close down the business instead of making profit at the cost of lives….” This is easier said than done. The greed that consumes our upper-income citizens will not allow a reduction in any ‘development’ to benefit the environment even though its ruin adversely affects all of us.
A World Bank’s assessment of 2006 revealed that the loss caused to Pakistan by ‘environmental degradation’ was equivalent to six per cent of GDP — while our ‘economic progress’ was also six per cent of GDP. What is the ratio now?
Karachi’s pollution is an old nightmare burgeoning by the day. Apart from endangering ordinary citizens, it affects the armed forces located in the metropolis. In June 2007, Senator Nisar Memon, chairman of the Standing Committee on Defence and Defence Production, presented a report on Pollution in Karachi Harbour and areas around PAF Bases at Karachi.
The navy had complained that a 30 per cent reduction in the life of their warships was anticipated because of accelerated corrosion which would cost some $1bn over their lifetime. The cause is the 400 million gallons per day of untreated sewage that pours into the sea from rivers and nallahs, rendering the harbour a basin of chemicals.
The air force had lost 12 fighter planes (each costing between $10m to $25m) over the foregoing year and a half due to accidents with birds in the take-off and landing flight paths. The proliferation of scavenging birds around Faisal and Masroor bases is generated by heaps of uncollected garbage and industrial waste.
The committee found that environment protection laws were sufficient, but enforcement was practically non-existent, especially by Sepa. The defining law for the control of industrial and municipal waste and liquid/gaseous effluents is the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act 1997, and the National Environmental Quality Standards (NEQS) 2000. These define exactly what concentration of pollutants can be contained in discharges from a facility into sewage treatment or inland waters. They are, naturally, given the standards of the ‘leaders’ and their minions, observed mainly in the breach. Sepa is deliberately kept understaffed and is subjected to massive political pressures. Last month, a news item in this newspaper revealed that over 100 environmental protection orders issued to offending industries by Sepa had to be withdrawn owing to influence exerted on the government.
Karachi has three sewage-treatment plants (Gutter Baghicha, Mauripur and Mehmoodabad) which process less than 25 per cent of the city’s effluent, allowing over 400 million gallons per day of raw and poisonous sewage to pour into coastal waters. It is criminal that the city government has allotted amenity land for housing to its political supporters within two of these sewage plants — Gutter Baghicha and Mehmoodabad — thus restricting the much-needed expansion of waste-treatment facilities.
One requirement of NEQS 2000 that Sepa has purposefully ignored in the majority of its EIA determinations is that the discharge of effluent must not be more than three degrees centigrade above sea temperature, nor can discharge be at shore or within 10 miles of mangroves and important estuaries.
Many citizens of Karachi who are concerned and alarmed by the environmental degradation that surrounds them await the next session of the Karachi bench of the SC. It is amazing that it is to the judiciary that we can only look with the hope that they will pass orders that at least provoke the government and the administration to do the jobs they are paid to do.
On the grabbing of amenity land side, the sand in the hourglass is running out for Makro-Habib at Webb Ground in Lines Area. The SC has ordered that by March 17, 2010 the mega-store was “to remove its structures and installations from the playground, restore it to the same condition as existed on the date of the sub-lease and hand over its vacant possession to the CDGK”. However, as of today, there has been no action.
One factor that has recently come to light concerning this issue is that the defence ministry, vide SRO 272(1)/83 dated 17-3-1983, had been “pleased … to exclude from [Karachi] Cantonment the areas comprising Jutland Lines, Abyssinia Lines and Tunisia Lines”, so that it could be developed by the KDA. Webb Ground lies in Tunisia Lines, and the existence of the 1983 Federal Gazette notification was not revealed to the court by the ministry’s counsel.
arfc@cyber.net.pk
Over the top by Masood Hasan
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ilikum and the Lahore Zoo
By Masood Hasan
The tragic death of whale-trainer Dawn Brancheau a few days ago at Seaworld, Orlando, USA has made news globally. Tilikum, a 30-year-old, 22 foot, 12,000 pound killer whale, to whom Dawn was devoted, suddenly and without reason whipped his trainer round and round and then plunged with her to the bottom of the pool emerging with Dawn trapped in his mouth. He kept thrashing Dawn around till the trainer was dead of drowning – all this in front of a stunned house of visitors who were ushered away but not before they had seen some unbearable sights of death in slow motion. Dawn was 40. It seemed at first she did not realise what was happening. She had been busy rubbing Tilikum by the poolside and apparently her swinging ponytail either caught Tilikum’s attention or annoyed him or perhaps he thought it was a game – whatever it was, it prompted him to catch it in his mouth and yank her off into the deep pool. Minutes later she was dead. She was only 40 and one of the few trainers allowed to work with Tilikum.
Many people believe that when you cross that unwritten line and get far too close into the world of animals, you should be prepared for the worst. There are scores of incidents – thousands to be more accurate, where people crossing the boundaries have paid heavy prices, often with their lives. Advocates of this thinking caution that wandering into unchartered waters can be fatal. Tilikum is cute as a button but is nevertheless a killer whale. Aussie naturalist and TV film-maker Steve Irwin wandered too far, taking crazy chances and died off the Australian Coral Reef, a barb through his heart delivered more by sheer instinct than anything else. But while the stingray swam on, absolutely without remorse of any kind, Irwin was dead. A healthy respect for the codes of wildlife are well worth remembering, but then man must adventure, must explore the unknown, go where no one has gone before to quote from that immortal Star Trek line.
The death of Dawn has of course evoked debate and a torrent of comments. A video of the attack has been quickly taken off the net and both ordinary people and experts are looking at this macabre incident from different and obviously conflicting perspectives. This is not Tilikum’s first brush with death. There have been two other serious incidents associated with him – one trainer survived with 200 stitches and one man who broke into the pool aquarium was found dead the next morning lying on Tilikum’s back as he floated without a care in the world.
In Tilikum’s case, he is the star on show and brings in millions to the owners. He is their prize exhibit and they cannot do without him. Yet the backlash of public horror, outrage and questioning is going to be difficult to fend off. Clearly, they have to re-evaluate their strategy when they work the killer whales through what are indeed spectacular routines. The dilemma of course is that without a trainer, there really is no show – it is the interaction between animal and man that brings out the dramatic element. Sending Tilikum back into the wilds is like killing him anyway because he is no longer able to survive on his own. That part of his life we have quietly taken away from him and he is dependent on human beings to survive. That leaves not much room for his future other than a transfer to another facility, but then his current hosts may not wish to lose their star and the millions he brings in.
And last of all is the question of putting down Tilikum. While, unlike here where the first demand would be to eliminate Tilikum, (remember the stupid father who thrust his child’s flawed arm into the bear’s cage to heal it and the child eventually died leading to an outcry that the bear should be put down. Mercifully he was not) – there is little demand for that. People who matter understand the larger issues here and in any case this possibility has been firmly taken out of the equation by none other than Dawn’s family. Grief stricken and shattered as they are, the family has categorically stated that Tilikum will not be put down. That they have shown compassion at a time like this is simply amazing and says much for Dawn’s family. Thousands of miles away from that tragedy, we are without remorse busy exhibiting cruelty to animals on a scale that defies description.
Last week there have been cries of anguish from some truly God fearing and animal loving people in Karachi who have raised public alarm over the inhuman treatment of animals in the Karachi Zoo. This is not the first time stories of abject horror have emerged from that den of infamy. Sadly, this is also not the last time. There will be public outrage and it will die because the authorities who can change this will not, for reasons that we can guess. It is not important – these are only animals and they are being looked after reasonably well. It is not a priority and it is not going to win an election and lastly, how can you change something that is now firmly anchored in our mindset?
The stories surface and then die down. Till some other facet of our bestiality to our fellow travellers on this great journey, comes to light. More outrage from ordinary people. Almost like a well-choreographed script, the same parts are played and the same results show up. Nothing changes. It is not just the Karachi Zoo but all zoos in Pakistan that need drastic and ruthless surgery if we so wish it. But we really don’t; animals are expendable. Those of us who live here in Lahore have been campaigning what I can only call stupidly and hopelessly for a quantum change in the entire structure of how the zoos are managed and why this must change through effective and swift laws that are implemented without fear, favour or discrimination.
The chief minister of Punjab, a thoroughly decent and hard-working man, even granted more than one audience to a group that volunteered to examine the state of affairs at the Lahore Zoo and recommend sweeping changes. That preliminary report is decaying somewhere in one of the many secretariats. Will it see the light of day? I doubt it. It was not a complicated document, it did not demand the setting up of an infrastructure that would be the talk of the world – all it did offer was a complete change in the way zoos are run and a rethink on our collective attitude towards animals. As one fears, zoos are not a priority. This is not a by-election. This is just a zoo with some animals who will not be able to stage a protest in front of the Governor’s House or the CM’s secretariat.
Life will go on and animals will die of neglect and incompetence. Our cruelty to animals inside our zoos, at the shameful kennels, on the roads and streets, will continue. I see that the Lahore Zoo has celebrated the birth of yet two more lion cubs – can they announce their pedigree so that our doubts can rest? Even if they are not descended from Leo the one lion whose progeny still continues at the zoo, they have a dismal future ahead of them – that much we can all be sure of.
The writer is a Lahore-based columnist. Email: masoodhasan66@gmail.com
Keeping the army in check by Irfan Husain
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Irfan Husain
Saturday, 13 Mar, 2010
IN Pakistan, reading into the transfers and promotions of our generals has become essential to understanding the subtle shifts in the military-political relationship.
Routine administrative issues like the grant of an extension in the service of the ISI chief becomes headline news.
This preoccupation reflects the central role the army has come to occupy in Pakistan. As the major political player, it is no surprise that changes in the higher echelon of the military should attract fascination and scrutiny.
One reason the army is the single-most powerful institution in the country is the high threat level it perceives from India, and skilfully exploits domestically. In a thoughtful article on foreign policy, Munir Ataullah writes in a national daily:
“And the common experience of mankind tells us there is a wide gulf between the mindset of an army and that of a political leader. Normally, a country’s foreign policy is firmly rooted in its domestic political compulsions. We seem to have got it the other way round: our foreign policy has been the convenient excuse for seizing and maintaining control of the levers of power, and driving domestic policy.”
He goes on to say: “Only those who live in their own mad ideological world now believe that India is still not reconciled to the existential fact that is Pakistan.”
Apart from using this perceived threat from India to justify the enormous burden the defence forces have placed on a poor country’s resources, our generals have exploited divisions among our politicians to grab and retain power. But that’s the nature of the beast: a power vacuum is filled by any force organised enough to exploit it.
The ongoing wrangling between the ruling PPP and Nawaz Sharif’s PML is a case in point. When this elected government was formed two years ago, our hopes for stability were raised by the coalition forged between the two major rivals for power. Asif Zardari and Sharif showed considerable statesmanship by seeming to overcome their differences and join hands.
Unfortunately, Zardari was unable to rise above his level, and committed a number of blunders in a bid to consolidate his grip on power. In doing so, he alienated the powerful chief justice, Nawaz Sharif and the army chief, Gen Kayani. To alienate so many power centres simultaneously takes talent. Now he stumbles from one self-created crisis to another, spending more time on apologies and damage control than he does on formulating policy, and providing leadership. As a result, his government looks increasingly like a rudderless ship.
When there are cracks in a wall, all manner of creepy-crawly things slither in. In our case, the fissure that has opened up between the government and the PML-N is wide enough for tanks to pass through. Now, the army chief feels emboldened enough to make political pronouncements with impunity.
It appears that last year’s furore over the Kerry-Lugar Act was largely orchestrated by the military’s point men and women in the media, and yet the government was unable to make its case. Now that the money is in the pipeline, our ghairat brigade is silent. But the damage to the government has been done.Having written against the army’s devastating role in Pakistan’s politics for much of my adult life, I remain convinced that no other institution has inflicted as much damage. However, we need to separate the army’s political role from the military one for which it was created. Despite the fact that these roles overlap, we should remain aware that in our current predicament, the army is playing an indispensable part in confronting a ruthless foe at a huge cost in lives lost.
It is easy to argue that the Taliban monster we face is a creation of the army in the first place. However, assigning blame will not make our enemies go away: they have to be fought until they lay down their arms or are eliminated. And obviously, the army is the only institution to take them on. In this context, we should recognise how difficult the battle is, and how heroically our officers and jawans are fighting.
If one were to judge from the chat shows on our TV channels, we would never know that the country was at war: most of the discussions are about constitutional amendments, corruption and the appointments in the judiciary. While foreign journalists follow the progress their troops are making and the hardships they are undergoing, we are perpetually fixated on mundane, much-dissected issues like the NRO, Zardari’s alleged foreign accounts and Nawaz Sharif’s farcical tax returns.
Fortunately, the army does not currently have any stomach for another coup, despite the encouragement it is getting from some politicians, as well as from a section of the media. In several conversations in Karachi recently, many people have speculated on how long this government will (or should) last.
To his credit, Nawaz Sharif has consistently said he will not support or accept any unconstitutional step towards regime change. His uncompromising position on the issue has silenced some of the voices calling for immediate change. Indeed, there was feverish speculation on the date by which this government would be shown the door.
Even if some would-be Bonapartes in the army wanted to stage a coup, they are aware that US laws governing aid would block the flow of further funds and military hardware. More to the point, another election at this time is almost guaranteed to produce a substantial PML-N majority.
Given Nawaz Sharif’s distrust of the military, the army is hardly likely to prefer him to a pliant Asif Zardari. From GHQ’s perspective, it is a choice between bad and worse. So even though the army high command might loathe and despise Zardari and the PPP, they fear Nawaz Sharif and a resurgent PML-N. Another factor in the army’s calculation must be that unlike the past when a pliable judiciary gave coup-makers a blank cheque, this time they will not have an easy ride in the Supreme Court.
Clearly, both major parties have a stake in the system, and in making the military subordinate to parliament. This will not happen unless both Zardari and Sharif forge an understanding on certain basic principles. While these were enshrined in the Charter of Democracy signed by Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, much has happened since then.
Despite their rivalry and differences, both Zardari and Sharif need to send out a clear signal to the army and the people of Pakistan that unconstitutional steps will be firmly opposed.
irfan.husain@gmail.com
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