Sunday, February 2, 2020
Opinion - It’s 2020. Time for Democrats to Ignore These Two States.
By Michael Tomasky
Everybody talks about Iowa and New Hampshire, but nobody does anything about it. Here’s an idea.
This must end for Democrats. Everyone knows it. Everyone argues it. But then, everyone throws up their hands. Iowa has been first for nearly 50 years now, a position to which the Democratic Party has given its tacit assent. And New Hampshire — why, New Hampshire has a law stating that it must be the first primary. So there.
To which I say: So what? What the Democrats must do is simple. Stop giving the assent, and break the law. We need a little Democratic Party civil disobedience.
Let’s quickly review how Iowa came to have this position. After the calamity of 1968 (the convention riots, the Vietnam War schism), the party opened up the nominating process. States were encouraged to have primaries and caucuses.
Iowa adopted a cumbersome, four-stage nominating process, of which the caucuses were the first step. So it had to go early. Kathie Obradovich, a former opinion editor for The Des Moines Register, said last year that “the old story is that they figured out how long it would take to print all the paperwork on their elderly mimeograph machine.” Mimeograph machine!
So that’s how Iowa got the first vote.
To Iowa’s half-century, New Hampshire goes back a full century. It has held the first primary since 1920. But it was, again, after 1968, when state politicians saw the nominating system was being changed, potentially threatening New Hampshire’s primacy, that they passed a law saying it had to have the first primary.As is often observed, the Democratic National Committee can’t do much about these dates. It’s the Constitution itself (Article I, Section 4) that says that states “shall” decide on the “time, place and manner” of their elections. So the committee can’t change the dates.
It can, however, do something else. It can ignore the two states.
That’s right. Let Iowa and New Hampshire hold their caucus and primary, but don’t participate. Make all the candidates agree that they won’t seek a spot on the ballot.
Impossible? That’s what everyone will say. But it’s not. Oh, I’m sure it’s all very complicated with respect to the committee’s bylaws. But bylaws can be changed, by people who want to change them.
The problem with Iowa and New Hampshire, as David Leonhardt laid out in detail in The Times, is that they are horribly unrepresentative of a party that is now, according to the 2017 Pew Typology Survey, 54 percent white, 19 percent each African-American and Latino, and 9 percent other. Iowa is 85 percent white non-Hispanic, and New Hampshire is 90 percent.So what the Democratic National Committee needs to do is choose two other, more representative states. I would suggest Florida and Michigan. Florida is more diverse than the country as whole. The United States is 60 percent white non-Hispanic, 13 percent African-American, and 18 percent Latino; Florida is 54, 17 and 26. Michigan is somewhat less diverse than the country, at 75, 14 and 5, but at least the black population is representative, and there are other strong arguments for making an important Rust Belt state an early test.These states are diverse in other important ways. They have major cities, smaller cities, suburbs, university towns and farms. They have economic diversity. And of course both are swing states with lots of electoral votes (29 and 16, respectively). They matter in a way Iowa and New Hampshire (six and four) do not.
I say Florida and Michigan, but take your pick. The point is, the Democrats should pick two large and diverse states — or it could be four states that are rotated, to add to the geographic diversity — and tell them to move their primary dates (and yes, primaries would be far, far preferable to caucuses) forward.
And then, let Iowa and New Hampshire do what they want, but just ignore them. The committee has some leverage here. It schedules debates. It should schedule them in Florida cities like Orlando, Tampa and Gainesville, and Michigan cities like Detroit, Lansing and Ann Arbor. Never in Ames or Manchester.
That’s a carrot. Now, here’s a stick. Impose a debate qualification that any candidate who seeks a ballot position in either state or spends more than three days campaigning there will be barred from the debate stage. Problem solved.
Yes, it’s hardball. But at this point, hardball is what’s needed. There is no rational argument against it. Well, maybe there’s one. Some will raise the possibility that treating the two states like this will ensure that the next Democrat running for president will lose the states and their electoral votes.
A generation ago, I would have believed this argument. But now, in this polarized country, I don’t. In the heat of a partisan general election campaign, given all the big things that are at stake now in every presidential election, Iowa and New Hampshire Democrats aren’t going to vote against their standard-bearer over a procedural move that many will know in their bones was justified. And my guess is that both states would object forcefully the first go-round, but after that would see they’d lost and just run up the flag and choose later dates.
Some traditions are oppressive, and some laws are bad. Democrats and liberals admire the Americans who’ve challenged them. I’m not saying the committee chair who takes on Iowa and New Hampshire will go down in history with Rosa Parks. But she or he will be lauded as the person who ended an anachronistic duopoly and brought the nominating process into the 21st century. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/02/opinion/iowa-new-hampshire-primary.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Why the Government of Pakistan Must Heed the Voices of Young Pashtuns
28/APR/2018
According to Imtiaz Alam, The News, one of Pakistan’s prominent English language dailies, refused to publish this column written by him. He released the text “to uphold my freedom of expression [and] for the people’s right to know.” The Wire is publishing the article to ensure it reaches a wide audience in South Asia and the world.
Gone are the days of colonialism, yet we see its remnants to this day. The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) is such a space that was either eulogised for the ‘free spirit’ of our valiant tribesmen or abused as a lawless region. It came to be the epicentre of terrorist structures, which were rooted out by our valiant armed forces.
As we slowly, lopsidedly and coercively move towards the ‘mainstreaming’ of FATA from outside and over the heads of its people, the death [of a young Pashtun man] Naqibullah Mehsud in a fake police-encounter [in Karachi] provoked our besieged tribal and not-so-tribal youth to vent their passionate indignation over their plight.
They came to Lahore to share their agony and lament our apathy towards the miseries they had suffered for too long with no light at the end of the tunnel. There were a few among the self-loving Punjabis, an odd combination of the Lahore Left Front (squabbling over the ideological plausibility of its worthiness), who decided to respect their civil right to express themselves from the ‘Hyde Park’ of the inner city – the historic Mochi Gate. With the new found emblem of “vote ko izzat do”, the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (N) – which prefers to close its eyes over the abuse of freedoms by the rebellious clerics – shivered in its pants in granting freedom of assembly and speech to the defiant youth as a brutalised and fragmented civil society dared to stand by the worthy visitors.
A mini-hell broke loose in Lahore and an ugly scene was created by a confused police and the wayward hot pursuit engaged in by a variety of intelligence sleuths late at night that ironically provoked even armchair revolutionaries like me to recall the day when we took out a procession to oppose military action in the then East Pakistan of 1970.
The protestors narrated their heart-rending stories of death and destruction from all sides and vented their anger against the fathers and grave-diggers of the terrorists and the bloody fiefdoms of a variety of warring Taliban. These were the stories of victimhood of recent generations, who lost their childhoods in the bloody wars fought in the name of faith or for hegemony of arms.
In the last four decades, tribal society has passed through the most torturous, bloody, destructive, divisive and increasingly brutalising phases. The sons and daughters of these dark times saw nothing except barbarities, hopelessness and helplessness. The children of jihad from the war zone had no window of opportunity or expression. As they saw a most handsome young man – an aspiring model with fascinating attire and alluring photo sessions – being cold-bloodedly murdered, they simply could not take it anymore and thronged to public spaces with a white flag in their hands. Suddenly, we see a Pashtun civil rights’ spring emerging from the death-fields of FATA.
It took everybody by surprise, which erroneously gave birth to conspiracy theories. Popular movements do not spring out of the womb of conspiracies. However, spontaneity can take any direction, depending on the sense and actions and reactions of the adversaries. If the mainstreaming of FATA, rehabilitation of its displaced people and rejuvenation of their lives is intended, then what could be a more humanistic societal change than these Pashtun youngsters providing a social base for civil society to fill the promising void created with the exit of the barbaric Taliban? An unwarranted and thoughtless conflict between the youth and the security forces could again push a new generation to the other side of the fence – only to become fodder in an inter-state conflict. Neither forcible integration nor separatism would help resolve the basic social and economic maladies and matters pertaining to the organic development of the people of FATA.
Indeed, after the horrifying slaughter of our children at Army Public School Peshawar, Operation Zarb-i-Azb and later Operation Rad-ul-Fasad became primarily instrumental in cleansing out the terrorists and destroying their hideouts among the populace and remote places. Military victory is always accompanied by its usual pitfalls. The military operations are not undertaken with kid-gloves; they are the baptism of Armageddon and bring death and destruction in their wake. The original sin is finally in the last phase of its ablution. It must be commended, even with or without a pinch of salt. The sacrifices of Pakistan’s soldiers and officers are incomparable and laudable. Let’s not question their valour and honour because of the misdeeds of those who put the country through perpetual pain and self-immolation. All have suffered under the tutelage of the jihadi paradigm –even the misguided teenage suicide-bombers. Now is the time for healing, recouping and allowing the nourishment of a new civil society across the fascinating lands of our indomitable tribal people.
Under a somewhat delayed process of mainstreaming FATA, parliament has legislated to extend the constitutional writ of the Supreme Court of Pakistan and the Peshawar High Court to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, still ruled by coercion and without the rule of law. The armed forces have done a commendable job of eliminating the scourge of terrorism from almost all of FATA and other regions. Now, it’s time for civilianisation and the integration of lawless regions into the constitutional, political, economic and administrative framework of the national mainstream. And this can and should be done with the unhindered participation of the tribal people, through an organic process that empowers the people rather than reviving the relics of the colonial era or keeping the punitive structures that were part of the much needed operations. Annexation cannot work, nor can Balkanisation in a most tumultuous region.
Popular rights-based movements warrant the unity and support of all democrats and progressive people – not chauvinistic divisions. Both movements and their support system must be kept within the peaceful framework of constitutional and legal means. They must not entertain any adventurous tactics and slogans that strengthen the anti-people agendas of anti-democratic forces or provoke a possible crackdown against a nascent civil rights’ movement that needs consolidation on democratic lines, while discarding warlordism and ethnic chauvinism. They should also be mindful of all kinds of mischief mongers and guard against hostile alien elements. The agitators and the authorities must engage with patience for the acceptance of genuine civil rights. We have heard about some sort of engagements between the military authorities and the leaders of the Pashtun youth movement. Communication lines are being maintained, I have heard, despite provocations. We have seen a positive outcome of talks between the traders and the Inter-Services Public Relations office of the Pakistan army. However, the talks must not be piecemeal; they should be comprehensive and appropriately structured.
The following steps and processes should be given priority:
– Decolonisation: Bringing an end to the Frontier Crimes Regulation and the reign of Political Agents and Maliks.
– De-Talibanisation: To not let the Taliban and their variants take hold of FATA again.
– Demilitarisation: A timeframe to replace military structures and check-posts with civilian structures for administration.
– Disposal of landmines: It’s already underway and should be expedited.
– De-Guantanamoisation: Creating a truth and reconciliation commission to bring disappeared persons before a court of law or tribunal and satisfying the aggrieved families about their whereabouts or fate.
– Civilianisation: All fundamental, human, civil and social rights should be assured for the people of FATA.
– Mainstreaming: Constitutional, judicial, political and administrative mainstreaming of FATA, beginning with the determination of its status as either an autonomous region of the federation or its integration with Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) through an appropriate verdict of the people. It could be done through a ballot paper along with the elections to the provincial-tier during the course of general elections.
– The establishment of powerful local governments with proportionate representation of all people, classes, tribes and sub-tribes. The extension of the lower tiers of judicial structures along with local dispute resolution councils. Administrative structures and local police/levies responsible to local councils must be created.
– Rehabilitation and reconstruction: Rehabilitation of all Internally Displaced Persons with direct and full compensation, as was done in Swat. The reconstruction of villages, towns, businesses, handicrafts and agriculture. Due compensation for the losses of properties, businesses and other means of livelihood.
– Rejuvenation: Greater allocation of resources for poverty alleviation, education, health, water, energy and municipal provisions. Revival of cultural, social and sports activities.
– Resource allocation: appropriate resources, including due share in the divisible pool, which must be put at the disposal of local people.
Pakistan’s Pashtun Rights Movement is Alive and Kicking
By Mohammad Taqi
In the grand scheme of things in Pakistan, the PTM is a breath of fresh air, yet a drop in the bucket.
This February 1 marks the first anniversary of the PTM – Pashtun Tahaffuz Movement or Pashtun Defense League – stalwart Professor Arman Luni’s killing due to police brutality. Luni was a teacher, poet and political organiser, who along with his sister Wrranga, had joined the PTM ranks to protest the Pashtun lands east of the Durand Line being used by the Pakistani army establishment to harbour and launch its Taliban proxies against Afghanistan and the US and Coalition forces stationed there.
The PTM had been catapulted on to Pakistan’s political stage after its massive protest against another police brutality in January 2018 when Naqibullah Mehsud – a young Pashtun man from the former tribal district of South Waziristan – was killed extrajudicially, by a police officer named Rao Anwar in the provincial metropolis Karachi. The PTM’s immediate demand then was to seek justice for Naqibullah, which still remains elusive.
The movement also sought an end to the army’s impunity in the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), demanded that Pashtuns forcibly disappeared by the army in the so-called War Against Terrorism be produced before the courts, landmines removed from the ex-FATA, people displaced internally and externally due to military operation be repatriated to their homes and also be given reparations for destruction of their homes and businesses.
The PTM has, since, gone through the usual ups and downs that most similar movements undergo over the course of their evolution, with most important being the imprisonment of its two parliamentarians Ali Wazir and Mohsin Dawar last year on trumped-up charges of murder, and its charismatic figurehead Manzoor Pashteen earlier in the week.
Dawar – a cool-head lawyer – was arrested again last week, while leading a protest against the incarceration of Pashteen but was released the next day. Pashteen has been charged with sedition, conspiracy and a speech allegedly ‘subverting the constitution’.
The irony is that the army dictator General Pervez Musharraf, who has been convicted of high treason an sentenced to death by a special court, remains at large. Regardless, the spontaneous outpouring of support for the PTM leader within and outside Pakistan, and countrywide protests, indicate that the PTM, as well as its message and appeal, are alive and kicking, despite the Pakistan army’s dire warning that the movement’s “time is up”.
The PTM’s time is clearly not up. The tremendous support it generated across Pakistan, especially from the leftist Awami Workers Party (AWP), despite its ethno-national focus on Pashtuns, indicates that the PTM has room to grow and flourish.
That the AWP leaders and cadres came out in droves – and got arrested by the dozens – in support of the PTM, suggests that while the movement champions the Pashtun grievances, its message resonates across the national and class spectrum in Pakistan because of the common tormenter – the army.
The plight of the Okara’s Punjabi farmer, the toiling Baloch of Gwadar, the landless Sindhi peasant or a disappeared Urdu-speaking Shia Mohajir is the same as that of a Pashtun who has been squished under the army’s heavy boot. The ethno-national inequality and the class divide have always overlapped in multinational states like Pakistan and have posed the perennial conundrum for the progressive thinkers and activists, whether the national issue has to be addressed first or is it the class question that needs the immediate attention and remedy.
In Pakistan’s context it is an intertwined phenomenon where the army has acted not merely as the praetorian guard that has anointed itself to define the national interest but virtually as an economic class, as well. And it has done so with the help of collaborators across the ethno-national spectrum. The traditional political parties were forced to play ball with the army or face extinction.
On their part, the traditional or legacy political parties have remained under clan leaderships and derived electoral strength in large part from patronage politics rather than ideological and issued-based agenda. This, in turn, has led the mainstream political parties to remain beholden to the army that controls levers of patronage.
The two traditional Pashtun nationalist political parties viz. the Awami National Party (ANP) with its historical base in the present-day Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, and to a lesser extent the Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PMAP) that draws support from the Pashtun areas of the Balochistan province, have effectively remained Islamabad-oriented since at least 1988. They have been stakeholders in the federal and respective provincial governments, which inevitably entails remaining reticent about the army’s Afghanistan project, wherein the Pashtun areas contiguous to the Durand Line have been used as a bridgehead for harboring and launching the Afghan Taliban.
For example, one cannot think of a province-wide – let alone country-wide – protest by either the ANP or the PMAP demanding the Pakistani state and Deep State to stop meddling in Afghanistan. While the stalwarts of both parties have paid lip service to the issue, they have frequently governed their home provinces without ever practically trying to stop the Pakistan army’s intervention onto Afghanistan.
The ANP governed the KP province from 2008-2013 and the PMAP held the gubernatorial slot for Balochistan from 2013-2018. Not that there is anything wrong with coming to power through even a nominally democratic process, the problem was that neither of the signature Pashtun nationalist parties did anything material about the Pakistan army’s policy of using the erstwhile FATA as a sandbag against Afghanistan.
The army, on its part, never abandoned its pursuit of the so-called strategic depth in Afghanistan. For this purpose, the Afghan Taliban have remained the army’s tried and trusted proxies, who had to be homed and harboured in the ex-FATA and the Pashtun regions of Balochistan. This meant that the native Pashtuns of those areas had to suffer a double whammy i.e. face the brutality of the Taliban as well as the army, which went after the so-called Bad Taliban – the ones who disobeyed its command – and cosmetically, to placate international concerns, against the Good Taliban – the ones who have remained under its discipline. These were the circumstances, in which the PTM leaders and cadres came of age and realised that they have to fend for themselves.
Despite strong bonds of kinship and fraternity, the top leaders of the ANP and the PMAP have not visited any prominent population centre of the ex-FATA during almost two decades of war, death and destruction. The PTM rose from the ashes of this war and indignity at the hands of foes and abandonment by the friends. But could it make a difference?
In the grand scheme of things in Pakistan, the PTM is a breath of fresh air, yet a drop in the bucket. On its own, it can draw attention to the plight of the Pashtuns of ex-FATA, present their case nationally and worldwide, and serve as a roadblock of sorts, to the army’s decades-old policy of using the Pashtun regions straddling the Durand Line as a jumping board for its Taliban proxies. But, by itself, it may not be able to put an end to the policy and practice of the Pakistan army to seek hegemony over Afghanistan and to install its puppet regime there.
To this end the PTM will have to convert the mainstream Pashtun nationalist parties to its cause, which is a tall order. But even more difficult is to convince the three-time former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s Punjab-based Pakistan Muslim League (PMLN) and the later former PM Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) to close ranks with the PTM and convince the army that its project of prosecuting foreign policy through jihadist proxies a la the Taliban, has a tremendously bloody domestic blowback.
While the PMLN supremo, Nawaz Sharif, had tried to confront and rein in the army, his ill health took a major toll on him and his campaign, and sidelined him for the foreseeable future. His party currently is toeing his younger brother Shahbaz Sharif’s line, which effectively is to plod along with the army in the hopes that the latter would ditch its blue-eyed boy Imran Khan and let the PMLN to return back to power. The PPP has almost been confined to Sindh, the home province of its founder Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and has no inclination to take on the army over any major issue let alone the ex-FATA and Afghanistan, which hardly resonate with its electoral base, if at all. The Pakistan army under its chief, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, who has a three-year extended tenure under his belt, is unlikely to change its tack vis-à-vis the PTM. It would continue to try to crush the movement by force. With the political parties tamed and the media cowed down into submission, the army has its reasons to believe that it can prevail. History, however, tells another story. Each time the Pakistan army has overplayed its hand and tried to conquer its own people, it has backfired, and it had to beat a military or a political retreat.The PTM’s cause is just, its means constitutional and the ends democratic and humanistic. The movement and its leaders have a long and arduous journey ahead of them. But then, the life and struggle of the Badshah Khan– the father of non-violent Pashtun nationalist campaign, known as the Frontier Gandhi – tells us that there is no shortcut to a good, old-fashioned political struggle. While attempting to build coalition bridges with the mainstream political parties, the PTM will have to slog on.
https://thewire.in/south-asia/pakistans-pashtun-rights-movement-is-alive-and-kicking
#Pakistan - The variability of corruption
By Muhammad Ali Jan
As the recent furore over Pakistan’s slight drop in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index ranking demonstrates, no other narrative has gripped the imagination of mainstream public discourse in the past 30 years than that of corruption: talk show hosts, politicians and even a number of international development agencies all pinpoint corruption as the most formidable hurdle in the country’s path to economic development. However, as a recent Gallup opinion poll revealed, there seems to be a deep chasm between the eagerness with which the chattering classes have embraced the anti-corruption mantra and the extent to which it figures in the imagination of ordinary people: when asked to identify the single biggest problem facing the country, only 4 percent of Pakistanis identified corruption to be the principal ill – 4 percentage points less than Kashmir and 2 percentage points above the dengue virus – while 76 percent of them thought inflation and unemployment were the main concerns.
Of course, anti-corruption crusaders will continue to insist that people need to be made aware of the clear relationship that exists between low levels of economic well-being and the endemic corruption that bedevils the country. But it is precisely this supposed link between corruption and economic development (usually restricted to growth) that is more complex and ambiguous than the activists allege. While years of research on the issue have identified several reasons for the ambiguity, I will focus on two key ones: first, the mainstream definition of corruption does not automatically assume negative economic outcomes; secondly, what is usually bracketed under the heading of corruption are a set of discreet practices, not all of whom are tied to negative growth; finally, more important than the existence and even level of corruption, is its predictability and whether states are able to facilitate and direct businesses towards productive ends in exchange for ‘under the table’ payments.
Although something akin to corruption may exist in any organization – for example a cricket club’s treasurer stealing from the common pool or an office employee embezzling funds – the common definition refers to the abuse of public office for private gain, or more specifically, the violation of formal rules of conduct in pursuit of private benefits, whether for wealth in the form of bribes or political advantage. While I leave aside the questionable assumption of the existence – or even the desirability – of a strong public-private dichotomy in all settings, regardless of historical and cultural context, for another article, what is striking about this definition is that despite the underlying moral judgment that rules are broken in order to benefit public officials (politicians, bureaucrats or military officials) there is no assumption that such an action automatically leads to negative economic outcomes.
Even by definition therefore, such rule-breaking can and has, co-existed with outright plunder, very low levels of development as well as with sustained rates of high economic growth. This is because not all corruption is created equal; nepotistic fire sales of productive assets for unproductive ends to family and friends is different from facilitating productive entrepreneurs in exchange for ‘access money’; likewise, graft is different from outright extortion (though difficult to distinguish in many contexts) and the impact on growth would be distinct as well; finally, several forms of ‘corruption’ like patronage and clientelism may have an even more ambiguous relationship to growth but can be extremely important in establishing democratic practices in the long-run and require a separate analysis.
Several forms of ‘corruption’ like patronage and clientelism may have an even more ambiguous relationship to growth but can be extremely important in establishing democratic practices in the long-run.
While extraction of a certain amount of economic surplus is common to all states, what distinguishes developmental outcomes is not the act, nor even the amount of such payments, but their predictability and the services that states are able to provide in return. The American development sociologist Peter B Evans, in his seminal comparative work on industrialization in the developing world, showed how in ‘predatory states’ like Zaire public property was essentially controlled by a small clique of bureaucrats and relatives of President Mobutu, who saw plunder of the public exchequer as a right. But even more importantly, it was not the magnitude, but the unpredictability with which the state plundered and levied random extractions, untied to any productive ends, which led to the abysmal economic performance.
By contrast, ‘developmental states‘ like South Korea also extracted surpluses (or ‘rents’) from businesses to shower upon incumbents and their friends at the expense of the citizenry as a whole – sometimes in extravagant amounts – but in exchange they facilitated capitalists by providing long-term investment credit, a stable business environment, favourable terms of trade and strategic protection, to create a highly productive and export-oriented model of economic development. Of course, the Korean case was aided by the existence of a tightly-knit and highly meritocratic (but by no means uncorrupt, though these two things are often conflated) bureaucracy, a version of this can and has existed in other states as well. Bangladesh is a key example of a country with very high levels of corruption and a far from meritocratic/competent bureaucracy, but it is the predictability of corruption (rather than its level) in an overall environment seeking to facilitate growth inducing sectors like garments, that are key to explaining success.
Since the prime minister is fond of reminiscing about the ‘development decade’ of Ayub Khan, it would be useful to remind readers that it was a tightly-knit nexus between state, bureaucracy and favoured capitalists (the infamous ‘22 families’) that was partially responsible for the high growth. The state selected a group of entrepreneurs – mostly Karachi-based refugee traders from the Indian state of Gujarat – who did not have local roots in the landlord-dominated polity of the country at the time and would not have been able to operate without such links; it gave them lucrative incentives to shift from trade to industry by guaranteeing extremely high profits, credit on favourable terms, as well as cheap imports through a dual exchange rate system. In response, these capitalists remained tied to the Ayub dispensation through various legal and illegal ties and were the main force behind financing his foray into electoral politics through the Convention Muslim League.
Moreover, even the squeaky clean image of the bureaucracy as entirely rule-bound is a misnomer as the case of the founder chairman of the Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation (PIDC), Ghulam Faruque Khan, clearly demonstrates. Described as a strong-willed, powerful individual who made rapid decisions, saw them carried out and worried about government rules, procedures, or approval afterwards, if at all, he leveraged his position in the state to establish one of the most successful business houses of the time, and was by no means the only bureaucrat to do so.
Finally, as the shift from the ‘Shahbaz Sharif system’ to the Buzdar dispensation in Punjab amply demonstrates, rapid decision-making and implementation along with weak adherence to rules may be able to deliver certain developmental outcomes – particularly in infrastructure – while an emphasis on punishing people for rule bending may actually disincentive actors from taking risks altogether and bring the entire developmental machinery to a halt. It is therefore important to think more deeply about the context in which ‘corruption’ takes place and its manifold links to growth, rather than a blanket condemnation which seems to be doing more harm than good.
A worsening corruption perception rating at a time when anti-corruption drives are a top priority call for a deeper look at the narrative that has gripped public discourse for nearly three decades now
https://www.thenews.com.pk/tns/detail/606912-the-variability-of-corruption
Is there a solution to the wheat crisis?
Qasim Shah
Maladministration allows certain people to make a quick buck before the government machinery moves in to address the problem.The rising prices of flour and disappearance of the commodity from many parts of the country require corrective action by the government. The blame game between different tiers of the government will not solve the issue. Policymakers and analysts should look at the issue from a food security perspective rather than as a problem that only has administrative and logistical aspects.
In a country where 39 percent of the population is poor (roughly 80 million, not counting the 20 million who have fallen into poverty during the last 2 years); 20 percent are deprived of all aspects of health, education and living standards; 68 percent of the households are unable to earn enough to secure nutritious diet; three quarters of the population depends on wheat flour alone for 72 percent of their daily caloric intake; where annual per capita wheat consumption is 124 kgs — one of the highest in the world — an unprecedented increase in wheat flour prices in recent weeks is indeed a big blow.
The average per capita caloric supply during the last decade has improved. It stands at 2430 kcal, above the minimum threshold of 2,350 kcal. Increased production of cereals has improved average daily caloric intake of Pakistanis marginally beyond the recommended daily intake of 2,350 kilo calories (kcal) per adult equivalent. However, the fact remains that among the urban poor, the averages intake barely touches the 1,786 kcal (undernourishment level).
The rural poor are slightly better off with an average intake at 1848 kcal. Yet since 55 percent of the rural population is poor, the caloric deficiency is a serious burden for the rural population as well.
Another approach to look at the issue arising due to unprecedented hike in wheat flour prices, which is a more realistic approach, is the percentage of household monthly expenditure on food. Households with lower incomes tend to spend a higher percentage of their monthly expenditure on food than those with high incomes.
Across Pakistan, on average a household spends 49 percent of the total monthly expenditure on food. Thus, poor households — and those which spend a higher proportion of their monthly expenditure on food — are particularly vulnerable to food price inflation which is the prime shock affecting food security in the country. It’s pertinent to note here that a majority of households in Pakistan are market-dependent to meet their needs: 79 percent for cereals, 92 percent for vegetables, 50 percent for milk and 70 percent for meat intake.
According to a study, jointly commissioned by the Planning Commission and World Food Programme, malnutrition is costing roughly 3 percent of the GDP. The study also points to the fact that the cost of malnutrition in Pakistan is 704 billion rupees annually.
This government, too, often highlights the challenge of malnutrition in its policy statements yet it has done very little to overcome it. One analysis shows that Pakistan needs an estimated Rs193 billion investment in 7-8 years to overcome the challenge of malnutrition. The money can be made available if the government decides to slash the annual direct and indirect subsidies provided to the agriculture sector, which amount to Rs450 billion, by approximately 10 percent.
Wheat is the staple food in Pakistan, cultivated on 60 percent of the agricultural area during the rabi season. It accounts for an estimated 10 percent of the value-added in agriculture and 2 percent of the GDP. The production during the last three years has fluctuated, registering the lowest during 2018-19. However, this was enough to meet the national needs by combining strategic reserves (which according to USDA Grain Report were between 2.2 to 3 million metric tonnes).
The decision to import wheat in the wake of the crisis on zero duty, therefore, has come under heavy criticism because people want to know the status of wheat reserves lying with PASSCO. What will happen to the local produce if imported and local wheat lands in the market at the same time?
It’s important to know that the government buys a quarter of the total wheat produced in a year driven by both food security and market intervention objectives followed by the private sector which procures 15 percent of the production; a small fraction is used for making animal feed and the remaining (about 58 percent) produce farmers retain to meet their household needs and for seed.
We must realise that the flour crisis is not the first of its kind. Such crises are mostly cyclical and so have been their administrative solutions which allow people and communities with vested interests in food shortages to make some quick bucks before the government machinery moves in to address the problem. These crises, indeed, have their origin in the fact that the state has left the food markers at the mercy of arhtees (middlemen and commission agents) just as it has handed over the economic management to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Without replacing this mechanism with something more helpful in ensuring food security and the nutritional needs of the poor, no government will ever be able to find a permanent solution to the problem.
پاکستان کے تعلیمی نصاب میں کسی خاتون ہیرو کا ذکر نہیں‘
نامور سماجی کارکن طاہرہ عبداللہ کہتی ہیں کہ پاکستان میں لڑکیوں کی ذہن سازی کر دی جاتی ہے کہ فیمینزم
ہماری تہذیب، مذہب اور مردوں کے خلاف ہے حالانکہ ایسا نہیں۔
انسانی حقوق کے لیے کام کرنے والی سرگرم کارکن طاہرہ عبداللہ کا کہنا ہے پاکستان میں خواتین خود کو فیمینسٹ کہنے سے اس لیے ہچکچاتی ہیں کیونکہ یہاں فیمینزم کو ’گالی سمجھا جاتا ہے۔‘
انڈپینڈنٹ اردو کے ساتھ خصوصی گفتگو میں طاہرہ عبداللہ نے کہا پاکستان میں لڑکیوں کی ذہن سازی کر دی جاتی ہے کہ فیمینزم ہماری تہذیب، مذہب اور مردوں کے خلاف ہے، حالانکہ ایسا بالکل نہیں اور یہ بات لوگوں کو تب سمجھ میں آئے گی جب فیمینزم کے بارے میں ہمارے تدریسی نظام میں پڑھایا جائے گا۔
ان کا کہنا تھا فیمینزم کی تحریک برسوں سے چلتی آ رہی ہے، بس وقت کے ساتھ اس کی شکل بدلتی رہتی ہے۔
نوجوانوں کی تعلیم کے حوالے سے انھوں نے کہا تعلیم ہر لڑکی اور لڑکے کا حق ہے لیکن یہ دیکھنا ضروری ہے کہ بچوں کو کس طرح کی تعلیم دی جا رہی ہے
طاہرہ نے بتایا کہ انھوں نے حال ہی میں ایک تحقیق مکمل کی ہے جس کے مطابق ملک میں پڑھائے جانے والے نصاب میں آج بھی کسی خاتون ہیرو کا ذکر نہیں جس کی وجہ سے نئی نسل کو ملکی تاریخ میں اہم کردار ادا کرنے والی خواتین کے بارے میں کچھ معلوم نہیں۔’حکومت بھی اکثر خواتین اور ان کی خدمات کو نظر انداز کرتی ہے۔‘
انھوں نے پی ٹی آئی حکومت پرتنقید کرتے ہوئے کہا کہ جب موجودہ حکومت نے 2018 میں معاشی مشاورتی کونسل بنائی تو اس کے اراکین کی فہرست میں ایک بھی خاتون شامل نہیں تھی۔ ’کیا انھیں پورے پاکستان میں ایک بھی عورت نہیں ملی جو معشیت میں ماہر ہو؟ کوئی ایک پی ایچ ڈی خاتون نہیں ملیں؟
’قانون ساز کمیٹیاں بناتے وقت خواتین کو برابری سے شامل نہیں کرتے اور جب شور مچتا ہے تو کوئی ایک عورت کو ٹوکن کے طور پر حصہ دار بنا لیتے ہیں لیکن ان کی نیت ان کی پہلی فہرست سے ہی پتہ چل جاتی ہے۔‘
طاہرہ نے مزید کہا کہ جب وہ نئی پود کو دیکھتی ہیں تو انھیں خوشی ہوتی ہے کہ وہ کتنی خود اعتماد اور پر جوش ہے اور اپنے طور سے خواتین کے
حقوق کے حوالے سے کوشش کر رہی ہے۔
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