Contents

Monthly Essay Outlines ................................................................................................................. 2

1- Take down the bureaucracy ............................................................................................................... 3
2- Education in Pakistan ......................................................................................................................... 5
3- Pakistan deserves ‘education’ ............................................................................................................ 8
4- Water crisis ........................................................................................................................................ 11
5- CPEC 2018 Summit: A policy for success....................................................................................... 13
6- Understanding & experience............................................................................................................ 14
7- ‘Real’ Pakistani women .................................................................................................................... 16
8- Water scarcity ................................................................................................................................... 18
9- KP’s healthcare secret ...................................................................................................................... 20
10- Dark days for the Palestinian cause............................................................................................... 22
11- US’ isolatio ist ode ..................................................................................................................... 23
12- History’s geopolitical pivot ............................................................................................................ 24
13- Why we lag behind ......................................................................................................................... 26
14- Doing the dishes ............................................................................................................................. 27
15- Health manifestos .......................................................................................................................... 29
16- Human rights and peace ................................................................................................................ 30
17- The 31st Amendment ..................................................................................................................... 32
18- Behind the wheel, at last ............................................................................................................... 34
19- Short of water? ............................................................................................................................... 34
20- Managing water in Pakistan .......................................................................................................... 36
21- Fallout in Kashmir........................................................................................................................... 38
22- Economic crisis management......................................................................................................... 39

1
 Monthly Essay Outlines
Pakistan Rich in Natural Resources
But Poor in their Management

Outline
1- Introduction
2- Natural Resources and their management
3- Richness / abundance of natural resources in Pakistan
4- Pakistan's natural resources and their mismanagement

a) Energy resources
i- Nonrenewable energy resources
a. Oil and Gas reserves
b. Coal reserves

ii- Renewable energy resources

a. Wind and solar power
b. Hydropower

b) Agricultural resources
i- Irrigation Network
ii- Fertile Land
iii- Variety of Crops
iv- Animal Husbandry
v- Fishing

c) Mineral Ore Resources

i. Copper and gold resources.
ii. Salt mines and other minerals

d) Human resources
i. Sixth Largest Population in the World
ii. Youth comprising major chuck

5- Factors leading to poor management / Governance

a) Political instability/ rivalry,
b) Lack of vision and planning,
c) Flawed policies,
d) Bureaucratic bottlenecks and corruption,
e) Worsened Law and order situation,

6- Implications of mismanagement of natural resources

7- Way forward
8- Conclusion

2
 1- Take down the bureaucracy
MAY 25, 2018 BY AADIL AAMIR
 The service tenure and the structure must
be completely overhauled
The slogan may sound extremely revolutionary
but it is something that must be done if Pakistan
is to successfully step into the twenty first
century. By taking the bureaucracy down, the
abolition of the entire institution is not intended,
what is meant rather is the complete overhaul of
the British raj’s last monument. In order to
undertake this massive reform programme, the
policy makers must strike at the heart of the
problem.
Following recommendations are proposed:
1- Induction: First things first. If the Central
Superior Services examinations truly filter out
the best and most competent and intellectual
candidates for the bureaucracy, why is the
service delivery so poor and why does the
efficiency of the bureaucracy reflect a
continuous downward trajectory?
The procedure of induction for civil servants
must be radically reformed. At present, the
CSSexam is primarily a written examination
procedure, followed by a psychological exam
and interview (the results of which are meshed
together) and focuses on the candidate’s ability
to write unnecessary lengthy answers, cramming
and good expression of the English language.
The CSS exam fails to ascertain critical thinking
ability, competency, honesty and the ability to
put the nation’s interest before personal interest.
These are qualities that are integral to any
bureaucrat and which most candidates lack.
Therefore, a system that focuses on the critical
ability, problem solving and logical reasoning
should be adopted. Information (which the
written exam focuses on) is not as imperative as
wisdom (which the CSS exam does not even get
close to ascertaining).
2- Language: The candidates are expected to
attempt the written part of CSS in addition to the
psychological assessment and interview by
making use of the English language. This
reflects the psychological complex inherited by
the policy makers from the ‘Firangis’. It is
socially believed that anyone who has a certain
level of command on the said foreign language
is an ‘intellectual’.
Even the British colonial machine, when they
introduced civil services in the subcontinent in
1858— known as the Imperial Civil Service,
took the examination in the local languages and
then later taught English to the selected
candidates during their period of training.
The candidates for the civil services in Pakistan
must be allowed to attempt the examination in
whatever language they may choose, or at least
they must be given a choice between Urdu and
English. English or whatever other languages
that are deemed necessary may be taught to the
candidates once they have been selected and are
undergoing training.
3- Civil service training: The training of
successful candidates which starts at the civil
service academy and the Common Training
Programme fails to make the future ‘masters’
realise that they are essentially servants of the
people and not their masters. The word servant
or mulazim is never or rarely used during the
training period.
Perhaps the overarching flaw of the training
system that the successful candidates undergo is
the fact they are made to realise that they are the
“elite corps” of the given generation. They are
intentionally subjected to a superiority complex
and they genuinely start believing that they are
‘superior’ than those that they are meant to
serve. In simple words, they are taught to rule
and not to serve. They are taught that the people
3
are ‘commoners to be ruled and not masters to
be served’.
This can be rectified by first disavowing the
chosen candidates of the superiority complex
that society and later the academy makes them
believe. The word, mulazim, must categorically
be used over and over again during the entire
course of their training.
Secondly, they must not only be told how to
implement laws, they must also be made to learn
that the laws are made to serve the people and
must be amended according to need.
4- Structure of the bureaucracy: The
structure of Pakistan’s bureaucracy has been
borrowed from the Raj and mimics Max
Weber’s model of structural hierarchy.
The focus remains on authority and
implementation of orders without amending the
procedures if the consequences are undesirable.
For example, the provinces propound Police
Orders that are or reflect British era police
models.
This can only be redeemed by the policy makers
that sit in the halls of power by legislations
pertaining to police and civil administration that
reflects contemporary issues and up-to-date
ways to solve them. The New Public
Management model can be conceived in this
regard and tailored to Pakistan’s indigenous
needs.
5- Service structure and tenure: Civil
servants in Pakistan enjoy an undaunted tenure
regardless of their performance. They may stay
in BPS Grade-17 during their entire service.
This not only infringes on the rights of junior
officers, but also hampers the civil
administration’s performance. Similarly,
promotions are made on the bases of ACRs
(Annual Confidential Reports) and connections
to the ruling government.
While officers with impressive reputations such
as Omer Rasool are posted to key positions, their
work is hampered by the ground reality that they
can only continue to work as long as the chief
minister continues to like them. On the other
hand, officers mired with corruption allegations
such as Fawad Hassan Fawad, the prime
minister’s principal secretary, continues to enjoy
key positions, detrimental to the country’s
future, because he has long been rumoured to be
a favourite of the Pakistan Muslim League-
Nawaz (PML-N), especially the Sharif brothers.
The service tenure and the structure must be
completely overhauled. Term-of-service must be
introduced at all levels. Additionally, all heads
and chiefs (especially of the FIA, police and the
chief secretaries) must be appointed for a fix
term, let’s say five years.
This will ensure that the institution functions
without political interference as the head will no
longer be forced to bow before the whims of the
chief ministers and prime ministers.
Similarly, the present system does not cater to
performance. A performance report should be
generated instead of an ACR and promotions
must be made on the bases of an officer’s
performance in his preceding posting. This can
be done in an honest way if the system is made
online so that the performance can be judged on
the basis of goals achieved can be ascertained.
6- Politics-administration dichotomy: This
dichotomy can only be achieved if the federal
and provincial public service commissions are
emancipated from the politicians. This can be
done by offering a secure term to the chairmen
or chairwomen of the commissions.
7- Salary and perks: The salary and perks of
all services, including military cadres, must be
uniform. Otherwise, a rift between various
services will always continue to impede
Pakistan’s progress.
4
In addition to this, while perks may be
decreased, salaries must be increased and
especially from grade 17 to grade 20. This is
because these grades reflect the initial half of a
civil servant’s service. Additionally, less perks
and more salary essentially means that the
officers would have to pay for different
amenities themselves and this would bring them
closer to problems faced by the middle and
underprivileged classes.
The bureaucracy conundrum can be solved
easily and the process of initiating the solution
can be undertaken quickly. After all, the
bureaucrats themselves come mostly from the
middle class and once they enter service, they
must be saved from the political leviathan.
Aadil Aamir
The writer is a member of staff.
2- Education in Pakistan
JUNE 2, 2018 BY AADIL AAMIR
 The problems
Education is a process that facilitates the
acquisition of skills, beliefs, wisdom and values
rather than the mere accretion of degrees like the
Pakistani society believes. At the heart of
Pakistan’s problems lies the education
conundrum. If Pakistan is to emerge as a stable
polity, equipped to dive deeper in the twenty-
first century and reap dividends from its
burgeoning population, it must provide a skilled
workforce that can power progress and an
environment that is conducive to economic
growth. In order to realise that dream, Pakistan
must fix its outdated, colonial and ‘slave-
producing’ education system. In order to do this,
fractures in the present system must be pondered
upon.
Anyone who dwells into this ocean of problems
is inevitably taken back to the 19thcentury and
Lord McCauley. For here is where the erosion of
the Sub-continent’s ancient value oriented,
religiously neutral education system happened.
The old system placed an explicit focus on the
learning of languages especially Persian and
Sanskrit (which is written in Devanagari script),
while McCauley’s system shifted the emphasis
to an English centred education system which
hurled the local population into an array of
inferiority complexes (This is also where the
present colonial mindedness emanated from).
Secondly, the axe of history inescapably falls
upon the Lawrence brothers of Punjab. The
brothers who were vehemently opposed to each
other, decided to rule the local populace via their
own local elders. The brothers achieved this by
training sardars and nawabs in the ways of the
English vis-à-vis chiefs’ colleges such as
Aitchison College (which still boasts not only
5
colonial tradition but the outgoing students
proudly walk around with an air of superiority).
Economic mobility in Pakistan is mired with
wealth, social connections and corruption, and
therefore, education is looked towards as the
means to make a place in the corporate world
and consequently becomes an expectation
builder. The problems in the education system
can be broadly stratified along three lines i.e.
demand-supply gap (which most literature has
focused on), lack of quality (which most
drawing room discussions focus on) and
education-employment gap.
Firstly, the demand supply gap is grounded in
the provision of education, which according to
the Constitution of Pakistan is the responsibility
of the state. Several surveys have revealed that
ample distance needs to be covered to get to a
school and more so in rural areas. This deters
students and especially girls from attending even
primary school.
Deconstructing the demand-supply gap reveals
that lack of basic facilities in schools such as
electricity, sanitation and clean drinking water
also hampers the resolve of parents to send their
children to school. The population council
conducted a research in 2002 and the findings
were confirmed by subsequent surveys. It
revealed that at least 80pc of young males and
70pc of their female counterparts had a desire to
get education. This portrays a failure on the
state’s part to deliver on its constitutional
promise (Not to mention, it hampers Pakistan’s
social contract, if one exists).
Those left out of the education system would at
best become sub-optimal ‘cogs’ in Pakistan’s
economic structure and their massive numbers
stand for an opportunity lost to Pakistan, which
is detrimental to a sustainable economic-growth
model (which Pakistan obviously hasn’t been
able to come up with as of now).
Secondly, Pakistan’s education system has not
only failed to deliver quality education and
counter radicalism but also has three
disconnected systems operating simultaneously.
These are the public schools, private schools and
religious seminaries. The three types can be
easily recognised by three broad markers:
ideological, qualitative and socio-economic.
Madrassahs cater to the poorest segment of the
society and have the greatest divergence with
contemporary economies. The syllabus taught in
these seminaries is grounded in religious biases
and portrays a narrow-minded worldview. A
majority of the public schools and ‘non-elite’
private schools cater to children representing the
middle class, and therefore, the majority. These
schools follow a syllabus which is strictly
regulated by the government and has a particular
emphasis on rote learning. The medium of
instruction is Urdu and students fail to develop a
minimum proficiency in the English language,
which unfortunately is a basic prerequisite for
most white collar jobs in the country including
the Central Superior Services (CSS). The
syllabus is an imperfect blend between Islam
and nationalism characterised by historical
inaccuracies and biases.
Elite private schools apply indirect and stringent
economic screening via their fee structures.
These schools are without doubt for those that
possess opulent amounts of wealth. These
schools use English as the medium of instruction
and promote critical thinking, objectivity and an
adherence to foreign culture. Their curriculum is
set by foreign universities such as Cambridge
University but a few subjects such as Islamiyat
and Pakistan Studies are regulated by the
government (Nelson Kelly’s Pakistan Studies
book, which has been taught to students since
decades were recently banned by the
6
government). The students of these schools
generally depict wider world views in
comparison to graduates of seminaries and non-
elite public schools.
Interestingly, such is the divergence and
isolation between the three systems that most
students go their entire lives without
intellectually engaging along systems. This in
turn produces three varied and highly distinct
cohorts within the same generation.
Lack of quality and the state’s failure to provide
livelihood at the culmination of one’s
educational journey has exposed students to
become amenable to radical literature, ethnic
violence and sectarian terrorism. The failure of
quality is evident in the Mashaal Khan case,
where university students murdered a fellow
student for allegedly committing blasphemy
without investigating or asking for the slain
student’s side of the story (It was later proved in
court that Mashaal had indeed not committed
blasphemy). Similarly, those involved in the
Safoora Goth carnage were university graduates.
contrary to popular social belief do not represent
intellect rather the inability of a candidate to
vividly and coherently explain phenomena. The
examinations do not focus and do not even ask
the students to critically analyse situations and
events. When it comes to sciences, students are
expected to reproduce exact derivations and they
are not taught how to apply formulas to given
problems. This defeats the purpose of teaching
them science in the first place. The students
therefore mature into intellectually redundant
adults.
Problems that ensure that Pakistan’s education
system continues to stay in the 19thcentury have
been discussed. Democracy can only flourish in
politically aware and educated societies and the
dismal state of the education sector in the
country exacerbates the regressive cycle. This
cycle ensures that such men and women are
allowed to sit in the halls of power that do not
wish for the masses to be educated. The ‘what to
do’ and ‘how to do’ will be discussed later.
Aadil Aamir

Pakistan’s education sector has also failed to The writer is a member of staff.
draw on contemporary education techniques and
questions by the students are deemed as
disrespectful to the teacher. The students are not
allowed to intellectually challenge what they are
being taught and this limits their ability to not
only learn but also to think. This is why even
after several years in a job, many people still
falter during their basic work routines. Why?
They were never taught how to learn.

Perhaps, the paramount structural problem with

education in Pakistan is its examination system.
The examinations are conducted to ascertain a
student’s ability. Contrary to this, examinations
in Pakistan attempt to determine a student’s
ability to reproduce what they have read in
books and sometimes exact paragraphs.
Similarly, lengthy answers are expected which

7
 3- Pakistan deserves ‘education’
JUNE 8, 2018 BY AADIL AAMIR
 The turnaround of Pakistan’s
education is daunting but not
insurmountable
Education is the only phenomenon that cuts
across horizontally through all sections of social
and economic classes. Unfortunately, Pakistan’s
education not only fails to do that but on the
contrary produces three vividly distinct cohorts
within one generation and subsequently the
nation is divided during the nation building
process. Much has been said about the problems
of the education sector in Pakistan. It is time to
present a coherent plan to fix education in
Pakistan.
Pakistan has the means and the ability to
produce a well educated population, which may
be allowed respect in the comity of nations. This
can only be realised if the policy makers make
massive quantitative and qualitative changes in
the education sector of the country. Equally
important is that the state must produce an
intellectually sound and value neutral
educational apparatus. This will serve the dual
purpose of providing not only real education to
the populace but also allow the production of a
counter narrative that challenges the radical
terror-producing and religiously
discourse. Otherwise, as evident, the state will
be unable to de-radicalise society
asymmetric violence, ‘Safoora Goth’, ‘Mashal
Khan’ and ‘attack on minorities and their
worship places’ will continue to happen.
Another unfortunate example is of the book
titled, ‘Islam: The misunderstood religion’ by
M. Qutb which is a “suggested” reading by the
FPSC for CSS Islamic studies. The Qutb
brothers were responsible for radicalising the
Middle East and propounded the version of
Islam that the Saudi crown prince has recently
denounced.
Education must be at the heart of a policy
solution that aims to provide a panacea for the
state’s problems, power a sustainable economic
growth model, eradicate poverty and build
lasting peace. Reversing the identified failures
present an increasingly daunting challenge.
Pakistan carries in its heart one of the largest
youth populations in the world but the chief
provocation comes from politicised Islamic
clergy which has run its course and the largely
unregulated private education sector which
deforms the state’s education setup.
The Fins share a laudable cultural
characteristic with the Koreans; a deep social
respect for teachers, social value for academic
accomplishments and economic response for
academic accolades later in life
UNESCO enjoys the mandate to cover the
biased varying aspects of global education and it has
been allowed space to lead the struggle vis-à-vis
and UN’s SDGs. The Education 2030 Framework
for Action (EFA 2030) takes on the intimidating
task and provides a vividly structured roadmap
8
that enables policy makers around the world to
construct an education plan tailored
indigenous needs and rooted in inclusive and
equitable education for the citizenry. Pakistan
has already missed the MDGs but would do well
to abide by the education SDGs and EFA 2030.
Following the EFA 2030 would allow Pakistan
to build an education apparatus that increases
teaching quality, covers vocational and tertiary
education, develops unbiased gender parity and
ultimately aspires to reach the free education
benchmark.
Pakistan needs to challenge its failing education
apparatus by coming up with appropriate
legislation backed up by equitable and rigorous
bureaucratic implementation. Pakistan must be
able to provide a level playing field and equal
access to education for the entire citizenry
regardless of religion, geographic location and
socio-economic background. This can only be
achieved if the education in Pakistan is
nationalised. All future education policies must
be cognizant of the explosive ramifications of
neglecting underprivileged children.
The nationalisation process must not be swift.
Public sector education must be uplifted and
progress must be viewed with a qualitative lens.
Only then will the public sector slowly absorb
the private education setup and eradicate the
private education cosa nostra.
Similarly, the process of revamping religious
seminaries must be undertaken swiftly. Their
faith based focus must be shifted to a moral and
to civic sense focus grounded in humanitarian
studies and moderate nationalism. It is
imperative for Pakistan’s survival that the
religion-nationalism nexus is broken. This will
give birth to graduates with a wider world view,
respect for dissent, acceptance of difference of
opinion and skills necessary for contemporary
economies.
Financial outlays for the education sector must
be enhanced magnanimously. Education must
weigh heavier on the education vs infrastructure
development scale. It is vital for Pakistan’s
survival. Funds in this regarded can be collected
by introducing a progressive tax regime that
targets elite private schools such as Aitchison
College, TNS and the Lahore American School
(LAS). The regime must also be inclusive of
public-private partnerships and full bright
scholarships for the underprivileged.
Furthermore, the problem of quality teaching
can be catered to by initiating a short-gap
initiative. This would entail a varying cohort of
teachers being imported from educational
utopias such as Finland, Singapore, Sweden and
Norway, to not only work on the quality of
teaching and education but also to provide
invaluable policy inputs. These teachers and
professors must be systematically placed at
different levels of the education setup including
primary, secondary, graduate and post graduate
education levels.
9
Pakistan has a burgeoning population of retired
servicemen including military persons, judges
and bureaucrats. These retired officials must be
barred from working after retirement and instead
must be encouraged to join the education sector
as teachers. They must not be allowed
administrative posts. This will not only
normalise them after a lifetime of high service
but also allow the younger generations to
capitalise on an untapped wealth of wisdom and
experience.
Similarly, a propaganda wave must be launched
with the aim to enhance the teachers’ respect in
society. Only then will the profession attract
intellectuals from across the society. Their
remuneration must be significantly increased,
especially in the public sector, and their salary
and perks must be updated so that they are at par
with the Basic Pay Scale grade system. This is
because a teacher who worries about making end
meets will never be able to concentrate in class
and focus more on running from one university
to another and teach more classes that he or she
can handle. This might sound revolutionary, but
it is only logical, since the future of the country
is in their hands. Capitalistic endeavours within
the education system are treasonous and
consequently evening academies and private
tuitions must be rigorously contained. The future
of Pakistan cannot be given into the hands of
those that make profit out of those that represent
the ultimate future of the country.
The examination system in Pakistan’s education
sector is redundant, outdated and reeks of
McCaulism. It is of the essence to re-engineer
this system. The present focus on writing ability
must be shifted towards critical thinking,
establishing opinion backed by logical reasoning
and the ability to learn. This will in future prove
to be the breeding ground for minds that are able
to conduct effective and pragmatic research.
To ensure that Pakistan’s education system is
pulled out of the abyss it presently finds itself in,
policy makers must familiarise themselves with
state’s that portray outstanding education
systems such as Finland. Once that is done, the
men and women in the halls of power can come
up with policy solutions that mirror the world’s
education utopias tailored to local needs.
An example that warrants mention is of Finland.
Half a century ago, Finland was on its way to
become the economic stepchild of Europe but
today academic intelligentsia term the Finnish
education system as “utopian”. The said system
is grounded in intrinsic motivation and
extracurricular choice. Pakistan’s education
sector lacks both of them. The Fins share a
laudable cultural characteristic with the Koreans;
a deep social respect for teachers, social value
for academic accomplishments and economic
response for academic accolades later in life.
Pakistan has so far failed to mirror this and
unless this is reversed Pakistan’s education
sector will continue to present a dismal picture.
10
Today’s world is indifferent to tradition and
unforgiving of frailty. The turnaround of
Pakistan’s education is daunting but not
insurmountable. If the task is not undertaken
swiftly, the state will continue to be frail.
Success will follow when the state is slow to
complain and quick to adapt. Education is the
only way to heal the ruptured, marginalised and
polarised social fabric. What remains is that the
state must ensure that successive regimes,
institutions and the people must rise up to this
challenge. It is time for Pakistan to take the
Great Leap Forward.
Aadil Aamir
The writer is a member of staff.
4- Water crisis
JUNE 16, 2018 BY AADIL AAMIR
 Myth or reality?
Ever since the industrial revolution, human
ingenuity has allowed water, the elixir of human
life, to flow even in the most arid landscapes.
Ever since the 19th century, water was no longer
a mystical force to be worshipped but a
commodity to be exploited. The United Nations
(UN) Committee on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights declared that the human right to
water entitled everyone to sufficient, safe,
acceptable, physically accessible and affordable
water for personal and domestic use. Pakistan
has so far failed to guarantee its citizens that
right.
South Asia scholar Anatol Lieven observed that
water shortages present the greatest future threat
to the viability of Pakistan as a state and society.
Some may disregard Lieven’s statement as
overblown but none can disagree with the
underlying premise. According to the World
Resources Institute, Pakistan is among the five
leading countries that face extremely high water
shortage and low access to safe drinking water.
The Pakistan Council of Research in Water
Resources observed that Pakistan touched the
water stress line in 1990, crossed the water
scarcity line in 2005 and warned that the country
would reach absolute water scarcity by 2025.
Presently, Pakistan is mired in a hoard of issues
and water scarcity lies at the heart of Pakistan’s
economic and energy conundrum. The
prevailing water crisis threatens the very fabric
of Pakistan’s society and the state’s survival
itself.
The water shortage capacity of the reservoirs
available at Tarbela, Chashma and Mangla has
been dramatically reduced due to the increase in
11
silt deposits over the years. Additionally, the
lack of a national and coherent agriculture policy
not only contributes to the wastage of water but
also allows the growth of high water consuming
crops during arid seasons. Pakistan’s irrigation
system is characterised by grossly inadequate
infrastructure investment with most of its
budgetry allocation going towards a bloated
water bureaucracy and hence starving the sector
of tools that would allow it to efficiently use the
elixir.
The Khanpur Dam was built to cater to water
needs of the twin cities but the growth of
unregulated industry allowed the demand to
outstrip the supply
The five year economic policy cycles have given
rise to rapid increase in industrial production
without the efficient use of water. For example,
the Khanpur Dam was built to cater to water
needs of the twin cities but the growth of
unregulated industry allowed the demand to
outstrip the supply. Although, the present dams
boast laudable infrastructures, what Pakistan
requires is new dams and water reservoirs such
as the ‘controversial’ Kalabagh Dam. The feudal
consortia that that has long overshadowed
Pakistan’s policy making focuses on personal
interest and does not allow the Kalabagh Dam to
be built so that their personal agricultural estates
are not hampered. The chief justice of Pakistan
took Suo Motu action pertaining to the Kalabagh
Dam. He was in turn blamed for institutional
overreach by the feudal minded aristocrats and
the judge had to clarify that he had only taken
the action to ensure that Pakistan did not face
irreparable water shortages.
Similarly, retreating glaciers, rising sea levels,
increased droughts and frequent heat episodes
have failed to convince policy makers of the
need to formulate a national water policy. The
evidence for ‘their’ lack of interest can be
gauged from the fact that the National Security
Council has so far not considered water security
as detrimental to national security.
India presents an overwhelming threat to
Pakistan’s water resources. Abdul Sattar
remarks in the book, Pakistan’s foreign policy,
that the Indus Water Treaty allows India the
construction of ‘run-off-the-river’ power plants
but restrains it to construct dams on western
tributaries of the Indus. Regardless, India not
only managed to complete the Baghlihar Dam
project but also recently completed the
Kishanganga Dam. The Dam is not only a
violation of the 1960 treaty between the two
neighbours but also depletes the water levels of
rivers flowing into Pakistan. Pakistan has taken
the issue up with the World Bank but as always
this was a crisis-driven ad-hoc decision. The
issue should have been taken up as soon as
India’s plans were revealed.
Similarly, except for an agreement pertaining to
the Helmand River between Pakistan and
Afghanistan, no treaty exists between the two
countries that govern the sharing of water. This
12
could prove to be fatal for Pakistan as it uses an
estimated seventeen million acre feet of water
coming in from Afghanistan. Media reports have
revealed that India is helping Afghanistan
construct several multi-purpose water projects
and dams on the Kabul River, which would
inevitably lower the peak run-off and quantity of
water entering Pakistan.
Pakistan faces unprecedented rates of water
scarcity. The state’s indigenous and municipal
water resources are inadequate and undeniably
under threat. What is required is that policy
makers must rise above petty political, domestic
and class interests. Men and women sitting in
the halls of power, who are charged with the
protection and governance of Pakistan, must
protect it from the present abyss that Pakistan’s
presently finds itself in. Pakistan is already
parched and if meaningful action is not taken, it
will soon find itself without enough elixir to
power agriculture and industry or even clean
drinking water for human consumption. The
state must realise that the water crisis is not a
myth. It is a reality. A reality that has been
staring Pakistan in the face for decades.
Aadil Aamir
The writer is a member of staff.
5- CPEC 2018 Summit: A policy for
success
By Dr Aynul Hassan
PEOPLE have often raised concerns about the
CPEC being the next East India Company. But,
much to their dismay, they have been proven
wrong time and again. We now live in a
globalised world where the countries are
interdependent to fulfil their needs. Gone are the
days when the foreigners would step on a land
for the sole purpose of invasion and
colonisation. They don’t set up their military
bases now in foreign lands, but they are rather
interested in setting up their businesses overseas.
The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is based on
the win-win philosophy of Confucius.
With the successful execution of CPEC, both
Pakistan and China are going to reshape the
future of the economic world. China will have
all that it needs at the moment to make its
presence felt in every corner of the world; more
seaports and direct routes to connect with
different parts of the world, cutting down the
shipping costs etc. Pakistan will see phenomenal
growth in its infrastructure, energy and
telecommunication sectors.
BRI bids to enhance regional connectivity and
cooperation and to address the Infrastructural
Gap of 68 countries across the Asia Pacific area
and Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Thus, it
has the potential to accelerate the economic
growth. BRI has some of the largest
infrastructure and investment projects in history,
covering 65pc of the world’s population and
40pc of the global GDP as of 2017.
CPEC is a 3,218-km route, mainly consisting of,
but not limited to, highways, railways, pipelines
and energy projects. The project that had
initially started off with a $46bn budget may
13
now witness an increase which might take it to
$75bn. Out of the total amount, a whopping
$33bn will be for used for energy projects alone
which will help Pakistan with its prevalent
energy crises.
For China, its north-western landlocked region
will become land and sea-linked through
Kashgar, Gwadar and beyond. Its import cost of
crude oil will decline significantly. More
importantly, China’s further expansion of
longterm trade with the West through Gwadar
could be safe and secure as opposed to routes
through the South China Sea or the Malacca
Strait.
For many, CPEC is the gamechanger for
Pakistan. Such are the expectations from the
project on this side of the border. There is
absolutely no doubt that it will help Pakistani
traders get access to huge Chinese market that
remains untapped to so many businesses in
Pakistan.
With CPEC in place, one hopes that the large
deposits of mineral resources will be extracted
and made the most of. The tourism industry is
also set to get a boost because of the
opportunities that the CPEC brings with itself.
Most of all, it will help create hundreds and
thousands of jobs in Pakistan, resulting in
significantly cutting down the problem of
unemployment.
To implement CPEC in an optimal fashion, we
need a development policy which ensures that
peace, security and stability of the region are not
compromised and there is scope for an average
educated, healthy and disciplined workforce to
perform duties on a mass scale. It should be
ensured that the rule of law, accountability,
meritocracy, transparency, good governance and
business-friendly policies are in place for the
successful execution of CPEC.
Once the aforementioned objectives are
guaranteed, the work should be done to make the
infrastructure better than ever because the CPEC
will continue to play a critical role in the
development of infrastructure across Pakistan.
The writer is Former Director, Macroeconomic
Policy and Development Division, United
Nations.
6- Understanding & experience
Faisal Bari
June 15, 2018
The writer is a senior research fellow at the
Institute of Development and Economic
Alternatives and an associate professor of
economics at Lums, Lahore.
IF you find that two grocery stores,
reasonably closely located, are charging
different prices for the same good, and you
have had even a few classes in introductory
economics, you should immediately become
curious as to the reason for this differential.
Violations of the ‘law’ of one price, same
price for the same goods, should raise the
curiosity of economics/social science
students.
I find few students are able to connect what
they read in their courses and what they
experience every day around them. This
limits their understanding of the material
they read, limits their learning and limits
their ability to use their learning as a
stepping stone for deepening their learning
and understanding in a dynamic sense.
When I ask students to define something,
most are able to, if they remember the
14
concept, spill out the definition as they had
learnt it. When I ask them to give examples
— from their experience and not from the
textbook — of the concept in action, most
falter. But this is a big issue. If social
sciences are not able to equip you to
understand the world around you, you are
not learning anything and your ‘knowledge’
will just be a collection of rote learnt
definitions, concepts and methods that will
stay as long as your memory works and
then, with time, slowly fade away.
Even a week or two after the end of the
semester when I ask students to recall what
key concepts they had learnt or which
authors they had read, many cannot
remember details. A year or so later most
students do not even remember some of the
key concepts.
If you are not using your learning to
make sense of the world around you,
you are not learning.
If you are not internalising what you are
reading, if your reading and learning is not
shaping and changing your worldview, and
you are not using your learning to make
sense of the world around you, you are not
learning. This is true for almost all academic
disciplines but it is especially true for the
social sciences.
When you go to buy cloth for shalwar
kameez and the retailer tells you that you
have to buy a three-piece set of shalwar
kameez and dupatta and you do not think of
bundling and what the retailer is trying to
do, you are not using the concept of price
elasticity, taught in every introductory
microeconomics course, very well.
When schools insist that your child has to
buy her uniform, books and stationery from
the school and not from any shop, you
should be able to see parallels and
differences with the shalwar kameez
example quite clearly.
When you see a bottle of water that you get
for Rs60 from a store priced at Rs250 at a
restaurant and you do not think of
similarities and differences with the school
example above, there is a problem.
I could go on at length, but the examples
here should be enough to support the more
general point I am trying to make: book and
class learning has to connect to the world
you live in. It has to shape how you look at
the world, and it has to impact the categories
and concepts that you use to make sense of
your world. If they do not, you are not
learning, you are not getting knowledge, and
you are not growing.
The problem here is not just for the students
and from the students’ side, it is from and
for the teachers too. Most of the teachers in
the system, both school and university level,
have gone through learning in more or less
the same way as their students are doing
today. They too, when teaching, are not able
to connect the learning they are trying to
impart to their students to the world around
them. This is definitely a big problem.
I have had the privilege and honour of being
taught by some great teachers. But, I have
also had teachers who just did not know
their subject and/or did not know how to
teach. They relied on notes they had made
many years ago: in some cases the paper on
which they had made their notes had
become yellow and turned quite brittle with
age. They did not make the subject come
15
alive by giving relevant examples, did not 7- ‘Real’ Pakistani women
encourage questioning and/or class-
Rafia Zakaria June 20, 2018
discussions and did not make the effort to
provide frameworks that would facilitate
The writer is an attorney teaching
development of cross-concept and cross-
constitutional law and political philosophy.
reading connections.
OVER the Eid weekend, as most Pakistanis,
Given that the majority of the teachers in the
male and female, gorged on goodies, eating
system have content knowledge and/or
the biryanis and sheer kormas that are
pedagogy issues, students have to take on a
traditional to the festive season, the
greater burden of ensuring they are able to
country’s politicians remained preoccupied
get more out of their education than they
with the upcoming elections. Even Eid, it
currently are. They have to put in the extra
seemed, was not a holiday for them; no
effort to try and connect what they are
break was to be had from the pandering, the
learning with what goes on around them.
promising and the speechifying.

If you have come through the schooling and

Among these politicians was PTI chairman
university system that has been rewarding
Imran Khan. While being interviewed, Khan
rote learning and the regurgitation of facts
stated that he disagreed with the Western
and you continue to have teachers who
feminist movement, which has, in his
encourage that behaviour, it will be hard to
opinion, degraded the role of motherhood.
break the habit. But it is important to do so.
Mothers, he went on to say, wield the most
You will need to consciously redesign how
influence over their children’s lives, thus
you learn. You will need to explicitly
implying that feminism’s focus on giving
connect your learning to examples, try to
women power outside the home has shifted
come up with some of your own, and use
attention away from the truly important stuff
your learning explicitly to interpret the
ie taking care of their (assumedly) large
world around you. As you get more adept at
broods of children.
doing all this, the older habits will get
weaker. But the effort to challenge the older
While the words produced some outcry on
way of learning, using rote, will need to be
social media, the tone and the denigration of
persistently practised before older habits
women and feminism in general, duly
will start weakening. This is not an easy task
pointed out by feminists, analysts and
to do nor is it a quick one. However, given
others, is deserving of further discussion.
where most of us are coming from, it is
Khan is hardly unique in raising the spectre
important to consciously reflect on our
of the abandonment of motherhood as the
learning process and to try to improve it.
consequence of female empowerment; men
in Pakistan (bosses, husbands, fathers,
brothers) do it routinely as they bar women
from doing this or that, working or studying
or leaving abusive marriages.

For many men, an ideal woman is one who

has no sense of self, no basis to ever

16
challenge the man’s decisions, who is
‘reasonable’ where the term means
complicit in her own subjugation.
The idea that any woman who wants more
than what men are comfortable with —
women who want to prove that they can be
mothers and doctors (or lawyers or
accountants or government workers, etc, etc)
— are in fact not ‘real’ Pakistani women and
are tainted by ‘Western feminism’ is a very
popular one in Pakistan. There is no use
explaining what ‘Western feminism’ may or
may not mean; for the purposes of men like
Khan and millions of others like him, it
stands simply and completely for anything
that they don’t agree with.
The consequence is the construction of the
authentic, the true, and the perfect Pakistani
woman as someone who is formed exactly
according to the wishes of the men who are
standing in judgement over her. For such
men, this would be the selfless and self-
sacrificing mother, a one-dimensional
creature that exists only to watch over her
brood and teaches them all the things that
men have approved are appropriate for
teaching.
For some other men, somewhat different
angles may matter more: they might see the
perfect woman as a fantastic cook who
keeps an immaculate house, pleases and
serves their mothers (and let us not forget
that women propagate these strictures too)
and on and on. The similarity in all of this,
of course, is that the woman is expected to
have no sense of self and no basis to ever
challenge the man’s decisions, besides being
‘reasonable’ where the term means
complicit in her own subjugation.
Obviously and unsurprisingly, millions of
Pakistani women fall for this trap. In a
country where all things Western are
sometimes quite deservedly reviled, no one
wants to be tainted, everyone wants to be
authentic — the good and perfect Pakistani
woman. This desire is manipulated by a
large segment of Pakistani men, politicians
or otherwise with a mastery that is
absolutely awe-inspiring. Mere
disagreement, for instance, saying
something like, ‘No, I don’t want to have a
fourth baby in five years’, comes close to
that tainted Western feminism, that
instrument of maternal degradation.
In truth, this ‘Western feminism’ has little to
do with the reality or the ideological
premises of what is actual feminism; it is a
completely local creation, its monstrosity
constructed entirely in response to Pakistani
fears: feminist Pakistani women, if they are
permitted to exist, will ditch their husbands
and marriages entirely, abandon their
children in the pursuit of whimsical careers,
demand that those who make messes
actually clean them up, and so on. It is not
that such fantasies do not ever cross the
minds of Pakistani women. In Sultana’s
Dream, a novella written in English by the
Bengali Muslim writer Rokeya Sakhawat
Hussain in 1905, a fantasy world devoid of
men is conjured up. It sounds like a lovely
place, familiar but devoid of the pressure of
being the perfect, real, true Pakistani
woman.
So stringent are the guidelines of selfless
devotion to Pakistani men (and hence
perfect Pakistani femaleness) that even the
example of some of the earliest Muslim
heroines may not help them reconsider their
approach. Take, for instance, the courageous
Nusaybah bint Ka’ab, one of the earliest
17
converts to Islam. After accepting Islam, she 8- Water scarcity
began preaching, always believing that
Michael Kugelman June 19, 2018
women and men had equal duties in
defending the faith. To practise what she
The writer is deputy director for the Asia
preached, the fearless Nusaybah took part in
Programme and senior associate for South Asia
the Battle of Uhud as a warrior. A number of
with the Woodrow Wilson International Centre
men who believe that mothers should stay at
in Washington, D.C.
home would be shocked to discover that
Nusaybah was married and the mother of
PAKISTAN could be water scarce by 2025. In
two sons. Would such a woman have
recent days, this prediction has generated
measured up to the contemporary idealised
headlines and galvanised social media users
standard of motherhood touted here?
across the country. It’s not the first time we’ve
heard this estimate. The UN, Pakistan’s Met
There is no one politician or preacher or
department and the Pakistan Council of
public figure who is to blame for the
Research in Water Resources have all delivered
construction of ‘Western feminism’ as the
it in recent years.
ultimate bogeyman to duly silence and
frighten Pakistani women into shutting up.
The fact that the projection didn’t attract much
Those who defend it, as many did on Twitter
attention previously is unsurprising. For years,
following this latest incident, brand
Pakistan’s water researchers have shouted from
themselves as the most tainted, falling into a
the rooftops about water insecurity. And most
trap in which they defend the indefensible
people couldn’t be bothered to look up to see
and hence disqualified from even daring to
what the shouting was about. But today, perhaps
call themselves Pakistani. The ‘Western
because of the debate on the Kishanganga
feminism’ created by Pakistani men is a
dispute, Pakistan’s water woes are getting
misogynistic marvel, a strategic move of
attention. That’s a good thing, given the
diabolical foresight, a tool to keep women in
seriousness of the situation. Pakistan won’t
their place — wherever Pakistani men
become water scarce in 2025 because, for all
decide that place may be.
intents and purposes, it’s already water scarce.

The writer is an attorney teaching

Per capita availability hovers around 1,000 cubic
constitutional law and political philosophy.
metres, the scarcity threshold. In some areas, the
Indus has been reduced to a puddle, bringing
misery to farmers and an agricultural sector that
dominates the economy. Drought conditions are
endemic in Balochistan. According to officials
in Karachi, residents receive fewer than 500
million gallons of water per day, well below 50
per cent of daily needs.

Meanwhile, groundwater tables are plummeting.

According to the World Wide Fund for Nature
in Pakistan, the water table has fallen to below
130 feet (39.6 metres) in central Lahore. The

18
Indus basin aquifer, as revealed by Nasa satellite
data, is the second most stressed in the world.
Building new dams won’t make damaging
policies go away.
Groundwater is water security’s safety net. And
in Pakistan, this safety net is fraying rapidly. It is
also increasingly contaminated.
Let’s be clear: Pakistan is rapidly running out of
water, and much of what’s left is unfit for
consumption. The over 53,000 children that die
every year from waterborne disease, according
to Unicef, learn this in the most tragic way.
More than two-thirds of Pakistan’s households
drink contaminated water, according to Unicef.
Research in Science Advances journal finds that,
based on about 1,200 groundwater samples, up
to 60 million people, more than a quarter of the
population, are at risk of consuming arsenic. A
whopping 91pc of Karachi’s water, according to
a Pakistani judicial commission report, contains
sewage and industrial waste.
Water pollution isn’t just a public health hazard,
it’s also detrimental to the economy. According
to the World Bank, it costs Pakistan nearly 4pc
of GDP.
With scarcity having arrived, there’s only so
much that can be done. Indeed, the what-should-
be-done question has become the can-anything-
be-done question.
Fortunately, the answer is yes. The first step is to
craft a national consensus, with buy-in from the
entire political class, for addressing a long-
neglected crisis. A new national water policy,
approved last month, is a good start. It needs a
strong implementing framework and should be
informed by inputs from Pakistan’s water
experts.
Tough decisions will need to be made about
changing the public policies that have
exacerbated water woes: a preference for
wasteful flood irrigation and water-guzzling
crops, a lackadaisical approach to maintaining
and repairing ageing, leaky water infrastructure;
a paucity of wastewater treatment facilities, and
a distorted water-pricing regime that gives
consumers little incentive to conserve. Let’s also
not forget that CPEC, with its large-scale
projects in Pakistan’s most parched regions, is
an accelerant of water stress.
Building new dams — or getting a favourable
decision on the Kishanganga dispute — won’t
make these damaging policies go away.
Admittedly, an American urging Pakistan to
develop political consensus to tackle a critical
policy dilemma may be a case of the pot calling
the kettle black. In America, partisan gridlock
has long stymied efforts to address poor
healthcare and gun violence.
Yes, it’s hard to develop political consensus and
national strategies. But it’s essential. For
Pakistan, the alternative is stark: a dry dystopia
where some, equipped with electric tube wells,
desperately search for the last drops of
groundwater, while others find themselves at the
mercy of rapacious water mafias. Energy
resources are exhausted. Public health crises
explode. Water scarcity takes a devastating toll,
killing crops, livelihoods, economic growth, and,
slowly, the nation on the whole.
Back in 2007, South Asia scholar Anatol Lieven
had warned that water shortages pose “the
greatest threat to the viability of Pakistan as a
state and a society”. At the time, his warning
may have seemed hyperbolic.
Today, with the existential threat posed by water
stress coming into sharp focus, Lieven’s warning
is sounding remarkably prophetic.
19
The writer is deputy director for the Asia
Programmed and senior associate for South
Asia with the Woodrow Wilson International
Centre in Washington, D.C.
9- KP’s healthcare secret
Assad Ahmad June 16, 2018
The writer is a Lahore-based columnist and
consultant with a background in finance, public
and private sector strategy, and energy.
HIDDEN under the trite sound bites that the
Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s political leadership
thrives on, lies the story of a revolution that
must be told.
PTI supporters should be disappointed that their
leadership hasn’t effectively told the rest of the
country about one of their biggest successes.
Few Pakistanis know that the party’s
government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has
successfully implemented a healthcare solution
that is a blueprint for the rest of the country to
follow.
No, it is not the case that KP has radically
outspent everyone else. In fact, all four
provinces are running neck and neck in terms of
health spending as a percentage of their budgets.
The claim that KP’s spending priorities are
somehow vastly different than Punjab’s, which
only builds metros, is a fallacy that should be
removed from the PTI’s rhetorical arsenal and
thrown in the wreckage left by Peshawar’s bus
rapid-transit project.
What should replace it is the reality of the Sehat
Sahulat Programme. Because it is innovations
like these that can make widespread access to
decent medical care a reality in Pakistan. And
that is something worth talking about.
What should replace the PTI’s rhetorical
arsenal is the reality of KP’s health programme.
Sehat Sahulat is the KP government’s flagship
health insurance programme. As of now, around
half of the households in the province, selected
for need, based on the Benazir Income Support
Programme methodology, are card-carrying
members.
An expansion of coverage to 70 per cent of the
population is under way. The cards, known as
Sehat Insaf cards, signify that the holders are
covered by health insurance, with premiums
paid to State Life directly by the provincial
government.
This insurance allows households to utilise up to
Rs540,000 per year, for medical treatment and
medicines, at public and private hospitals across
the province. So, the poorest person in KP, sans
a single rupee in hand, can be treated at the
finest private hospital in Peshawar, just like any
fee-paying patient.
The cherry on top? The insurance also pays
patients lost wages, and in case of referrals from
outside Peshawar, travelling money.
Premiums are surprisingly low. Currently, the
KP government pays the insurance company just
Rs1,500 a year per household covered. Well-
placed sources confirm this will have to rise a
bit, as the insurance company is currently losing
money on the deal.
To keep costs low, and to combat fraud, there
are a few caveats to the coverage. Outpatient
care isn’t included, and there are rules relating to
referrals that can be cumbersome. There is also a
conscious attempt to prioritise utilisation of
government hospitals, to allow them to generate
revenue. Despite this, around 60 per cent of the
fees paid in insurance claims, are paid to private
hospitals.
Sehat Sahulat is a dramatic step towards equity
in medical care. It replaces a system where a
poor person requiring surgery had to choose
20
between a lower survival probability at a
crowded public hospital unable to cope with
patient demand, and the certainty of financial
ruin at a better equipped private hospital. It
lessens the burden on public hospitals, raises the
status of poor patients there (because they now
represent a revenue source in the form of
insurance payments), and enables people to
afford private treatment that would previously
have been unthinkable.
Alongside equity, Sehat Sahulat represents
efficiency in spending healthcare resources.
Such efficiency isn’t typically achieved by well-
intentioned gentlemen in robes, poking at bed
sheets, taste-testing food, ordering equipment
purchases, and embarrassing the handful of
highly qualified specialists who choose to make
Pakistan their home.
If public hospitals across the country are
hopelessly overcrowded, understaffed and
under-equipped, then, yes, part of the reason is
that budgetary allocations to healthcare must be
raised.
But there is a more obvious reason — Pakistan
is a poor country. To illustrate just how poor we
are, consider this: even adjusting for purchasing
power and price differences, every rupee earned
by every person in the country wouldn’t be
enough to publicly fund a healthcare system of
the quality of, say, Norway ($5000+ per capita
expenditure).
So, what we have must be spent efficiently.
What KP’s brilliant initiative does is show what
this might look like. By focusing more spending
on insurance premiums, the state encourages a
marketplace where entrepreneurs want to invest
capital to build and equip new facilities that the
government can’t afford upfront.
KP’s health-sector insiders confirm that this is
well under way in the province. New private
hospitals are being built at a rapid pace, to cater
to demand from a newly insured patient base.
This efficiently frees up the capital expense that
would be required to build new facilities.
Some treatments are so expensive that no
affordable insurance would cover them. For
these, the state’s answer will have to remain
specialised centres of excellence like the
Pakistan Kidney and Liver Institute in Punjab,
and the National Institute of Cardiovascular
Diseases in Sindh. And for primary care,
including the Lady Health Worker programmes
and small health units, each province has lessons
to learn from others. For everything else, look to
KP.
A broad-based, sustainable insurance initiative
including private hospitals is something that the
federal government has also been working on.
That programme, called the Prime Minister’s
National Health Programme, still in the early
phases of roll-out, covers just a few districts and
offers far fewer benefits to beneficiaries. That
the KP government has implemented its bold
plan on the scale it has, in the time frame it has,
is astounding.
That they haven’t talked about it more is
shocking. The PTI would do well to change that
now. And come July, each provincial
government must roll the programme out in their
domain.
Just as the PTI’s 100-day agenda promises — in
about 10 words buried right near the end. One
hopes that those supporting equity and
efficiency in healthcare spending didn’t miss it.
The writer is a Lahore-based columnist and
consultant with a background in finance, public
and private sector strategy, and energy.
21
 10- Dark days for the Palestinian cause
Irfan Husain June 11, 2018
LAST week, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli
prime minister, was in London as part of his
campaign to persuade Germany, France and
the UK to ditch the nuclear agreement with
Iran, just as the United States has done.
While no public commitments were given, it
is clear that despite their brave words, the
European signatories to the deal have few
options but to fall into line with Washington.
The problem for them is that Trump has
threatened to apply tough secondary sanctions
on banks and companies doing business with
Iran. Few corporate chiefs would risk losing the
right to operate in America, the world’s biggest
market. So even if the French, German and
British governments would like to keep their
side of the nuclear bargain, most companies
would be reluctant to enter into contracts with
Iran, or continue with existing ones.
This is a point Netanyahu made with some relish
during an interview with Evan Davis, the lead
presenter on Newsnight, the BBC’s flagship
news programme. According to him, the deal
was already dead: which company would
forsake doing business in a one trillion dollar
economy for trading with Iran, a country with an
economy just 3-4 per cent of America’s?
When asked how he would prevent Iran from
returning to its nuclear enrichment programme,
Netanyahu replied “All options are open”, a
clear warning that he was still itching to bomb
Iranian nuclear facilities. And while Obama had
pre-empted him by signing a historic deal with
Iran, there are no such restraints in place with
Donald Trump in the White House. If anything,
his approach towards Iran is even more
aggressive than his Israeli friend’s.
Davis went on to ask how the conflict with the
Palestinians would end if the Israelis were not
prepared to make any concessions over
Jerusalem, statehood and the return of land
illegally usurped to create new settlements.
Netanyahu made it clear that sovereignty for
Palestinians wasn’t on the cards. “Call it what
you like, autonomy or self-rule, but we will
retain control over borders and security.”
Citing the ineffectual, home-made rockets fired
from Gaza, he declared that Israeli borders had
to be protected, making light of the scores of
Palestinians shot dead by Israeli army snipers in
recent weeks. Insisting that most of them were
Hamas “terrorists”, he went on to claim that the
civilians killed were being used as human
shields.
Netanyahu’s trump card was saved for the end
of the interview when he gloated over the fact
that many Arab states now had good relations
with Israel, and this shift in attitudes was a huge
regional game-changer. It is true that Iran is
more isolated than ever, and countries like Qatar
that partly funded Hamas, have withdrawn their
support. Even the Palestinian Authority under
Mahmoud Abbas has stopped paying Israel for
supplying Gaza with electricity, thereby causing
further hardship to the beleaguered people
forced to survive under siege in wretched
conditions.
Recent images from Gaza show kites carrying
small fire bombs that fly over neighbouring
Israeli farms being shot down by drones. This
imbalance in force is a perfect metaphor for
Palestinian impotence in the face of Israeli
might. Abandoned by most Arab states, the
principle political support for Palestinian rights
now comes from Europe. However, this is
nullified by the open-ended backing of the
United States: never has there been a more pro-
Israel supporter than Trump in the White House.
Even presidents like George W Bush were
22
reluctant to move the US embassy to Jerusalem
from Tel Aviv, something Trump has not wasted
any time in doing, despite advice to the contrary
from the State Department.
In the Newsnight interview, Netanyahu came
across as confident and in total control of the
situation. Fluent in his American-accented
English, he seemed amused and tolerant at
Davis’s attempts to rattle him. His education in
America has given him not just useful insights,
but has helped create a network of well-
connected friends. He is by far his country’s
most articulate spokesman: coming across as
“one of us”, his passionate defence of Israel’s
indefensible policies and actions over the years
has convinced many, especially in America.
And this is the key difference between Israeli
and Arab lobbying in America: whereas Jews
are generally accepted as valuable members of
the community, Arabs are seen as lazy, rich and
completely alien. Above all, Israel is viewed as
an island of democracy in a sea of dictatorship.
Military planners in the Pentagon view the
country as a forward base for any possible
conflict in the Middle East, and have pre-
positioned an arsenal there for emergencies if
American interests are threatened.
In such an environment, it is easy to see why
American politicians are reluctant to step out of
line where Israel is concerned. Those who did so
have paid a heavy price: the Israeli lobbying
machine is a well-honed organization whose
members keep a close eye on their
representatives and how they vote on issues
relating to Israel. The senior George Bush lost
his re-election bid, partly because he opposed
Israel’s illegal construction of settlements. Since
then, even Barack Obama had to toe the line,
despite his clear dislike of Israel’s repressive
policies, and his obvious antagonism towards
Netanyahu.
These are dark days for the Palestinian cause:
friendless and isolated, their dream of statehood
is further away than ever. Many of them must be
regretting their failure to grasp the opportunities
offered in the Oslo and Camp David talks. True,
what was on offer was unjust, but the world is
unfair, and sometime, the weaker party has to
take what it can get, rather than nothing at all.
11- US’ isolatio ist ode
Editorial June 22, 2018
UNDER Donald Trump, what were up till
now fringe positions of the American hard
right are now becoming part of Washington’s
official policy. The latest in this series of
moves is the US withdrawal from the UN
Human Rights Council, a multilateral body
formed to monitor human rights abuses
amongst the global body’s member states.
Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN,
used characteristically undiplomatic language
while criticising the body, terming it “a
cesspool of political bias”. And the main
reason for such a harsh appraisal? According
to Ambassador Haley, the UN body displays
“unending hostility towards Israel”. US
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo used equally
strong terms to denounce the council, terming
it “a protector of human rights abuses”.
While most US allies were critical of the
withdrawal from the human rights council,
Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu was
overjoyed, gleefully welcoming the
“courageous decision” in a tweet. Not too long
before that, Mr Trump rowed back from his
policy to separate migrant children from
their parents trying to illegally enter the US.
This decision was only reversed after an
uproar in the US over the issue. Indeed, for a
state that swears by fundamental rights, these
actions are unbecoming and need to be
reconsidered.
23
The Trumpian agenda seems to be one of
isolation from the global community, with
limited engagement with countries the US
president approves of. The withdrawal from the
UN council is only the latest in a long list of
American decisions that have caused outrage in
the global community. The tearing up of the Iran
deal; the withdrawal from the Paris Agreement
on climate change and the moving of the US
embassy in Israel to Jerusalem all seem part of a
pattern to redirect American policy towards an
uncharted course. The reason for Washington
leaving the UN rights council is also ironic;
while states should not be singled out, it is a fact
that Israel’s human rights record is abysmal,
especially with regard to its treatment of
Palestinians. Here is a state that claims to be a
democracy, yet launches murderous campaigns
against civilians, including children. So for the
global community to censure Israel on its
behaviour is the least that can be done. But
America under Trump has shown that it is
drifting in an extreme direction, where foreign
and domestic policies are drafted not on the
basis of rationality, but whim and impulse.
12- History’s geopolitical pivot
Munir Akram June 10, 2018
The writer is a former Pakistan ambassador to
the UN.
IN his 1904 treatise, The Geographical Pivot of
History, Halford Mackinder theorised that
whoever controls the Eurasian heartland — from
the Volga to the Yangtze and the Himalayas to
the Arctic — would control the world. Soon
after, Nicolas Spyman countered with the thesis
that whoever controlled Eurasia’s rim would
control the heartland and the world.
Hitler’s decision to open the eastern front
against the Soviet Union and the Cold War
contest for control of Central and Eastern
Europe were heavily influenced by these
theories. The demise of the Soviet Union saw
Nato move eastward as the US asserted its
global dominance. America’s unipolar moment
(1992-2003) began to erode after its disastrous
2003 invasion of Iraq. Since then, power has
pivoted towards the Eurasian heartland.
The most important reason for this shift is the
rise of China. At no time in history has any
nation brought so many people out of poverty as
quickly as has China. It will soon be the world’s
largest economy and the second military power.
Simultaneously, Russia has risen from the ashes.
It is again a military match for Nato, the
dominant power in Central Asia and a critical
player in the Middle East and increasingly in
South Asia.
Significantly, China and Russia have established
a strategic partnership, symbolised by the
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)
whose latest summit is being held in China.
Since the US invasion of Iraq, power has pivoted
towards the Eurasian heartland.
The heartland powers aim to extend their
influence westward to cover the rest of Eurasia.
Several European countries (Hungary, Poland,
Greece, Italy, Austria) desire closer relations
with Russia. Seventeen European countries have
formed a group to promote economic
cooperation with China under its Belt and Road
Initiative (which will extend to European ports
on the Atlantic)
With the heartland under Chinese and Russian
control, the focus of strategic competition with
the US now is the entire Eurasian Rim: southern
Europe, Middle East, South Asia and Southeast
Asia. The European pillar of the American
security order is in disarray. The expansion of
the European Union is frozen; the UK has
exited; southern Europeans are unhappy with the
single currency; Turkey is alienated from Nato
and the EU; mass migration from the Middle
24
East and Africa has revived racism and eroded
European unity. The recent unilateral US trade
tariffs, its withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal
and threatened sanctions against Europeans
doing business with Tehran, will further weaken
the Atlantic alliance.
America’s credibility in the Middle East is on
the wane. Russia has carved an important role
for itself. Iran has consolidated its influence in
Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. Despite the defeat of
the militant Islamic State group, anti-US Muslim
extremism has intensified, especially after the
US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital
and the virtual jettisoning of the two-state
solution.
Propelled by Israel, the US seems headed
towards a conflict with Iran which could engulf
the entire region. Whatever the outcome, the US
is likely to become further mired in the Middle
East morass. Russia and China will gain by
default. Indeed, given their ability to work with
Tehran, Tel Aviv and Riyadh, they may be able
to restore some semblance of order in the region.
The Sino-US competition in East Asia is
escalating. While seeking its help to
denuclearise North Korea, the US disinvited
China from the annual multination Pacific Rim
naval exercises (ostensibly for landing a bomber
on one of its claimed South China Sea islands).
At the recent Shangri-La Dialogue, the US
defence secretary declared the US will continue
its freedom of navigation forays close to the
islands and take further steps to challenge
China’s maritime claims. The US intends to
send a warship through the Taiwan Strait which
is certain to provoke a strong Chinese reaction.
However, the aims of the Obama pivot to Asia
— to build a ring of alliances around China’s
periphery and exclude it from a Pacific trade
partnership — are unlikely to be realised. Trump
has withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific
Partnership and no Asean member is prepared to
confront China. Nor are the three other members
of the US-led anti-China quad — Japan,
Australia or India — prepared to do so. In the
final analysis, America itself is unlikely to risk
war with China, eg by blocking access to its
claimed islands or encouraging Taiwan to
declare independence .
The contest in South Asia is also complex. For
decades, China’s strategic partnership with
Pakistan has maintained a balance of power in
the subcontinent. Since 2005, the US has sought
to recruit India as a partner to contain China’s
rising power in Asia. The South Asia policy
outlined by the Trump administration seeks to
maintain the US military and geopolitical
presence in Afghanistan and promote an Indo-
US security order in South Asia.
China and Russia’s endeavour is to prevent
India’s complete military alignment with the US.
India has tried to play both sides of the field.
Although the US renamed its Pacific Command
as the Indo-Pacific Command to acknowledge
India’s importance, Prime Minister Modi, while
endorsing the freedom of navigation principle at
the Shangri-La Dialogue, also underlined the
importance of India’s cooperation with China.
Beijing and Moscow no doubt hope that the
entry of Pakistan and India as full members of
the SCO will facilitate the normalisation of their
relations and draw India closer to the Sino-
Russian sphere and autonomous from America.
This is likely to be a long, uncertain game.
Today’s interdependent world is vastly different
from Mackinder’s era of competing empires.
The current geopolitical rivalry will be heavily
conditioned by several global and shared
challenges: unprecedented technological
development, new weapons and concepts of
warfare, the growing role of non-state actors, the
population explosion, climate change and the
25
manifest failure of global and regional
institutions to respond to these challenges.
The shape of the new world order will depend in
considerable measure on the evolution of the
relationship between China and the US. Their
national interests can be served more by
cooperation than confrontation. Sino-US
strategic confrontation could lead to instability
in several regions if not a global disaster; their
cooperation could accelerate trade, investment,
global growth and prosperity for all peoples: in
the heartland, the Eurasian Rim and beyond.
The writer is a former Pakistan ambassador to
the UN.
13- Why we lag behind
Tasneem siddiqui June 03, 2018
The writer is a social scientist.
THERE are several Southeast Asian countries
fortunate enough to bring socioeconomic
prosperity to their people within a generation.
On the other hand, there are countries that,
despite decades of high growth rates, are still
chasing an elusive ‘take-off’. Pakistan is one of
those countries.
In its early years, in spite of major handicaps, we
achieved an intermittent growth rate of about six
per cent over four decades. As hopes were raised
for a better future, even countries like South
Korea sought to emulate Pakistan’s planning
model. By the end of the Ayub era, however, it
became clear that this ‘golden age’ of
development not only failed to impact the lives
of millions of disadvantaged groups, but also
created massive inequalities due to the regime’s
discriminatory policies. It was no surprise that,
far from a ‘take-off’, this led to the country’s
dismemberment.
This article is not about Pakistan’s economic
situation. It is about a ‘development surprise’.
Recently, Bangladeshi economist Wahiduddin
Mahmud predicted that his country is on the
verge of becoming the next Asian Tiger. This is
the same country that, prior to 1971, Pakistan’s
ruling elite felt was dragging economic growth
down. Far from mourning its separation, many
thought it was good riddance to the ‘bottleneck’
that was holding West Pakistan back. Almost 50
years later, it is interesting to see where Pakistan
and Bangladesh stand in terms of economic and
human development.
First, the Bangladesh story. It wasn’t easy for a
poor country to overcome the trauma of a costly
‘liberation’, and so it faced both political and
economic instability. To add, being a deltaic
country, it had a history of natural disasters,
resulting in famines and persistent poverty. They
also shared the same problems our rulers tend to
cite to explain lack of performance: military
interventions, poor governance, institutional
vacuum, corruption and a polarised society.
Despite these handicaps, from the 1980s
onwards, growth picked up. Initially lacklustre,
once it was on track there was no stopping it. To
the surprise of many, at 7.28pc in FY-2017, its
growth rate surpassed even India’s.
There are a few important factors to
Bangladesh’s success. Its economic performance
has been steady for the last 20 years. When its
growth rate first exceeded Pakistan’s in 2008,
many analysts treated it as an aberration whereas
it was in fact a turning point. Besides GDP
growth, the country has made significant
progress in its social indicators. Given its level
of economic development, it has actually over-
performed in social development.
Bangladesh has maintained a 1.1 pc population
growth rate — about half of Pakistan’s 2pc —
and closed the gender gap in primary and
secondary education by the mid-1990s. It has
also had much success in child health and
preventive measures such as immunisation.
26
These factors have resulted in a rise in average
life expectancy, surpassing India’s and
Pakistan’s by four and six years respectively.
What is more surprising is that this remarkable
progress was not achieved through large public
expenditures on mega projects financed through
domestic or foreign loans, but instead through
mobilising resources at the grass-roots level:
micro-financing, and active support of a
committed and engaged civil society and
intelligentsia. Bangladesh’s early growth came
from the readymade garment industry, which not
only proved to be a boon for women’s
employment, but also their empowerment and
inclusion in social development.
Coming back to Pakistan, in spite of early
successes and great potential, it’s fair to say that
both its economy and human development
continue to face problems. As stated earlier, this
isn’t a review of the current macro-economic
situation, but anyone would admit that, even
accounting for perennial structural problems, its
growth is neither steady nor stable.
What is most worrying is Pakistan’s dismal
performance in the social sector: 25 million
children out of school (according to Alif
Ailaan); continuing wide gender gap; poor
quality of education and health; gaps in routine
immunisation; the worst infant mortality rate in
the world; rampant malnutrition and stunted
growth in 40pc of the children. These issues do
not bother either our political leaders or our
intelligentsia. They think that a high growth rate
for 10 or so years will automatically solve all
our problems.
But Bangladesh’s experience has shown that its
progress in social outcomes is neither a
reflection of economic growth, nor public
expenditure-led development. Would it be too
much to ask of our planners, policymakers and
civil society leaders to look at this ‘development
surprise’, and perhaps learn a thing or two from
it?
The writer is a social scientist.
14- Doing the dishes
The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional
law and political philosophy.
FROM the outside, Sweden looks like the most
equal country in the world. What men do,
women do as well. The streets of Sweden’s
cities are full of both of them; they ride their
bikes to work, they push children in strollers,
they do groceries, they work in banks and they
work in construction.
The premise of gender equality, reflected as it is
in the public division of labour, seems to be
flourishing here. If there is a place in the world
most committed to gender equality, this seems to
be it. Even the country’s foreign policy
advertises itself as a ‘feminist’ foreign policy,
committed to realising the principles of gender
equality. Sweden’s international development
programmes are thus required to make gender
equality the first priority.
But at home, things are a bit different. The equal
division of labour that one imagines is the
private dimension of gender equality — men and
women doing the dishes, purchasing the
groceries and performing the million domestic
chores that are involved in running a home —
are hard to realise even in a country so
committed to gender equality. And there is data
to back this: according to a recent study
published by the European Sociological Review,
equality is not the norm in every single
relationship.
The dishes are a symbol of shared work, of
living a life together that reflects mutual respect
rather than fear.
27
Even more interestingly, the study finds that
relationships in which men discount the
domestic work done by their partners and do not
share equally in it, reveal greater dissatisfaction
with the relationship. In simple terms, husbands
who do not do the dishes in Sweden face the
highest risk of getting dumped.
Sweden is not alone. Another study from
Australia, where (surprise, surprise) men and
women do not share the housework, show
similar results. With far less government support
for realising gender equality in relationships,
Australian women (like so many others in the
rest of the world) find themselves saddled with
hours and hours of extra work once children are
born. This fact, the unwillingness of too many
men to share in the housework, has been linked
to Australia’s very high divorce rate.
The fix to the problem is simple in theory: in
couples where both husband and wife work
outside the home, they must share the domestic
chores or at least responsibility for them. In
couples where only one works outside the home,
it is absolutely crucial that the person doing all
or most of the domestic chores be acknowledged
for their share of the work.
In Pakistan, where there is little or no
commitment to gender equality, the story is even
sadder. Traditional gender roles combined with
the pressures of an urbanising society means that
women are saddled with both a career and all the
responsibility of ensuring that the home runs
smoothly. Old but resilient ideas of manhood
mean that many men are totally unwilling to
share in the housework or even care for the
children. Both are easily dismissed as the realm
of women; the man will be less of a man if he
changes a nappy or if he cleans up the kitchen.
Then again, there are the in-laws, particularly
many mothers-in-law, who stand guard, ensuring
that the work they did must now be heaped on
the new woman in the house. The darling sons
of these women never do the dishes and never
will do the dishes and very few will thank their
wives for doing the work. Unlike the women in
Sweden, who can easily choose divorce,
Pakistani women saddled with all the dishes and
none of the thank-you’s have no recourse but to
sigh and bear it.
Some men and their mothers may consider this a
victory, but this is not true. As any Pakistani
woman knows, a home with such a lopsided
power arrangement, where the separate branches
of governance, male and female, are not
balanced, is not a happy home. Even if it is true
that men have always dominated, husbands have
always ruled the home, what has been forever is
not what can persist forever. As the Swedish and
Australian examples show, ultimately such
arrangements are weak arrangements, built not
on love but on the lack of better options.
Equality in the home, admittedly, is not a
priority for most Pakistanis. Even in this
moment of incipient political change, where the
usual suspects and many others are leveraging
their power and hedging their bets, few pause to
consider that the imbalances of the public sphere
are born of those that are constantly justified in
the private sphere.
When people are raised and reared in an
environment that is often a tyranny, where
power is never evenly distributed and one bossy
force controls everything, they remain ill
equipped to demand anything more in the public
and political spheres. What works at home,
everyone assumes, works everywhere else —
one side with all the power, everyone else with
all the silent hatreds, all the unattended
misgivings.
The dishes, then, are a symbol of so much more
than simply the dishes; sharing in the work of
28
managing a life together reflects mutual respect
rather than absolute fear.
Relationships based on respect, on overcoming
differences and sharing power, ones that ensure
the happiness of all involved, are the bricks and
bones of a truly healthy family. No one wants to
do the dishes, but when everyone participates in
doing them there is little opportunity for secret
hatreds to grow and seethe and simmer.
So it is with everything else; the home is, after
all, the microcosm of the state as a whole, easy
to rule with fear and intimidation but left
vulnerable in its secret resentments. Even if they
are silently borne, the weight of these secret
grudges weighs the bonds that bind. A lifetime
of inequality, of dishes dumped on one person,
of power hogged by one side, is a persistent
threat to the home and to the whole in which it
exists.
The writer is an attorney teaching constitutional
law and political philosophy.
15- Health manifestos
Arif Azad June 10, 2018
The writer is a public health and development
consultant.
IN the run-up to polls, political parties are
polishing their policy preferences and slogans
into manifesto commitments — concrete and
vague. Though detailed manifestos for the 2018
elections are yet to be launched, the PTI has
already given a preview in its first 100 days
programme. Going by the trend of the 2013
manifestos however, one can confidently predict
what is going to be included in those that are
going to be rolled out and what is set to be
excluded in so far as health is concerned.
With health spending stubbornly stuck at
between 0.6 per cent to 0.7pc of GDP over the
years, all major political parties have pledged to
increase health funding. This commitment varies
between 2pc to 6pc of GDP. While both the PTI
and PML-N pledged a funding increase of
between 2pc to 2.5pc, the MQM and ANP
pledged 5pc and 6pc respectively.
One perennial problem with such funding
commitments is that they are invariably
uncosted and go largely unmonitored. As to how
much of the pledged increase was implemented,
no one is the wiser going into the 2018 election.
The result is that it is more likely that the new
manifestos will begin with the same baseline
figure of health spending. Again, all major
political parties are likelier to pledge an increase
ranging from 2pc to 5pc in the new manifestos.
In 2013, there was across-the-board consensus
among all party manifestos on extending health
coverage. And the consensual way to do it is
through health insurance schemes. Both the PTI
and PML-N governments have introduced some
version of health insurance schemes. This is
commendable at a time when out-of-pocket
expenses are sky-high, causing medical
impoverishment, and chronic underfunding is a
perennial issue. Curiously, of all the major
parties, only the JUI-F’s manifesto did not
contain any reference to health spending or
national insurance schemes or any other
significant health-related commitment.
We need plans for an affordable health sector.
Immunisation was also an integral part of the
2013 manifestos. Yet this life-saving health
intervention was glaringly missing from the
manifestos of the JUI-F and ANP in 2013. Why?
One can only conjecture that extremist
objections to vaccination might have caused this
omission. Other common features have been
mother and child health programmes, investment
in tertiary care, family planning, etc.
Primary healthcare — an all-encompassing
health component — has been missing, with
29
only the PTI and ANP nodding feebly in this
direction. PHC was incorporated as part of the
mother and child health intervention in all
manifestos. Overall, the previous manifestos
tended towards the curative side of health rather
than the preventive side that can not only
prevent and control disease but can also save
money spent on cure.
Though population control has not featured in all
the manifestos, the PTI and PML-N made
manifesto commitments to tackle the population.
Mercifully, commitments to safe and clean
drinking water were enshrined in the 2013
manifestos of all parties. The PTI’s previous
manifesto committed to tackle health as an
emergency issue. However, whether health was
taken head-on with the promised urgency is
another question.
The 2018 manifestos have yet to be unveiled,
but one thing can be said with some degree of
certainty: we are going to see more of the same
in the new manifestos. We are going to see the
same analysis of the issue in the manifestos,
with the same emphasis on highly visible
spending on eye-catching and vote-winning
health programmes and hospital buildings.
Even though health-related manifesto
commitments do address genuine and urgent
medical and curative needs, the larger and
integrated health vision that binds together both
the curative and preventive sides has been
notably absent from the parties’ electoral
promises.
Unless they do not engage in a broader
conversation about a well-integrated health
vision underpinned by regular funding that is
progressively increased, the manifestos are set to
rehash old platitudes about health challenges and
repetitive strategies of throwing money at vote-
winning health challenges. They should instead
focus on tackling underlying wider determinants
of health such as nutrition, housing, environment
and population.
My wish list for the 2018 manifestos is for
primary healthcare, universal health coverage,
access to affordable healthcare and medicine,
public health and regulation of private
healthcare, eye health and non-communicable
diseases to be included in the 2018 election
manifestos.
This is an ideal opportunity for political parties
across the spectrum to demonstrate a bold vision
for an integrated, well-funded, affordable health
sector that addresses both the curative and
preventive aspects of health. With more of the
same no longer a sustainable option, the need for
a new outlook on health is urgent.
16- Human rights and peace
Munir Akram June 24, 2018
The writer is a former Pakistan ambassador to
the UN.
A WEEK ago, the UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights issued the first-ever report on
human rights in Kashmir. “This is not a conflict
frozen in time,” said the UNHCHR head. “It is a
conflict that has robbed millions of their basic
human rights and continues to inflict untold
suffering.” The report has urged the UN Human
Rights Council “to consider establishing a
Commission of Inquiry to conduct a
comprehensive and independent international
investigation into allegations of human rights
violations in Kashmir”.
The report was prepared through “remote
monitoring” since India refused to accept an on-
site visit by the UN high commissioner’s office
to India-held Kashmir and Pakistan made its
acceptance of access to Azad Jammu & Kashmir
conditional on India’s acceptance. The report,
obviously to project objectivity and impartiality,
30
creates a false equivalence between the human
rights ‘developments’ in IHK and human rights
‘concerns’ in AJK and Gilgit-Baltistan. Further,
to soften the blow for India, the historical review
of the dispute is partial; it refers to “the Indian
state” of Jammu and Kashmir and omits
reference to India’s refusal to implement the
Security Council’s plebiscite resolutions.
Nevertheless, the 49-page report devotes over 20
pages to the violations in IHK and five pages to
alleged ‘concerns’ in “Pakistan-administered
Kashmir” which, the report admits, are of a
“different magnitude”, and mostly “structural”.
The report’s section on ‘Human rights violations
in Indian-administered Kashmir’ covers: lack of
access to justice; military courts; administrative
detentions; excessive use of force; killings
perpetrated in 2018; use of pellet shotguns;
arbitrary arrests; torture; enforced
disappearances; violations of the rights to health,
education and freedom of expression; reprisals
against human rights defenders and journalists;
and sexual violence.
How can the first UN report on human rights in
Kashmir be utilised to alleviate the people’s
suffering?
The report notes that this “round” of protests,
which started after Burhan Wani’s killing on
July 8, 2016, is “on an unprecedented scale” and
“involve(s) more people” mostly more “young,
middle-class Kashmiris including females”.
Since July 2016, 145 Kashmiris have been killed
by the Indian security forces. The use of pellet
shotguns killed 17 people and injured 6,221
between July 2016 to August 2017. The
impunity for human rights violations and lack of
access to justice (provided largely by the Special
Powers Act and the Public Safety Act) are “key
human rights challenges”. There is “total
impunity for enforced and involuntary
disappearances” and “chronic impunity for
sexual violence”. Attempts to seek justice for the
gang rape 27 years ago of 23 Kashmiri women
by Indian soldiers at Kunan-Poshpura “has been
blocked ... at different levels”.
The false equivalence between IHK and AJK,
the reference to the “Indian state” of Jammu and
Kashmir and the skewed historical review make
it impossible for Pakistan to endorse the report
in its entirety. Nevertheless, Islamabad must
examine how this first UN report on human
rights in Kashmir can be utilised to alleviate the
cruel suffering of the Kashmiri people and the
danger of another war between Pakistan and
India.
Pakistan’s capacity to support the freedom
struggle of the Kashmiri people has been
significantly compromised by India’s success in
equating it with ‘Islamist terrorism’ as well as
US pressure to refrain from doing so. Yet,
despite this, India’s half-a-million-man army in
IHK has been unable to suppress the popular and
heroic revolt by a third generation of Kashmiris.
Unable to admit this, India seeks to deflect
world attention from its brutal tactics by blaming
Pakistan for the infrequent militant violence in
IHK.
In the aftermath of a major militant attack, Modi
and his BJP cohorts may be tempted to actually
undertake ‘punitive’ strikes across the Line of
Control especially to burnish the BJP’s waning
popularity in the run-up to the 2019 Indian
elections. Significantly, the BJP has ousted chief
minister Mehbooba Mufti and now rules
Kashmir directly from New Delhi.
A perceptive article by Prem Shankar Jha on
The Wire analyses ‘The BJP’s Dangerous End
Game in Kashmir’. Jha argues that the BJP’s
strategy for victory in 2019 is “to push Hindu-
Muslim polarisation”. This strategy is “now
yielding diminishing returns on the mainland. It
is therefore, time to look outside the country for
31
a source of this (Muslim) threat. The obvious
candidate is Pakistan, and the obvious place to
make this threat credible is Kashmir”.
Despite the shortcomings of the report, Pakistan
should actively support the establishment of the
proposed commission of inquiry by the Human
Rights Council and offer to allow its visit to
AJK. It should lobby for this decision with
members of the OIC, Western countries which
espouse human rights and the ‘human rights
community’. It should be argued that an
amelioration of India’s human rights violations
will serve to moderate militancy in IHK and thus
also serve the cause of peace.
If India rejects the establishment of the
commission, Pakistan should utilise the UN
report to seek support for other specific means
of ending the human rights violations in IHK.
These could include:
— identification of individual members of
India’s security forces responsible for violations
such as shooting and killing and maiming
unarmed demonstrators and for sexual violence.
Charges can be brought against them under the
Geneva, Genocide and other Conventions;
— propose a resolution challenging the legality
of India’s emergency laws in IHK;
— propose the adoption of a UN convention
outlawing the use of pellet shotguns and similar
methods against peaceful demonstrators;
— demand that the ICRC and other
organisations seek humanitarian access to
Kashmiri prisoners and call for the release of
political prisoners;
— propose a resolution calling for India’s
observance of the rights to freedom of
expression and association in IHK and the right
of Kashmiris to travel outside India.
— demand justice for the victims of sexual
violence in IHK, especially the mass rape
perpetrated in Kunan-Poshpura.
Simultaneously, Pakistan should consider
approaching the ICJ and the UN Security
Council to declare that India’s human rights
violations in IHK constitute crimes against
humanity and war crimes.
If Pakistan, with the support of the ‘human
rights community’, can mobilise credible
pressure on India, it will help to alleviate the
suffering of the Kashmiri people, reduce militant
violence and remove any justification for Indian
aggression against Pakistan, thus serving the
cause of both human rights and peace.
17- The 31st Amendment
Mohammad Ali Babakhel June 24, 2018
The writer is the author of Pakistan: In Between
Extremism and Peace.
UNLIKE Swat, Dir and Chitral, which were
merged in 1969 by Gen Yahya Khan, the
architect of the Fata-KP merger was a
democratic government, in consensus with the
military. Following successful military
operations in the area, the constitutional
amendment to merge Fata with KP may finally
bring relief to its people.
The 31st Amendment will bring legal and
administrative changes and alter the territorial,
demographic and political dynamics of the area
under direct administrative control of KP —
which has seen its total area increased to
101,741 square kilometres and population size to
32 million.
Historically, even after 1971, Pakistan remained
an overcentralised federation unwilling to
devolve its powers. While the 18th Amendment
and continuity of democracy has encouraged a
healthy trend towards smaller administrative
32
units, in this regard, merger was the only
strategically and financially viable option.
Nonetheless, its success will encourage debate
about the creation of new provinces.
The amendment will reduce seats in the upper
and lower houses of parliament. Fata’s 12
existing NA seats will go down to six (the NA’s
total seats will go from 342 to 336). Senate seats
will also reduce from 104 to 96. With 21 seats in
the KP Assembly, the total will increase from
124 to 145. In KP, Fata’s women and minorities
will have reserved seats. But Fata’s electoral
history suggests that affluent independents and
clergy will try to exert influence over KP’s
governance, which could lead to political
instability. And though the president’s and
governor’s indirect remote-controlled powers
have been brought to an end, increased political
awareness may lead to a call for a more defined
power-sharing formula between KP’s settled and
tribal districts.
Change in Fata’s status alone may not pay
dividends.
A constitutional amendment alone may not pay
dividends; hence, administrative reconsolidation
is inevitable. Harmonising KP’s and Fata’s units
will be a gigantic task. It may be advisable not to
disturb Fata’s administrative limits initially, but
certain steps (including creating new units) are
unavoidable. A practical option is to annex
Fata’s seven agencies with adjoining divisions
and six frontier regions with adjoining districts.
Given that the centre pledged Rs100 billion for
Fata’s development, the reforms’ success will
depend on friendly working ties between the
central and provincial governments. Without
this, the province may not be able to sustain the
financial burden.
The merger effectively eliminates the strategic
buffer along the Durand Line, bringing KP
directly in the line of fire from the Afghan
border. The Levies and khasadars will have to be
reorganised and merged to improve border
management, and the Frontier Constabulary’s
mandate too will have to be redefined. Merger
will also eliminate ungoverned spaces once used
by violent non-state actors, thus spawning the
need for a modern police to ensure stability in
Fata and the settled districts.
Tribes entitled to perks and privileges under the
old system may resist the merger. In KP, job
applicants from Fata already compete in zone
‘one’, but they may look for protective measures
for federal jobs. Merger may also affect the
admissions quota in educational institutions. A
system similar to Sindh’s rural quota may be
introduced for the former tribal areas in federal
services.
Previously, the administration’s writ in Fata was
restricted to major towns but now the
government’s writ will extend to every village.
To ensure stability, extension of land settlement,
infrastructure and communications systems are
necessary.
The shift from a colonial tribe-centric to a
modern individual-centric model is monumental,
not only for law and order but also for basic
provisions. This will be a new experience for
Fata’s people, who for over 100 years have been
governed as groups and subject to collective
punishment, despite this proving ineffective in
curbing the onset of militancy. Thus, the
opportunity to draft a new social contract
between individuals and the state is ripe. A
public-friendly institutional apparatus must be
set up to respond to the people’s needs rather
than ‘needs’ as defined in the past by the maliks.
Fata’s successful transition will be dependent
upon taxation, law and order and development;
however, mismanagement may repeat its sordid
history.
33
While the formal constitutional end of tribal
status took more than 70 years since
Independence to achieve, who knows how much
more time transformation may take. However,
efforts towards abolishing a draconian and
decadent system are worth appreciating. Had it
not been replaced, it would have become a
morass of mismanagement and corruption, with
serious ramifications for the security of the state.
A careful approach is needed to tread on the path
of reforms.
18- Behind the wheel, at last
Editorial June 26, 2018
ON Sunday, Saudi Arabia finally ended its
ignominious status of being the last country
in the world to prohibit women from driving.
As the stroke of midnight heralded the repeal
of this unofficial but long-enforced ban, many
women immediately took to the streets — for
the first time, behind the wheel — as
passersby cheered and police officers
proffered flowers. In a country where, despite
some modest easing of restrictions, women
are still forced to rely on the goodwill of their
male guardians to exercise any kind of
agency, such images are immensely resonant.
Yet, while the move is arguably one of the
most socially consequential reforms
introduced by Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman, it is still open to question to what
extent it will engender women’s emancipation
in the kingdom. The material ramifications
are obvious — Bloomberg estimates the
dividends of this move alone may rake in
$90bn by 2030, and the empowerment of
women through economic participation is
widely acknowledged — but navigating the
social implications for the conservative
kingdom is far more fraught.
As is typically the case with any women’s rights
issue, even in the West, the process of lifting the
ban has been highly contentious. Perhaps in an
effort to satiate the resentments of its more
regressive traditionalists, the state recently
cracked down on many of the prominent
campaigners of the movement to let women
drive. At least eight are still detained, and liable
to face charges in counter-terrorism courts for
their peaceful dissent. Their incarcerations are
thus a stain on the ‘modernised’ image of Saudi
Arabia the crown prince would like to project.
While he deserves a measure of credit for giving
his female subjects permission to drive, the
decades-long struggle of such activists is what
truly enabled this moment. As the upheavals of
the Arab Spring made clear, the power of the
privileged is not inviolable. It would be unwise
for Saudi authorities to resist the unstoppable
force of a people determined to be the drivers of
their own destinies.
19- Short of water?
Hassan Abbas June 28, 2018
The writer is an expert in hydrology and water
resources.
‘PAKISTAN will run out of water by 2025’ or
‘droughts of unprecedented proportions are
going to hit the country within five to seven
years’.
Really? How?
According USAID’s Factsheet 2017, Pakistan is
now a food-surplus country. But this food
surplus annually consumes 104 million acre feet
(MAF) of water. In Pakistan’s Water Economy
Running Dry, John Briscoe pointed out that
wastage of water in Pakistan’s irrigation is one
of the highest in the world. Indian Punjab
produces 30 per cent more with the same
quantity of water while California 50pc more.
Sandra Postel pointed out in her 1992 book Last
Oasis that irrigation efficiency can be improved
by up to 50pc by using the available
34
technologies. However, great strides have been
made since the early 1990s and today’s water-
saving technologies can enable our farmers to
produce surplus food using less than 50 MAF of
water.
According to international standards, 35 gallons
per capita per day is enough for a healthy
lifestyle. If we want to supply this amount of
water to every citizen in the country, all we need
is 12 MAF. Including the generally accepted
30pc losses in water supply systems, the
domestic requirement for 207 million
individuals here does not exceed 17 MAF.
Our problem lies in the pattern of consumption.
Pakistan’s industrial consumption is under 10
MAF. So, the actual water requirement to fulfil
all domestic, industrial and food security needs
is less than 77 MAF, whereas the country’s river
flows alone contribute an average of 145 MAF
of water annually.
We are neither water deficient nor water scarce.
There is general apprehension that climate
change will reduce our natural water supply;
however, the data obtained from the University
of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in the
UK shows that the country’s rainfall has not
depleted in the past 115 years. Actually, there is
a rising trend.
The resource is in abundance. The problem lies
in our consumptive patterns; 104 MAF goes into
irrigation, out of which 54 MAF is preventable
wastage — if we invest in efficient irrigation
practices.
The urban and industrial sectors remain poorly
served despite manageable requirements of 27
MAF or thereabouts. In most cities, domestic
and industrial needs can be met by investments
in proper aquifer management, prevention of
pollution in aquifers and streams, correct
handling of storm water run-off, and appropriate
disposal of sewerage effluents.
Investment in the irrigation, urban and industrial
sectors will not only lead to water security in
these sectors but also synergistically fix the
problems of water logging and salinity, while
eliminating stagnant pools that are a breeding
ground for disease-carrying vectors. Natural
water courses which have currently turned into
sewage drains will change from the eyesores
they currently are to the assets they once were,
and many environmental benefits will become
evident.
Then why all this scaremongering?
The first set of beneficiaries of such an attitude
are poorly funded ‘scientific’ organisations
struggling to persuade funding agencies to give
‘research’ money for their ‘urgent’ studies that
would prevent the ‘looming doom’. When funds
are acquired, they can justify their existence, and
their so-called scholars can add the names of a
few publications to their CVs.
The next set of beneficiaries are the ‘donors’
feeding the funding agencies. If a ‘looming
doom’ successfully translates into a mega
project, the ‘donors’ are more than compensated
by the business deals that come up — hefty
construction contracts, expensive machine, and
large material supplies. The bigger the scare, the
bigger the project and the bigger the dividends.
Scaremongering, however, skews the investment
priorities.
Anxiety and panic are generally followed by
tricky but believable so-called solutions focusing
on large infrastructure investments through
borrowed money. For example, instead of
targeting the wastage of 54 MAF in the
irrigation sector, the focus is on damming and
diverting the 20-odd MAF of water that makes it
to the Indus delta, while there is spending in
35
billions of dollars on projects such as dams —
completely ignoring the impact of erosion of the
river delta and the silting of dams (as happened
in the case of the Mangla and Tarbela dams),
and exacerbating issues such as wastage in the
irrigation sector, water-logging, salinity, etc.
Proper aquifer management, improving
irrigation efficiency and checking pollution do
not involve very large sums of money and
expensive contracts and are sustainable in the
long run.
Dependence on the wrong advice and foreign
loans is no more an option. We should
understand our own system, our strengths and
believe in ourselves to get out of the quagmire
we are in. It is time to embrace perpetual
sustainability and stop being fooled by
investment modules that contribute to
scaremongering.
20- Managing water in Pakistan
AADIL AAMIR
At the Millennium Summit, the United Nations
(UN) addressed the effects of economic water
scarcity by listing safe drinking water as an
International Development Goal. The goal
aimed to achieve reduction in the percentage of
population without sustainable drinking water by
the year 2015. Pakistan failed to reach the goal
and the UN replaced Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) with the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs).
Pakistan must now pursue water security and
provision as a national security goal followed by
a national water policy. In addition to the water
SDGs, the policy must pursue the overarching
goal of ensuring a sustainable model of water
provision for drinking, municipal and economic
requirements.
The need for integrated planning for
development, efficient use and equitable
distribution of water is undeniable and is the
start of any policy solution geared to take on the
water conundrum that plagues Pakistan.
The Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) had
prepared a draft national water policy that
covered the provision of safe drinking water,
hygienic sanitation, protection of water
resources, flood management, water quality,
treatment of water and water reuse. This draft
policy not only gave pause to those who believe
Pakistan’s water situation is insurmountable but
also proved to pessimists the existence of
intelligentsia in the country. Much has been said
on ‘what to do’ but the state’s policy makers
must now focus on ‘how to do’ it.
The solution to Pakistan’s water scarcity
conundrum is uncomplicated. A national
integrated policy that involves all ministries
concerned and inculcates all aspects of ‘water’
is the ultimate policy solution to reverse the
present water predicament
Ad-hoc and crisis driven executive policy
decisions pertaining to water are limited by five
year electoral cycles and the inherent fallacy
with this situation is that it is not only incoherent
but it also pushes Pakistan deeper into the abyss
in the long run. The state requires a national
water policy that is not only integrated but is
also cognizant of international politics
concerning water. The policy solution must be
entrenched in two essential elements, which are;
water development and water management.
Water development pertains to construction of
dams, alternative energy sources and an agreed
framework for water sharing with Afghanistan
and India. Dams such as the Kalabagh Dam
must be alleviated from the shadows of domestic
politics and must be viewed with a national
interest lens. A short term strategic imperative
36
must be sough with nuclear power plants so that
the reversal of the energy crisis is undertaken
and Pakistan’s water storage capacity is
increased simultaneously.
In addition to this, a diplomatic framework with
Afghanistan must be reached before India
successfully aids the former in building dams
with storage capacity which would result in
depleted levels of water inflow for Pakistan. If
policy makers decide to act, they will realise that
as a lower riparian state, Pakistan has several
international laws that favour it. Pakistan Water
Partnership (PWP) director recently told a media
outlet, “The Indian storage capacity is 30
percent, which they struggle to increase up to
50pc, while Pakistan with 140 MAF of available
water resources has a capacity to store only 7pc,
which is a real source of concern for
policymakers.”
Moreover, water management can be further
stratified into efficient use of water in the
agricultural and industrial sectors, flood
management, conserving rainfall, treatment of
water and educating the population about
conservation of water.
The government must actively and unrelentingly
ask the industrial and agricultural sectors to
switch to water efficient production techniques.
Additionally, polluting by-products must be
curtailed as they not only destroy the
environment but also adulterate water supply
sources. Similarly, production of water intensive
crops must be curbed and provision of water to
these sectors must be shifted from rotation based
to demand oriented so that wastage of the
resource can be managed more efficiently.
Flood management, in Pakistan’s context, is an
aspect of water management that warrants the
lion’s share of attention. Dams with water
storage capacity must be built and only then can
a viable and sustainable long term water policy
solution can be pondered upon.
The population must be educated about
conservation of rain water and a propaganda
wave must be launched that plants the seeds of
Pakistan’s water revolution pertaining to the
elixir’s conservation at the personal and
household levels.
Countries such as Namibia, Australia and
Singapore are already drinking recycled water
which demonstrates that treated waste water can
be safe, clean and fit for human consumption.
Additionally, it significantly assists in water
consumption.
The solution to Pakistan’s water scarcity
conundrum is uncomplicated. A national
integrated policy that involves all ministries
concerned and inculcates all aspects of ‘water’ is
the ultimate policy solution to reverse the
present water predicament.
The importance of undertaking this daunting yet
surmountable challenge is undisputed. Policy
makers must muster the courage to rise up above
domestic politics and start by including water
security as a pillar of national security. Those
who do not believe this to be a national security
problem are unaware of the black hole that
Pakistan is heading towards. If Pakistan is to
exist through the twenty first century, it must
have water.
Aadil Aamir
The writer is a member of staff.
37
 21- Fallout in Kashmir
A.G. Noorani June 30, 2018
The writer is an author and lawyer based in
Mumbai.
WHEN Mufti Mohammed Sayeed justified the
unscrupulous coalition of his Valley-centred
PDP with the Jammu-based BJP in 2014, as the
meeting of the North Pole and the South Pole, he
did not realise that this puerile metaphor would
provide the best explanation for its break up.
The two poles can never meet. The BJP quit the
coalition on June 19, 2018. Each found its base,
regional and religious, shrinking. Next year, if
not sooner, the BJP will go to the polls in a
general election. Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s popularity is on the decline. His first
priority is to consolidate his Hindu vote bank.
In 2014, the BJP sensed a rare, fleeting
opportunity to acquire a presence in the Valley.
Parleys were begun with Mufti Mohammed
Sayeed before the 2014 assembly elections.
They yielded a fractured verdict for a house of
87–28 seats for the PDP; 25 for the BJP; 15 for
the National Conference run by father and son
Farooq and Omar Abdullah; and 12 for the
Congress. The BJP’s seats came from Jammu
alone. It did not win a single seat in the Valley
or in Ladakh. The PDP won three seats from
Jammu and 25 in the Valley; the NC won 12
seats in the Valley and three in Jammu; the
Congress won five from Jammu, four from the
Valley and three from Ladakh.
The PDP-BJP coalition was always an
untenable alliance.
The BJP sought to form a government in Jammu
and Kashmir (J&K) by itself, by winning all the
seats in Jammu and the Buddhist-dominated
Ladakh, and stealing the rest from others in the
Valley. Sensing this, the PDP made an all-out
effort to defeat the BJP. While Kashmir’s
Muslims ignored the Hurriyat’s appeal to
boycott the polls, they felt cheated when the
PDP forged a coalition with the BJP.
The coalition’s Agenda of Alliance was
deceptive, with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh’s writ dominating its terms. The PDP had
demanded ‘self-rule’, greater than the NC’s
demand for ‘autonomy’; plus an external
dimension. There must be an accord with
Pakistan on mechanisms to link the two halves
of Kashmir and, eventually, for a settlement of
the Kashmir dispute. All this was omitted in the
agenda. It recorded the two sides’ disagreement
on Article 370, the Indian constitution’s
guarantee of ‘autonomy’, which has been
completely hollowed out.
Modi made no secret of his agenda. When he
went to Srinagar for the Mufti’s swearing in as
chief minister in March 2015, he snubbed the
chief minister when he pleaded for efforts at a
settlement with Pakistan. The coalition stumbled
along even after Mehbooba became chief
minister after her father’s death. The power
upsurge after Burhan Wani’s killing in 2018
found her wanting. She stooped so low as even
to justify the use of pellet guns against her own
people.
Polls were due in 2020, but as the clock ticked
away, she found her unpopularity increase. The
BJP also found that its base in Jammu was
shrinking. The tipping point was the rape-
murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in
Jammu, whose body was found on Jan 17, 2018.
Two of the BJP’s ministers in Jammu supported
the perpetrators. The worm began to turn.
Mehbooba secured their resignation on April 15.
The BJP replaced them with more rabid
Jammuites.
Mehbooba pressed the prime minister and home
minister to initiate a process of conciliation
within J&K, and with Pakistan. She knew that
38
Kashmiris yearn for a settlement of the dispute.
This was contrary to Modi’s policy. And in
J&K, the Indian army launched Operation All
Out in 2017, with the BJP’s strategic adviser
stating that the government would “eliminate all
militants”.
In retrospect, it is clear that that what followed
her entreaties was a charade to serve as a prelude
to a crackdown. The rape case had exposed the
depths of the divide between Jammu and Kash-
mir. What shocked everyone was the spurt in
local recruitment in the ranks of fighters. It was
a response to the growing vandalism of the
security forces.
In mid-May came the ‘unilateral’ ceasefire
during Ramazan. The random cordon-and-search
operations were stopped, but not those based on
specific intelligence.
Nothing exposed New Delhi’s insincerity more
than Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s appeal for
talks in Srinagar on May 26, 2018. “If Hurriyat
is ready to talk, we have no problem, we are
ready to talk.” Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s response
on May 29 was positive. If the government
“gives clarity on what it wants to talk about and
speaks in one language [they] are ready to join
the process”. India has nothing to offer to them.
On June 17, the ceasefire was ended. On June
19, the BJP ended the coalition, paving the way
for governor’s rule.
The BJP has given contradictory reasons for the
step. The real reasons are the polls in 2019 and
the centre’s desire to get the PDP out of the way
to crush the militancy in J&K. It will not work.
The situation will get worse.
22- Economic crisis management
Rashid Amjad June 30, 2018
The writer is professor at the Lahore School of
Economics and former vice chancellor of the
Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.
DO forgive the people of this country if they
cannot make sense of our present economic
predicament. On one hand, they are told
repeatedly (and correctly) that the economy has
started reaping the benefits of CPEC — the
‘game changer’ — in the form of significantly
reduced load-shedding, an upturn in investment
and a not unimpressive recovery in economic
growth. At the same time, they are told that the
economy is in dire straits!
A severe foreign exchange crisis threatens to
reverse significantly the recent economic upturn.
Our import bill exceeds our export earnings,
including remittances, and if we add to it the
repayments due on foreign loans, the gap is
immense: $25 billion or over eight per cent of
GDP. The country’s foreign exchange reserves
are fast running out. We have already reached
the critical level of just two months of imports.
The alarm bells are ringing as foreign exchange
reserves continue to lose almost $1bn a month.
We must now wake up to the reality that, unless
we can raise $8bn to $10bn in new loans and
obtain a roll-over of existing debts, we could
well face default on our debt payments — which
is a polite way of saying ‘bankruptcy’.
The current state of economic affairs requires
that some important decisions be taken.
The economic problem we now face cannot be
traced solely to the previous government’s
stubborn refusal to adjust the overvalued
exchange rate. Our economic managers appear
to have lost the plot over the last two years. For
one, they were unable to keep track of CPEC-
funded investment flows, whose exact form of
39
financing has never been made transparent. The
second and perhaps more important reason for
our plight is that the federal and some provincial
governments decided to go on a spending spree
— launching projects, oblivious to their cost and
foreign exchange implications. This is not new:
the last two governments were equally guilty.
The current state of economic affairs cannot be
allowed to continue. Some important decisions
may need to be taken in the crunch, even by the
interim government in the national interest. The
simple reason for this is that, unless some
immediate measures are taken to restore
business confidence and, most importantly, to
calm the foreign exchange market, the exchange
rate will continue to fall. In the extreme
scenario, we could enter a freefall situation.
Given this uncertainty, anybody with some
staying power will not be willing to part with
their US dollars, betting that the rupee will fall
even more. Those wanting foreign exchange will
be chasing less and less available in the market.
Yet, nobody will bail us out, whether it is the
IMF or anyone else, without imposing
‘conditionalities’ — primarily to ensure that
they get their money back. Here, our team of
negotiators (from the finance ministry and State
Bank) must learn some lessons from the past.
The last two governments entered into
agreements with the IMF almost immediately
upon coming into power. The 2008 agreement
with the IMF was an unmitigated disaster in
terms of its impact on growth, which fell from
near 6pc to less than 1pc. The economy never
quite recovered after that. The 2013 agreement,
partly due to the groundwork done by the
interim finance team, was able to avoid this
shock through a more gradual decline in the
fiscal deficit. However, agreeing almost
immediately to a reforms agenda was unwise.
To the extent possible, the new government
should seek some time to finalise the content
and sequencing of economic reforms, for which
it can take full ownership and deliver.
The immediate challenge will be to agree to a
stabilisation package, at an appropriate speed
and sequencing of adjustment, that protects the
country’s economic interests. Despite its weak
bargaining position, the government should
work towards a stabilisation package in which
the burden of adjustment primarily falls in a
sequenced way on the fiscal deficit rather than
on the exchange rate. This is not to deny that we
need to adjust the exchange rate, but we must
keep this limited to its current overvaluation. We
must remain fully aware that the cost of a very
steep devaluation is especially high for our
heavily indebted economy. Doing so would also
raise the value of imports, especially oil
products, fuelling inflation and eroding
competitiveness. To that extent, it would
neutralise the gains from devaluation. Most
importantly, it would increase the cost of our
defence preparedness, which in the current
volatile situation cannot be compromised at any
cost.
Of course, cutting the fiscal deficit is not without
cost, even if the decline is made gradual. A 2pc
drop in the fiscal deficit would reduce our
current GDP growth of around 6pc to near half
this amount. Most importantly, to counteract
this, we must put in place measures that allow
the recent growth momentum to build on the
revival of manufacturing and upturn in exports
and create the climate to encourage the much-
awaited revival in private investment. All this
will ensure that the decline in GDP growth is
minimised. The emphasis here should be on
reversing the anti-export trade and tariff regime
and making a serious attempt at cutting down on
losses from public-sector enterprises. This
should entail including workers and their elected
representatives in any restructuring negotiations.
40
Over the medium to long term, the policy focus
must shift to expediting coal mining in Thar
(which could finally remove our dependency on
imported oil and gas), preserving and
supplementing our water resources, and
switching the emphasis in education from
merely increasing numbers to improving the
quality of education imparted and the social
skills of our graduates.

If seriously and successfully monitored and

implemented, this agenda will likely keep the
newly elected government busy through its term
in office. Come 2023, it will be judged on these
achievements.

41