War euphoria

Source: The News
Date: September 30, 2011

War euphoria by Harris Khalique

The televangelists, holy entertainers and the know-it-all jugglers of news and views are having a field day in Pakistan. What else would sell better than the war rhetoric in the living rooms of the middleclass urban and semi-urban populations? That is where the ratings for programmes and talk shows are gathered from. These are the people who use the fast-moving consumer goods, more or less the only manufacturing left in the country, and enjoy the different packages offered by cell phone companies. The commercials of these products make it possible for the private television channels to continue programming.

Therefore, profit-making has to be quick, sharp and maximum. The programming has to suit the palate of the most conservative political class in Pakistan. Sorry. Not conservative, confused and conservative. Mainstream electronic media is not capable of – or not interested at all in – bringing both knowledge and sanity to its audience by apprising them of the challenges Pakistan will face if there is an abrupt severance of relationship between the two allies in the war on terror. Therefore, for a change, the country we wish to fight and destroy this time around is not India but the United States of America.

When those running different institutions of the state of Pakistan are undoubtedly upset with the Americans, they want de-escalation in tensions, continuation of a constructive dialogue and a negotiated settlement. The corps commanders had no choice but to show restraint when they met and so did the prime minister and his cabinet members. The All Parties' Conference is underway at the time of writing this piece and it is an important initiative in terms of taking all political forces on board.

The prime minister in his opening remarks mentioned the willingness of the government to engage with the Americans and resolve any outstanding issues, although he was firm and forceful at the same time. This is because those running the affairs of the state, whatever their competence level may be, fully realise where the country stands in these difficult times, economically, politically and militarily.

But our media is playing a dangerous game by whipping up emotions of an already confused and conservative populace. Showing war footage from 1965 and 1971, playing war anthems, even if that happened once or twice, and airing provocative programmes where war-mongers are invited to speak or are taken on the phone as experts is strengthening a particular mindset. This mindset is suicidal, bigoted and jingoistic. It has landed us into trouble in the past, brought embarrassment internationally in the present and making us implode as a country and society in not too distant future.

Let us be honest to ourselves. Even progressive Americans cannot hold a brief for the foreign policy pursued by the Americans since the Second World War, leave alone someone coming from the third world. But in the case of Pakistan, who decided to side with the Americans and why since the times of Seato and Cento in Gen Ayub's era? Who decided to make Pakistan into the frontline state in America's war against the Soviets under Gen Zia? Who decided to become the closest non-Nato ally of the Americans under Gen Musharraf? Who has created the reliance on American military aid, the need for American development aid and dependence on international financial institutions dominated by the Americans? Who do we trade with the most? Why do half of us wish our children to study in the US and the rest wish to emigrate themselves? What's gone wrong now then? I rest my case.

The writer is an Islamabad-based poet and author. Email: harris. khalique@gmail.com

Link: http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=70109&Cat=9

Costs of Poor Planning By Naseer Memon

Costs of Poor Planning

 

By Naseer Memon

Daily Dawn-22nd Sept 2011

Link: http://www.dawn.com/2011/09/22/costs-of-poor-planning.html

THE Planning Commission issued a startling analytical review of the public-sector development portfolio some time ago. The document is a testament to the systematic institutional decay witnessed in the planning of public-sector development.

The country’s annual budget is normally defined by the ‘three Ds’: defence, debt servicing and development. Ideally, there needs to be a balance between these expenditures but in Pakistan, the first two are sacred while the third is routinely compromised on account of a paucity of funds. During the 2010-11 period, the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) was fixed at Rs280bn. Subsequently, the foreseen revenue shortfall curtailed it by Rs100bn.

The report acknowledges the burgeoning PSDP development deficit and reveals that the current throw-forward has reached the staggering sum of Rs3.1tr with over 1,800 crawling projects. Logically, it would require Rs600bn a year over the next five years if even an elusive moratorium on new projects is applied. If the current size of the federal PSDP is taken as a benchmark, the time lag would be 15 years — not accounting for project delays and increased costs.

PSDP projects are normally comprised of four mains sectors: infrastructure (energy, railroads, ports, roads, etc), social development (education, health, water, etc), balanced development (special programmes for less developed areas) and production (agriculture, industry and minerals, etc). The current throw-forward pertains predominantly to projects concerning infrastructure: some 409 projects are buried under a crippling future estimate of Rs2.4tr against the paltry allocation of Rs135bn under the previous PSDP. This is followed by the social sector with 1,227 projects costing Rs850bn having a throw-forward of Rs0.58tr.

Within projects related to infrastructure, almost half of the throw-forward is dedicated to the power and energy sectors. A throw-forward analysis in the social sector shows health as a major victim, with an estimated 25 per cent share in the deficit.

Education and higher education are the other major victims.

Ironically, the social sector is a vehicle to achieve key human development targets under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The social sector has more than 1,200 projects in its portfolio, which accounts for one-fifth of the overall throw-forward.

The analysis identifies five key reasons for the debilitating throw-forward. It includes the approval of provincial projects without due consideration, frequent cuts in the PSDP due to resource crunches, weak feasibilities, cost overrun and ignoring public-private partnerships. Yet this report is nothing but a confession of sins, lacking any avenue of atonement. While the document brings valuable facts to light, it skirts around the institutional reasons for this state of affairs.

The Planning Commission is charged with the stewardship of the planning process, the sanctity of which it is mandated to safeguard. Poor appraisal processes that succumb to political pressures, the haemorrhaging of professional and qualified human resources and indecent haste in the project approval process have plagued the public-sector planning process. This has become particularly evident in recent years: the volume of throw-forward doubled within the last five years. Politicians alone could not have done this without the collusion of the planning wizards.

Regardless, the situation does not reflect well on a dispensation which has yet to demonstrate better sense in delivering development benefits to the citizens. In its good years, project appraisal would take two months. The length of this process has, by now, shrunk to a few hours with hardly any critical appraisal taking place.

The Planning Commission lacks the professional will and competence to shield the planning process from the demands made by the project’s proponents. Governments announce and inaugurate projects to gain political mileage while higher-level government offices do not understand the value of and intricacies involved in the development process. With a view to gaining popularity and securing their vote bank, they make generous announcements and often gloss over procedural imperatives.

The role of the Planning Commission is to protect the planning process; yet this is flagrantly compromised to appease the people at the helm of affairs. The Central Development Working Party has itself vitiated planning prerequisites by approving projects without the mandatory scrutiny. Equity in benefits determines the political economy of development; this is very often simply ignored. Certain favoured constituencies receive huge amounts of funding without justification, which eventually puts society under heavy strain.

Likewise, processing the PC-1 without a proper PC-2 is common. The PC-2 is a prequel to PC-1 that has to establish the feasibility of any project. A glaring example of this is the Mangla dam-raising project. The resettlement aspect was ignored at the planning stage. Now that the structure is complete, the project is dogged by the resettlement issue since the costs have doubled from the initial estimates.

Had there been a rigorous appraisal process in place, such anomalies could have been avoided.

The report depicting unsustainable throw-forward was issued in March. Yet in its previous quarterly meeting, the executive committee of the National Economic Council approved of new projects worth Rs300bn. If this remains the trend, it may approve projects costing more than a trillion rupees each year, further fattening the mammoth throw-forward.

Both politicians and planners must demonstrate some sanity to align development with the greater goal of sustainability.

Thrusting more projects on the slim purse of public-sector development will render the whole ineffective. The sector has already touched rock bottom and can ill afford further erosion.

(The writer is the chief executive of Strengthening Participatory Organisation. nmemon@spopk.org)

 

The poetics of Avicenna by Aziz Ali Dad

The following article  “The poetics of Avicenna”  by Aziz Ali Dad, source “Friday Times, August 05-11, 2011

 

Avicenna (Abdallah Ibn Sina) lived in a period in the history of Islamic societies which witnessed efflorescence of philosophy and translations of Greco-Roman and Indian texts into Arabic. It was common among the scholars of the day to study Greek philosophy. Being a part of the cultural and intellectual ambience, Avicenna was also actively engaged with philosophical, scientific and literary debates of his time. His was the age when Muslim philosophers were studying Greek masterpieces, an indispensable component of their scholarship. Among the Greek writers they studied, Aristotle (384-322 BC) held a special position, and Arab philosophers presented their understanding of the ideas of Aristotle in the form of summaries and commentaries. As part of this tradition, Avicenna presented his views and understanding of Aristotle's Poetics in his own Commentary.

For his Commentary Avicenna relied on Arabic translations of Poetics. One of the main features of Arabic translations of Poetics is that Arabs used the Syriac translations as their source. Those translations were based on the Greek version of Poetics. The Arabic translation by Abu Bishr Matta contained deficiencies in syntax, nomenclatures, understanding and transliteration, and Avicenna used this translation to write his Commentary. In addition, he used the translation of Abu Bishr's student Yahya ibn Adi and al-Farabi. F. C Peter in his book Aristotle and the Arabs describes Yahya ibn Adi as the leader of the Peripatetic School of Baghdad of which Avicenna's Aristelianism was a direct product. While using these translations, Avicenna imbibed the shortcomings, misconceptions and fallacies of Poetics. It can be deduced that the sources of Avicenna were twice removed from the real source.

 

InPoetics, Aristotle discussed different genres of Greek poetry and the art of poetry in general. Later on Neo-Platonist philosophers erected an elaborate schema of classification of his works. This resulted in a classification of all the sciences. The classification or division of the works of Aristotle was called the 'context theory'. This classification was the work of philosophers such as Porphyry (234-304 AD) and Alexander of Aphrodisia. In this classification, Poetics came under the category of Logic. Alexander of Aphrodisias is considered as one of the proponents of the scheme of the context theory. He places Poetics in the lowest position in the hierarchy of the classification of Aristotelian logic. These ideas about the status of Poetry were products of Neo-Platonists who attributed different concepts to Aristotle that were not actually an integral part of his works.

When the Arabs conquered Alexandria and Syria, they came into contact with Neo-Platonist philosophers. Muslim philosophers were very impressed by the philosophical vigor of Greeks and appropriated it to explore and explicate different dimensions of life, religion, society and science. Avicenna came into contact with the classification of Neo-Platonists through Abu-Sahl al-Masihi who was a distinguished physician and his companion. By making Neo-Platonist classification his base, Abu-Shal presented the order of sciences that ought to be studied. According to an account given by Abu-Sahl, Aristotle incorporates Poetics in the category of the Logic, which holds the eighth position preceded by Rhetoric and Sophistics.

 

For more details: http://www.thefridaytimes.com/beta2/tft/article.php?issue=20110805&page=26

 

 

 

"Crisis of poverty of thought" by Aziz Ali Dad

The following article  “Crisis of poverty of thought”  by Aziz Ali Dad, source “View Point, July 22, 2011”.

 

In Pakistan our souls have been constantly fed on the emotions through the medium of poetry. It has permeated so much in our psyche that we view the order of things through the spectacles of emotions Over reliance on poetic medium has become an integral part of our thinking processes as our perception of history and other events is informed by it 

“What does a philosopher demand of himself first and last? To overcome his time in himself, to become ‘timeless’.-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Historically, Indo-Gangetic region proved to be a fertile ground for the genre of poetry. Great mystics, preachers, reformers and founders of religion in India expressed their ideas in poetry. Even where sacred texts are written in prose, poetry became an efficacious medium to disseminate religious teachings and injunctions to the masses. The genre of poetry reached its zenith during the Mughal period as we see eminent poet cum “thinkers” indulging in mushahiras in the courts of the Mughal kings, princes and patricians. Dominance of poetry during the period of decline signify deeper crisis in the society. Poetry’s dominance over intellectual and cultural life of subcontinent resulted in poverty in the realm of philosophy.

Though there are some thinkers who can be treated as philosophers in loose term, their number is miniscule in terms of influence on overall thinking paradigm of south Asia as compared to poets. During the colonial period we witnessed emergence of individuals who started to engage philosophically with existential issues and intellectual challenges of the time. They represented their intellectual insights through the medium of prose. Despite their periodic forays into philosophy in prose, poetry still remained a dominant medium of the intelligentsia. Even Allama Iqbal resorted to poetry for the propagation of his ideas. This situation compels us to raise question about relationship between poetry and poverty of philosophy/thought.

In the 1960 Marshal McLuhan wrote a crisp but illuminating book ‘Medium is the Message’. The main argument of his book is that medium not only determines our message but also changes our way of thinking by bringing about changes in the way we perceive the world. Although, he brings examples from mediums introduced by technology, we can extend his argument to the genres employed in literature and different disciplines to convey the message.

 

For more details: http://www.viewpointonline.net/crisis-of-poverty-of-thought.html

 

What’s happening in Balochistan? by Salman Abid

Source: The News International
Date: July 10, 2011

The province will remain another world unless we treat it as our very own

By Salman Abid

How can the Balochistan issue be resolved? The answer to this question is difficult because democratic forces seem to have little decision-making powers in the province. The undemocratic forces wield major power in the region and, at the moment, no political solution seems near in the future. The political government took some positive steps but the results are not that good. The trust deficit between the state and the Baloch has widened.

The trust deficit is not only between the political forces and federal government, including military institutions, but also between local intelligentsia - human rights activist, academics, media personnel, and poet, etc - and the deprived communities.

The federal government announced a few packages for Balochistan, including the National Finance commission (NFC) award. But the issues and concerns of the Baloch people, critics believe, cannot be resolved by offering different packages given without consulting different stakeholders in the province.

For example, the missing people is an issue of the Baloch people that remains unresolved. The majority of Balochistan's political parties and workers, including human rights groups, blame the security agencies for the whole situation. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has also issued a fact-finding mission report on the province titled, Balochistan - Blinkered slide into chaos". It has given a list of missing people and those that were killed in the province on the basis of different reasons.

For example, the report says 140 bodies of missing persons were found in Balochistan during July 2010 to May 2011. 143 people were missing till May 29, 2011, 18 people were targeted in 2011 and 5 people were killed in 2011.

The serious cause of concern is that not only political workers but human rights activists, poet, professors, students, lawyers', social workers, and journalists are also missing or have been found dead. The province's nationalist parties give even higher numbers of missing people.

The political government, state agencies, and security forces are accountable to highlight and present the true picture of Balochistan before the nation. Are the government and security agencies doing their utmost to find out missing people? If the security agencies have complaints against certain people they should be brought before the court.

Actually, we should admit that the people of Balochistan, especially the marginalised groups, have been facing serious social, political and economic disparities in the region due to lack of attention from the government. The basic infrastructure of institutions in the province is very poor, especially in education, health, and transportation sectors besides concerns about natural resources' control. Balochistan people also have serious reservations on the issue of governance.

The people of Balochistan believe decisions about the province are being taken in Islamabad and GHQ. The provincial political government is powerless and has no right to take any political decision for the local people. A majority of the elected people admit the failure of resolving issues due to inadequate administrative and political powers.

For more details: http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/jul2011-weekly/nos-10-07-2011/pol1.htm#4

 

Philanthropy or agenda?by Aziz Ali Dad

The following article  “Philanthropy or agenda?”  by Aziz Ali Dad, source “The News, April 28, 2011”.

The controversy about the authenticity of projects undertaken by Greg Mortenson through his Central Asian Institute (CAI) in northern Afghanistan and Gilgit-Baltistan and the financial irregularities in CAI has created a furore in the international media. In the ensuing debate arguments of his votaries and detractors have focused only on Mortenson’s personality. Indeed, the controversy surrounding his philanthropic initiatives is a manifestation of global philanthropy and its discontents, which are a product of broader power relations and of the economic structure of the world dominated by a neo-liberal political and economic regime.

Mortenson’s book Three Cups of Tea is a New York Times bestseller. The author is accused of fabricating “some of the most dramatic and inspiring stories” in Three Cups of Tea and committing irregularities in the finances of the CAI. The impression he gives in the book is that he brought civilisation to the region of Gilgit-Baltistan to ward off the pernicious effects of Taliban ideology through education. Interestingly, the region, especially Baltistan, where he claimed to have set up schools, does not even have Taliban supporters, let alone the Taliban themselves.

Mortenson gives the impression that nobody had worked in this field before in the areas where he operated, and that he remained undeterred despite all odds and threats. That is why his representation of the region reeks of condescension. Amidst illiteracy and darkness the protagonist appears to be an emissary of civilisation who is bringing light to the dark spots of the earth. Philanthropic activities appear to be humanitarian, but there is a colonial mindset behind them. Mortenson reminds you of Western scholars who provided moral justification for their countries’ interventions in foreign countries during the colonial period.

There is no denying the fact that philanthropic interventions through soft initiatives can be used to defeat the scourge of terrorism, violence, ignorance and extremism. Unfortunately, the “soft” component of the counterterrorism strategy has become embedded within disaster capitalism. That is why initiatives of the soft component in development attract development professionals in droves to reap the benefits from reconstruction project in the aftermath of a war or disaster. No one can object to the opening of girls’ schools, but the question is: why it is always necessary to declare an area of intervention as being a land of obscurantism and ignorance, where the society is necessarily uncivilised? It is to provide a justification for the wiping out of all vestiges of the indigenous system and turning the society into a clean slate so that a neo-liberal economic script can be written with philanthropy used as an excuse.

For more details: http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=43936&Cat=9

 

 

Unthought thoughts by Aziz Ali Dad

The following article  “Unthought thoughts”  by Aziz Ali Dad, source “The News, April 3, 2011”.

 

Killing on personal whims reveals the violent mentality that lurks beneath the calm veneer of silent majority in the Pakistani society.

The elevation of Salmaan Taseer’s assassin to the status of a hero and justification of the murder by a vast section of society show a mindset that is totally out of sync with modern times. When a society relapses into primitive state of nature, it paves the way for its own demise. Moreover, it clearly shows the descent of our society into an anarchic state where the only rule is the law of jungle.

In the state of nature, individual will remains dominant and the collective will does not emerge. In such a state, in the words of Thomas Hobbes, “man is a wolf on a fellow man, a state of war of everyone against everyone.” To end the uncertainty and insecurity of life in the state of nature, humankind entered into a social contract, in which the individual surrendered its will to form a collective will. The collective will played a pivotal role in the emergence of society, culture, state, religion, law, industry and vocations of different kinds.

With the advent of modernity, nature of the state underwent drastic changes. Through rationalisation of institutions and other spheres of life, the state was able to hold the monopoly on violence by empowering only one organisation to commit violent acts legitimately.

This idea is basically a manifestation of the collective will that enables people to progress and make life secure from the dangers of allowing the individual will and devolution of violence to its citizenry.

A study of the Pakistani society clearly shows the signs of withering away of rationality and disintegration of society. It is a society where the individual will dominates the collective will and the state fails to hold its monopoly on violence.

Salmaan Taseer’s murder is symptomatic of an obscurantist mind that is bent on removing the last vestiges of modernity to create more space for a golden past that never existed. Taseer’s assassination has clearly opened the deeper fissures within our society. Also, it has revealed the violent mentality that lurks beneath the calm veneer of silent majority.

Qadri’s elevation to the status of a hero clearly manifests a clash between tradition and modernity, because it is against the basic principles of modernity to decide about the fate of a person on a personal whim. Only institutions of the state are entitled to decide about the crime of a person and award punishment. If everyone is given a license to kill, the civil war in Pakistan is well nigh.

Those who are celebrating Qadri as a hero are not only eroding the fabric of society by turning it into a state akin to the life of nature. It is impossible to keep the edifice of state, religion, culture and values intact when the very foundation of the society is destroyed.

The clergy in Pakistan failed to understand the dialectics of modernity. Instead of tackling modernity on its own turf, the priest, in a bad faith, tries to cast our minds in medieval mould. This has created a cognitive dissonance or gap, for we are trying to make sense of the modern order of things with a paradigm that was evolved in response to centuries old issues.

Late professor Mohammed Arkoun of Sorbonne University termed this gap ‘unthought’ in Islamic thought. According to Arkoun the unthought in Islamic thought has been accumulating since the 16th century. He finds the causes of contemporary semantic disorder of thought in Islamic societies and its failure ‘to contribute to the great open debate on a world scale’ in the lacuna created by unthoughts.

This intellectual lacuna can be filled only by acquainting ourselves with modern discourses of social sciences and humanities. It will enable us to avoid anachronism in our worldview and objective realities on the one hand, and help us to deal with some of the intractable issues of our society with relevant sociological imagination.

Modernity demands rationalisation of different spheres of life and progressive vision of religion, but our priestly class has organised itself around issues that are always divisive and mostly violent. Their myopic version of religion reduces the status of God into hangman. The managers of the sacred have turned sacred institutions into an instrument of their political agenda. The priests are misfit to assume the charge of defining an entity like God.

On the other hand, religious discourse has remained ‘unthought’ for liberal/secular intelligentsia. As modernity is ‘unthought’ to religious class, religious discourse has remained unthought for seculars.

For more details: http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/apr2011-weekly/nos-03-04-2011/dia.htm#4