Treachery no less

“WOULD you like to become chief minister of Kashmir again?” Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah was asked in 1968, shortly after his release from internment, by a correspondent of the Shabistan Urdu Digest.

His answer was explicit “No, because only that person who enjoys the confidence of the government of India can be the chief minister of Kashmir.” B.K. Nehru, governor of Kashmir, confirms this in his memoirs Nice Guys Finish Second: “from 1953 to 1975 chief ministers of that state had been nominees of Delhi” appointed through “rigged elections”.

Abdullah drew power from the people; not New Delhi. After the abject pact of 1975 he revived the National Conference. After his death his son Farooq reduced it to a tool of the centre. What Kashmir needs is a leader who can speak up to New Delhi for his people.

There is a big divide still between those who regard Sheikh Abdullah’s dismissal from office and his imprisonment by Nehru in 1953 as a crime and those who reproach him for not toeing the centre’s line.

Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, the protégé, shares the ideology of the conspirators of 1953 — Bakshi, Sadiq and Mir Qasim.

Any time now bar a hitch, he will be sworn in as chief minister of Jammu & Kashmir as nominal head of a coalition with the BJP which is opposed fundamentally and radically to everything which Mufti and his Peoples Democratic Party professed to stand for. During the election campaign both parties had attacked each other. Modi wooed Jammu with brazenly communal appeals.

For the first time ever, the BJP will be in power in Kashmir. Mufti will be in office — not in power which will reside in New Delhi to be exercised through its men in government.

All this to satisfy Mufti’s long-festering lust for power; just one last taste of the heady brew for the 79-year-old.

It is important to view this from three distinct perspectives — the nature of the PDP-BJP deal and its implications; the structure of Kashmir’s politics, and the impact of both on a solution to the Kashmir dispute among all the parties involved — India, Pakistan and the people of Kashmir.

The BJP aspired to rule over Kashmir with a majority in its own right. That was ‘Mission 44 Plus’. It was this threat which drove the Muslims in the Valley to vote in large numbers. The result was that none of its candidates was elected.

In Jammu the BJP swept the NC and the PDP away. It failed in Ladakh completely. In an Assembly of 87 the PDP won 28 seats; BJP 26, the NC 15, the Congress 12 plus six independents.

If the PDP was true to its mandate it would have accepted the professed support of the Congress and three independents making a total of 43.

Three facts emerge from the recent pronouncements by the BJP’s President Amit Shah (and its general secretary, seconded to the BJP by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Ram Madhav (that (a) the initiative for a coalition came from the PDP, (b) Omar Abdullah was as keen on a pact with the BJP, and (c) the BJP, wooed by both, was determined to be in power; not in the opposition.

The results of the polls were declared on Dec 23. On Dec 31 Mehbooba Mufti told Governor N.N. Vohra and declared publicly: “The PDP has the support of more than 55 MLAs which is more than enough to form the government.”

Thus by Dec 31 the deal was a fait accompli. But public opinion and the PDP’s cadre had to be placated by a daily retail of assurances of fidelity to the faith; elections to the Delhi Assembly on Feb 7 had to be tided over; the BJP’s cadre had to be placated. Feb 9 was the death anniversary of Afzal Guru’s hanging in 2013 and Feb 11 of Maqbool Bhat’s hanging in 1984.

Lastly, a fig leaf had to be devised, in the form of a minimum common programme, to cover up admittedly irreconcilable differences.

The compromise will secure BJP entry into the Valley, will have nothing for Kashmiris but the loaves and fishes of office to a man with a past as the Congress’ man in Kashmir

This brings us to the last point the impact of such politics on the Kashmir dispute. It cannot help one bit in the peace process. Significantly, of late Mufti has discovered the need for renewing the peace process between Pakistan and India which makes one suspect that Modi will renew it, and Mufti will claim that as his achievement.

It is woefully clear that unless the Kashmir dispute is solved its politics will remain hostage to the sordid flaws of New Delhi and the agents it chooses at any given moment in Srinagar.

The writer is an author and a lawyer based in Mumbai.

Published in Dawn February 14th , 2015

Pak-Afghan economic ties

SEVERAL significant developments have taken place in Afghanistan in the past few months that require fresh thinking and a review of the relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

First, most of the Nato forces have withdrawn from Afghanistan while the presence of US forces has been considerably reduced and largely limited to support and training of the Afghan National Army.

Second, the general elections in Afghanistan were successfully conducted with a large turnout and the majority of the population participated in this peaceful democratic transition.

Third, the newly elected President Ashraf Ghani enjoys excellent credentials and is committed to the economic development of his country. He has therefore formed a national unity government with his opponent Abdullah Abdullah as chief executive.

Fourth, the new leadership has engaged in a highly constructive, candid and mutually rewarding dialogue with Pakistan setting at rest the confrontational role of the previous government.

Fifth, Pakistan’s civil and military leadership have demonstrated not only through words but actions that they are fully committed to a peaceful and stable Afghanistan. Pakistan did not show any preference for any political party, ethnic group or presidential candidates at the time of the general elections.

Sixth, Afghanistan and Pakistan have agreed to work together to eliminate militant groups responsible for terrorist activities and that have been using the ‘other’ country as a safe haven for their activities.

These developments are both significant and propitious for turning a new leaf in the chapter of Pak-Afghan relations. The focus of these relations should move to build strong foundations for the revival of Afghanistan’s economy. During the last decade, the Afghan economy has become too dependent on external assistance and Isaf-related economic activities. The ‘withdrawal’ shock to the economy would be destabilising if alternative measures are not put in place to absorb this shock gradually.

It may sound odd that we are proposing at this juncture to increase our financial aid to Afghanistan when Pakistan itself is facing economic difficulties, but this is a critical confidence-building step along with increased trade and investment.

Pakistan is one of the largest trading partners of Afghanistan as it exports goods and services worth approximately $3 billion annually and is also the main conduit of imports from elsewhere through the Karachi port. Tariff rates should be reduced on essential commodities, non-tariff barriers lowered and trade facilitation eased to remove the obstacles faced by Afghan businesses and lower the cost of transactions. Concessionary export refinancing facilities should be made available to Pakistani exporters for incremental flows of goods to Afghanistan beyond the present threshold.

Pakistan provides Afghanistan with the shortest access to the sea but rail and road freight services have not been fully developed to leverage this locational advantage. Liberalisation of the transportation sector by allowing the entry of newcomers and promoting competition among the carriers, expanding the existing highways and rehauling the railway subsector would go a long way in facilitating both bilateral and transit trade.

Exports of the mining sector from Afghanistan would require that the transport corridors be functioning by 2017 at the latest. Afghanistan can also earn substantial revenues from transit trade and energy to and from the Central Asian Republics.

President Ghani has announced the establishment of industrial zones for Pakistani investment. As Afghanistan has an LDC status Pakistani private investors can set up export-oriented industries in these zones attracting preferential lower tariffs in the advanced countries. This act of liberalisation by Afghanistan is not so widely known to Pakistan’s business community. Pakistani chambers and business councils should collect and disseminate detailed information widely among their members.

These zones would bring foreign exchange earnings badly needed by Afghanistan substituting over time the volume of foreign aid that will substantially decline. Pakistani investors, to be successful, would require better infrastructure in the form of highways, railways, integrated border crossings etc. Several other border posts should be opened and the missing infrastructure put in place.

A tripartite agreement between China, Afghanis­tan and Pakistan should assign the responsibilities for execution of this plan. China can take the lead in building the necessary infrastructure; Pakistani private investors can set up the industries and bring skilled manpower and Afghanistan can set up a one-stop shop to facilitate investment flows and resolution of problems.

In addition to industrial zones, Afghanistan offers investment opportunities in construction, food processing and retail. Pakistani investors should take first-mover advantage as their transportation costs would be low and they understand the consumer tastes and preferences better.

The government here has to expedite the formation of the Ex-Im Bank which was announced in the 2014-15 budget. The bank will be the ideal vehicle for scrutinising investment proposals and furnish a range of funding and non-funding instruments (eg guarantees) to those whose proposals are found to be feasible.

In the area of trade in services, Pakistan has earned a good reputation in banking and insurance, telecommunications, IT enabled services, engineering consultancy, architecture and accountancy. Afghanistan would need expertise in these areas both for current operations and ‘on the job’ training of their own young professionals.

Well-reputed hospitals, medical laboratories, clinics, nursing training institutes, general and specialised universities and colleges, vocational and technical training institutes from Pakistan can enter into partnerships and agreements with their Afghan counterparts. After all, the youth bulge has to be gainfully employed for which quality education is a pre-requisite. The affordability to this kind of education would be a major consideration for which the Pakistani experience would come in handy.

In the coming years, Pakistan should negotiate free trade and bilateral investment agreements with Afghanistan. The trade agreement can have sensitive lists that protect vulnerable items and these lists can be gradually phased out over a given period. In the medium term, the two countries should form a common customs union with the external tariffs at ports of entry and thereafter the goods can move freely between the two countries.

This will mitigate the curse of illegal imports into Pakistan through the diversion of the present Afghan transit trade, generate tax revenues to be shared by the two and reduce the transaction cost of doing business.

Our Afghan brethren have suffered and made huge sacrifices during the last 35 years or so. It is time that Pakistan and the international community work together to give them a chance to live a peaceful life and make economic progress just like other countries in the region.

The writer is dean and director at the Institute of Business Administration, Karachi.

Published in Dawn February 14th , 2015

Cycle of hope, despair

ONLY when you are an observer of Pakistani politics and policies can you oscillate from utter despair to regaining some of your optimism and back again within the space of a week.

Yes, the attack on a Shia mosque in Peshawar by terrorists has pushed into background a faint glimmer of hope that was evidenced earlier in the week and even as the seven-day period was drawing to a close.

Pakistan’s relations with Afghanistan, with the election to office of President Ashraf Ghani, a clean, clear-cut man of merit to replace the master of double-speak Hamid Karzai whose family reportedly amassed a fortune during his decade-plus in power, have been like a breath of fresh air.

Of course, Hamid Karzai was no more than half the problem. Even if, as the Pakistani security establishment would have us believe, he was being instigated by India to lash out against Islamabad, he was often reacting to the disastrous policy pursued by GHQ-ISI to try and convert a sovereign western neighbour into a compliant satellite by the use of proxies.

Wherever Pakistan seeks extraordinary influence in the region, it would be foolish to assume India will remain a silent bystander and it hasn’t. Add to this Iran’s fears and aspirations towards Afghanistan and the recipe for a heady mess seemed ready. This, even when the interests and concerns of bigger powers such as the US, China and Russia have not been taken into account.

The fallout is for all to see. The architects of the policy, which involved fanning flames in Afghanistan, are now wholly preoccupied by trying to rather belatedly firewall Pakistan itself from this raging toxic, ideological storm. And, on any given day, a series of firefighting efforts are seen across the length and breadth of the country.

While it is too soon to reach definitive conclusions, one would be inclined to stick one’s neck out and say the situation at least in terms of ties with the western neighbour is improving slowly as Karzai’s exit from the scene in Kabul was accompanied by a change of guard in Rawalpindi too with some signs of change in policy, attitudes emerging.

The Nawaz Sharif-led civilian set-up has often spoken of its desire to have amiable relations with all neighbours and the new military leadership has not undermined the government at least where Afghanistan is concerned. With multiple visits by civilian and significantly different tiers of military and intelligence top guns, bonhomie can be sensed for the first time in many years.

Where the arrival of the first batch of Afghan National Army cadets to train alongside their Pakistani counterparts at the military academy in Kakul, Abbottabad, was a discernible sign of the new beginning, the briefing by the army’s chief spokesman on Thursday was further evidence.

Maj-Gen Asim Bajwa, while briefing the media on the progress of the investigation into the Army Public School massacre detailed those arrested/killed so far. These included several suspects captured by the Afghan forces on their soil “on the basis of intelligence provided by us”, he said, adding: We are “very grateful” to the Afghan forces for their cooperation.

Such cooperation and assistance and the publicly expressed gratitude for it would have been a peacenik’s dream even a year ago but now seems to be something that observers expect more routinely.

If the forces of the two countries work in tandem to deal with the terrorists and their safe havens in their so-called lawless common border areas, it would be safe to assume that the terror networks will be considerably hamstrung in what they can achieve.

Of course, there is no point in letting one’s imagination run wild. All positive signs notwithstanding, there are still many unresolved issues the main one being the future of the Taliban led by Mullah Omar. For long the group has been rightly seen as enjoying Pakistan’s support. In this ‘new look’ military policy, it is far from clear where the group and its future will be found. Till this is clear all other positive signs may not amount to much in the long run.

Talking of positive signs, perhaps the most significant was the Pakistan Foreign Office rejoinder to a statement issued by the Saudi embassy in Islamabad in which it had sought to clarify that the Saudi government was ‘not funding’ extremism in Pakistan.

Where the statement had restricted itself to Saudi ‘government’ funding alone and said every penny that was given was routed through the host government, the Foreign Office responded that this wasn’t the case with ‘private charities’ etc. These have often been blamed for channelling funds to those aligned with Saudi ideology.

Whether this would lead to a serious dialogue between the two sides is another matter. However, that Pakistan was, for once, concerned and bold enough to publicly express disquiet at sources of extremist funding traced to the Kingdom was either a slip-up for which heads would roll or a very welcome development coming not a day too early. Wish I could say which with certainty.

As I get to the final para of this column the news from Peshawar is not good at all. Another week, another carnage. The size of the challenge remains formidable. How formidable? A friend has just shared the top lines of a survey done by Gallup Pakistan. It says 87pc of Pakistanis believe that minorities (not clear whether this includes Muslim minority sects) in Pakistan enjoy freedom of speech and equal rights; only 8pc disagree.

Need I say more?

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.

abbas.nasir@hotmail.com

Published in Dawn February 14th , 2015

Learning and experience

IN a recent undergraduate level class I taught, quite a few students did not know what rationing was. I asked them what they thought load-shedding was, or the closure of CNG pumps two to three days a week, or even the limit on each car getting Rs1,000 worth of petrol only during the oil supply crisis. They were flummoxed. So was I. Most of the students were, of course, aware of load-shedding and the petrol crisis, but they had not connected the word ‘rationing’ to load-shedding.

In another class, with graduate students of a social science and at a different university, I found that students, though working on political economy issues, were not at all comfortable with using notions like ‘externality’, ‘public good’, and ‘rent-seeking’ while analysing the political economy issues they were studying. In some cases students pursuing graduate-level theses on these issues had similar problems.

In another university and another class, students could not give me examples, from their world, of bundling (putting things together that could have been sold separately eg cars with fitted air-conditioners or stereos), price discrimination (charging different prices for the same good eg different tuition fees paid by students in universities, student discounts) or self-selection-based price discrimination (eg the various mobile phone connection packages on offer).

They were not able to think through what the consequences of inflation were on savers and borrowers. Most could provide nice definitions of economic concepts, but when they were asked to explain the concepts in their own words, the problems multiplied.

There seems to be a strong and significant break, in general, in the mind of students, between what they do in class and read in the books they are studying, and what they face ‘out there’ in the world. The teaching is bookish, definition-based, and focused on solving problems that come from the book, while the world presents, in their minds, very different issues and challenges. But, and I speak only about social sciences as I teach economics, this is clearly a false distinction. If, for the students, social sciences cannot make sense of the world they live in, clearly they are not doing their job, the teachers are not doing a good job of teaching social sciences, and the students are not doing a good job of learning the subject.

The problem is clearly not just at the university level. I have not taught in schools in recent years, but have interacted with a significant number of high-school students through informal meetings and guest lectures and have found the same thing at the school level as well. Students are brilliant at learning and reproducing definitions and solving certain types of problems, but they are not able to connect their ‘learning’ with the world they live in. They are not able to manipulate or ‘play’ with what they are learning.

They have become very good at taking examinations and have ‘cracked’ examination systems from the higher secondary level and Matriculation to ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels, and they have the grades to show for it. But the basic problem of turning what they learn into knowledge that is fully internalised and that is able to shape or mould them is not addressed.

In fact, the focus on examinations and grades works in the other direction. It encourages rote learning and regurgitation. For example, even the elite schools have monthly tests, mocks for major examinations, mocks for mock examinations, midterms and end-of-term tests. They over-examine their students and teach to examinations. It helps in cracking the exam. But it works against giving time to the students to internalise their learning.

In some cases I have even found that students are not even assigned textbooks (in the social sciences) or are not encouraged to read original (literature) texts and are asked to just work through lecture notes and guides.

This method of schooling is having other effects on the habits of children too. They do not get time to read anything beyond their course material. Most of them do not read the newspapers, fiction or any other areas they might have developed a liking for. Most of them do not even get time to play. They come home with lots of homework and have to prepare for all the tests that are regularly taken, and then many of them have tutors to coach them in specific subjects. These trends cannot be healthy for our children: for their physical or mental health or for their overall development. It creates narrow and shallow minds. It creates minds that are not able to understand issues, contextualise them, argue a position, and entertain counter-arguments with equanimity. But our children are the citizens, parents and decision-makers of tomorrow. If we do not equip them with the skills mentioned above, what kind of future are we hoping for?

A question in one of the examinations I had set for an undergraduate class a couple of years back asked students to work out the consequences for the local hamburger market of a major fast-food restaurant opening up in that locality. A number of students in the class did not know what a ‘hamburger’ was. And one of them wanted to know why we should be thinking of ‘ham’-based burgers in a country that did not allow trade in pork. Clearly, we are failing to teach.

It is hard to see how change can happen. The students, their teachers, and the parents are all embedded in a system that encourages teaching to examination, with the focus on results. Even if awareness is there, individual deviation from the above equilibrium would be hard. But collective action is even harder to organise and so we seem committed or condemned to continuing down this path.

The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives and an associate professor of economics at LUMS, Lahore.

Published in Dawn, February 13th, 2015