Crackdown on HDT - Newspaper

dawn.com/news/1731873/crackdown-on-hdt

January 16, 2023

IT is unfortunate that rather than engaging with Balochistan’s

Haq Do Tehreek politically, the state is cracking down on its
leadership. The movement has for over a year been highlighting
what it says is an injustice with Makran, with Maulana Hidayatur
Rehman serving as the HDT’s face. The maulana and his
movement were catapulted to the national stage in 2021 when he
led a massive protest in Gwadar over various issues, including
the presence of illegal trawlers off the Balochistan coast,
obstacles in border trade with Iran and lack of civic facilities in
what is supposed to be a key node in the CPEC network. The
HDT’s supporters were back on the streets of Gwadar last year
due to what they said were the state’s unfulfilled promises. After
talks with the government broke down in late December, the
administration and demonstrators faced off in a violent
confrontation. A policeman was killed during the melee,
resulting in the state going after the HDT leadership. On Friday,
Mr Rehman was arrested from court in Gwadar in connection
with the killing as well as other cases.

Lawyers present at the court premises say the arrest is illegal as

the maulana had come to apply for bail, and the detention
amounts to denial of Mr Rehman’s right to seek bail. Moreover,
the maulana says the crackdown on his movement is linked to
the HDT’s struggle for their rights. While the killers of the law
enforcer must be punished, the state should not indulge in a
political vendetta against the HDT. The maulana and his
supporters must be able to defend themselves in court, and no
politically motivated cases should be filed against them. As we
 have seen in the case of MNA Ali Wazir, the state has a particular
expertise in keeping people it does not agree with behind bars by
putting them through the legal rigmarole. This undemocratic
attitude needs to change.

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2023

Opinion

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Dropping remittances
dawn.com/news/1731874/dropping-remittances

January 16, 2023

ONE hopes the 19pc year-over-year decline in December

remittances has given the resident ‘wizard’ in Q Block some
pause. Amidst declining exports and immense pressure on what
remains of the country’s meagre foreign exchange reserves, the
country needed those remittances to pad its books. Yet Pakistanis
abroad sent less money home, thanks, in part, to our finance
minister’s unhealthy obsession with controlling the exchange
rate. Market watchers said people have started giving preference
to illegal hundi and hawala networks to remit money, as their
operators — shady and unsavoury though they may be — are still
giving people better conversion rates than the farcical official
exchange rate maintained by the State Bank. That theory seems
to be supported by the overall trend in remittances, which have
posted a decline in each subsequent month for the past four
months.

For an idea of just how important these remittance dollars are

for Pakistan, one need only look at where the country stands at
the moment. Remittances in the recently concluded six-month
period of July-December 2022 were clocked at $14.1bn, $1.7bn
less than in the same period last year ($15.8bn). The State Bank
currently holds less than $4.5bn in its own reserves. It has been
declining requests to issue letters of credit even for critical goods
and commodities in order to keep those remaining dollars from
flying out. In this context, it would seem that those ‘lost’ $1.7bn
could have provided the government with desperately needed
breathing space. One cannot blame the expatriates. People are
facing difficult economic conditions around the world, so
remitters could be keeping more money for themselves and
sending less to Pakistan. But for whatever sums they do send,
they cannot be expected to agree to get fewer rupees for their
dollars than what the open market is willing to give them. It is for
this reason that many exporters (of both goods and services, ie
freelancers) are also keeping their dollars stashed abroad until
they are sure they will get a better rate. By creating these
distortions, Ishaq Dar’s dollar peg is dealing long-lasting damage
to the economy. It is feared that if it collapses — some say it is a
question of not if, but when — the release of the pressures that
have built up due to it will deal another body blow to the already
gasping economy

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2023

Opinion

Red lines - Newspaper - DAWN.COM

dawn.com/news/1731875/red-lines

January 16, 2023

Former prime minister Imran Khan believes he is the latest

target of the establishment’s version of ‘cancel culture’. Ever
since the shifting sands of Pakistan’s treacherous political
landscape caught up with the PTI chairman last April, he has
railed against the powers that be for having pulled the rug from
under his feet, or in his words, for becoming ‘neutral’.

Of late, however, Mr Khan has been alleging that these quarters

are engaged in political engineering to keep him out of power, an
assertion that various developments in the country appear to
support.

A few days ago, in the run-up to the Punjab chief minister

seeking a trust vote from the provincial assembly, the PTI chief
claimed his party members were being persuaded to part ways
with him on the grounds that he had no political future, that he
had been marked with a “red line”. Decrying as “arrogant” and
lacking in political acumen those who wanted to write him off,
Mr Khan vowed he would erase the barriers being erected
against him with the help of his supporters. The people of this
country alone, he said, had the right to place red lines on people.

The ousted PM’s assertion certainly has historical precedent in

this country. Several civilian leaders have found themselves
shunted into the political wilderness after falling foul of the
powerful security establishment. Some managed to claw their
way back, often only after compromising with the power
brokers, when changing circumstances opened up the
opportunity for a second (or third) act.
But Mr Khan is conveniently glossing over the bigger picture —
the fact that what has happened with him is part of a wider
pattern. While the ‘red line’ on the PML-N leadership was in
place, Mr Khan was the beneficiary — and a very willing one at
that. Who can forget the smug declarations ad nauseam of the
PTI government and the establishment being on one page?
Whatever his differences with the other parties, Mr Khan should
know that they are all in the same boat in this respect — equally
vulnerable when they cross the red lines decided upon by the
powers that be. Both Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif came to
this realisation in time after years of making Faustian bargains,
though one might argue whether the latter has not once again
taken the expedient route.

The fact is that when civilian leaders cede space, the red lines
multiply and become more arbitrary, serving objectives that have
little to do with national security but everything to do with
protecting influential personalities and vested interests. As the
media has found over the last few years, holding the authorities
to account has become particularly dangerous. Every society has
red lines, but they must be consistent and clearly defined.

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2023

Opinion


‘She told you so’ - Newspaper

dawn.com/news/1731881/she-told-you-so

January 16, 2023

IS there anything more to say about Harvey Weinstein, the

legendary film producer whose downfall came at the hands of
the industry that once celebrated him? Yes, as I learned while
watching the movie She Said, based on the book by the two New
York Times journalists Jodie Kantor and Meghan Twohey whose
story exposed Weinstein’s sexual misconduct. The movie serves a
good lesson on the nitty-gritty process of investigative journalism
and why people must support such journalism.

While the movie did not sensationalise any event, and chose not
to show sexual violence, I was more interested in the role — and
portrayal — of journalism. Irrespective of the country and
language in which it is practised, the news-gathering process is
the same: getting sources on the record, authenticating their
claims, ensuring all sides are covered and fact-checking until the
editor (and sometimes lawyer) is satisfied to publish. Sadly, there
is a great deal of anti-journalism sentiment today, as evidenced
by the global decline in trust in news media, so to watch the
painstaking attention paid to verifying every single detail over
the course of reporting shows the value of journalism. The same
is true about sources, who in this case were initially reluctant to
speak to the reporters but over time learned to trust them with
their stories, their vulnerability, their futures. The reporters and
editors did not let the survivors down.

The movie also shows how writing about people’s trauma

impacts journalists themselves. The reporters work tirelessly
through the night and it’s good to see their husbands taking on
the role of caregivers without being portrayed as heroes.
Pakistani TV drama writers could take a cue from the portrayal
of normalising men doing housework and childcare. And of
women working and supporting each other during, in this case,
their reporting. Too often Hollywood, Bollywood, Khalil-ur-
Rehman, etc like to portray women competing or working
against one another, and this senseless depiction feeds into all
kinds of misogynistic ideas. It’s an endless cycle which needs to
stop.
Can Me Too go beyond hashtag solidarity?

The title of the book/movie stems from the “he said/she said”
phrase when describing conflicting reports of a situation
between a man and woman. Often in cases of sexual violence, the
onus is on the woman to prove she wasn’t asking for it. She Said
reminds audiences to listen to women even if it is two decades
later because the system did not allow her to speak up then.
She Said ends with the publication of their story in 2016 but we
know that was not the end for Weinstein or the Me Too
movement that sprang. We know he was tried and sentenced to
jail but we also know there are countless men who have evaded
punishment for sex crimes. We know how much change is
required to enact solutions to harassment across industries — to
disable the barriers that prevent women from filing complaints
for example. She Said tells audiences how Weinstein and Co used
non-disclosure agreements and settlements to silence women.
We see how women’s careers were cut short because they dared
to speak up for others. It is tactics like these that prevent women
from speaking up.

Can women hope for an HR department that cares as much about

their well-being as they do about their seths’? On a global level
can we expect more from the Me Too movement beyond hashtag
solidarity campaigns that focus on ousting a few powerful men?
When can we see collective organised movements against
oppressive systems that enable and protect men, institutions?

Men like Weinstein and Bill Cosby may have faced their
reckoning but the same cannot be said for Hollywood or any
other industry which has kicked out many of its bad boys
without implementing changes to systems that allow for
accountability.

This may be a bit of a stretch but if we’re to look at what

happened at Karachi Eat a week ago, where some single men
reportedly gate-crashed the family-only event and harassed
women, we can see that exclusion policies don’t work. Time and
again, erring men face consequences for actions but little attempt
is made to address the structural imbalance that leads to such
situations. Segregation will not end harassment just like locking
women up will not end sexual violence. Multiple stakeholders
need to be taken on board to understand why harassment takes
place, what works and doesn’t, before coming up with ideas to
address them.

The Me Too movement opened a door to important, albeit

painful, discussions about harassment and power. Hopefully, it
will lead to a reckoning which results in systematic change and a
sense of closure for all, not just for a privileged few.

The writer is co-producer and co-host of On/Off the Record, a

podcast on journalism in Pakistan.

Twitter: @LedeingLady

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2023

Weaponised hate - Newspaper - DAWN.COM

dawn.com/news/1731880/weaponised-hate

January 16, 2023

ABOUT a week ago, in events disturbingly reminiscent of the Jan

6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol that followed US president
Donald Trump’s defeat in elections, supporters of the Brazilian
Trump copycat Jair Bolsonaro stormed Brazil’s Congress,
supreme court and presidential palace.

This came after months of Bolsonaro, sticking to Trump’s

playbook, refusing to concede defeat in the presidential elections
till the very last moment, and peddling the unproven narrative of
rigged elections while inciting his followers to violent acts, which
ranged from threatening supporters of his political opponent to
blocking roads and creating social unrest. Events culminated in
hordes of his overzealous followers storming critical government
buildings.

After a presidency that was in part won by adapting Trump’s

playbook to the Brazilian situation, and exploiting society’s
fissures and fault lines, the Bolsonaro regime upped the ante
through its hateful rhetoric, violence, and disdain for the facts —
the last leading to a large number of deaths by Covid after
Bolsonaro refused to take timely preventive measures to curtail
the spread of the virus. As one saw in the US, fomenting hate and
fostering its devotees led to a sharp rise in violence, which
wreaked havoc on Brazilian society and polity.

Thanks to lopsided liberal economic policies and empowered

crony capitalism, Brazil, and the world as well, has lost much
biodiversity in the Amazon rainforest.
It’s all too easy to sow the seeds of hate.
Under Bolsonaro, there was a constant cutback on social welfare,
leading to suffering for the most vulnerable segments of
Brazilian society. But Bolsonaro stuck to demagoguery, and
responded with bluster whenever questioned about his
government’s plan of action, or lack thereof. Closer to home,
another world leader who has applied the same playbook is
India’s Narendra Modi.

All this should serve as a warning to Pakistani society, especially

as national elections are expected to be held this year. Millions
are still reeling from the devastation caused by the
unprecedented floods of 2022 in the country. The misery
continues to spread as people bear the burden of skyrocketing
prices of essential goods amplified by supply chain issues and
import controls. The unrelenting — in fact, worsening —
economic situation has compounded public misery, and
misinformation has been added to the mix. The social media
machine is in overdrive, peddling half-truths and full lies with
little restraint.

Political parties have active social media wings run by tech-savvy

youth whose job, it seems, is to weaponise information against
political opponents. It is well-known that the US usually pioneers
strategies and harnesses technologies and the world follows suit,
thus it sets trends and shapes the manner in which discourse in
society proceeds. This was seen throughout Trump’s presidency.
We have seen the same elements in the Bolsonaro and Modi
governments.

Trump’s pioneering use of social media in new and frighteningly

effective ways to rally support has inspired demagogues around
the world, including Marine Le Pen in France, Itamar Ben-Gvir in
Israel, Bolsonaro in Brazil, and Modi in India, among others. Such
momentum is built up by deploying anger and hate towards
those seen as the enemy. At present, the fissures within Pakistani
society run deep; rarely has the country seen such vast divisions
not only over issues but also cultish personalities, motivated by
anger rather than political agendas.

The election, whenever it takes place, will be heavily contested

and the challenge is to ensure that sanity prevails. Active steps
need to be taken by the government, the mainstream media, and
civil society — as it is a social responsibility — to inform the
public about the dangers of fake news, disinformation, and
tainted narratives.

At the other end, political parties and leaders are in dire need of
an exercise in soul-searching to examine whether the cost of
attaining (usually very short-lived power) is worth irreparably
damaging institutions and society in the country and pushing
them towards greater chaos. It is easy to sow the seeds of hate,
but impossible to control what follows.

The deeply complex social and demographic landscape of India is

already reaping what the BJP and Modi have sown with regular
lynchings, sexual violence against women and rampant state-
endorsed violence against minorities and political opponents.

Time is running out as new elections are already on the horizon.

Society and the politicians have to make sane choices if they
want to avoid the fallout of toxic narratives.

The writer is editor at the Centre for Aerospace and Security

Studies, Lahore.

casslahore@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2023



Myth of population control

dawn.com/news/1731882/myth-of-population-control

January 16, 2023

IT is the dawn of 2023. Ahead of us are several national problems

that continue to be overlooked. The solutions are obvious, but the
intent to act is missing. Critical areas face stagnation, with
population and education on top of the list. Both sectors are
interrelated but their current state is at the heart of everything
that plagues Pakistan’s progress. The last 10 years show little
change in our educational trends. Universal primary enrolment,
especially for girls, is lagging. And fertility rates have not
changed for a decade.

But while state responsibility for education is at least widely

discussed, the public discourse on our annual population growth
rate of two per cent frequently disappoints. Our demographics
are well known to those who matter. So, don’t they see the
linkages between human and other development? Instead, we
hear the frequent lame excuses — ‘Population is a provincial
subject’, ‘population control is against our religion, ‘it is a
politically inexpedient topic’, etc.

This impasse is dominated by an outdated but continuing

concept of population control. ‘Population control’ is a term full
of fallacies; it is decidedly not the way the state should tackle
demographic challenges. A rights-based approach must be on top
of the agenda. Whether it is a question of granting political rights
or citizens’ rights to services, the philosophy and orientation of
the state must change.

Fifty years ago, Mahmood Mamdani wrote a revolutionary book,

The Myth of Population Control, on the impact of Indira Gandhi’s
Emergency on a village in Indian Punjab. India’s population
control policy during the Emergency failed miserably. It caused
Mrs Gandhi’s downfall and led to an extreme distrust of state
policies. Only a few miles away, we would not expect anything
different to happen in Pakistan if the state adopted this policy of
population control. ‘Population control’, as it stands, has already
been regarded as something negative, and rejected by most
people as a way of taking away our values.
The new population narrative asks that the state should not be the controller
but the enabler.

The China and India examples of draconian population control

policies cannot be followed. Instead, we must emulate states that
have successfully reduced their population growth rate. Plenty of
examples abound in the region. Iran made contraceptives
available to its public health services, Bangladesh invested in
community outreach services and the empowerment of women,
and Saudi Arabia permitted women to access contraception in
the private sector without foisting any state policy.

Pakistan too, must move to provide similar solutions which

would enable families to actualise their own wishes and
fundamental rights. The new population narrative asks that the
state not be the controller but the enabler — it must not decide
how many children people should have; instead, it should
provide the information and means for families to decide. The
state must play its role in enabling change by increasing choices
and access to services for women who need them.

There are enough glaring statistics that show the current

disconnect between state institutions and the people, especially
the poor. Clichés are used widely to condemn the reproductive
choices of the poor, when millions of pregnancies are unwanted.
Many in power flippantly say that the masses want lots of
children. This is a callous abdication of responsibility when 6.5m
women express an unmet need for family planning services,
2.2m abortions take place annually because of unwanted
pregnancies and 1.4m unwanted children are born each year.

Women can and must decide on how many children they want
and when. Many women with an unmet need for family planning
services are powerless and cannot make decisions about their
own healthcare or move outside their homes. They need state
support to guard their decisions. They must be provided access to
voluntary services, through subsidised transport and services.
Family planning must be seen as beneficial through aggressive
public service advertising. The government must do this in
partnership with the private sector. Citizens and entities should
be invited to give their input for services such as low-cost
housing, telehealth and distance learning.

After the 18th Amendment, responsibility for providing services

lies with the provinces. However, the federal government can
also show more intent. At the moment, federal institutions
support a pronatalist stance: the NFC award with 82pc weightage
for population size contributes to greater resources for higher
population growth. This is an incentive for provincial
governments to increase population sizes. Paradoxically, while
numbers boost political representation and resources for the
powerful, they do not translate into access to services, nor
human development for the people of a province.

A new financial arrangement must be made, and additional

amounts allocated to incentivise provincial governments to
improve the presently lagging education, health and family
planning outcomes. Providing services for the 6.5m women, with
an unmet need, located across Pakistan would cost Rs13 billion.
The arrangement must be devised by the federal government to
share these costs, minimising any drain on state resources. The
potential gains are huge: halving the number of pregnancies,
lowering fertility rates, increasing the per capita income and
making progress in enrolling millions of out-of-school children.

Finally, a federally conducted population and housing census is

going to be rolled out in March 2023. The Council of Common
Interests’ decision was based on a political party’s demands for
fresh constituency boundaries. The funding was found for a
digital census costing Rs33bn. It must be remembered this time
that a census’s main purpose is to count everyone living on
Pakistani soil to distribute resources and to ensure that housing,
school and work opportunities reach everyone.

The state must use its resources to convince the public that the
census is a count for ensuring each man, woman and child’s
entitlement. The census must be more transparent this time,
sharing results openly with the provinces, and be seen as a tool
for guaranteeing the constitutional rights of individuals.

The time to change the state’s stance on population is now and it

must seize the opportunity while the situation is still salvageable.

The writer is Country Director, Population Council.

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2023

Failure of economic governance

dawn.com/news/1731883/failure-of-economic-governance

January 16, 2023

IN a book I put together two decades ago, the late Meekal Ahmed,
one of Pakistan’s most distinguished economists, contributed a
chapter titled ‘An economic crisis state’. He had this to say then:
“Economic management in Pakistan has steadily deteriorated to
the point where the economy has lurched from one financial
crisis to the next. At the heart of the problem has been poor
management of public finances and deep-seated unresolved
structural issues in the economy that bad management and poor
governance has exacerbated. The consequences are plain to see:
macroeconomic instability, high inflation, poor public services,
criminal neglect of the social sectors, widespread corruption,
crippling power outages, growing unemployment, deepening
poverty and a deteriorating debt profile.” Meekal also wrote, “An
IMF programme gets some reforms implemented as part of its
conditionality but as soon as the programme is over or ended by
the authorities’ themselves mid-way, all the reforms are rolled
back.”

Twenty-three years later nothing has changed. This paragraph

could well have been written today. Its summary of the outcome
of poor economic governance is an apt description of the present
economic disarray. For many decades successive governments,
civilian and military, with few exceptions, pursued similar
policies that contributed to or reinforced Pakistan’s structural
economic problems. In fact, their foreign policy and economic
management intersected to produce an outcome in which the
country became increasingly dependent on external financial
assistance, aid and borrowing rather than finding a viable
development path by relying on itself and safeguarding its
economic sovereignty.

The pattern of external overreach and internal underreach

persists. This has got to a point where securing funds/loans from
friendly countries and international financial institutions is now
celebrated by government officials and even deemed by sections
of the media as major policy successes. Such claims are blind to
the ineluctable reality that living off other people’s money is
hardly a national achievement. They provide false comfort to the
ruling elite but do nothing to resolve the country’s economic
problems.

The source of the country’s recurring economic crises is of course

its fiscal deficit — a measure of governments constantly living
beyond their means, unwilling to raise domestic resources and
engaging in unrestrained spending. The fiscal deficit has been the
source of persistent macroeconomic instability, high inflation
and balance-of-payments crises. Over the decades, the twin
deficits of the budget and balance-of-payments were managed by
dysfunctional economic policies. Significantly the country’s
external alignments fed into and facilitated this.
Living off other people’s money is hardly a national achievement.

In earlier decades Pakistan’s Cold War alliance with the West

offered policymakers the means to finance deficits with soft
loans. Successive governments — dominated by rural and urban
elites — therefore found the way to avoid reforms, raise
sufficient revenue or tax themselves or their support base.
Dependence on external resources to finance both development
and consumption was thus both encouraged and enabled by the
availability of concessional assistance as a consequence of the
country’s foreign alignments. Cold War assistance accompanied
Pakistan’s close alliance with the US, then cemented by military
pacts. Then in the 1980s, Western aid flowed as a strategic
payback for Pakistan’s pivotal role in resisting and rolling back
the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. 9/11 again turned Pakistan
into a front-line state and increased its strategic importance for
Washington, which mobilised international efforts to provide
financial resources and IMF financing for budgetary support as
well as debt restructuring to ease Islamabad’s economic
problems.

The result was aid-fuelled economic growth during much of the

period of Gen Ziaul Haq’s and president Pervez Musharraf’s
governments, which created an illusion of economic progress.
‘Borrowed growth’ may not have had such deleterious
consequences if the fiscal space it provided was used to launch
reforms to address Pakistan’s underlying structural problems:
widen the tax base, document the economy, diversify exports,
and boost savings to finance an investment level to sustain an
economic growth rate higher than the rise in population. But this
did not happen. The availability of external financial resources
along with high remittance inflows from overseas Pakistanis
simply enabled the country’s economic managers to postpone
reforms, ignore the structural problems of the economy and
pursue dysfunctional policies. Moreover, once concessional
financing began to taper off, it was replaced by expensive foreign
and domestic borrowing. This ‘borrowed growth’ was not only
unsustainable but came at the enormous price of debt
accumulation.

The mid-1980s marked a sharp break in Pakistan’s budgetary

history, with revenue no longer matching even the government’s
current expenditure. For the next decade and beyond successive
governments borrowed heavily to finance not only development
but also consumption. In the process, the country accumulated
unsustainable debt both by borrowing abroad and at home. This
burden continues to cripple the economy today.

In recent years, reliance on the West has been replaced by

dependence on close strategic ally China, Saudi Arabia and the
Gulf states, who have provided financial help to bail out the
country from economic and liquidity crises. Rollover of debt and
deposits in the central bank to shore up reserves have been
among the ways this has been done. Announcements last week
from the UAE and Saudi Arabia are the latest illustration of this.
It again underlines the intersection of foreign alignments and
financial help to overcome economic crisis. It also demonstrates
how governments continue to look outside to rescue the
country’s economy when it teeters on the brink of insolvency.
That Pakistan is now in its 23rd IMF programme is another
testimony of this.
The habit of depending on others has become so deeply
entrenched in the country’s political culture that there is little if
any questioning of this among those in power or for that matter
in the establishment whose leaders join in and often spearhead
the effort to seek ‘lifeline’ funds from friendly countries. This
reflects the failure of economic governance as it involves
lurching from one crisis to another with no ability to avert the
next one with outsiders seen as stopgap answers to the cash-
strapped country’s perennial economic problems. Above all this
approach reduces the country to the unfortunate status of a
supplicant whose economic survival depends not on itself but on
others.

The writer is a former ambassador to the US, UK & UN.

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2023

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Comments (1)

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COMMENT MOD POLICY

E.Ravi Kumar
Jan 16, 2023 08:17am
Simple question is when Argentina with Agricultural income
placed among G20 countries, Pakistan despite wast mineral &
agricultural wealth couldn't. Why? Pakistani leaders doesn't
know what their country need. Another simple question is, when
no other South Asian country compete INDIA on Defence
Expenditure, why Pakistan? Hence, a common man would be
more WISER than a person from a RICH Political Family. Isn't it?

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