COMMENTARY

Pakistani Journalists: Standing Tall

Beena Sarwar

Journalists in Pakistan walk a tightrope between the military and the militants, risking their lives as never before to get the truth into the public domain. They have always had to tiptoe around directly challenging the concepts upheld by the security establishment. But as a Pakistani writer and filmmaker writes, the media in Pakistan is still standing.

ay a prayer for Saleem Shahid, my friend, then lets talk about cricket, whos going to be the next captain, lets gossip, urged senior journalist Nusrat Javeed in the television talk show Bolta Pakistan that he co-hosts with the younger Mushtaq Minhas. As Minhas tried to bring up the issue of the investigative journalist Saleem Shahzad who had just been found murdered, Javeed interrupted him:
Merey bhai (my brother), focus on getting good ratings. Television is all about ratings. This is the message we need to understand. Get your ratings up, talk about the corruption of politicians, talk about drones, go ahead and bash America, spread Imran Khans thoughts from house to house, or even better, leave journalism altogether. You must learn your lesson, identify the safe areas and play thereI myself like cooking. I think maybe I should start a TV show: Nusrat can cook you get to travel also

Savage sarcasm, satire, and black humour are means to deal with pressures that journalists in Pakistan face, particularly since the war on terror that has pushed them onto a tightrope, caught between the military and the militants.

Dealing with the Devil

As in most of south Asia, Pakistan has a bureaucratic culture where the right to information or freedom of information are fledgling concepts and even the most innocuous government file is often stamped top secret. Journalists who rely on the ubiquitous reliable source to obtain the story sometimes end up making a deal with the devil. A source provides exclusive information that will make the front page; in return, you may have to publish a story against someone, or use inaccurate or slanted information. In countries where reporters obtain information legitimately for example, Sweden, where journalists routinely peruse government correspondence and trawl through official registers without being beholden to anyone journalists

Beena Sarwar (beena.sarwar@gmail.com) is a journalist, documentary filmmaker and editor of Aman ki Asha for the Jang Group, Pakistan.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW

can reject such requests or look for verification from other sources. But when the information is obtained clandestinely, or leaked by dubious sources, this may not be possible. Of course Pakistan is not the only country where journalists cultivate secret sources. Remember the New York Times (nyt) report alleging that Iraq was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction? It paved the way for the US invasion of Iraq, with disastrous consequences not just for that country but the world. That lie for which the NYT subsequently and belatedly apologised, led to a situation that contributed to the current state of affairs in Pakistan, including the increasing risks journalists face. The risks to reporters are multiplied by the high stakes of the post-9/11 world with its murky underworld of intelligence gathering, particularly in Pakistan where the intelligence agencies also have a selfstyled agenda to ensure compliance with the ideology of Pakistan. According to one interpretation of this ideology, India is the enemy, Pakistan is the torchbearer of Islam, and (since the Afghan war of the 1980s that Pakistan fought as a front line state for the United States against the Soviets) jihad or holy war is the way to enforce these concepts. Pakistani journalists have always had to tiptoe around directly challenging the concepts upheld by the security establishment, particularly around conflict situations and the wars fought with India (portrayed in Pakistan as Pakistani victories following Indian aggression). The other sacred cow has always been Islam, the dominant religion in Pakistan, an emotive issue that governments have often tried to exploit for political gains. When Zulfikar Bhutto found his government weakening, he tried to play the religious card. He declared Friday the weekly holiday, got the Ahmedis categorised as non-Muslims, and banned gambling and alcohol. But his handpicked Chief of Army Staff, general Zia-ul-Haq trumped Bhuttos Islam card with his own more extreme version. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a godsend to Zia. His hanging of Bhutto, imprisonment, torture and flogging of political opponents (including journalists), and crackdown on

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the media (censorship, newspapers forcibly shut down), were all overlooked as he allowed Pakistan to be used as the front line state in the Afghan war. He resorted to heavy censorship, a restrictive media policy and indoctrination through the media and education systems in order to build consensus for the new security paradigm centred on jihad and strategic depth. Journalists vigorously resisted the dictator. Besides protest demonstrations, there were more subtle ways of dissent, like publishing blank spaces to alert readers that material had been censored, using pseudonyms (that had to be continuously changed as the agencies cottoned on to identities), and the art of criticising without being too obvious about it.

Strategic Assets
After the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan, the fledging democracy that began to emerge following Zias death in 1988 found itself up against not just a security establishment used to openly forming and implementing policy,

but also its strategic assets, the trained, indoctrinated mujahideen left over from the Afghan war and who now turned their guns on Pakistan. The security establishment let them target people they considered a threat to their version of Islam since the mujahideen were useful in bleeding India over Kashmir. Since 9/11, this projihadi, anti-India policy has intersected disastrously with policies emanating from the war on terror. Here are a couple of examples about journalists caught at the wrong end of this paranoia. In March 2006, security agencies arrested Geo TV reporter Mukesh Kumar Ropeta and cameraman Sanjay Kumar near the US airbase at Jacobabad in Sindh where they had rushed upon hearing a blast (later explained away as a sonic boom). Ropeta and Kumar were kept incommunicado for three months, tortured and accused of being spies for India an accusation apparently triggered by the fact that both are Hindu (and by implication, associated with, or having sympathies with, India). They were finally produced before a court in June, the same month

that investigative journalist Hayatullah Khans body (shot to death, his wrists bound with government issued handcuffs) was found in North Waziristan. He had been abducted six months earlier after he reported that the death of Abu Hamza Rabia, an alleged Al Qaida commander, was due to a US missile. His photographs of pieces of a US-made drone in the wreckage of the house destroyed by the blast gave the lie to the governments claims that the explosion was caused by inflammables in the house itself. Incidents related to Pakistans involvement in the war on terror have upped the ante for journalists, caught between the government secret services and insurgent groups. Nearly 50 journalists have been killed over the past decade, about 12 in the last 18 months alone, many of them victims of target killing, like Saleem Shahzad. But the journalists killed in conflict-ridden Balochistan barely merit small reports in the mainstream media, like fore example, the Baloch journalist Malik Siraj Akbar poignantly documents (Death Is One Pakistani Reporters

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Economic Reforms and Growth in India

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This volume investigates the nature of economic growth in India, its pace over time, its relationship to changes in the policy regime and the role of the external sector, and uses data to evaluate the policies that have implicitly underpinned the changes. Presenting a range of approaches, views and conclusions, this collection comprises papers published in the Economic and Political Weekly between the late 1990s and 2008 that are marked by an empirical awareness necessary for an understanding of a growth history. The articles reflect a certain groundedness in their approach in that they privilege content/context over methodology. This volume is an important addition to the literature on post-liberalisation economic growth in India. It will be useful to students and scholars of economics and management. Contributors include Deepak Nayyar Rakesh Mohan Atul Kohli Arvind Panagariya Kunal Sen Neeraj Hatekar Jessica Seddon Wallack Pulapre Balakrishnan Ravindra Dholakia Ramesh Chand R. Nagaraj Montek Ahluwalia Shashank Bhide Amit Bhaduri Pranab Bardhan

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Constant Companion, iwatchnews.org, 3 June 2011). Akbar writes,

During the past nine months, I have lost six colleagues in the conflict. I spent time with all these journalists, working on stories, participating in training programmes or developing source networks in the countrys largest province bordering Iran and Afghanistan. Family members and professional colleagues back home in Pakistan attribute the reporters targeted murders to state secret services and death squads. The authorities have not investigated or punished those responsible for these killings. Worse still, official pressure on media outlets has led to a complete blackout of the news concerning their deaths.

only to be abrogated within a few years. The media at the time, the Urdu daily Jang, the English daily Dawn and Radio Pakistan, toed a pro-establishment, progovernment line. Journalists arrests were part of the crackdown on all progressive forces in the early 1950s, as Pakistan tried to align with the US where the McCarthy era was then in full swing. Journalists suspected of communist sympathies were fired and imprisoned (including my uncle Mohammad Akhtar and his colleagues, M A Shakoor, Eric Rahim, Ahmad Hasan, Tufail Ahmad Khan and Mihaj Barna). (2) 1958-71 Army Rule Field Marshall Ayub Khan, General Yahya Khan: The State-controlled Pakistan Television, that began broadcasts in 1964, has remained very much his masters voice. Along with a few newspapers and the governmentcontrolled Radio Pakistan, PTV reported only what the government allowed. This censorship was particularly evident when it came to the growing unrest in what was then East Pakistan. The news censorship and slanting was so extreme that even on 16 December 1971, when the Pakistan army surrendered to the Indian army, the West Pakistan media was still predicting victory. An exception was Anthony Mascarenhas, the Goa-born, Karachi-educated journalist who had helped found the Associated Press of Pakistan (APP), the government-controlled news agency. Recruited by The Sunday Times, London in 1970, his reports on the happenings in East Bengal profoundly influenced opinion in the outside world, and changed the course of his life, as his obituary in The Times notes.
He and his family had to leave their home and all their possessions in Karachi. He arrived in Britain on 12 June 1971, and the following day his three-page story appeared in The Sunday Times. It was quoted all over the world and won him awards from IPC and What the Papers Say. But it also earned him the bitter hatred of Pakistans military regime, and for a time he had reason to fear for his life.

In April 1973, the National Assembly approved the new Constitution that had been accepted by most political parties. These years were marked by a sense of consolidation, nation building, and emergence from the trauma of 1971. General elections in 1974 brought Bhuttos Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) to power amid allegations of rigging. These allegations fed into a wider discontent that Bhuttos Chief of Army Staff, general Zia-ul-Haq was able to exploit when he overthrew his erstwhile mentor in 1977. (4) 1977-88 Army Rule, the Zia Years: In 1977, Prime Minister Bhutto announced general elections one year before his term ended. Before the early elections could be held Zia-ul-Haq imposed Martial Law and imprisoned Bhutto, later hanging him. The promised elections within 90 days were never held. Zia appointed himself president and made various changes to the Constitution, including various controversial Islamic laws. It was during these years that many of the developments mentioned above took place censorship, journalists being imprisoned and flogged and tortured. (5) 1988-99 Democracy Musical Chairs: After Zias death in a plane crash in August 1988, it was as if the lid had been lifted off a pot on the boil. The ugliness cultivated and stifled during the Zia years came spewing out. The violence of the 1990s is well documented. The privatisation of violence mentioned above manifested itself in attacks on journalists by men with affiliations to various religious and ethnic parties. This decade was also marked by veritable musical chairs of governments being elected and ousted, thrice through powers that Zia had introduced allowing the president to dissolve the assemblies and send the government packing on various grounds. The first general elections in this period, held in November 1988 brought Benazir Bhutto to power but with her hands tied behind her back, with the critical areas of defence, foreign policy and economy off-limits to her government. President Ghulam Ishaq Khan dismissed her government in 1990 and headed a caretaker government that oversaw fresh general

This intensification of conflict that the journalists find themselves in makes the bad old days of the Zia era look good. But then it is necessary to remind ourselves that Pakistan is reaping now what the general sowed during those dark days. After Zias mid-air exit from the scene, journalists began facing an increase in privatised violence by non-state actors, thugs strengthened during the military dictatorship. They barged into homes and offices of journalists (even the much respected editor of the daily Dawn was not spared), sent live bullets and warnings to journalists, and kidnapped and beat journalists. This was in addition to the threats from the secret agencies. At least four journalists were killed in 1990 alone, four narrowly escaped death, and three others were kidnapped. Twenty newspaper offices were attacked (The Press in Pakistan Is Unwell, Index On Censorship 7/1991). Journalist friends in India sometimes express wonder at the courage of their Pakistani colleagues; some wish that the Indian media would stand up to, say, the corporate sector at home. The fact is that due to the almost uninterrupted political process in India (barring Indira Gandhis Emergency years), Indians have had a chance to build a consensus with the State and buy into the States security paradigm. Pakistanis on the other hand, have historically had an adversarial relationship with the State, leading to an often healthy scepticism. The phases of Pakistans political and media history identified below provide an overview that illustrates this. (1) 1947-58 The Formative Years Governor Rule: A Constitution was adopted,
Economic & Political Weekly EPW

(3) 1971-77 the Bhutto Years: On 20 December 1971, army chief general Yahya Khan resigned and handed over the government to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who took oath as president and first civilian Chief Martial Law Administrator of Pakistan.

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elections three months later. Nawaz Sharifs Pakistan Muslim League was voted to power but dismissed in 1993. Another caretaker government supervised new general elections, which returned Benazir Bhutto to power. Barely a couple of years later, President Farooq Leghari (a PPP stalwart) dismissed the government and three months later Nawaz Sharif was elected back to power. During Nawaz Sharifs last government, tensions between the media and the government hit a new high. There were by now several newspapers in various languages. The ownership of the Urdu language Jang, Pakistans largest circulated daily with several editions, had started an English language newspaper The News, competing with the established, and more staid Dawn. Tensions between the media and the government had been building up since the previous summer, coinciding with Nawaz Sharifs announcement of the controversial Constitutional Amendment 15 (the Shariat Bill). The government was also irked by the planned launch of Geo, an offshore south Asian satellite channel backed by the Jang Group. The government feels that the Jang Group is a monster in the making, with its move into the electronic media challenging the official monopoly on truth, Imran Aslam, then senior editor The News, told me at the time. Matters between the government and the Jang Group came to a head in January 1999 when the Jang editor-in-chief Mir Shakilur Rehman at a press conference played audio tapes supporting his allegations that the government had been pressurising him to sack and replace 16 journalists, support us in policy matters, and refrain from criticising the first family. The startling revelations led to an unprecedented battle between the govern ment and the press. Newsprint supply to Jang, which had already been held back illegally by the government, stopped abruptly. The groups bank accounts were frozen, affecting the 4,000-odd employees whose pay cheques were held up. The government filed a sedition case against Mir Shakilur Rehman. The battle continued until the government assured the Jang Group unconditional access to its newsprint stores and bank accounts (details in my article, Nawaz Sharif vs the

Press, Frontline, 27 February-12 March 1999). The quid pro quo for the government backing off appeared to be the Jang Groups shelving of the Geo project at the time. (6) 1999-2008 Army Rule, the Musharraf Years: Chief of Army Staff general Pervez Musharraf ousted the Nawaz Sharif government in a coup and held controlled elections in 2002, in which no major political leaders participated. The Chief Executive of Pakistan as Musharraf styled himself, granted licences to private television stations, including Geo. His relationship with the news channels soured during their coverage of the mass agitations against his dismissal of the Chief Justice of Pakistan. When he imposed Emergency rule in November 2007, Musharraf banned several channels. Geo was the last to be allowed back on air several months later. (7) 2008 Democracy Again (Imperfect, But a Step in the Right Direction): And so we come to the current phase, in which journalists walk a tightrope between the military and the militants, risking their lives as never before to get various versions of the truth into the public domain. On the plus side, Pakistan is on the right track. It has a democratically elected government that is staying away from the vengeful policies of the past. However, the deep state that columnist Kamran Shafi keeps reminding us of, continues to undermine freedom of information and freedom of the media. For many, the intelligence agencies and the militants they once trained and equipped are two sides of the same coin. Although officially Pakistan has rejected the jihadi policy, the linkages built up between the military and the militants over decades may take time to disappear completely. The journalists who expose those leftover links do so at risk to their lives. Ironically, the first journalist to be killed for venturing into that murky terrain was not a Pakistani but an American, Daniel Pearl. There are other ways to deal with pesky journalists, of course. On 24 June, former Deputy Attorney General of Pakistan (during the Musharraf era) Sardar Muhammad Ghazi, filed a petition in the Supreme Court of Pakistan against
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journalists and media organisations for defaming Pakistans armed forces and its top spy agency. He is arguing that the armed forces and the intelligence agencies are responsible for defending the geographical and ideological boundaries of Pakistan and that elements from the print and electronic media are out to destabilise and de-nuclearise Pakistan. As Bob Dietz of the Committee to Protect Journalists commented, This suit is part of a wide range of efforts including threats, abductions, beatings, and killings (of journalists) that we have seen being dealt out at an increasingly frequent rate. It is also clear that having an independent media does not always mean better, more mature public discourse. On the contrary, the ratings-driven big media, as elsewhere in the world, are more interested in news and talk shows that are sensationalist and fan conflict rather than promoting open, honest discussion and dialogue. The anti-American rhetoric pushed by certain sections in Pakistan (particularly the religious and right wing political parties and the agencies) is also evident in the mainstream electronic media and their talk shows, dubbed by some wags as Pakistans jihadi media. While this may not change anytime soon, in recent months the rise in public awareness about political issues and the right to information has led to unprecedentedly open challenges to Pakistans traditional security paradigm and calls for accountability of the military. There is an increased highlighting and exposure of abuse, documented and made public by citizen journalists or the para-media as the Bangladeshi journalist Afsan Chowdhry termed the underground media of Bangladesh in the 1990s. Except that the current para-media is not underground, anymore but very much in the open, on the Internet with email, blogs, social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc) and cell

available at

Dey & Bose Magazine Agent

P.O.Beldubi, Dadpur Howrah 711 322, West Bengal Ph: 22198749
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phones (readily accessible documentation tools that allow a lay person to take photos or videos and upload them to the Web). All this is also affecting public discourse as never before. The merging of these technologies and tools has led to a virtual (no pun intended) revolution that would once have been considered science fiction. All

this has led to changes in the public discourse that the big media also picks up. In the final analysis, Pakistan is barely three years into the current phase. The direction it now takes will be critical to the situation of the media in coming years. If the current elected government completes its tenure, holds elections, and hands over

power to the next elected government, it will be a first in Pakistans history. If that happens and the democratic political process continues over the years, one can hope that a democratic political culture will eventually prevail over the security state and the militants, allowing journalists to do their job with less risk to their lives.

Paddy Glut and Farmer Distress in Andhra Pradesh

R V Ramana Murthy

The artificial glut in paddy in Andhra Pradesh after the 2011 rabi was created by millers who cut down their purchases after an excellent harvest. This caused severe distress to farmers, a majority of whom sold their produce at less than the minimum support price. A record procurement of the rabi crop by state agencies could not mitigate the crisis, which has become an annual phenomenon. The lopsided policy of the Food Corporation of India in Andhra Pradesh of procuring rice instead of paddy is the root cause of the problem.

he bumper harvest of paddy in Andhra Pradesh 2010-11 brought the farmers trouble rather than benefit. It began with no miller turning up at mandis until end-April to lift the paddy, causing prices to plunge. Anxious farmers hit the streets with dharnas across districts, symbolically burnt paddy on roads in protest, and in some districts threatened to hold a crop holiday in the next season. The unprecedented arrival of paddy at the mandis threw the under-prepared state government into a tizzy. The state government was forced to review and revise its procurement operations, yet the tardy procurement exposed its weaknesses in meeting the challenge. The increased procurement did not repair the damage completely. There is, in fact, a deeper malady in the policy in the state that is responsible for the situation. This calls for a serious debate on the efficacy of the government procurement policy and price support strategy.

the previous year (Table 1). The year 2010-11 was not the first one with a bumper crop. In 2008-09, the output was even higher, suggesting an upward drift in production. While this should welcome from the point of view of food security for the people, this has not been good news for the farmers. This is because the millers have depressed prices below the minimum support price (MSP). The majority of farmers who sold their crop to millers on an average suffered a loss of around Rs 5,000-8,000 per acre when compared to what the MSP would have enabled them to garner. The moot question is why does this crisis happen when we have built a safeguard called state procurement. Before addressing the larger questions, let us understand the nature of paddy production and the market. The physiognomy of paddy is that the kharif crop grown during June-November is a long duration crop of six months. The superior varieties (such as Sona Masuri, Vijay Masuri, BPT, etc) are produced during kharif and go into top end consumption. Millers usually compete to buy most of this crop and the market price tends to be above the MSP. The Andhra Pradesh State Civil Supplies Corporation (APSCSC) does not procure any paddy in
Table 1: Area, Production and Yield of Rice in Andhra
Years Area (Lakh ha) Kharif Rabi Production (lakh Tonnes) Kharif Rabi Yield (Quintal per Acre) Kharif Rabi

Bumper Harvest
In 2010, Andhra Pradesh received an unprecedented average rainfall of 1,330 mm, 30% in excess over the normal. As a result, there was a record yield of 40 quintals per acre on an average. To top this, due to low relative prices of maize and sugar cane in the past two years, there was a 5% increase of the area under paddy cultivation in the kharif season and a 10.8% increase in rabi (under paddy). This led to an all time record rabi production of 70 lakh tonnes in 2010-11, a 30% rise over
2000-01 2001-02 2002-03 2003-04 2004-05 2005-06 2006-07 2007-08 2008-09 2009-10 2010-11*

30.04 12.39 24.26 13.99 21.09 21.09 22.15 26.41 7.13 8.66 8.71 13.37

82.34 42.24 65.01 48.89 50.54 22.73 58.42 31.11 63.93 32.08 63.77 53.27 69.49 49.23 81.91 51.33 83.80 58.61 59.56 48.82 75.07 70.15

27.41 34.01 26.79 34.96 23.97 31.89 27.72 35.94 28.86 36.83 25.24 36.59 26.31 36.81 31.78 36.50 29.89 37.00 28.87 35.43 25.69 39.88

25.26 14.56 25.78 14.06 28.03 15.87 20.63 29.22 13.78 17.59

R V Ramana Murthy (rvramana66@gmail.com) is with the Department of Economics, University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW

*Advance Estimates. Source: Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Government of Andhra Pradesh.

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