South Asia

Saira Wasim is a noted US based contemporary artist from Pakistan. Ms. Wasim has carved a niche for herself with her innovative and meticulously crafted Persian miniatures, which she employs to make devastating political and social commentary. Ms. Wasim’s work has been widely feted, and has been showcased in numerous prominent art institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, and Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Biographical

You were born and raised in Lahore. Can you tell us a little more about how it was growing up there? Did you ever visit the BRB canal?

While I was born in the city, my parents moved to the suburbs right after my birth. I grew up in Allama Iqbal town, which is a south-western suburb of Lahore.

After my birth, my father built a house in Allama Iqbal town - he always wanted to live away from the city life. Our house was one of the first in the town. My early memories of living in that new town include seeing fields all around our house.

My parents still live in that house though the town itself is much more crowded now.

And yes, I have visited BRB Canal plenty of times; my father loved to take us there on picnics.

Is your family originally from Lahore or they moved there during partition?

My maternal grand parents were from Lahore while my paternal grand parents were from Pasrur, a small village near Sialkot (near the Indian border).

Many of my family members originally lived in Qadian, a small village in Gurdaspur in Indian Punjab as Ahmadis have long had very strong ties with Qadian.

Can you tell me a little more about your childhood and your parents?

We were raised in a protected environment. Our weekends were spent at my father’s village of Pasrur. Our father always wanted us to have a first hand knowledge of village life because he wanted us to experience how people live in extreme poverty. We were also taught swimming, horse riding, fishing, climbing on trees, and many other activities of village life.

Abu

My father is an engineer. In 1984 my father started a factory for manufacturing capital goods in Lahore. He ran a factory to manufacture control panels and switch gears. ‘Power Electronics’, my dad’s company, was the first Pakistani company that made Switch-gears. Before that, Pakistan had to import these products from Western countries at an enormous cost. It was in fact that realization which prompted him to start manufacturing capital goods.

My father disliked the idea of emigrating to other countries. He believed that we have to make things better in our own country. He thought things would get better after Zia’s regime and that our Caliph, Mirza Tahir Ahmad, would come back. He thought that Pakistan would be on the road of peace and prosperity soon after Zia left but my father was mistaken in his optimism.

Anyhow, while the 1980s were the worst in Pakistan history in terms of freedom of speech and religious freedom, 1990s were the worst in terms of political chaos and corruption in the country. My father had to struggle hard and faced numerous obstacles due to the constant flip flop of democratically elected governments of Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, and because these governments brought a lot of corruption in the country. The common man in Pakistan had thought that democratic governments would bring peace and prosperity in the country but things got much worse.

Ami

She is a very sensitive person.

My mother had a very tough childhood. My Nana Jaan died when she was two years old and she had to live in extreme poverty.

Although my Nana Jaan, a close friend of Mirza Gulam Ahmad (founder of the Ahmadi sect), was a very rich businessman, with interests in Lahore and Bombay, before partition, and left huge property for his four kids and two widows, those four kids and two widows didn’t get even a single penny from that property because my mother’s two Chachas (uncles) were very much against my naana jaan’s conversion to Ahmadiyya faith and his second marriage at the age of 60 to my nani jaan (a young Kashmiri Ahmadi school teacher from a very poor family). His first wife was a rich lady from a nawab family who lived most of her life with my nana jaan. She had converted to Ahmadiyya faith along with nana jaan but couldn’t have kids so she, along with second caliph Mirza Basir-ud-deen Mahmud and his wife, made my nana jaan do a second marriage with my nani jaan. The first wife died soon after my nana jaan death, and both chachas distributed the wealth among their children. My nani jaan, who got widowed at the age of 25 with four young kids, moved to Rabwa from Lahore where the second caliph was living, who supported nani just like his own daughter and grand kids and there she started teaching at local school. My nani also died when my ami was 16 yrs old and my mamoo (ami’s elder brother) who was himself just 21 yrs old became the guardian of three younger siblings.

Can you tell us a little more about the impact of growing up as an Ahmadi in Pakistan?

Ahmadis have faced antagonism since the beginning. Ulemas of all the major seventy-two sects of Islam declared them Kafirs in 1891.

In 1974, Prime Minister Zulifqar Ali Bhutto declared Ahmadis non-Muslims. The constitution of Pakistan was amended to outlaw Ahmadis from calling themselves Muslims. Following the legislation, anti-Ahmadiyya riots broke out in the entire country. Thousands of Ahmadis died in the riots. Their properties were looted and their homes burnt.

My ami (mother) always tells us this story that in 1974 when she was pregnant (with me) and alone in the house with her three year old daughter (my elder sister), the mullahs led a call during the Friday sermon for every Ahmadi house to be burnt in order to secure Islam from Ahmadiyyat. A huge mob went on a rampage. As the word got around people, including our next door neighbors left their houses to try to save themselves. When the mob, which included some of our own Sunni relatives, was marching toward our house, my abu (father) went to the police to ask for help. The police refused point blank saying that they could not go against the mullahs.

Just when the mob was about to reach our house, there was a sudden severe sandstorm. My ami always says that it was a miracle. (I don’t know about Indian Punjab but in Pakistani Punjab we have a lot of sand storms especially in early summer and they come so unexpectedly that one doesn’t get the opportunity to close the windows and doors of the house. The storms leave your house covered in dust and the whole city turns into a desert; one can’t even see beyond a foot). The mob couldn’t do anything except break a few windows. My Ami tells us that after the storm there were only shoes and turbans found on the street.

So at a fairly early age we came to know that we had a religious identity which was unacceptable to the mainstream Muslims. We were nurtured in the basic teachings of Ahmadi faith in house, and sent to Convent of Jesus and Mary school because my father didn’t want us to face any discrimination because of our faith.

The discrimination against us has also been endorsed on our passports. If we call ourselves Ahmadis we have to enroll as a non-Muslim which deprives us of all our basic rights as Muslims. For example, Ahmadis cannot cast votes as Muslim and in order to vote, we have to enroll as non-Muslims.

During Zia-ul Huq oppressive regime, our Fourth Caliph (spiritual leader) Hazrat Mirza Tahir Ahmad was compelled to migrate to England. Since then many Ahmadis in Pakistan have emigrated to European countries. Most of my relatives moved to USA and Canada.

Zia’s oppressive regime left a long lasting legacy of turmoil in the country and religious extremism. There were many incidents of animosity that I witnessed, and now living in US I realize how much we were denied of our basic religious rights. Ahmadis were not allowed to practice their faith in public places or build their mosques. So my father volunteered our house for congregational prayers in Ramazan and other Ahmadis meetings. When Mullahs of local mosque got this news my father had to face huge threats and warnings that we were using our residential area for un-Islamic activities. It is against the constitution of Pakistan to build Ahmadiyya mosque or use a building as Ahmadiyya mosque and activities. My father was sued by the local mullahs but my father took the fine in his stride and paid the penalty.

I find it ironic that the only country where I am a non-Muslim is my own. In the past I have never commented on these issues in my work. And although I was very willing to address such controversial issues, the general air of intolerance in my society always discouraged me from doing so.

When did you first realize that you were interested in art? Was it a Eureka moment for you or a slow eventual realization? South Asian societies generally see art as a hobby. From art as a hobby to choosing it as a profession, this transition is especially difficult in Asian societies. Were your parents supportive of your decision? If you feel comfortable, please tell us a little more about your parent’s professions and their impact on you.

From the earliest that I can remember, I have always been very fond of drawing. Every wall, cupboard and door was covered with silly figurative drawings and portraits of family members, relatives, and who ever visited our house. I watched the visitors secretly and drew their appearance on the wall and when they were gone I showed it to my parents and said, “Look, I made the picture of Baba Chokidari, motti Chachi, and Apa ji - don’t they look like this?”

In the beginning my parents were amused by the drawings, my parents said, ‘look how creative and clever she is’, they laughed at those silly drawing on every wall of the house, and then they realized that every wall was covered with scribbling and drawings, and it gave them a very untidy appearance. So I was given blackboard and white chalks to draw on and instructed to draw on the blackboard only. The blackboard had two sides, one for me and one for my elder sister. We were told to do anything on our given area of Blackboard. My sister’s side was always covered with homework and my side was always covered by drawings. It is funny that now my sister is a Doctor (a general physician in Missouri), and I am still doing those silly drawings.

Let me share one another interesting story with you, my mother was also interested in art and always wanted to be a professional painter. Unfortunately, being a woman, she was not allowed by her family to paint or to pursue a professional carrier. When she was young, art was considered un-Islamic, and a waste of time. She used to make miniature paintings on fabric, newspapers and vases, from scratch and without any guidance or training. At that time, parents decided what careers the children would pursue and with whom they would marry. My widowed grandmother, who was a teacher and vice principal at a local school, decided that my mother should become a doctor. However my grandmother died untimely and the male guardians of my mother disallowed her from continuing her education. So, with her hidden passion for the arts and her mother’s unfulfilled dream for her to be a doctor, she was married away.

Since early childhood my mother has been mentally and academically preparing my sister and me to eventually become doctors. My sister fulfilled my mother’s dream and became a doctor. But when it came my turn to choose a career, I disappointed her. She always said “I didn’t get permission to be an artist by my mother, so how can I allow you?”

At the time my progress in school was getting very weak and she had to face complaints from my school teachers that they had caught me drawing in the class.
So whenever my mother caught me drawing or painting, she would destroy whatever artwork I had created. The only safe time I had was in the middle of night. I used to wake up in the middle of night when everybody was asleep, switched on a torch, covered myself with a big blanket, and pursued my art underneath it. Now I feel funny sharing all this but I was still caught, and received a good beating from Ami. My mother had a special beating stick for me. If I ever said I wanted to be an artist my sister immediately fetched that stick and put it in front of Ami.

My mother was not an anti-art person but she feared that her daughter wouldn’t have respectable place in the society and that pursuing art would kill my professional abilities. As you know in South Asian society artists are deemed to be mere craftsmen.

My ‘secret’ decision of being an artist was totally opposite to what my mom had decided for me. What I was painting was an even graver threat to Ami and Abu because starting 8th grade, I started painting compositions on ‘human suffering’ ‘persecution on minorities and women issues’.

Eventually, after years of persistence, my parents realized the intensity of my devotion to being an artist and I was granted permission to go to an art school. My Abu was a very big support from the very beginning - he always supported me in whatever I did or chose except we were supposed to be good in studies and elite in our fields. Like, “Kasbeh Kamal khon khe Aziz-e-Jhan Shohri’’ Iqbal

My Ami had her own very strong principles and believes, she always taught us it was a rigid patriarchal society (secondly we were a religious minority) where there was much discrimination against women and minorities and so women must pursue a career of utmost prestige and which would be considered safe and money making too.

Another reason for these strong anti-art sentiments in the 80’s was Zia-ul-Haq’s dictatorship. Every sort of art except for calligraphy was condemned; figurative art was considered un-Islamic. In fact, engaging in any form of art was considered a great sin.

I was careful to never show my work to my family till it was exhibited or published because if they saw the content and imagery of my work, they would never allow me to continue making such paintings or display them. So, belonging to a family from a controversial religious minority, and one that didn’t support the arts, I grew more politically conscious by the day.

On Art, why did you choose miniature art? What specific affordances does miniature art provide for your overtly political work?

Even today, Pakistani audiences perceive miniature painting as decorative, a form of art that reflects and glorifies their rich traditional heritage. Miniatures, for me, however, have a a more transcendental role; it is a vocabulary for the artist to engage in a sociopolitical dialogue with viewers towards a more humane society.

Of late, the miniature has drawn attention from foreign curators, museums, and art institutions. Yet, in Pakistan, my work was accepted by just one gallery––Rhotas2, the only serious gallery in Lahore–the others being reluctant to display anything controversial.

Moving to Chicago in 2003, I gained the artistic and religious freedom that was somewhat precarious in my own homeland. I began responding to my new environment. The post 9/11 climate of fear, scrutiny and surveillance of Muslims in the West thus shaped my current works. Global politics has become a consistent theme. Western societies in general - and the United States in particular - tend to be less aware of other societies in the world, particularly about Islam and Muslim culture. This is an era of cross-cultural misunderstandings; misperceptions created by a Western media that is mostly hostile to Muslim societies and Islam. Much of this misperception is attributable to the Western media, which often presents a distorted version of reality and only one side of the global debate. My new works unmask the injustices and hypocrisy of both Eastern and Western worlds.

My work has journeyed through several boundaries, from employing the centuries-old miniature format to a contemporary stage where a human drama unfolds every day, to cross-cultural forays and political interventions. And the inspirational sources have been many –– the courtly propaganda of the Mughals, the grandeur of baroque opera, the fun and enjoyment of circus performances, icons of pop culture, and the glamor of South-Asian cinema.

With Mughal allegorical symbolism, we miniaturists have created our own visual semiotics and metaphors. For example, the extremist mullahs who have hijacked Islam for their own political agendas and manipulate Muslim youth in the name of Jihad are allegorized by Greek-satyrs; Muslim leaders are depicted as string puppets in the hands of President Bush; Pakistani army generals wearing Hawaiian sandals indicate the irony that this nation is the world’s seventh nuclear state and is spending on a defence budget of over $3.5 billion a year in spite of a national debt of over $40 billion; the Shia-Sunni clash in Iraq is a bull-fight and the bogeyman media is a monkey with a camera.

Although they provide comic relief, they are critical of ignorance and prejudice, manipulation of governments and religious heads. The ironies and paradoxes of a post 9/11 world permeate my tragi-comic paintings. Mine is a plea for social justice.

**Note: The interview was conducted about an year ago in 2007. The interview has been edited for style, and on occasion for content, but due care has been taken to keep the overall emphasis and context intact.***

Investment in education, especially in developing countries, has long been shown to produce a variety of socially desirable outcomes including reduction in child mortality (esp. maternal education), lower fertility rates, better environment, and increases in gender equality etc.

Funding for education however suffers deeply, especially in South Asia. What the politicians haven’t accomplished in deed, they have accomplished in words. For example, in 2002, India enacted a constitutional amendment making education a fundamental right for all children between 6 and 14. Pakistani leaders have been no less ambitious and nor has the lack of commitment of resources needed to make those policies a success, any less mocking.

Given that Education is an extremely broad area, I have split the analysis into three non-exclusive parts – funding for education, literacy, and primary education.

For my analysis, I rely upon three data sources - Statistics Division of Government of Pakistan (Federal Bureau of Statistics); Ministry of Economic Affairs and Statistics, Government of Pakistan; and Institute of Statistics at UNESCO (World Bank, UNDP use its data). Data from the sources is sometimes conflicting, and in a small majority of cases wildly irreconcilable.

Funding for Education

While the exact figures differ (details below), all data show that Pakistan between 1999 and 2006 spent on average spends less than 2.5% of its GDP on education as compared to 3.6% average expenditure by countries in South Asia, and a combined average of 3.4% of other “low income countries”.

Education expenditure under Musharraf rose – though only eventually – from the low of 1.84% of GDP in 2000 to a still low but higher figure of 2.25% in 2005, rising to 2.59% in 2006. Expenditure on education (as percentage of GDP) under Musharraf compares poorly not only cross-nationally but also historically. The average expenditure in education stood at 2.7% plus under Bhutto’s second term between 1993 and 1996. Musharraf‘s regime however did do better than Sharif’s regime during which expenditure had plummeted to below 2% of GDP. Cross-nationally, Pakistan compared poorly to its South Asian neighbors (about a percentage below India, and generally below Bangladesh during the Musharraf era), and lagged significantly behind countries as varied as Iran, and United States.

Education expenditure measured as percentage of government expenditure rose appreciably between 2004 and 2005 from about 6.4% to nearly 10.5%. However in 2006, when the expenditure rose again to 12.5%, it was about 6 percentage points behind Iranian expenditure, a narrower gap than the 12 point wide chasm in 2005. Musharraf government’s spending on education averaged 4% behind Bangladesh’s expenditure, which remained steady between 14 and 15% points from 1999 to 2005.

Education expenditure is by no means uniform across the country and aggregate statistics hide much of the regional and within-region variation. Expenditure in education in Pakistan is the prerogative of the provincial government. Punjab government which swam in money during the Sharif era and allocated up to 31% of its budget on education, spent a declining proportion on education under Musharraf. Reflecting American money and priorities, investment in education by Balochistan’s provincial government went up post 9/11. Most budgetary allocation to education was spent on furnishing recurring expenses, and only a small proportion (less than 8%) on development. (Husain etc., 2003)

Adult Literacy Rate

Increases in literacy have been a major success of the Musharraf era. The overall literacy rate (10 years & above) was 54 percent in 2005-06, an increase of 9.0 percentage points over five years. (The more conventionally reported 15+ year literacy rate is slightly lower at around 50%. Increase in that statistic is unknown.)

The literacy rate for non-poor went up from 51 percent in 2001 to 59 percent in 2005 whereas for poor it improved from 30 percent to 40 percent in the same period. Gender gap however remained significant and persistent – the 26 percent gap between male and female literacy rates at 2001-2002 was only marginally higher than the 23 percent gap in 2005-2006. As always, regional literacy rates varied widely. Female literacy rate in Balochistan was a shocking 15% in 2001-2002 and only rose to 20% by the end of 2005-2006. NWFP fared slightly better with an increase from 10 percent from the abysmal 20% rate in 2001-2002. The literacy rates compare quite badly with countries like Iran where the corresponding figure are 82% for men, and 76% for women. India’s literacy rates were at least 10% higher, and the growth in literacy rates (after accounting for differential starting points) more impressive. The Musharraf era growth in literacy rates however compares favorably historically within Pakistan.

Primary Education

Only 60% primary age children in Pakistan attend school, a much lower rate compared to neighboring countries. Moreover, the gender gap is large. There are only 56 girls to every 100 boys enrolled in primary education.

Average new enrollment in primary schools was about 3.42 million in 2000 and 5.04 million in 2005-2006. Growth in primary education enrollment, after accounting for population growth, stands at about 1.4 times. However, the situation still remains stark. Out of the 20 million children between five and nine years of age only about half of them are currently enrolled in primary school. And girls make up much less than half of that number, according to the figures.

Nearly 80% of the students who enroll in primary school ever reach Middle School and only about half of the students who reach Middle School go to the High School. This attrition rate has remained about constant under Musharraf.

Hard data on Pakistan is hard to come by. Where available, doubts exist as to its veracity. For example, it is widely believed that the government numbers on inflation are fudged. The census numbers are hugely controversial for it is used as a basis for distribution of funds, jobs, and enrollment in colleges. Sometimes the numbers offered by different government departments don’t match and no explanation is offered about sudden wide fluctuations in numbers. For example, the number of students enrolled in the nation’s universities nearly doubled from 126,000 to 218,000 in 2003-2004. (I try to tackle the mystery in a future column on education.) Then there exist a whole domain of variables which cannot be succinctly reported in numbers -like the longer term impact of rise of Islamic fundamentalism in SWAT and Balochistan, or the impact of extended military rule. Hence, where possible, I provide additional qualitative assessments to supplement the numbers.

Its time to open the bright orange “black box”!

Musharraf came into power on October 12th, 1999 after removing Nawaz Sharif in a bloodless coup. He installed himself as the ‘Chief Executive’ and has effectively controlled Pakistan along with his coterie since then. The history of power is the history of corruption – mostly. As Selig Harrison – a mediocre scholar for an equally middling institute, writing for the International Herald Tribune, argues that while Musharraf may contend that he clings to power to protect the country from the scourge of corruption and fundamentalism, his real reasons are more banal – maintaining the $5 billion commercial empire under the control of military. (The figure is supported by Ayesha Siddiqa in Military Inc.)

Corruption in third world is endemic and pandemic. In Pakistan, it bored into Bhutto’s socialist economy through ‘license quota’ raj, then bled into Ayub and Zia’s military economy through the ‘fauji foundation’ economy. The only things consistent throughout were- the impassive mass of bureaucrats – who only snapped out of their languorous daze to partake ‘chai paani’ - standing at the gates of bureaucracies that reigned over daily life, the hectoring police raj, and the inadequate and inefficient legal structure carrying yellowing remains of at least 1.3 million (2004 estimate, 2003 figures; Law and Justice Commission) pending cases in its orifice. The situation in India is considerably grimmer with an estimated 30 million pending cases. (RTI India).

Since 1995, when Transparency International started its cross country surveys on corruption, Pakistan has consistently dredged the bottom. Except for the exceptionally low raw score of 1 in 1996 under Bhutto, the scores show a stubborn tendency to never go beyond 2.7 (1998).

“One of the biggest curses from which India is suffering…is bribery and corruption. That really is a poison. We must put that down with an iron hand and I hope that you will take adequate measures as soon as it is possible for this Assembly to do so.”

Address by Quaid-i-Azam, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on his election as President (11th August, 1947)

Taking Jinnah’s cue, Musharraf signed into law National Accountability Ordinance (1999, amended 2002 and 2003), and launched an anti-corruption drive - National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NACS) in 2002. National Accountability Bureau, an “apex anti-corruption organization”, came into force as part of NAO to enforce anti-corruption measures. A police order (No. 22) was also signed into place in 2002 with the intention of reforming police. It appears that all this activity had a modest temporary effect with raw scores rising from 2.2 to 2.6 between 1999 and 2002, and then taking a sharp fall starting 2003.

TI Corruption Perception Ranking for Pakistan*

Year	Rank	Score
1995	39/41	2.25
1996 	53/54	1.0
1997 	48/52	2.53
1998	71/85	2.7
Musharraf came to power near the end of 1999
1999 	88/99	2.2
2000 	Pakistan not included
2001 	79/91	2.3
2002    81/105	2.6
2003	96/133	2.5
2004	134/145	2.1
2005	146/159	2.1
2006	142/163	2.2
2007	138/179	2.4

Source: Transparency International

To help put Pakistan’s scores in perspective, Pakistan scored lower in 2007 than Uganda, Malawi, and Cameroon. While Pakistan regularly trawls the bottom of the Corruption Perception Index, its neighbor India has done better. In 2006 rankings, it sat in the middle with a rank of 70, though the raw score differential was a mere 1.1 points.

A survey within Pakistan found that the most corrupt province was Punjab followed by Sindh. Similarly the most corrupt departments haven’t changed much between 2002 and 2006 except taxation, which is now seen as less corrupt, and land department more.

2006	2002
Police	Police
Power  Power
Judiciary Taxation
Land	Judiciary
Taxation Custom
Custom	Health
Health	Land
Education Education
Railway	Railway
Bank	Bank

Source: Major Findings of Pakistan National Corruption Perception Survey 2006

Further Reading:

• Hegemony of the Ruling Elite in Pakistan By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
• National Accountability Bureau Case Studies
• Transparency International - Pakistan
• Working Paper: Corruption and Democracy, Michael Rock (pdf), UN - Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

It was only a little more than a month ago that Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan, after nearly eight years in self-imposed exile, to a rapturous welcome, and a stark threat of violence. Within days, however, emboldened by her reception, the largely salutary attention from the media – both national and international, and her pragmatic assessment of Musharraf’s rather limited options, Bhutto schemed to press home her perceived advantage in the power-sharing deal with Musharraf. A welcome opportunity arose when the Supreme Court led by self-styled messiah of constitutionality, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, appeared set to reject Musharraf’s recent “election” – the entire opposition boycotted this barely concealed charade – as President.

Musharraf, ever the wily General, pre-empted Supreme Court’s actions with a declaration of emergency on November 3rd, days before the Court was to hand its verdict. The emergency, which appears to have been declared at least with the knowledge of US if not with its backing, drew swift condemnation from around the world. Emergency declaration spawned the by now familiar scenes of protesting lawyers, undoubtedly with some PPP support, against the ‘illegality’ of Musharraf’s declaration. Musharraf and Bhutto, still hedging their bets, appeared to avoid a confrontation till November 9th when Bhutto declared her intention to lead a motorcade from Lahore to Islamabad on the 13th. Musharraf reciprocated by giving the orders to put Bhutto under house arrest.

The chorus of condemnation, and the Western penchant for espousing formulaic naïve idealism, put enormous pressure on America’s support for Musharraf. From America’s perspective, it appeared that supporting Musharraf and the status quo wasn’t particularly in their interest, given the choice of dealing with equally amenable democratically elected representatives. America, it appears, let Musharraf know as much, and then worked with Saudi Arabia to bring Nawaz Sharif – whom Musharraf had removed in a coup in 1999 had successfully exiled – back to Pakistan.

With the arrival of Nawaz Sharif, who still appears petulant - in spite of his hair transplant- with his threats to boycott elections in January, even though the first thing he did after coming to Pakistan was file his nomination papers, the electoral equation has changed. There is now a strong possibility that Sharif, untainted by General’s touch, would perform strongly in the polls. The return of Sharif and the possibility of his electoral success marks the denouement of a political drama thick with intrigue, lack of trust, and greed.

Not so Sharif

Last time Sharif fought elections in 1997, his party managed to garner enough seats in the parliament to change the constitution, which it used first to strip president of his discretionary power to dismiss the government (Article 58 (2b)), and then to enact a law to allow party leaders to expel anybody from legislature who violated “party discipline”. The second measure was rejected by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional. Accusations of ‘judicial activism’ were leveled against the court and Sharif set to bring the court under his control. After a protracted battle with Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah during which Sharif threatened to curtail the size of court to 12 from 17, Sharif forced the resignation of Shah by ably recruiting the other justices on the court against Shah. Between 1997 and 1999, Sharif assiduously worked to concentrate power. By early 1999, he felt sufficiently emboldened to suppress media. Between December 1998 and January 1999, his government sent notices to Jang newspapers to remove 16 journalists considered hostile to the government. When Jang refused, they launched cases charging tax fraud, among other things. “In May, two senior journalists, Najam Sethi and Hussain Haqqani, were arrested and a few others were harassed by the intelligence agencies. Sethi was accused of treason on the grounds that he delivered an anti-Pakistan speech in New Delhi.” (Hasan-Askari Rizvi, 1999)

Consumed by hubris, Sharif, whose relationship with the army soured notably after the army failed to deliver on Kargil, set to tackle the Army. On October 12th while Musharraf was on an official tour to Sri Lanka, Sharif dismissed Musharraf and replaced him with a low level crony from Pakistan’s intelligence services. While Musharraf was still on the plane, the army responded by banding behind Musharraf and executing a coup against Sharif’s government. By the end of the day, Musharraf had taken the newly minted position of ‘Chief Executive’ - since the position of President was already taken - and thrown Sharif into jail.

The ‘incomparable’ Bhutto

Benazir Bhutto embodies the conflicts that cleave at the heart of Pakistani politics. She is a Radcliffe (Harvard’s college for women) and “oggsford” (the college Gatsby went to) alumna and a “deeply dedicated Muslim” , a Shia by birth and a Sunni(?) by marriage, daughter of the last ’statesman’ – a reputation Zulfikar, (the name of the double-edged sword Husayn used in Karbala, and a name that aptly captures his two sided personality of a feudal minded socialist), sealed with Shimla accord– and wife of Mr. 10%, the first democratically elected female leader in the Muslim world and the leader of one of the most notoriously corrupt regimes to lead Pakistan.

Bhutto’s political career rests upon the mythology of her father and the Bhutto name, and she has done little to let PPP grow beyond a personality cult, much like the nepotistic practices of the Nehru-Gandhi family in India. Bhutto, over her career, has not only shown calculating pragmatism – like her marriage to an undistinguished “successful businessman” at 34 in preparation of elections in 1988, or courting the West by playing to its stereotypes, and decisions reflecting deep sense of entitlement and nepotistic feudal tendencies like her appointment of mother, Nusrat, as a senior minister without portfolio, followed by appointment of her father-in-law as chairman of the parliamentary public accounts committee, she has also shown a penchant for making brash decisions that come easy to a woman born in luxury, excessively feted by the West, and who was elected a Prime Minister at the age of 35. Her decision to press her advantage – when she saw a beleaguered Musharraf at the center of an international outcry – was one such misstep – and a misstep that is likely to cost here politically.

Pakistan: A country of exiled political leaders

When Sharif was sent to exile in Saudi Arabia in 2000, the heads of Pakistan’s three major parties –the other two being Bhutto (PPP) and Altaf (MQM) - were to all in exile. Despite the forced absence of leaders from parties which rely a fair bit on their leaders, Musharraf still couldn’t cobble together a new political structure – as was his stated intent. Perhaps it was because these leaders were able to rule so effectively from their respective exiles. But the more likely reason is that new political structures aren’t built in elites – they are built by years of demagoguery and pandering. In reality, Musharraf shouldn’t have tried to cloak his authoritarian regime with democracy. By playing a benevolent autocratic democrat, Musharraf clearly took on too much. He replaced politics with something far more inert and calculated, and his self-righteous defense of the charade combined with his increasingly manifest status as a vassal to US, drew people away.

The present and the future

Musharraf imprudently relied too much on continued support from US, while Bhutto overplayed her hand by pushing too far with her rent-a-day rioters. It is very likely that the true beneficiary of the current fiasco would be PML, which will expectedly fight the election in alliance with Islamic parties, if elections are allowed to be held fairly – a relatively improbable scenario.

Bhutto, Sharif, and Musharraf do not trust each other. A game of political brinkmanship, as evidenced by banning of Sharif and his brother Shahbaz by the Musharraf controlled Election Commission and the meeting between Sharif and Bhutto, is now unfolding as each tries to form alliances or thwart the other. It is useful to note that forming alliance with one on a particular issue doesn’t preclude forming an alliance with another. This game will continue till election results come in and throw the power equation in sharp relief. Election results will also draw accusations of unfairness, and each of the power blocs has a large enough support base to cause major disruptions.

It is going to be a turbulent few months for Pakistan.

Further Reading:
BBC: Pakistan - the balance of forces Added (12/17)

On a slow news day, Western journalists, genuinely apathetic (subconsciously) - for such truths never scar their conscious minds – took to telling the world about how ‘Pakistan’s Musharraf’ - You know it is nice of them to clear up whose Musharraf they are talking about for it is not always clear - had declared emergency. In doing so, they paid as much attention to a third-world dictator enacting Martial law, as they have in some time. The calamitous event was reported with the usual combination of scant detail, high impact graphics, half-baked – sometimes skipping the oven all together - analysis, all topped with alarmist rhetorical flourishes (they will give you a heart attack if you don’t watch out).

The news day actually started a day earlier with reporting about speculation, and government warnings against speculated action. US, proudly and staunchly backing Musharraf at least since a day after that calamitous day in 2001, warned their pet dictator ‘against martial law’. (San Jose Mercury News) When the threat of declaring martial law grew, the ‘world grew concerned’ (Guardian) simultaneously. And when a ‘desperate Musharraf’ (Trend Information, Azerbaijan!) declared emergency, it left US in a ‘tizzy’ (Calcutta Telegraph), as it ‘reel[ed]‘ (AFP) under the blow. US immediately took umbrage and issued ‘condemnation’. The ‘world’, not to be left behind, ’roundly condemned’ (Duetche Welle, Germany), ’slammed’ (Earthtimes, UK), and ‘rapped’ (The Province, Canada) General Sahib. Rice went further, for she wanted ‘Pakistan to evolve as a democracy’, and appealed for a return to the ‘constitutional course’ (Bloomberg) even as the phrase cruel and unusual punishments”, in US’s own constitution was being debated to see if ‘coercively inducing a drowning sensation’ met that criteria. All this condemnation must have left Musharraf chagrined.

It was a ‘Sad day for Pakistan’ (The Daily Star, Bangladesh) when an ‘out of control’ (Nation Multimedia, Thailand) Musharraf chose to launch a ‘coup within a coup’, and put Pakistan under his ‘iron fist’ (The Standard, Hong Kong – an area that reels under the iron fist of its own big brother). The wordsmiths at Hindustan Times online division, which doubles as a soft porn website, found time to craft the smart aleck headline “Under General Anesthesia” to describe the events of ‘Black Saturday’. (Malaysia Sun)

On that ‘black’ day, Western journalist’s thoughts didn’t stay long with people in Pakistan, as reporting on martial law gave way to more pertinent matters like ‘threat of nuclear weapons falling into wrong hands’, and ‘War on Terror’.

After all, the concerns of the media are solely determined by what (and how) they can best pander conditional on what is available. The pavlovian reactions to international crisis, the cues media uses to determine when to cry fire and when to cheer, are all rather simplistic - Democracy is good, autocrats are bad. Forget then that sometimes ‘enlightened moderation’ is the best alternative. Ignore too that nothing has changed substantively in Pakistani politics – control still wrests with the general for after all it was only a ‘coup within a coup’. Banish any thoughts that Benazir, the incomparable, ran a regime true to her name - only if in levels of corruption.

I misstate my point, as I often do, for people who know little don’t need to deliberately ignore. They simply write. Till a new story appears and fuels a new news cycle, provides more cause for alarm, and more time to run ads.

It appears that Pakistan has had its day in the sun. New York Times is not waiting with baited breath; there is a cell phone jammer in the market that can stop the person sitting next to you from yammering while you try to read about Paris Hilton. (Number 1 story on NY Times website) Yeah, she is back.

Mohajir Quami Movement

In 1978, Altaf Hussain formed a student organization called the All Pakistan Mohajir Student Organization (APMSO). The nascent student organization quickly leached students from Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba, the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami. In doing so, it sealed its future as an adversary of IJT. APMSO and IJT regularly clashed on the college campuses in the early 80s, and have continued to battle since then.

In 1984, the Mohajir Quami Mahaz (MQM) set up with by Altaf Hussain. Between 1984 and 1986, Hussain worked to recruit its cadre and then launched itself on national stage with a massive rally in Karachi on August 8th, 1986.

Between 1986 and 1988, MQM worked towards a Sindhi-Muhajir alliance. In 1988, MQM fought national elections (under the name Haq-Parast) in an alliance with Sindhi dominated Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) led by Benazir Bhutto. In the elections it emerged as the third largest party with 13 seats in the National Assembly. MQM also achieved a landslide victory in municipal elections (1987) in Karachi. MQM’s first stint in sharing power was largely ineffectual in delivering real tangible improvements as the governance was marred by both infighting within MQM as well as active sabotage by Bhutto’s PPP. MQM withdrew support from the Bhutto government and fought the next election in an alliance with Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML). The Mohajir-Sindhi alliance provided the only real chance to thwart the Punjabi dominance in Pakistani politics, and PPP’s parochialism and MQM’s need to deliver to its constituents, led to an early demise to the alliance. MQM’s decision to ally with the Punjabis would soon prove to be unfortunate.

The coalition Islami Jamouri Ittehad (IJI or Islamic Democratic Front) rode to power in the 1990 elections. Between 1990 and 1992, MQM got a free reign under Jam Sadiq Ali. But with power came, dissent and party indiscipline. Aamir Khan, a comrade in arms with Altaf, began muscle flexing. In June 1992, the military concerned about MQM’s rising star launched Operation Cleanup to weed out Altaf Hussain. All of this was done with the express consent of Nawaz Sharif. While the Operation was officially to ‘weed out criminal’, it turned into an all out witch hunt against MQM. The military launched not only conducted raids but also led a media assault- it released photos ’showing’ that MQM was a terrorist organization that ran torture chambers, and newspapers, fed by the military, ran expose’ pieces about its gun running operations. Disagreements between Altaf Hussain and the then MQM’s two prominent militant leaders, Afaq Ahmed and Aamir Khan had first surfaced towards the end of 1991. The military led campaign, sidled with a political campaign, helped create ‘mutiny’ within ranks and led to the formation of “Real MQM” or Haqiqi Mohajir Quami Movement (MQM-H) under Aamir Khan. Funnily, the progenitors of the splinter group were also killed by the avid embrace of its parents, the government. The group quickly lost credibility on the street and eventually just became a front group for the government to wage war against MQM.

Soon after the launch of the Operation, MQM withdrew support from the coalition. The same year, Altaf Hussain went to UK ostensibly for ‘medical treatment’ and converted the opportunity in to a voluntary exile. Since then he has led the organization via telephone, faxes, and other modern communication mechanisms. It is important here to note the central role of Altaf Hussain in leading MQM.

MQM is seen as a one man party which deeply relies on the charismatic leadership of Altaf Hussain. Hussain, who was born to lower middle-class background in Azizabad in Karachi, is known as Quaid (leader) and Pir Sahib within the ranks. MQM itself is a cadre based tightly knit organization. The organization prides itself on superb discipline within its ranks. The organization imposes a premium on its cadres for strict adherence to, what it sees, are essential tenets for building a strong organization. In its pamphlet on training workers, it lists four essential elements of a strong movement: “(1) “blind faith” (literal translation from Urdu) in the leadership; (2) elimination of individuality; (3) strong sense of common purpose; and (4) complete knowledge of, and agreement with the ideological basis of the organization.”

MQM boycotted the 1993 elections. The PPP government in 1994 gerrymandered the districts so as to bypass MQM’s ironclad grip on Karachi. 1994 onwards Karachi was under grip of violence as MQM(A) fought pitched battles with ISI supported MQM(H). In November 1994, the army was withdrawn from law enforcement duties in Sindh, but the paramilitary Rangers were reinforced and specially trained police inducted. During 1995 and 1996, hundreds of people were killed by Rangers and police, including hundreds of members of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement.

In 1997, MQM(A) tried to moderate its stance in terms of ethnicity by changing its name Muthaida Quami Movement (United National Movement). Reflecting MQM’s nature (and need) for forming alliances of convenience, MQM again switched partners in 1998. The ruling PML(N)’s troubled alliance with the MQM(A) in Sindh province ruptured during October 1998. Without the MQM(A), the PML(N) no longer had the numbers to govern in the Sindh province, leaving a clear path for the opposition Pakistan People’s Party of Benazir Bhutto to join with the MQM(A) to form a majority in the Sindh assembly. Within a year, Musharraf was at the helm of Pakistan as its CEO.

Transportation Riots

The Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Almost right away Pathan refugees started pouring into Karachi. Pathans, on coming to Karachi, largely went into the transportation, rental, and money-lending businesses. Up until 1979, the informal housing market in Karachi was controlled by Punjabis and Mohajirs. Starting 1980, Pathans started taking over the informal housing sector. This created tensions between Pathans and the predominantly Mohajir (Bihari) renters of Orangi. These tensions came to a boil in 1985 during the transportation riots.

Between 1984 and 1985, Karachi minibuses, called the ‘yellow devils’, were responsible for on average two deaths per day. In 1985, a Pathan bus driver skipped a light and ran into a group of students of Sir Syed College. The Mohajir and Punjabi student activists from the Islami Jamiat-e Tuleba, the student wing of the Jama’at-e Islami rioted. Bihari basti dwellers of Orangi also joined the transport riots. The rioting saw Mohajirs in pitched battles with Pathans, who formed a partnership with the Punjabis – an alliance cemented by arms trade between Punjabi dominated military and the Pathans. The alliance between Pathans and Punjabis still stands; Pathans are seen as henchmen for the Punjabis in Karachi.

Analysis

The Mohajir conflict is not an ethnic conflict as Mohajirs don’t belong to a certain ethnicity but come from a variety of different ethnicities. The uniting cultural glue, if there is one, is the shared language – Urdu. The major thing that bound them together, especially initially, was economic interest. Economic interest was also what led them to mouth nationalist slogans as a way to propagate the status quo that distinctly advantaged them. The other part of Mohajir identity – the one which made them see as a different nationality- was formed in the era post mid 1960s, when ethnic aspirations had started battering Pakistan’s political landscape with gale force winds. Mohajir ‘identity’ formed under the pressure of Sindhi nationalism, and the Punjabi and Pashtun ethnic movements, and most importantly under the economic pressures created by limited resources and ‘unequal’ distribution. Certainly Sindhis felt that they had legitimate grievances for they believed that it was ‘their land’ and ‘their resources’ that were being ‘preyed’ upon by outsiders. Meanwhile, the Punjabis felt threatened by the economic ascendancy and dominance of the Mohajirs within Pakistan. Additionally, post ethnic quotas, the only way Mohajirs could demand economic rights legitimately as a group was to be considered a separate nationality on par with that of Sindhis, Punjabis, Pathans, and Balochs. And Mohajirs did just that. Given that Mohajirs were ethnically, and to a large degree –especially post immigration of poor Biharis- economically diverse, mobilizing them as a “nationality” proved tricky. The earliest mobilization attempts hence were focused around the style of clothing. It is often called the ‘Kurta-Pyjama’ mobilization.

The trajectory of Karachi and Pakistan could have been different had it not involved itself in Afghanistan. The Islamization unleashed by Haq to service the Muhajideen pipeline had a deep impact on the political and cultural fabric of Pakistan – an impact whose ripple effects are still being echoed in the demolished minarets of Lal Masjid, and Shia-Sunni relations in particular. Zia regime, which came at a time when concern about Iranian revolution was high, armed the Sunni extremists within Pakistan and helped perpetrate horrific violence against the Shias in mid 1980s. Zia’s regime also saw vicious persecution of other minorities like the Ahmaddis. The Afghan war also made available huge amounts of small arms within the country, something which was abused to deadly effect in ethnic clashes.

The Future

In 1998, Mohajir, Baluch, Pashtun and Sindh parties allied to form the Pakistan Oppressed Nations Movement (PONM), which seeks to challenge Punjab hegemony in Pakistan’s political life. Another group that represents Mohajirs, Sindhis, and Baluchis is the Grand Democratic Alliance. While these alliances proved ineffectual, there is now likelihood that Mohajir-Sindhi-Pathan alliance may take shape with Benazir-Musharaf and possibly ANP coming together to fight elections.

Pakistani politics cannot be understood without paying close attention to the deep ethnic cleavages that line its polity. The seminal moments in its brief history – the 1971 war with India which led to the creation of Bangladesh, the horrific violence that rocked Karachi in the mid-90s– both are a reflection of Pakistan’s inability to transcend narrow ethno-linguistic boundaries in either revenue allocation or in crafting policies around language and culture.

Here below, I explicate how the vicious ethnic politics in Karachi, the first capital of Pakistan and a city which contributes 35% (in some analysis 60 plus percent) of all revenue to the central coffers, has come to define the ethno-political dysfunction that has marked Pakistan’s history.

Mohajirs

The Arabic word Mohajir means a refugee and in Pakistan, it generally refers to non-Punjabi Indian Muslim immigrants. One of the reasons why Urdu speaking immigrants are seen as Mohajirs and Punjabi immigrants not is that while the Punjabi Muslim immigrants were able to assimilate very well within the ethnically similar Punjab, the educated Urdu speaking immigrants from the Gangetic plains and elsewhere formed a culturally distinct group in Sindh.

The Mohajirs post partition formed the educated ’salariat’ (Hamza Alavi’s term describing the educated British favoring class during the Raj) in the nation’s capital city, Karachi. They were overrepresented in the bureaucracy, media, and managerial positions in the private sector. Politically, they were ardent nationalists who studiously avoided ethnic politics and favored Islamist parties until the reorganization in mid 1960s. The Mohajirs cynically supported the military and strong central government so as to keep the federalist pressures, as in demands by other ethnicities for ‘fairer’ representation in bureaucracy and elsewhere, at bay. The arrangement fell apart as Bengalis rebelled and won independence in 1971. The same year Bhutto was elected and he ushered in a federalist structure by first revising the Regional Quota system in federal bureaucracy to lower Mohajir quota from 17 to 7.6%, and then by nationalizing some key financial institutions that were owned by Mohajirs. Since then things have changed dramatically for Mohajirs - they have come to be underrepresented in state educational colleges and jobs, and have lost some of their economic muscle.

The rulers and the Mohajirs

Pakistan as a nascent nation got off to bad start. Its ‘father of the nation’ (Baba-e-Qaum) – really a Jawaharlal Nehru and Gandhi rolled in one for that country – died a little more than a year after its creation. Whatever little chance the nation had of enlightened leadership vanished as Liaquat Ali Khan, a close confidant of Jinnah, was assassinated merely four years into his reign as a Prime Minister. Then, after a period that saw 6 prime ministers in 7 years, Mohammad Ayub Khan grabbed power in a coup and steered Pakistan into an alliance with the US. Midway during his rule in 1964, he fought and won elections, which were widely seen as rigged, against Fatima Jinnah, sister of Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Mohajirs sided with Fatima Jinnah in that election and suffered targeted violence at the hands of Gohar Khan, son of Ayub Khan, for such temerity. Just as an aside Ayub Khan’s son Gohar Ayub Khan was Pakistan’s Foreign Minister in the Nawaz Sharif government and Gohar’s son, Omar Ayub Khan, is Pakistan’s current Minister of State for Finance. Ayub Khan in 1964 moved the capital city from Karachi to Rawalpindi on an interim basis and then to Islamabad, its current resting place. The move was widely seen by Mohajirs as a way to marginalize them. In 1969, he turned reigns over to the only second Shiite after Liaquat to lead Pakistan, General Yahya Khan. Yahya Khan of course famously led Pakistan into another losing war with India in 1971 that led to the creation of Bangladesh. Following the 1971, nearly half a million Bihari Muslims, who had moved to East Pakistan in 1947, demanded that they be expatriated to Pakistan. Out of the nearly half a million refugees, Bhutto – the successor to Yahya Khan – only allowed 100,000 before his Sindhi constituency forced him to abandon the rest. The stranded Biharis live in refugee camps in Bangladesh till today. The issue of these abandoned Biharis further alienated the Mohajirs who had vigorously campaigned for them.

Bhutto was elected at a time when Pakistan felt chastened by the independence of Bangladesh. Bhutto felt that his first job was to let of the steam of ethnic pressures within Pakistan by redrafting the quota system for federal bureaucracy and other educational institutions so as to provide for more proportional representation of different ethnicities. Bhutto, who is generally considered an enlightened statesman within Pakistan- and there are good grounds to think that the authoritarian leader was just that, was also a closet Sindhi nationalist. Bowing to his native constituency, the Sindhis, he instituted urban-rural quotas that resulted in a precipitous decline in the number of jobs to which the predominantly urban Mohajirs were eligible. The interesting side note to this controversy is that given that the regional quota system that was based on the demographic strength of each ethnicity, the census became the most politicized document in Pakistan.

After Bhutto’s assassination, Pakistani Politics was run by Zia-ul-Haq singly for about 10 years. Haq’s rule is legendary not only for his fateful decision to involve Pakistan in Afghanistan, but also for his full throttle Islamization that he unveiled to support the prior cause. Haq, a Punjabi, also deeply reviled Mohajirs. The war in Afghanistan led to another refugee influx in Karachi that was to change the dynamics within Karachi to the worse once more. This time the influx of Pathans was also accompanied by wide availability of small arms. “Between 1986 and 1989, the prices of guns went down by 40 to 50% in Karachi. The TT-pistol sold for Rs. 5500 in 1987. In 1989, it was priced at Rs. 3000. In the Frontier, the price of an AK-47 went down from Rs. 40 000 in 1980 to Rs. 16 000 in 1989.”

End of 1988 saw Bhutto being elected as PM of Pakistan in a much feted election. The time period of course ties neatly with the ‘end of Afghan war’ and the reduced utility for US of a military regime in Pakistan. Bhutto, daughter of Zufikar Ali Bhutto, rode to power with a coalition government that included MQM. Post election, Benazir is widely alleged to have run one of the most corrupt regimes. Just to give you a flavor of the bankruptcy of the regime, Madam Bhutto appointed her mother, Nusrat, as a senior minister without portfolio and her father-in-law as chairman of the parliamentary public accounts committee. In addition, ever the Sindhi nationalist and eager to firm up her credentials there, she didn’t throw much rope to Mohajirs. The relationship quickly soured and MQM in turn found an ally in Nawaz Sharif’s Punjabi dominated PML. It is important to note that this proved to be a death knell in terms of Sindhi-Mohajir relations against what many saw was Punjabi dominance, especially post Zia, at the center. Bhutto oversaw the worst of rioting in Karachi in the mid 90s in her second stinct at the helm. Corruption wise things didn’t change much in her second stint as PM either as she appointed her husband, Asif Zardari, as the environment minister. Of course, Zardari did more than merely handle the environment. After moving through an interim prime minister, Sharif eventually came to power in 1997. He in turn was deposed by General Pervez Musharraf, a Mohajir, in 1999 – which brings us to the ‘end’. We can talk about Shaukat Aziz but lets not. Most trace the ascent of Musharraf to the top in a Punjabi dominated military exactly because of his status as a Mohajir - the Punjabi military bosses promoted him for they felt that a Mohajir would never attempt, and much less succeed, in a coup d’etat. Musharraf’s relations with the Mohajir community of course have been on warm terms but that has attracted the ire of nearly all others. The 2007 Karachi riots hence can be seen as a stage managed confrontation between PPP led Sindhis and MQM.

Demographic factors in Karachi

Sindh’s urban society was dominated by Hindus before 1947. The native Muslim population was primarily rural. The emigration of Hindus post partition left a vacuum which was filled by the educated Muslim immigrants from India. In the 1981 census, only 6% of the population identified themselves as Sindhi.

The relative affluence of the Mohajirs was always a rubbing point for the Sindhis.
Post 1971 war with India during which Bangladesh was created, nearly 100,000 Bihari Muslims who had migrated to Bangladesh during partition immigrated to Karachi. Another 300,000 Biharis were left stranded in Bangladesh in over 60 refugee camps as political will ran out as Bihari immigrants became a political liability in Sindh. The Bihari immigrants who speak Urdu have traditionally been seen as part of the Mohajir community.

Then starting with 1980s, Afghan refugees starting pouring into Karachi as Afghan war got underway. The Afghan immigrants were widely alleged to have brought along with them the ‘drug and arms’ mafia and the number of small arms in city just ballooned as ethnic conflagrations became deadlier. The Afghans threw their weight politically behind the Punjabis, and the nexus worked effectively and to deadly effect in the riots in the mid 80s and then again in the mid-90s.

Language and Cultural issues

Urdu was instituted as the official national language at the inception of Pakistan even though only a pitifully small fraction of Pakistanis spoke the language. In the widely cited 1961 census results, it was reported that Urdu was the mother tongue of a mere 3.7% of all Pakistanis (7.5% in West Pakistan), and only 15% of West Pakistanis were able to speak Urdu at all. It is hopefully already clear that Urdu was the language spoken by the Mohajirs and they fought tooth and nail to keep it the only ‘official’ language.

Language has been a key issue in Pakistani politics. In fact one of the major rallying points for East Pakistanis was recognition of Bengali as one of the state languages. In Sindh, there was widespread resentment against Urdu. In 1972, Sindh province (Bhutto) passed a resolution instituting Sindhi as the second official language. The act led to ‘language riots’ as Mohajirs, concerned about losing economic privilege that emanated from their ability to speak Urdu, rioted. Language riots are often seen as a turning point in the city’s history and the relation between Mohajirs and Sindhis.

Revenue Sharing Issue

In 1995-96, Karachi’s estimated contribution to the Federal and Provincial Tax Revenue was Rs 403 billion or just a little over 63%. Karachi metropolitan area’s population of about 12-14 million then was just about 10% of Pakistan’s total population. The Federal Government reallocated just over 2% of the revenues it harvested from Karachi back into Pakistan that year. The imbalance can be largely explained by the redistributive nature of tax regimes in which taxes from rich provinces are often used to provide for public goods elsewhere. While that is largely true, there was also explicit discrimination that led to such neglect of infrastructure that it almost killed the cash cow of Pakistan.

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This is part I of a two part article on the issue.

Six South Asian countries have been listed amongst the 25 states likeliest to fail on the “Failed States Index”, co-created by Foreign Policy magazine and The Fund for Peace. The same six countries - Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka - (in the same order) were also featured amongst the top 25 in last year’s rankings.

The Indian subcontinent, it appears, has the highest density of states in danger of ‘failing’ in a geographical region, aside from a broad swathe of Central Africa running from Sudan to Guinea. Nearly half a billion people live in the states marked as likely to fail in the subcontinent.

Any failure of state within the subcontinent is likely to have an impact well beyond the borders of that country. In fact that is exactly why US based think-tanks and magazines create these ‘failed states index’ to begin with. The co-creators of the index argue, citing the 2002 U.S. National Security Strategy - filled with the typical hyperbole that garbs most US security policy documents - that the impact of state failure is likely to be ‘global’. Even if we discount such assertions, the likely impact of state failure in the subcontinent is certainly worrisome, especially for India.

Before we analyze the impact of state failure in South Asia, let me diverge briefly to formalize what we mean by a ‘failed state’.

What is a ‘Failed State’?

One may argue that if a state fails its people, it is a ‘failed state’. But formally a ‘failed state’ is defined as one with weak government, political instability, and insecurity. State Failure, according to Center for International Development and Conflict Management at University of Maryland’s State Failure Task Force Report: Phase III Findings (Large PDF document - 255 pages) has been defined as a state that may have one or a combination of the following -

• “Revolutionary wars. Episodes of sustained violent conflict between governments and politically organized challengers that seek to overthrow the central government, to replace its leaders, or to seize power in one region.
• Ethnic wars. Episodes of sustained violent conflict in which national, ethnic, religious, or other communal minorities challenge governments to seek major changes in status.
• Adverse regime changes. Major, abrupt shifts in patterns of governance, including state collapse, periods of severe elite or regime instability, and shifts away from democracy toward authoritarian rule.
• Genocides and politicides. Sustained policies by states or their agents, or, in civil wars, by either of the contending authorities that result in the deaths of a substantial portion of a communal or political group.”

India in a ‘Dangerous Neighborhood’

There are a variety of factors that underpin the instability in the region – resurgent Islamic fundamentalism combined with military rule in Pakistan and Bangladesh (two different degrees in both countries), Taleban in Afghanistan, ‘Maoists’ in Nepal, hermetic authoritarian regime in Burma, and Tamil nationalists in Sri Lanka.

Troublingly a lot of problems, like Islamic fundamentalism, that plague ‘failing states’ in South Asia can ‘travel’ well across borders. There is already evidence to the fact that Maoist success in Nepal is having an effect of emboldening Maoists insurgents in eastern part of India. And if problems in Bangladesh were to set off an even wider wave of immigrants looking for security and economic opportunity in India, it is likely that the wide-spread anger against Bangladeshi immigrants in parts of North-east India would escalate into sectarian violence.

Given the fact that India has tangible, probable, and immediate threats, and given India’s crucial role within South Asian politics, it is but obvious that India should play a crucial role in mitigating some of the issues precipitating state failure in its neighborhood. India will have to play its hand deftly though and the choices will not always be obvious. For example, India has for years on end enjoyed a cozy relationship with Nepalese Royalty but has had to put in its weight behind the political parties and the Maoists who wanted the Monarchy scrapped. On the other end India, which has long argued for democracy in Pakistan, has established a healthy working relationship with Musharraf government and even made some moves towards meaningful negotiations over Kashmir.

While India has shown great pragmatism in dealing with some long running and some ‘unexpected’ political upheavals, it doesn’t seem to have a coherent long term strategic perspective on how to foment stability in the region. Part of the reason is that India doesn’t really have the bargaining power, as in resources or military muscle, for a more aggressive foreign policy. However it does enjoy fair amount of credibility among the major powers within the world, and it is time that it use it to chart out a longer term policy towards it neighbors. The key components of the policy should be a enlightened economic policy – for example, making compromises towards creating a regional free-trade block, a more active role in diplomacy – say for example complimenting the role of the Norwegians and the Icelandic delegation in Sri Lanka, taking lead in thinking about ’sustainable development’ and environment – especially important given the enormous impact that global warming can wreck on the region, marshalling resources from the Western countries for the basics – education, health, and basic infrastructure, and working with authoritarian regimes where necessary to urge for more moderate and sustainable policies.

…to be continued…

Emily Wax in her Washington Post article about India’s booming economy writes, “India has a growing middle class estimated at 300 million people.”

300 million is an astounding figure and just a shade below the US population. If indeed India has a “growing” middle class that is 300 million strong, then US and the rest of the world better take notice. There is just a small problem - the figure is almost entirely meaningless.

Middle class is a phenomenally slippery concept. The term was initially used to refer to the urban bourgeoisie. In its modern avatar, it was meant to refer to people who could afford certain amenities. As amenities have become the norm in the West, calls have been made to redefine the term again. The term itself though has a lot of emotional cache and almost 90% of the people in US, according to a survey in 1992, thought themselves as middle class. Statistically, we can define “middle class” as the class of income earners that is within one Standard Deviation of the mean. But for a country like India where the mean wage is less than $2/day, the statistical definition as above would be thoroughly bankrupt.

Main Course: Pass me the knife, please

Let’s briefly analyze Wax’s claim about the numbers in Indian middle class. According to World Bank, India’s GDP was $796 billion in 2006. Assuming that all economic activity was produced by the 300 million (about 1/4th of the real population) and the gains spread equally among them, Gross Income Per Person would be $796,000/300 = $2600/year or $7/day. All hail this “middle class”.

It is fashionable to use terms like “middle class” and then attach numbers like 300 million but both the term and the number are grossly inaccurate.

Newspaper Gestalt

Over years, stories on economic miracle in China and India have become de rigeur in newspapers. The stories are uniformly bankrupt for they fail to get even the basic figures right and put things in proper perspective.

A new foreign correspondent to India, like Wax, is expected to file in his/her share of these formulaic stories along with the expected special report on the heartrending poverty in rural China and India.

There is little hope that we will ever have better coverage or even that different topics will be covered, except the occasional Shilpa Shetty-Gere kiss induced frenzy, given that most foreign press reporters go to other countries with doltish prior hypotheses, look for confirmation, confirm them, and sigh with relief and move on to their next story. The whole problem is exacerbated by the fact that the tour of duties for journalists have shrunk.

On Wax

Emily Wax is a much feted reporter due to her coverage on Darfur. While I have never read her stuff from Darfur, it is unlikely that it will be any better than the shoddy reporting from India. Before her ridiculous article on the current state of Indian economy, she wrote an article on the Shetty-Gere scandal framing the story as a ‘Lexus and the Olive Tree’ kind of fight. Not once did she draw the reader’s attention to the frayed judicial system, or the poorly educated justices, or archaic laws.

A city hasn’t been showered with such love since Dalrymple wrote about Delhi. Bapsi Sidhwa’s edited volume on Lahore in fact far exceeds it. After all, Dalrymple was nothing but a foreigner who had only spent a few years in Delhi when he wrote the book, while Sidhwa in her endeavor is accompanied by a range of distinguished authors and intellects, only tied together in their love for Lahore.

The love for the city, its landmarks, its famed cuisine, its gourmets, its brutalizing summers, its people, its stories, and its relationships shines through on every page.

Every great city deserves an admirer and chronicler of the caliber of Bapsi Sidhwa – someone who will perspicaciously and assiduously collect stories that celebrate her beauty and look unflinchingly, yet lovingly, at her bruised soul and her warts.

The Book

The book strikes an immediate rapport that is akin to being invited to an intimate familial Punjabi gathering. I felt alternately like a kid sitting on the lap of my maternal uncle being told stories about the city, a young adult guiltily listening to the adult conversation about the brutal tales about city’s history, and an objective adult reflecting on history, and politics.

There is a warm intimacy that suffuses each of the stories in City of Sin and Splendor: Writings on Lahore. The additional element of emotional immediacy comes from stories that talk about things we South Asians have grown up with. All of it is made available ‘naturalistically’ by the craft of authors who rarely go beyond what is known. It is an important talent. For authors are always tempted by superfluous cleverness. It is the Jane Austen method of writing in some ways – writing honestly, perspicaciously, and often with great wit about what is known without flirting with the unnecessary or the arcane. It is grounded writing. The authors use words that are well worn and apt and not ones with peripatetic grandiloquent pretensions. The resulting atmosphere in the book is not stifling because of the self restraint, but educated and homely.

I have never been to Lahore. Yet the city stands alive in front of me. Though I don’t eat meat, I savored the morning Nihari with Irfan sahib. I shared in the pain of partition with Ved Mehta and Sadat sahib. I stopped to celebrate the indomitable spirit of Ismat Chugtai. I stood ring side as Bina Shah described the long standing tussle between Karachi and Lahore. And I wore my heart on the sleeve when I read Ranamama by Urvashi Butalia. Butalia’s phrase, “cracked pistachio green walls” will always stay with me for it describes pitch perfectly the color of walls on some subcontinent homes. I also admired the honest revolutionary spirit of Habib Jalib’s Dastoor. How did he know the story of Pakistan before it was ever written?

Third World

We are third world denizens. Our cities have always seemed shabby and poor and slung in deep unending mediocrity. The heat has always been brutalizing, and atmosphere dusty and arid. We have always struggled to grow trees and grass in face of hot summers, scarce resources, and petty corruption. Culture has melted into a thick gooey nothingness pressed on all sides from globalization, self-serving politicians, and poverty. Immigration and sprawl have killed the remnants of other things. Our chowks are nothing but traffic choked dusty islands. Yet we have formed familial bonds and come to be part of our cities. We have found times and places to share. We visit each other’s houses and exchange stories. People come over when we are in need. We listen to the stories of our doodhwallahs (milk men), and our kaam waalis (maids) and though we love to cavil about them, there is an unsaid human connection. Perhaps that is a bit too sunny an assessment. But indulge me for a little. All of it is held together by the incessant chatter. Conversation is the glue that keeps us together. We haven’t yet made conversation into a stylized art of identity negotiation. It is these relations, these conversations, the unsaid courtesies, and the people that Sidhwa celebrates in her book.

Colonial Rule

The British Raj left its mark on Lahore. Kim’s Gun haunts the hollow haunches of the emaciated old city. The gardens and separate civil line quarters for the English Sahibs have entrenched themselves in to the modern hierarchy of the city. More importantly, the Raj has scarred us psychologically. We have never grown to be proud of our heritage and culture. Forever chastened by the West that raced ahead, we have never sat down and taken notice of our heritage. We do pay a lot of lip service to the heritage but seldom do we believe in it.

Delhi and Lahore

I am from Delhi, which in many respects can be seen as Lahore’s twin. The cities share similar climates, somewhat similar Punjabi dominated cultures, similar histories, similar old-new city Raj-inspired distinctions, and similar heartaches of partition. I could find flavors of Delhi in the book - the ‘gates’ of the old city, the civil lines area, the colonial bungalows, the partition stories, and the oncoming McDonald’s culture. In getting to know Lahore, I felt that I got to know my city better.

Contemporary Conditions and History

He whose light shines only in palaces
Who seeks only to please the few
Who moves in the shadow of compromise
Such a debased tradition, such a dark dawn
I do not know, I will not own

Dastoor, Hajib Jalib

Lahore has suffered from the vicissitudes of the people in Islamabad and Washington. The malaise in its contemporary politics, the perversion to its culture from the Islamists and the secularists, both equally delusional and equally adamant, is quickly reducing this great city.

The single most important fact is that the world is wrecked by a thousand mutinies everyday. With globalization and technological onslaught, the mutinies have multiplied. All unleashed, without prior thought. We try to craft our lives around one while we are led by our noses to the next. It is unsettling to stop and take stock of the grievous loss that we will continue to take on our world.

The elite Lahore

The remembrances of a city and the love of a city only come naturally to those with time for leisure. To that extent this book is about the padshahs of Lahore. The book is an ode of the ruling class to itself, to its culture, and to its land marks. Yet, often times the book is much more than that. The everyday street is never far in this book. The everyday street may not have the kaamwali (maid) in it, but it does have the patang baaz’s, the halwais, the richshaw wallahs, and more. It is that everyday street that I carry in my heart.

Links:

Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was born in 1948 in Quetta, Balochistan. Chaudhry went on to work for more than a decade in varying capacities in Balochistan. So it is surprising that the firing of this Baloch has prompted little or no response in Balochistan. The fact isn’t surprising if you look a little closer. Mr. Chaudhry, now feted as a humanitarian crusader, never once raised his voice when the general sahib ordered a full-fledged military assault on Balochistan. The reason why I mentioned this anecdote is because it serves as a useful example for how much arm in glove was Mr. Chaudhry with the general before the glove was discarded and picked up by the opposition parties.

There is one more twist to the tale – ethnicity. Chaudhry sahib is not an ethnic Baloch but a Punjabi abdagar, whom Balochis despise. We will come back to the ethnic angle later for no analysis of Pakistani politics is complete without analyzing the cross-cutting ethnic cleavages.

The Upright Justice

As Chief Justice, Chaudhry’s reputation rests on two cases – the now famous Steel Mill Case in which he ruled against selling of Pakistan Steel Mills to a group led by a friend of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz (whose own position is in doubt due to the fact that he holds dual citizenship). Just as a footnote – the sale, which was overturned by Chaudhry, was authorized by a Cabinet Committee on Privatization led by Shaukat Aziz.

The second case that made his reputation was his decision to declare the Hasba bill, the NWFP Islamist bill, unconstitutional. Chaudhry was also vocal recently decrying Pakistani government’s complicity with US intelligence agencies and demanding the government provide information about the ‘missing people’.

The Corrupt Justice

Chaudhry was elevated to the position of Chief Justice by Musharraf in 2005. Since then Chaudhry sahib has played the role of an administration sock puppet admirably except, of course, in the cases mentioned above. There is little doubt that the humble justice’s wealth has grown with his position.

Most of the charges filed against the ex-CJP seem like the de-rigueur perks that a government bureaucrat in a reasonable position considers his right in South Asia – use of multiple cars, requiring “senior officials to receive him at airports”, “using helicopters and planes to go to private functions”, and forcing officials to help his son get admission in medical colleges and then getting him appointed as a “Grade 18 Police Officer”.

Somewhere among the litany of abuses is also this startling fact that Chaudhry wrote decisions on cases worth 55 million PKR. But the scale of corruption allegations can hardly be called dire - certainly not by South Asia’s lax standards. Critics point out more serious charges like property fraud and financial embezzlement dog other justices including two members of the Supreme Judicial Council which will hear the chief justice’s case. (BBC The critics further allege that “the chief justice was singled out because of his past performance, they say, which created misgivings in official circles about his likely role in the coming legal battles ahead of national elections, due later this year.”

Timeline– Chaudhry Dismissal to Karachi Clashes

Significant political events don’t automatically happen. A political scandal much like an unheeded boil festers and then bursts in violence. A timeline can give vital clues as to the kind of infection, who joined in and when, and what spurred the final orgy of violence. So here is a timeline to give a sense of the ebb and flow of this scandal.

March 9 – Justice suspended. More than the fact that he was suspended, it was the manner in which he was suspended that caught the attention. He was called up to General’s Rawalpindi residence, and held incommunicado for what people allege up to two days. The horror.

March 12 – Lawyers Begin boycott.

March 19 – Seven of the country’s judges resign including top judge of Punjab. Newspapers publish the picture of Chaudhry being shoved into a car.

March 28 – Chaudhry gives a speech arguing for independent judiciary

April 3 – Lawyers are still on strike. The SJC adjourns the hearings.

May 6 – Chaudhry gives speech in Lahore

May 13 – CJP Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, came to address the city bar association on the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Pakistani Supreme Court. Except it was not. It was a choreographed political move targeted to gain momentum against Musharraf. Except the move stalled and unraveled in its own strange way. Chaudhry never left the Karachi airport as PPP and MQM factions waged pitched battles in the streets killing nearly 40 and injuring 150 people.

Detailed Timeline at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/south_asia/6649463.stm

Karachi, MQM, Jamat-e-Islami, and PPP

There are multiple centrifugal forces that make Karachi politics so volatile - the Mujahir-Sindhi-Pathan divide, the enormous class divide, the interaction between those two divides (ethno-class angle), and the divide created by self serving politics.
The political fortunes keep shifting depending on who is in power in Islamabad and the wishes of the American puppeteers. This current phase of violence saw the lines being redrawn across the MQM –PPP axis but with one key variation – MQM and PML-Q (Musharraf’s party) are now aligned. There is a reason for the realignment – MQM is the only viable political force against Jamaat-e-Islami Islamic fundamentalists that the US government so abhors. There is little doubt in my mind that this is a temporary alliance for Muhajirs have never had strong allies. It is likely that this current episode will eventually end with PPP and Musharraf coming to some kind of deal to thwart both MQM and JI.

Class and conflict

One look at the people going to welcome Chaudhry is enough to tell that they were these super well groomed rich elites. PPP has today become a party with significant traction amongst the landowning elite. In Karachi, it is represented and funded by the industrialists and the business owners.

Media and conflict
There was of course bias in the way media – and here I mean Western media for that is what I had access to – covered this event - it was the story of how a hero for political freedom and his supporters were thwarted by the autocratic government backed militia. The truth on the street obviously was a bit different.

Analysis

The most worrisome aspect of the violence was the collusion between the police and government. The 13,000 strong paramilitary that was deployed to control violence stood casually by as both the MQM and PPP backed militia sparred with each other. What brought home the complicity of the police for me was this classic video clip of a person held by the police on the street still being beaten by, who I am sure, were Musharraf supporters. Some have alleged that the indifference of the paramilitary forces was because they are Punjabi dominated.

The strangest thing in the whole Chaudhry scandal is not the Karachi violence but the alacrity with which lawyers banded together to protest the firing of the Chief Justice. Mobilization of lawyers seems like a handiwork of the PPP. It is unclear to me as to why would the lawyers protest – they didn’t protest when Mushy was made president. Why are they suddenly so worried about political freedom? It seems to be an exercise in political opportunism.

Lastly we must focus our attention on Chaudhry. He is neither a crusader for freedom nor a deeply corrupt judge. Chaudhry is somebody who dallied with anti-government stance, found himself in the deep-end, got scared, found the rope thrown by the opposition parties and hung himself with it. Now Karachi hangs in balance with him.

Further Reading:

• Dawn: Back to the future? By Zaffar Abbas
• BBC: Q&A: Pakistan’s judicial crisis
• BBC: Blood and batons spur Pakistan row

According to China’s fifth national census, conducted in 2000, there were around 117 males for every 100 females. The sex ratios in much of Europe and US are quite the reverse with there being around 105 females for every 100 males. Amartya Sen in an essay for NYRB argued that the reason behind the discrepancy was misogyny. Emily Oster, who was a Harvard graduate student at the time, published an article in 2005 arguing that “perhaps as much as 45 percent of the gender imbalance observed in the Sen (1992) missing women populations in the period 1980–90 can be accounted for by hepatitis B.” Oster further argued “that the explanatory power varies significantly across space: 75 percent of the missing women in China are accounted for, versus around 20 percent in India.” Oster’s article received a lot of attention on its release. Luminaries like Steven D. Levitt, inarguably one of the top economist in the world and regularly touted as a future Nobel Prize prospect, used Oster’s research to take a jab at Amartya Sen. The paper was seen as a sign post of how sometimes prejudicial seemingly convenient explanations can be completely off the mark. The article also produced a fair amount of backlash with Monica Das Gupta, a senior researcher at the World Bank who had prior produced scathing articles documenting female infanticide in Punjab, arguing that Dr. Oster’s methodology was flawed. Das Gupta’s critique didn’t go unrequited and soon the argument had turned into a narrow academic debate. Just recently Das Gupta has renewed her assault with an article that uses some innovative statistics to dig a hole in Oster’s hypothesis. “Das Gupta found that data from a huge sample of births in China show that the only women with elevated probabilities of bearing a son are those who have already borne daughters.” World Bank

When I contacted Oster with the link to Das Gupta’s latest salvo, Oster said that she plans to follow up on Das Gupta’s research and that she had been sidetracked by the academic job market.

After reading Das Gupta’s paper, there is little doubt in my mind that Gupta is right. The take home message is that statistics is a blunt instrument to deal with data and Oster-size holes are easy to dig if one is not careful. Additionally, gender discrimination remains a trenchant problem in South and South-East Asia.

Further Reading -

• Oster Rebuts
• Das Gupta Rebuts
• Das Gupta on Punjab

May 22, 2008

Oster admits that she was wrong - http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/22/an-academic-does-the-right-thing/
Andy Gelman on Monica Das Gupta being right all along
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/blog/

Report on the Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India by Justice Rajindar Sachar. The report which runs around 400 pages offers an authoritative account of the wide economic and social disparities that exist between Muslims and other religious communities in India. The report, worked on by famous social scientists from India including luminaries like T.K. Oomen (pdf), a professor at JNU, Dr. Akhtar Majeed etc. suffers from serious methodological issues. “These figures are based on what people and organizations told us when we met them in the states. They need to be analyzed before arriving at any final conclusion.” as Dr. Sachar notes. [Sulekha]

….For a detailed methodological analysis of the Sachar Report, please check back later.

Biscuits (cookies) in India are marketed for their “glucose shakti(power)”, bath soaps are marketed for their ability to get rid of germs, hair oil for its efficaciousness in keeping “lice away”, and the famous “fair and lovely” for its eponymous abilities. We have popular biscuits made by “Britannia”, a popular red tooth-powder that left chalky marks on your teeth sometimes and turned your spittle red, neem (mainly known for anti-bacterial properties) soaps and toothpastes, a “farmer” brand ketchup, “brooke bond” tea (after English tea retailer), “clinic” shampoo, “kwality” ice-cream (I always found it perversely ironic that somebody would misspell quality), and “prickly heat” powders. We have multiple competing mosquito repellents including the famous “tortoise brand” mosquito coil and “good knight”. We have ads showing joint families cheerfully celebrate and lighting fire-crackers and earthen lanterns after getting their houses painted with “Asian” paints, or buying a “Maruti” car, or for that matter a Chetak (after the horse of Rana Pratap Singh) or a “hero”-Honda. Our movie studios often have introductory banners that are full of religious signage.

India is a poor country. It is a post-colonial country. We are as nostalgic about British era ‘quality’ products as we are about the merits of “herbal” remedies even though popular herbal concoctions like Chyavanprash contain mainly sugar.

India came of age, IT age that is, celebrating its “kissans”(farmers) and “jawans” (soldiers). India entered the age of economic liberalization with its own baggage of history - colonialism, and its familial structures, religion, and government propaganda. The specificity of ads, the perversities of the pitches, all are merely scavenging over the body of this skewed, troubled body politic.

I grew up in this strange India. I grew up drawing my houses with slanted tiled roofs even though I lived in Delhi which only has flat roofed houses. I grew up drawing my houses as spare free standing houses, in middle of nowhere, and with a long winding walkway and green brushes even though, I never saw such houses while growing up. I drew colonial beauty - the mimesis of colonial aesthetics in India is deep and resonance, powerful. I grew up in a household where both of my parents were government “servants”.

Commercial advertisement traditions in the country are still cognizant of India’s deep poverty - they focus on the practical and not merely the aspirational though that is rapidly changing. I suppose as the economy grows the ratio of practical pitches to aspirational pitches increases. It is an artificial line - the line between practical and aspirational- and a line that blurs often but a line nonetheless. The fact is that most Indians haven’t reached a level of material comfort where each additional major or minor purchase isn’t looked on as something that materially and significantly improves comfort.

India in some sense is a prime market for marketers, except of course its soul sapping poverty. Indians, ever aware of social position and with brains hardwired to equate price with quality, are almost always willing to buy something costlier that shows better taste or portends better quality. Of course their instincts are roped in by positive social perception about buying something for a “good value” aka cheaply. There is little doubt in my mind that the most successful advertisements will make both pitches. Similarly, the most successful advertisements would also pitch to both its modern commercial aspirational soul, and its traditional religious - changing yet rooted - soul.

Dr. G. Venkataswamy is a force of nature. He is a man who has performed more than 100,000 successful eye surgeries in spite of the fact that his fingers were severely crippled at a young age from a rare form of rheumatoid arthritis. More impressively, he has helped create a chain of eye hospitals, Aravind Eye Hospitals, run on ‘pay me if you can after the treatment’ basis, and helped provide access to eye care to a country with the largest number of cases of preventable blindness in the world.

For his efforts, He has won numerous awards including the Helen Keller International Award and the Padma Shree Award given by Government of India.

To learn more about this man, see this inspiring video at:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-430943131005128104

Musharaff has recently released a ghost written autobiography. If the customary deliberatively leaked portions of the autobiography are anything to go by, the autobiography will be a complete sham filled with enough factual and logical inaccuracies to make one nauseous. For a real biography of Musharraf, join me on a small tour of this autocrat’s life.

General Pervez Musharraf, the (in) famous son of Delhi, and the de-facto “mai-baap” (mother-father) of every Pakistani since October 12, 1999, the day he led a successful coup d’etat.

General sahib was born to a respectable middle-class family in Daryanganj, Delhi in 1943. His family moved to Karachi after partition and his father went on to work for the foreign ministry in Turkey. Pervez went on to join the military, one of the few certain ways available in Pakistan to move up the social hierarchy and rapidly climbed up the ladder thanks to some foreign education and the ample political ambition.

Musharraf was appointed the “Chief of Army” in 1999 by the then Prime Minister of Pakistan, Mr. Nawaz Sharif, primarily because Musharraf was considered a weak candidate given his status as a Muhajir. Muhajir (Arabic for refugee) is a mildly derogatory that refers to Muslims in Pakistan that came from India during partition. A brief glance at Pakistan’s politics will tell you two fundamental facts about Pakistan’s politics – that it is dominated by people from Punjab, and that it has no or little place for muhajirs (both facts are complimentary as most muhajirs stay in Karachi) except for of course the most famous one, “Baba-e-Qaum” (Father of the Nation) Mr. Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

Within a few months of his appointment, Musharraf launched a large well disguised offensive against India in Kargil, Kashmir. India, distracted with making peace overtures and conducting Bus diplomacy, woke up late to the conflict but soon enough successfully dispelled the Pakistani attack. In all, the Kargil conflict was an abject failure for Pakistan. Nawaz Sharif cried hoarse that army had launched the attack without his knowledge and reprimanded Musharraf publicly but never divested him of his duties as the Chief of Army. Within two months of the failed operation in Kargil, Musharraf launched a successful coup against Sharif and installed himself as the leader of Pakistan.

Between October 1999 and September 2001, Musharraf oversaw a catastrophic economy and Pakistan’s slow but steady slide towards being a failed state. At the same time, Mr. Musharraf talked about how he planned a return to democracy, and how his short reign was merely intended to stabilize the country. Never mind that within a fortnight we will celebrate (?) the seventh anniversary of his rule. Back to September 11th and how US undersecretary threatened to bomb Pakistan back to Stone Ages and how he bowed down to join the coalition. (Do I gather that there was an unwilling member in the coalition of the willing? ) Since I suppose Musharraf’s primary reason why he joined the fight against terrorism was fear and not genuine interest in fighting terrorism, it explains why Musharraf has never ever applied himself to the task of fighting terrorists beyond launching occasional forays in the North West for the benefit of the media. Mr. Musharraf continues to oversee a terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan that arms the Taliban in Afghanistan and the militants in Kashmir while mumbling statements with Bush and co. talking about his deep desire to fight terrorism. It begs belief when one sees Bush embracing Musharraf but then again Bush is conducting his puppet show for the unsuspecting Americans.

Let’s interrogate Musharaff’s efforts to return democracy to Pakistan. Musharraf currently holds the position of both the Chief of Army and the president of the country under a modified constitution that gives a president enormous executive power. Musharraf also oversees a puppet democracy run by Islamic parties that came to power after he disqualified most candidates from secular parties and mandated a new rule that only college graduates can run for elections. One would immediately think that limiting candidacy to people with college degrees can be seen as a progressive step that helps government be run by technocrats. But this is exactly where people like Musharaff are at their diabolical best. Two reasons – one is that most “college graduates” in Pakistan who did run in the election were graduated from unaccredited Islamic colleges, and secondly denying the right to stand in election to 9/10th or more of the population is extremely undemocratic. Musharraf, while mouthing niceties about democracy, has created a Pakistan where there is no second echelon of secularists. Musharraf positions himself as the sole messiah of the enlightened Pakistan meanwhile undercutting roots that can sustain a secular civil society in Pakistan.

Besides undercutting democracy and abetting terrorism, his perversity has found an outlet in two other things – supporting legislation that gives even more economic and other power to military as an institution, and waging a brutal war against people in the NWFP.

In all, it is nauseating to see Musharraf being felicitated for his contributions in the “War on Terror” while an uncomfortable morose Hamid Karzai looks on.

The worst part about these photo-ops showcasing a beaming Bush, Musharraf and Karzai is that the joke is on us.

Nearly 200 people lost their lives in the serial bomb blasts in India’s financial capital of Mumbai. The number is insignificant in a country of a billion but deliberate planned massacres have this cruel meaninglessness to them that rile up the hearts of even the disinterested.

The immediate Indian response to the blasts was muted as the government refused to pin down the attack on Pakistan supported militant groups before enough corroborating evidence could be collected to point to as much. The response was markedly different from the theatrical over-the-top response of the BJP led government, which deployed troops at the border after the attack on the Indian parliament.

The muted response comes amidst strong pressure on Indian government to take ’strong measures’. While a casual observer may take this to be a sign of pussyfooting, there is a pragmatic rationale behind toning down the response - the elbow room that India has when it comes to Pakistan is very limited given that outright conventional war is not an option and that hostile rhetoric will only play into the hands of right wing elements in Pakistan.

The only recourse hence is an honest attempt by India to resolve the issue of Kashmir and if need be bend a little bit to make adjustments on the issue. India’s flexibility on the issue, combined by strong pressure from US, will go a long way in strengthening the hands of the moderates in Pakistan and in implementing reform.

Dismantling of the ‘terrorist infrastructure’ will need time given the widespread sympathy within the top echelons of Pakistani military towards Islamic extremists. In addition, the fact that the regime is fighting fundamentalist Islamists in one part of the country, NWFP, makes it unlikely for them to take upon themselves yet more another onerous task of dismantling the terrorist training camps in ‘Azaad Kashmir’.

The simple disheartening lesson of the current bomb blasts in Mumbai is that there is no easy way out of a ‘bad neighborhood’ for a country. We can’t sloganeer our way to reforming our neighborhood nor bomb our way. The only way is patient reform while keeping India’s own sectarian and other problems under control.

New York Times in its article on Mumbai blasts and Kashmir Grenade attacks, ended the story with the following, “New Delhi has continued to accuse Pakistan of training, arming and funding the militants. Islamabad insists it only offers the rebels diplomatic and moral support.”

It is amazing to see that a simple relatively incontestable fact that Islamabad arms and trains militants is hedged by words like “accuses” and the ‘accusation’ followed by a rebuttal by Pakistani Government. There is absolutely no doubt - and this comes from reports from numerous non-partisan experts and numerous stories from Pakistani, BBC and other creditable international journalists that Pakistan engages in all of these practices. This form of equivocation which borders on he said/she said kind of journalism in which even the most basic facts are shown as contestable do a great disservice.

Objectivity doesn’t imply equivocation or getting government hack on either side to comment on issues.

Pankaj Mishra, writing for the New York Times, demolishes the myth of “New India” -

“Recent accounts of the alleged rise of India barely mention the fact that the country’s $728 per capita gross domestic product is just slightly higher than that of sub-Saharan Africa and that, as the 2005 United Nations Human Development Report puts it, even if it sustains its current high growth rates, India will not catch up with high-income countries until 2106.

Nor is India rising very fast on the report’s Human Development index, where it ranks 127, just two rungs above Myanmar and more than 70 below Cuba and Mexico. Despite a recent reduction in poverty levels, nearly 380 million Indians still live on less than a dollar a day.

Malnutrition affects half of all children in India, and there is little sign that they are being helped by the country’s market reforms, which have focused on creating private wealth rather than expanding access to health care and education. Despite the country’s growing economy, 2.5 million Indian children die annually, accounting for one out of every five child deaths worldwide; and facilities for primary education have collapsed in large parts of the country (the official literacy rate of 61 percent includes many who can barely write their names). In the countryside, where 70 percent of India’s population lives, the government has reported that about 100,000 farmers committed suicide between 1993 and 2003. ”

A related article in BBC talks about how the recent economic growth in India and China has meant little reprieve for those living in the rural areas.

At a time when India is being felicitated for its potential economic prowess, it is indeed sobering to look at the facts. But most jarringly, for a country that has been hailed and derided for its fecundity of engineers and doctors, is the fact that “about one-third of world’s illiterate population resides in India”. [ UNESCO, 2000]

If you dreg the bottom further, you will come to conclusion that even this figure is hopelessly inflated and a gross misstatement of the lack of real literacy that afflicts India.

India defines literacy as the ability to read and write for a person aged 7 or above, which is roughly equivalent to UNICEF’s definition. Census figures from 2001 put India’s literacy rate at 65.4% leaving over 250 million (counting only people above the age of 7) people are illiterate. The female literacy levels are even worse. “In 1991, less than 40 percent of the 330 million women aged 7 and over were literate, which means [then] there are over 200 million illiterate women in India.”

While these figures are bad enough, the picture gets worse when one counts the real literacy attainment of people considered literate.

“A recent study by ORG-CSR (2003) conducted in rural villages across five states—Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan,