Ambassador Ann Patterson of the United States says her country is providing assistance to Pakistan like it does to any other country. She was responding to reports in the press that the United States was reluctant to provide bulk of the funds directly to the PPP government. She mentioned a sum of over $3 billion disbursed since President Zardari took over. Why then were Prime Minister Gilani and officials of Ministry of Foreign Affairs voicing concerns that disbursements bypassing the government would involve huge administrative costs, reducing the actual amount of assistance?

The ambassador misses the point that the concern is not with the past but with the future. Despite the fact that Pakistan is a strategic partner and a non-NATO ally, the time that Kerry-Lugar bill is taking is boggling not a few minds. Musharraf's admission of diverting US assistance to uses other than agreed, has made confusion worse confounded. Stories of massive corruption in the media provide ammunition to the law makers and lobbyists working against the passage of the package in Washington, DC. Public opinion, which matters to legislatures of the donor countries, is influenced by the league tables produced at the international level on transparency, governance, regulatory frameworks and business conditions, competitiveness and human development. Pakistan's standing on all these indices is nothing to write home about. Nor is her notoriously low spending on health and education any help.

It all started with President Zardari's demand that the world must implement a $100 billion "Marshall Plan" to support democracy and anti-terror platform in Pakistan. This was after the announcement of $1.5 billion a year package by the United States for five years. Apparently the president did not think the sum of $7.5 billion to be anywhere near the requirement. The forum of Friends of Democratic Pakistan was organised with the aim of mobilising the larger package. After its first meeting in New York on Sept 26 last year, which produced speeches, a technical meeting in Abu Dhabi in April 2009 to tone down Pakistan's wish list, followed in the same month by the Ministerial meeting in Tokyo , which produced pledges amounting to 5 per cent of the "Marshall Plan" eyed by President Zardari, and a gup shup meeting in Istanbul last month, the circus returns to the Big Apple this month. Other than the United States and Britain, not many pledges have become commitments and far fewer commitments have been translated into actual disbursements. Even the promises of assistance for the IDPs, despite warnings from UN officials about a worsening human condition, have been made good only in insubstantial amounts. Whether the presence of Obama and Brown in New York will make any difference, remains to be seen. Other donors will be watching the progress on the United States own Strategic Implementation Plan being put in place to fulfil the Congressional requirement of effective oversight on assistance under the Kerry-Lugar bill.

What exactly is happening here? The bone of contention is the issue of aid effectiveness: how much of the assistance reaches the intended recipient or the extent to which the desired outcome is achieved. This has been put in a proper perspective neither by Ambassador Patterson, nor by the Government of Pakistan and not at all by the media. The refrain is that very little assistance will be provided to government.

Broadly there are three channels of disbursement -- project assistance, programme assistance and budget support. Traditionally most assistance was project assistance, disbursed directly to the project authorities. This ensured that funds meant for a project were spent only on that project. Tarbela and Mangla Dams are examples of this type of funding. Project assistance did not take an overall view of a sector and, therefore, led to intrasectoral imbalances. Sector-wide approaches followed. Intersectoral imbalances could be more serious than intrasectoral imbalances. So next came programme assistance. A set of criteria was agreed with the government and money spent on the agreed activities was reimbursed by a certain percentage. Social Action Programme of the nineties was an example of such assistance. The recent Paris Declaration endorsed budget support as the main vehicle to channel assistance. Here money is provided to the government as a receipt in the budget. The idea is that the government has its own strategy and priorities and the donors do not have the capacity or knowledge of ground reality to force their view of what is to be done in the name of development. Poverty Reduction Support Credit falls in this category.

Underlying the evolution of the various forms of assistance is the assumption of increasing trust in the host government. Budget support requires the highest degree of trust as the degree of fungibility of resources is the highest: they can be allocated in any manner. This is what is bothering the donors. There is what is called a fiduciary risk here, which is related to the state of accountability, transparency and overall governance. In the background of the war on terror, the intention cannot be to withhold assistance but to make it results-based, especially when the Americans are seen to be becoming increasingly unpopular. While the elements of Strategic Implementation Plan are being put together, and the expansion of the US embassy is part of that and not a clandestine operation to deploy thousands of marines, Pakistan was allowed budget support through the IMF, which does have a mechanism to monitor. The building of the US monitoring mechanism is taking its time. This will cost money, which will be charged to the projects as anywhere else. We must know that Planning Commission insists on including monitoring in the project cost.

The ambassador's take that "There is a huge internal capacity to develop Pakistan, and we want to tap into it" essentially means that development is not done by federal government alone. There are the provinces, local governments, for-profit and non-profit private sector, not to forget autonomous public sector institutions set up by federal and provincial governments. It does not matter if these entities are doing projects identified by the federal government or have entered into public-private partnership arrangements. This is nothing new for provinces, at least those who have already been dealing directly with donors. Even the federal government has a taste of things to come in the shape of Competitive Support Fund and Pakistan Poverty alleviation Fund.

In a word, assistance made part of the budget of the federal government may be smaller but, ask the provinces, that does not exhaust the definition of government. Add to the provinces local governments and public sector agencies, and the dominant portion will still go to government.

In his recent show, Ayaz Jokhio indicates the illusionist nature of media in his collages

By Quddus Mirza

Most people associate 'Guernica' with Pablo Picasso and not so much with the Basque town in Spain bombed by German and Italian warplanes on April 26, 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. This perhaps is an apt example of how a greater acquaintance with painting can overpower actuality and how lasting it is.

The complex connection between Picasso's painting and its subject, the town with humans, is repeated on many levels in our daily life. Every morning the world is translated into words and photographs in newspapers. A majority believes in what is printed -- as an unsusceptible and unchallenged truth.

Truly, we are living in a society that is surrounded by printed words -- which lately has expanded into the world of electronic media. Its effect is unavoidable; it haunts, captures and captivates us.

Ayaz Jokhio has picked newspapers to construct his latest work of art. Unlike most makers of collage technique, his selection of newspaper as a material -- that costs about Rs15 and turns into trash, only a day after its distribution -- has a conceptual reason.

In his two sets of portraits, portraying 10 actors and 10 singers, the artist has glued pieces of newsprint to shape dark and light sections of their faces. These individuals range from local personalities to international celebrities. Their photographs are composed in sharp contrasts of white and dark tones, something that is not identified with a living person, but with the 'standard' image of a personality. Hence, what one sees in the form of a portrait, for example, of Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan or Angelina Jolie, does not belong to a man or woman made of flesh, but is an image constructed for print media.

In that sense, Ayaz's new work is not only a means to pay homage to these creative personalities, it also investigates the role and significance of media in symbolising our collective desires, inspirations, aspirations and entertainment. In a subtle manner, the artist states that there is no other reality except media, which since long has ceased to represent reality because it has assumed its own presence in society. He conveys that media is deceptive. It is supposed to present the other point of view, but operates like an independent body, with its own opinions and partial views.

This illusionist nature of media is indicated in the series of another collection of collages by Ayaz Jokhio, where he employs paper to prepare paintings based on optical illusions: parallel lines appear uneven, two halves of same red stripes seem varied due to their separate background, and two sides of canvas look different in size because of the change in converging lines/angles. Though these optical phenomena are found in any elementary book of psychology, here these are constructed as art works, and in collage form, suggesting media's deceptive characteristic.

The selection of newspaper collage as a preferred material for all works included in his latest exhibition signifies another aspect of Ayaz's aesthetics. Like his earlier work shown in 'Going Places' at the same venue, Jokhio has displayed several new pieces depicting rulli, the traditional patchwork from Sindh. But instead of being flat like in the previous collage, these rullies are drawn with folds and creases. The method of collage for making a cultural product is intriguing because, in terms of formal structure, both rulli and collage are about recycling of the discarded substance -- pieces of cloth just like pieces of newspaper, are usually put in a pattern in order to re-create another image.

Interestingly, collage was 'invented' by George Braque and Pablo Picasso (Guernica is also painted in such a scheme that it resembles printed matter) and rulli is a common practice among the village women of Sindh. Yet in an uncanny way both techniques merge -- at least in the person of Ayaz Jokhio -- an artist originating from Sindh who now survives as a contemporary artist in Pakistan, showing internationally.

In that sense, one understands the reason why Jokhio prefers collage as his main means of artistic expression. Perhaps for him the blend of collage and rulli is an occasion to comprehend his visual/conceptual components as an artist living in this age and area -- a painter trained in the Western tradition of art (with collage being one of its favourite forms) and a native of Sindh, witnessing its glorious tradition of patchwork. So in a sense the rullies made one after another on his canvases are an occasion to resolve 'apparent' contradictions and conflicts of living in a modern world with a deep rooted past.

In that respect, rullies from the present show reveal the intelligent approach of Ayaz Jokhio who addresses and assimilates two segments of his personality/self, and merely for that reason, one is not much bothered by the repetitive representation of this image in his present exhibition.

(The solo show is being held from Sept 24 to Oct 3, 2009, at Canvas Gallery, Karachi).

Who determines the

In a deluge of serendipity -- and a pocketful of money -- art in Pakistan has suddenly acquired a newfound aura of attention that it had for so long yearned and coveted but never located over the last several decades. And if you reckon Gombrich's opening statement to his wonderful guide to art history The Story of Art that "There really is no such thing as art. There are only artists," then we can safely assume we speak of the communal efforts of a group of loosely knit individuals rather than an intangible body of thought.

But this is a good time as any to take advantage of the lull in the frenzy and fury that had gripped the art market in Pakistan until the fateful crash about 10 months ago, to re-evaluate the platitudes of our art -- and rethink the lines (or the lack thereof) upon which we have been considering the buying and selling of art.

It was an innate lack of knowledge on the part of buyers that led to the mad scramble for paintings of masters by investors who had set up a tidy grocery list of investment opportunities that listed art as the third most viable option after mutual funds and real estate. When the market ran out of paintings by masters, some devious art marketers had a field day, churning out fakes and selling them at exorbitant prices to buyers who had little recognition and even less inclination towards verification.

Fortunately, the market crash stalled, not cut off, the further proliferation of fakes but sordid episodes such as these could be avoided if buyers would inform themselves about the rudimentary facts of art and its evaluation. It is indubitably difficult to predict the career path of a young artist when he/she begins to paint or produce art and there have been many instances wherein the artist has failed to live up to the expectations of the market after a short meteoric rise. Also, the art market is about as predictable as weather during El Nino. But the few cases aside, it is usually not the frequenter of the gallery who is able to lay a safe bet on the artist with the potential to ascend the market, but more likely the informed frequenter. On the other hand, if it's any consolation, many art writers and critics have misunderstood and misjudged art and artists. Sir Herbert Read the venerable art writer and critic pondered over the veracity of surrealism and dismissed Dadaism as being "anti-art".

The predicament we encounter most often amongst buyers is a very elemental one -- the essential understanding of art, which has less to do with intellectuality and is more closely linked to the deficiency of a few simple rules of art education. In fact, it comes down to two fundamental rules, which, if more people are able to fathom, an immense hurdle in the appreciation of art would be surmounted: One is that harmony and beauty in the purely visual, sensuous and aesthetic sense are completely irrelevant to the merits of a work of art. And secondly, that perfect representation is not the goal of the artist.

That there is a severe drought of informed appreciation is actually quite understandable in a country like ours. It is said that art can be appreciated only by people who have reached the upper echelons of the Maslow hierarchy, wherein all basic needs as well as some peripheral needs have been fulfilled. Though artists and teachers who believe that art is a way of life and not an incursion into it have hotly debated this, let's assume momentarily that we are speaking to and of such persons belonging to this strata of societal and financial order. The problem all begins when we are left alone with a painting or sculpture or installation and cannot for the life of us locate the art and as a result try desperately to scramble around for clues to ease the process of discovery. It is akin to the experience of an illiterate person getting lost on the highway and getting frustrated at not being able to read the map.

If art has become alienated and far removed from the humdrum of ordinary life and living, it was not always so because for early man, art had a function and a purpose other than aesthetic gratification. Primitive people used images and visual renderings of animals and celestial objects to protect them against the things they feared. An icon, was created for personal protection as well as wreaking havoc on the enemy. Over the centuries, architecture and its elements have been easily understood for its functionality, as has craft and even photography because these practices have continued to exist within the functionings of society whereas art has been marginalised by the elite as an exercise created for their pleasure and their patronage. It is mainly for this reason that art has remained an enigma and has become hermetically sealed within galleries and art spaces, providing onlookers with the strange nagging feeling that what is seen on the surface is only the tip of the iceberg and the ability to reach the depth of the concept is far beyond their grasp.

The dictum we need to propagate is that art means different things to different people but the effort should always be to look at the work from the artist's point of view. The artist is the thinker, the interpreter of life and, whenever he has been authentic, he has always been right. If Cezanne and Picasso and Caravaggio before them, were derided for their incisive and revolutionary ideas, history proved them to be the knowing ones.