feature
Not free as yet

The peasant camps that house about 30,000 freed families of haris in interior Sindh are in a sorry state

  By Adeel Pathan

Thousands of freed bonded peasants are living under open sky with virtually no support from any side. Their living conditions are poor, to say the least, and they face lack of security. Actually the list of insecurities is rather long -- the more important ones being unemployment and lack of basic facilities like water, gas, electricity, medical aid and education.

At present about 30,000 freed families are living in seven hari camps around Hyderabad that include Husri, Himat Nagar, Shakil Nagar in Sikandarabad, Baba Sallahuddin, Mukhtar Nagar camp near the airport, Zeal Pak and Oderolal. They are living here in Katcha (makeshift) homes that are washed away during rain.

At a time when power supply authorities claim that the usage of electricity is increasing in the country with a rise in the sale of air conditioners, these people belonging to the important agricultural sector of the country are deprived of electricity altogether. There is no water supply either but sometimes a few water tankers are supplied, courtesy an NGO. At other times the inhabitants of the camps collect money and buy a few water tankers and share the water for a day or two.

The problem of bonded agricultural labour is on the rise. Whereas earlier only landlords used to have their slaves, now even mid-range farmers are doing that. Families who are desperately seeking livelihood or are struck by some crisis for which they need cash end up becoming victims. The feudal lords lend advance to them and in return keep them in bondage to do their work. The workers are supposed to pay off their loans through work -- but this rarely happens. During work, they are kept in private detention centres and the cycle continues for generations.

Temporary shelter has been provided by some NGOs in seven camps around Hyderabad and adjoining districts. The living conditions in the camps are totally inadequate but neither government nor any other agency has offered to provide any support.

Most of the haris -- as these peasants are locally known -- have no other skill, which they can use for earning. Therefore they either turn towards beggary or become victims of another bondage. "I escaped from the captivity of a landlord of Khipro," says Bhutta talking to TNS while sitting in his makeshift hut in Shakeel Nagar camp in Sikandarabad located in District Jamshoro, half an hour drive from Hyderabad. "But it is difficult to live here in camp," he says. "There is no water, and the worst problem is getting a job as mill owners don't give jobs without guarantee which I and many of my colleague cannot give because we come here from other parts of the province." But there are some who are happy because of the situation. "At least we are free," says Shagan while speaking to TNS. "We eat less food and sometimes none but freedom is not so easily available to all human beings," he says referring to hundreds of peasants who are still under agricultural bondage.

The families living in these camps remain vulnerable to reprisals, including threats and kidnapping, from their former landlords as the state provides no security and attacks on these peasants are a routine affair. "Our landlords are influential and they come here with armed men and sometimes also kidnap the freed bonded labourers," says another peasant living in the camps giving the example of the family of Mannu Bheel whose nine family members were kidnapped in 1998 and have not been recovered despite protest campaigns and pressure of apex courts.

A local resident of Sikandarabad, Lal Khan takes care of some affairs of the camp voluntarily and also supports the freed peasants in his meager means. He tells TNS that there is no healthcare facility, a school is operating here but the performance is questionable. Not happy with the teaching at the school being run by an NGO, he says that not a single child of a camp could write his/her name. Seeking jobs is a big problem for these freed bonded peasants and the jobs they gets are very low paid or sometimes not even paid. "They come from a background of agricultural skills that can't be applied in cities," he adds.

The residents of Sikandarabad camp say that they are living like a community in the camp and also offer worship in temples as majority of them belong to the untouchable caste of Hindus. They are living without sanitation, water for drinking, schools for children and dispensaries and most of all without homes. "Some NGOs receive huge funds in the name of bonded labourers, their education, health and other services but all their work is on papers only," says Abbas Kassar honorary coordinator Peace and Human Rights Trust.

There is an urgent need for the government to take appropriate measures to eliminate private jails and to take necessary steps for the rehabilitation of freed haris. The government should establish rehabilitation centres at the places where these bonded haris are living and make proper arrangements enabling them to resume their lives in a new society instead of a place where only the landlord has chnged.

There is also need for establishing technical institutions for these bonded haris where they can be provided with various skills for them to be able to stand on their own feet. The civil society should also come forward as some NGOs are running schools and technical centres for some women and children but the efforts need to be accelerated as the number of escaped/freede peasants is continuing to rise.

Journalist to the core
Tahir Mirza as I knew him
(1936-2007)

By Adnan Adil

When I think of Tahir Mirza, the most striking thing that comes to mind is that he did not do any harm to anybody; he was someone whose presence only benefited others and the society as a whole. As a journalist he enriched our lives despite being up against all odds that come with this profession in this country.

In 1990, I joined weekly Viewpoint in Lahore as a reporter, and Tahir Mirza was my first copy-editor. A tall man with broad shoulders sitting at a revolving chair on a small desk, cleaning and smoking his pipe in between editing stories at a fast clip, I found him instantly amiable.

He would rewrite stories by reporters like me who generally come from Urdu-language background and write in broken English. Tahir Mirza would do the job without a demur. He was very quick both in editing and writing his essays. At that time, he used to write a weekly column for a Dubai-based newspaper. Theorising was his not forte. He was a typical newspaper writer with fixed views on political issues and clarity of thought. For him, there could be no compromise on parliamentary democracy, liberal and secular values. He wanted Pakistan's good relations with India, maybe a confederation between the two countries.

A decent and simple man as he was Tahir Mirza would generally wear corduroy trousers and drive an old Volks Wagon. On occasions, for lunch he would ask me to accompany him to eat at a roadside eatery at Beadon Road, called Goonga Kebabs. On return, we would stop over at Maula Bakhsh's paan shop to have an ilaichi-supari galori. He had a special liking for subcontinental foods. He used to say onions should not be mixed in Dahi Bhallas as popular bhalla shops at Lahore's Reagal chowk do.

He would eat kebabs and nehari and drink scotch though moderately. On Tuesday evening when the weekly's production would be over, he would share the evening with his colleague and buddy ZIM. I never saw him arguing his point loudly. It was his strong point and for many his weakness; for as an editor he was not able to get press workers' demands from the management as many in daily Dawn would bear me out.

Mirza had joined Viewpoint by leaving Khaleej Times in 1989 and in 1991 he again left for Dubai. Mazhar Ali Khan's Viewpoint was struggling due to non-availability of advertisement. Mazhar Ali Khan threw a farewell party for Tahir Mirza at his house where I A Rehman, Aziz Siddiqui, Zafaryab Ahmad, ZIM and myself were present. Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan was a generous host.

Tahir Mirza had also worked for BBC Urdu service in London for a few years till 1983. Few people leave BBC as it is considered a well-paid employment for Pakistani journalists which also gives a degree of freedom. Tahir Mirza, however, would say he found BBC was like working for government-run Pakistani newspaper The Pakistan Times. Maybe he was not content with the clerical working atmosphere that prevails in that organisation, so typical of state-run organisations.

In late 1990s, when Tahir Mirza was the resident editor of Dawn in Lahore, I called on him in his office. He was as usual busy editing the copy of a reporter. He was frank and bore no bureaucratic demeanour which comes to some people with this position. Once I saw him a in a local departmental store where he was looking into a mirror to see how a jacket fitted to his body.

In the last 17 years of my career as a reporter I have worked with several editors. As time passed, I have seen editors becoming less competent than we had before and more street smart. In a volatile and ever-rising market of media men, there are a few media leaders who could be trusted for their credibility, integrity and uprightness. Tahir Mirza was one of this rare breed. May God keep his soul in eternal peace!

Taal Matol
Domestic Squabble!

  By Shoai b Hashmi

Thanks a lot! I have landed smack in the middle of a god-awful domestic squabble, and not one whit of it is my fault. It is all because of that fool Abrar Ul Haq who, it seems, has been in the news again. No, actually he is a very nice young man, and I am very fond of him; and because of that, and the fact that he is very much younger, the lady wife assumes that he is an old pupil and I have clout with him, and she wants me to use it -- to get him to write a new song, and she wants her name In It!

Now I know that Abrar has a rare talent, of writing lyrics that instantly catch the imagination, and set them to catchy music and sing them too and it has made him arguably our most popular pop singer. It seems that he last wrote a song about a girl named Parveen who he finds very 'namkeen' which incidentally merely means 'salty' for which the Arabic equivalent is 'Maliha.' It seems that someone wrote off a weepy letter to the papers whining that the classmates of a girl named Parveen were ragging her mercilessly. It quickly turned out that the letter was a fake, but not before poor Abrar had been dragged to court and admonished not to use names again. Actually he has a talent for this stuff too, and was lately in trouble for saying 'Panjaban', but that was really our talent for bloody-mindedness!

Anyway I have been trying to persuade the lady that Shakespeare never named the lady and we know her only as the 'dark lady of the sonnets'; nor did Ghalib, in fact in all his poetry Ghalib never named a wife or a loved one, only a certain 'sitam-pesha domnee', and I shouldn't have got on to that tack because she threw the book at me!

Yesterday was the fortieth anniversary of the Beatles' great album called 'Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' and she reminded me that one of the most famous lyrics was, 'Lovely Rita', and half the world was in love with Rita for years. Before that Harry Belafonte had made a legend out of 'Matilda' , though she was named after the even more popular 'Waltzing Matilda' of yore. Pat Boone made a name for himself crooning about a girl named Bernadine!

If you want to talk about more serious poetry, you cannot get more serious than Dante, who couldn't very well put his lady into 'The Inferno' but we all know she was Beatrice. And we even know about Oscar Wilde and His Lordship. Winston Churchill wooed his lady singing the most popular song of the day, 'Oh my darling Clementine'. And in the days of the Wild West, they all went to Alabama singing, 'Oh Susannah, with my banjo on my knee'!

I tried to counter that that was the West, and we are not and I got more flack. Not only do we know the names of Sohni and Sassi in folklore but also of Sahiban. And if you want to get technical and classical there is the Khamsa of Nizami, later retold also by our own Amir Khusrau, and the titles are full of names like Laila and Majnun and Shireen and Farhad not to mention Wamiq and Azra. So what they want us to do? Rename the classics as 'The Mad Guy and his Dark Lady' and 'What's er name and Farhad'? Maybe we can eliminate the last name too and call him the axe-wielding vandaliser!

issue
Prices crop up

Failing to check price-hike, the govt has banned wheat export much to the detriment of exporters and country's image

  By Shahzada Irfan Ahmed

The age old economic principle of demand and supply was refuted blatantly this year in Pakistan. May be it was for the first time that the prices of wheat had shot up drastically despite the fact that the country had had a bumper crop and supply was more than demand.

The government tried to check this trend but failed to do so. So, as a last measure, it imposed an immediate ban on the export of wheat. The other step was to remove Secretary, Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Livestock, Ismail Qureshi from the post for not being able to handle the situation.

There are reports that the price of wheat has started coming down gradually but there has been no indication that the decision has benefited the end user in any way. On the other hand, the exporters of wheat have strongly condemned the government for punishing them for the fault of others. They contend that instead of carrying out a crackdown against hoarders and black-marketeers, the government has taken this unjustified step. Even if the ban has to stay, it must be on future shipments but not the export orders that are near realisation, they contend.

Sheikh Mushtaq, a merchant in Karachi grain market, Lahore tells TNS that the finalised export orders should not be cancelled at any cost. "On the one hand this step will result in colossal losses to the exporters and on the other tarnish the image of the country. I ask what's the fault of the foreign buyers who have already sent Letters of Credit (L/Cs) and booked space on cargo ships." If the ban is not scrapped, Pakistan will never be able to bag commodity export orders in future.

The exporters contend that the government itself had increased the export quantity of wheat from 0.5 million tonnes to 0.8 million tonnes. This decision was taken in anticipation of a record wheat harvest of above 23 million tonnes. Besides, there was sufficient carryover stock from last year's yield. The government had worked out that by allowing export of 0.8 million tonnes of wheat, it was by no means jeopardising the local wheat market.

"It was all speculative buying that caused the havoc," says a Punjab Food Department official on conditions of anonymity. He tells TNS that many people started buying wheat at rate better than the one offered by the government and storing it in private godowns. The reason was that they wanted to sell it to exporters and earn easy profits. "The exporters who are getting around US$210 a tonne on their export orders have no qualms paying even Rs 50 per maund for quality wheat," he adds. Every school building, courtyard, dispensary, ginnery, in many villages has turned into wheat storage godown but no one takes action, the official laments.

The existing situation is not at all unexpected. Months ago, the State Bank of Pakistan had cautioned the government against the speculators by ensuring availability of sufficient buffer stocks with the government agencies. But the problem, according to market analysts, is that such measures are helpful in places where regulatory frameworks and legal and administrative controls are strong. The situation in our country is otherwise.

"Even the system to estimate the size of the crop is outdated. While other countries, even the backward ones, employ satellite technology to estimate the size of the crop it's the patwari who calculates the expected size of yield from a particular piece of agricultural land in Pakistani," says Ehsan Qazi, an agricultural scientist, based in Lahore.

He says it is not only the case with wheat crop. Even at time of the harvest of cotton crop, the millers start saying that the yield is surplus to local requirements. On the other hand, the growers hint at shortfall. While the former wants to bring the prices down by such remarks, the latter wants otherwise and get best price for his produce, he adds.

Chairman Agri Forum Muhammad Ibrahim Mughal says there are a few players who are manipulating the commodity markets. He tells TNS that instead of addressing the root cause of this price-hike the government has resorted to the easiest recourse available. He alleges that a Sindh minister and a couple of flour mill owners had blackmailed the federal government and got the ban implemented. "The said minister wanted to get handsome commission during wheat procurement drive whereas the flour mill owners' aim was to bring the prices of wheat down."

Sheikh Mushtaq (wheat merchant) says it all started with the call for transporters' strike after May 12 incident in Karachi. As transportation cost from upcountry to Karachi increased, the price of wheat started escalating in Sindh, he says. The government should have taken measures to bring this cost down instead of banning export altogether, he adds. Similarly, the hoarders shall be dealt with strictly.

Mushtaq says the transportation cost is bound to decrease with the start of fertiliser import. Once this happens, the trucks carrying fertilizer to upcountry will bring wheat to Karachi on their way back. Presently, the trucks charge two-way fare as fertilizer import hasn't yet started and they come empty from either Lahore or Karachi.

While all this debate is getting stronger and stronger, the government has decided to take up the issue after budget. Till then the exporters will stay in lurch and ordinary consumers wait for the cost benefit to reach them.

Lessons in history

The current politico-constitutional crisis has exposed that at best Pakistan has always had a controlled democracy

  By Hussain. H. Zaidi

"Some underdeveloped countries have to learn democracy and until they do so they have to be controlled" -- Iskandar Mirza, the first president of Pakistan

Ours is a land of contradictions and the political system is no exception. In a democracy, it is the people who constitute the power base. But in Pakistan, it is the establishment that has remained the repository of all political power. There has long been the belief that democracy is ill-suited to the country and in case introduction of democracy becomes a compulsion, the sampling of democracy should not be allowed to go unhindered. The argument is that left to themselves the people or their elected institutions are too ignorant to know and too bad to choose what is the best for them. Therefore, they must be governed by institutions morally and intellectually 'superior' to them.

(Mis)guided by this belief, the establishment has never allowed democracy to take root. Instead, it has always tried to control democratic institutions, and done so successfully. Some instances:

The attempts to strengthen democracy were dealt with the first severe blow when in 1953 Governor-General Ghulam Muhammad dismissed Prime Minister Khawaja Nazimuddin despite the latter commanding a majority in the legislature. The dismissal broke with the fundamental convention of parliamentary democracy that it is the legislature which controls the executive and established the unhealthy convention that the constitutional head can change the government. From then onward, the power to sack the prime minister was used by the president on many occasions to control or destabilise democratic institutions. 

Parliamentary conventions stipulate that whenever a new prime minister is appointed, he should immediately seek vote of confidence from parliament. The purpose is to uphold the status of parliament as the maker and sustainer of the executive. However, Governor-General Ghulam Muhammad who appointed Muhammad Ali as the new prime minister after sacking Khawaja Nazimuddin did not summon the federal legislature for five months. Again, the purpose was to make it clear that the new government owed its existence to the governor-general and not to parliament.

The dismissal of the first constituent assembly in 1954 by the governor-general, which also served as the federal legislature, was a departure from another fundamental parliamentary convention that parliament can be dissolved only on the prime minister's advice. The dismissal, occasioned by the attempts of the assembly to clip the wings of the governor-general, made parliament subservient to the constitutional head, which it has remained ever since except during the premiership of Z.A. Bhutto (1973-77) and the second tenure of Nawaz Sharif (1997-1999). And on both occasions the army stepped in to ensure that democracy did not take root.

After the restoration of democratic form of government in 1985, prime ministers were either dismissed by the president or forced to resign. Muhammad Khan Junejo was dismissed by Ziaul Haq (1988), Benazir Bhutto by Ghulam Ishaq Khan (1990) and Farooq Leghari (1996), and Nawaz Sharif by Ghulam Ishaq Khan (1993). Prime Minister Jamali agreed to quit (2004), otherwise his fate would not have been different from that of his predecessors. In fact, there were quite a few similarities between the removal of Messrs Jamali and Nazimuddin: On both occasions, the decision to replace the prime minister was made by the establishment. On both occasions, the parliament was excluded from any role in the change of the government. On both occasions, the PML parliamentary party meekly accepted the decision. And on both occasion, an outsider was chosen as the next prime minister. Who says history does not repeat itself?

The 'establishmentarians' have never been well disposed towards the idea of a powerful prime minister or parliament. What they want is a strong president, a docile prime minister and a rubber stamp parliament. Therefore, they make it sure that such constitutional provisions exist as would enable the president to control both parliament and prime minister. In the 1956 constitution, one of the provisions empowered the president to sack the prime minister, which President Mirza invoked or threatened to invoke several times to bring the prime minister to his heel.

The 1962 constitution being presidential, there was no need for such a clause. The 1973 constitution in its original form did not contain any provision that would empower the president to control the prime minister or parliament. However, at the behest of General Ziaul Haq, Article 58-2(b) was incorporated into the constitution conferring on the president the power to dismiss the prime minister and the National Assembly. From its birth in 1985 to its death in 1997, the Article became a lethal weapon in the hands of successive presidents to control and destabilise parliamentary institutions. President Musharraf taking a leaf out of the book of his predecessor got Article 58-2(b) resurrected through the seventeenth amendment to the constitution and thus eliminated any possibility of the prime minister or parliament getting out of his control.

The seventeenth amendment, apart from resurrecting Article 58-2(b), validates the political role of the armed forces. The combination of the offices of president and COAS has added to asymmetry in the distribution of powers between the president and the prime minister. Already, under the constitution, the prime minister is in a vulnerable position vis-a-vis the president. And when the president also dons khaki uniform, the fate of the prime minister is completely at his mercy.

This means, in case of Pakistan's parliamentary system, the relationship between the president and the prime minister has been turned upside down. Instead of being a mere figurehead, which he should be in a proper parliamentary democracy, our president-in-uniform is the repository of all powers both constitutional and extra-constitutional.

The legislation allowing president Musharraf to continue to hold the dual offices not only runs counter to democratic norms but is also repugnant to various constitutional provisions. For instance, turn to Articles 243 to 245, which define the role of the armed forces. Under Article 243, the armed forces are to work under the control and command of the federal government; they are not to take control of the government. Article 244 restraints the members of the armed forces, including of course the chief of army staff (COAS), from engaging themselves in 'any political activities whatsoever.' As for the role of the armed forces, this under Article 245 is strictly limited to defending the country against external aggression or threat of war and acting in aid of the civil authorities when asked. Any attempt by any member of the services to seize the government or rule the country is contrary to the afore-mentioned Articles.

Article 63 of the constitution bars a government official from becoming member of the federal or a provincial legislature. And one of the conditions prescribed by Article 41 for holding the office of the president is the qualification to be elected as member of the National Assembly. It is clear that under these two articles the army chief being a government official does not qualify to act as president.

Granted, for the sake of the argument, that in the largest national interest President Musharraf should remain at the helm. But why should he not contend to be a mere president, especially in view of the fact that under the constitution the office of the president is enormously powerful? Can he not ensure continuity of his policies if he is not the army chief? The answer of course is in the negative. Whatever our ruling party may claim about democracy taking root in Pakistan, the fact is that in Pakistan it is the armed forces who call the tune, while the rest dance to their tune. Without the backing of the armed forces no government can stay or complete its agenda. And without a nod from them, no party can enter the corridors of power.

What President Musharraf's insistence on remaining in uniform in 'the largest national interest' implies is that elected institutions in Pakistan are not capable of governing themselves and thus need to be guided by extra political forces. This echoes the remarks of President Mirza quoted in the beginning of this write-up and shows that Pakistan has made little if any progress on the road to democracy.

E-mail: hussainhzaidi@yahoo.com

RIPPLE EFFECT
Censorship

  By Omar R. Quraishi

One cannot fathom why the government is bent on cutting its nose to spite its face. Why the need to open yet another - potentially dangerous -- front with another institution of society, the press and media, at a time when the judicial crisis is at its peak? Who is advising the president to do this and if he is doing this on his own, can he not see the damage it will do to his and the government's credibility?

The changes made to the PEMRA law, promulgated via a presidential ordinance on June 4, are such that they can only be interpreted as part of a concerted effort by the government to tighten the screws, as it were, on the media, particularly the electronic one. The amendments go against natural justice which lends itself to natural law, the foundation stone of much of our own law, which comes primarily from British and Anglo-Saxon law. Also natural law is called 'natural' in a sense that it relates to rights that are so fundamental that no legislation or government sanction is even necessary for them to hold. It is such crucial and basic rights that the new Pemra ordinance has ridden roughshod over.

For instance, the state electronic media regulator will now be able to confiscate equipment and seal the premises of any TV channel which violates its rules and regulations without even referring the matter first to a complaints council. This means that such action can be taken without due notice and/or warning and without recourse to the channel to seek legal redress to stop such action. You don't have to be a student of law to understand that this violates the due process of law, which is that any person or entity charged with breaking the law must be given proper notice and warning of the action to be taken against it and -- equally importantly -- must be given a chance to defend himself before an appropriate justice-dispensing forum (usually a court). The changes made through this ordinance are tantamount to condemning a party without even hearing its side of the story.

The ordinance also empowers the regulator to suspend a channel's licence to operate after a 'duly constituted committee comprising the authority's members'. This means that the regulator plans to be judge, jury and executioner all in one. Now this wouldn't be so much of a problem were it not for the fact that there is practically no parliamentary oversight over Pemra (or any other industry regulator for that matter) and that the views of all stakeholders, particularly ordinary citizens, are hardly, if ever, taken into account. After all the Federal Communications Commission or the Food and Drug Administration in the US both have considerable sweeping powers as well but both are subject to close scrutiny by Congress and are held accountable for their actions. Most importantly, their actions have shown that by and large they tend to act in a manner that furthers the public good in and does not further any particular vested interest. Also, they are independent of the US government, which is something that certainly cannot be said of how regulators function and operate in Pakistan.

For some, the clamp-down on the media may seem reminiscent of General Zia's dark days and in general goes to show how quickly media freedom can be taken away by a government/state. Also, it shows desperation, particularly the amendment that brings under Pemra's purview video images on the Internet and on mobile phones. This means that the government wants to now control what people are watching on their mobile phones and the Internet, clearly an attempt to prevent them from watching videos of the rallies and protests related to the ongoing judicial crisis that can be seen on either medium (particularly in demand after the blanket ban on live coverage by TV channels).

Though one normally abhors giving quotes (because that seems a most unoriginal way to write -- borrowing ideas from others), there may be a case for mentioning what others have said on censorship. The first is Demosthenes, a statesman and orator of repute who lived in Ancient Greece in the fourth century BC. He said, "The readiest and surest way to get rid of censure, is to correct ourselves."

The second is Winston Churchill (who doesn't really need any introduction). He said, and it probably is very apt of Pakistan today: "Everyone is in favour of free speech. Hardly a day passes without it being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage."

The writer is Op-ed Pages Editor of The News.

Email: omarq@cyber.net.pk

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