It's
not easy to talk about Pakistan, because there'd be so much to talk
about , there have been so many changes, and so many conflicts, that it
would be difficult for you to grasp - I think it's difficult for most
Pakistanis to grasp as well.
But I'll briefly dwell upon three issues :
·
global pressures and their repercussions on Pakistan in
recent years
·
country level issues that have surfaced
·
some new directions in our work.
In
1977, the Army took over in Pakistan for the third time.
And this coincided more or less with the Afghan war, and from
1978 - 79 onwards, the Americans, Saudi money and the Pakistan army,
supported by Western governments, put together a formidable fighting
force of Islamic fundamentalists.
Foes whom the Americans are pursuing today were their allies,
they built them up.
Arms poured into the country in a big way.
Heroin was promoted in a big way to finance this whole operation
that took place against the Soviet Union.
And this changed the nature of Pakistani society.
Because it imposed on it a very powerful fundamentalist lobby.
Which in the elections never got more than 3% of the vote, but it
became a very powerful force in Pakistani politics.
It was street politics, politics of guns, politics of
establishment support.
Then,
when the Soviet Union was defeated, after a period of anarchy,
Afghanistan, which the Pakistanis and the Americans tried to direct,
with not much success, the Americans and the Pakistanis and the Saudis
decided that the Taliban were the answer, and they built up the Taliban,
they brought it to power.
One of the reasons for bringing the Taliban to power was they
thought they could bring peace to Afghanistan, so the oil pipeline from
Turkmenistan to Karachi could be laid, and an American oil company,
Unocal was going to build this pipeline, this three trillion dollar
project.
I think it is important to
understand these things because the press in Pakistan, the press and the
media of the world and south Asia, has misrepresented this to a very
great extent. It was the
politics of oil. The
Taliban leaders were taken to America, where they were wined and dined
(well, they couldn't have been wined, but they were certainly dined...),
and looked after by those who are in power in America today, because the
whole game was of this oil pipeline. So they went to America, met the
senators, and they came back. And
then they received a counter offer from an Argentinean oil company, and
they accepted that offer. And
that was the beginning of the American - Taliban conflict.
The
Pakistan army took over once again - it had never really not been there,
even during the period of so-called democracy, from 1989 to when
Musharraf took over in 1999.
It was really the army that was calling the shots, and had found
itself a small constitutional role as well - during the period of
dictatorship, the constitution was altered so that it could be
manipulated by the army.
Now
when Musharraf took over in 1999, he made three attempts to suppress the
jihad - the fundamentalists.
But the fundamentalists and the establishment had become one.
The ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence of the Pakistan Army) and
the fundamentalists were basically one and the same thing.
So Musharraf tried to crack down, and every time he has attempted
to crack down, they have retaliated by targeted killings, by bomb
blasts, by creating a situation of anarchy.
So he has always backed down, because he has not been able to
deal with it.
After
9/11, he made a more serious attempt, because the situation had changed.
He banned a lot of organizations, he arrested a lot of people.
And again, a series of targeted killings began.
I can give you horrific figures: a large number of prominent
figures have been killed.
They receive threats first, and after receiving threats, they are
gunned down.
Those sects of Islam which have opposed the fundamentalist
philosophy, their prominent members have been shot dead.
And for reasons that are difficult to understand, 107 doctors -
just in Karachi - have been assassinated.
And those doctors all belonged to those sects that opposed
fundamentalism.
So this is the monster that we are dealing with internally.
And this in a society which has never, ever voted for it. SO it's
a very serious situation.
We are going to have elections and again the same parties that
are going to
t have come to power previously.
But they will also be impotent in front of this force.
The
standoff with India, again, I think, has strengthened the hand of these
fundamentalists, it has not weakened it.
India has it's own internal pressures, because of which it is
pushing this issue.
Otherwise, what is required is an understanding on this issue,
between India and Pakistan, which is not happening.
So
this is a summary of the background of what we face today internally.
Now
after 9/11, we have received a lot of money from donors.
Loans are available easily which weren't available before.
So we are borrowing heavily once again.
There is an incredible anger among the people against the United
States.
And that anger is growing and expressing itself more and more.
Also, as I was saying earlier, Pakistan has started to look West
and North, rather than to Asia and South Asia, and this has manifested
in many, many ways, especially in the media.
So these are the issues, one part of the global issues.
The
other are the repercussions of structural adjustment and globalization.
This whole globalization process would have helped us enormously,
because we had the infrastructure for it.
But because of the political situation, there have been almost no
investments, neither local nor foreign.
We had a good booming economy, 6 - 7% growth rates, which have
now declined to less than 3%.
So, globalization, the new liberal economics, its application
structural adjustment has meant unemployment, recession.
(Figures of these are available in a paper I've written, in the
IIED journal)
There have been attempts at privatization, but very strong civil
society opposition has lead to their failure, especially in the case of
water, solid waste, sale of land, railways, very big opposition.
There have been strong anti-loan movements, as a result of which
there have been the stoppage of very major mega-projects.
There has been the cancellation of two of ADB and World Bank
loans and opposition to others.
Now the
census results in Pakistan
- both the agricultural census and the housing census and population
census, show that Pakistan has changed incredibly.
Officially, it is 32% urban today, but this is because there was
a faulty definition of urban,
which has been purposefully applied by the government of Pakistan
because it does not wish to show a large urban population for a number
of political reasons.
If you apply India's definition of "urban" to Pakistan
(which we have done, we carried out a study on that) then Pakistan is
53% urban.
Which is a very large figure.
Also
there has been in the urban sector an almost complete closing of the
male-female literacy gap, except in certain areas.
Development of nuclear families, a very sharp reduction in the
number of married women between the ages of 15 and 24 - all these are
given in another paper of mine, "What the census tells us."
The most serious thing that has come out is the unemployment of
senior citizens. Their employment has reduced to far less than half of
what it used to be.
This is a very serious issue.
Now all these trends have a major conflict with a very repressive
state apparatus.
The state apparatus is repressive in a very strange way:
there is press freedom, there is freedom of assembly, but the
popular means of communication such as television, state television and
state radio are not available.
So you rely on satellite TVs.
But
during this period, there have also been any poverty-alleviation
programs - mostly funds - in the last 5 years.
You have funds that lend to NGOs to run their programs, funds
that local governments can access, you have banks which can give grants,
endowments, revolving fund loans. They are huge funds, and they have
been squandered and misused like anything, both by local governments and
by communities.
And, unlike Thailand, communities in Pakistan don't refuse funds.
They take them!
The Pakistani is streetwise - wherever he finds an opportunity,
he grabs it.
But at the same time, this period of turmoil has led to an
incredible blossoming of writings, of political analysis, books,
travelogues, of history.
It has never happened in such a big way in Pakistani society.
And so one sees some hope in that.
Then
we've had a devolution plan
where the district governments have been made extremely powerful. And
the bureaucracy which we inherited from the British has almost been
wiped away.
It's been made completely subservient to local government.
So there is a lot of heartburn among the elite and among the
bureaucracy itself.
This of course, has created its own problems, because the police,
by the way, are not under the district government. It remains very much
a provincial subject.
So this has fractured Pakistan's old political system
considerably, and we do not know what shape it will take after the
elections, because when the provincial governments come to power,
they'll be almost powerless.
The power will reside very much in the districts and the
districts governments.
Now
I was a part of this devolution plan - I and my collogues - and we left
because the devolution plan had less to do with devolution and more to
do with keeping the military in power somehow or the other in the
background.
But by and large, NGOs have welcomed this.
Another
big change I would like to point out:
because we are urbanizing so rapidly and becoming an urban
economy, the GDP share in agriculture is down to 24.2%.
It used to be 53.2% in 1951, so that's a very big change.
Also a very big change in land tenure and land management. 16% of
farms today have share-croppers, whereas in 1951, it was 48.8%.
So these are very big sociological changes which are not
reflected in the way the country is governed.
THE
WORK OF OPP
As
far as our work is concerned, the OPP's work is documented in its
quarterly report, which comes out regularly.
The Urban Resource Center's work is also documented regularly in
quarterly reports.
Now what we have learnt, and what we have pushed for over the
last few years is to multiply institutions, create more and more
institutions.
So the OPP is divided into 4 institutions, and each of those four
institutions have developed their own networks, and as a result of that
division, we have become a much more powerful force than we were.
The URC is very soon going to be two institutions:
the URC will stay, but as a by-product, there is going to be an
independent organization called the Old
City Rehabilitation Program.
That is almost there now, and we hope to have it registered as a
separate organization. Similarly with the University, we had one school
of architecture, before, which we had more or less captured and which
has provided most of the young people, who have now become middle-aged
people, who run many programs and are in important positions in
government.
So it makes our work easier.
But by pushing the government a little bit, two more schools
opened, and both those schools of architecture and planning are manned
by Dawood graduates and one at least has adopted courses that are
similar to the Dawood College course.
So the base becomes broader.
Then we
have tried to bring organizations together, in Karachi.
So now we have a network of about 36 organizations.
And we have put each other's members on our boards of governors,
so there is a common link between board members. For instance, Perween
is on some boards, I am on others, others are on others.
So we can all come together quite easily and quite fast because
of this.
And there is a shared common view also, of things, that has
emerged after years and years of work, that has been supported and
respected.
Then we
have been able to link up through an organization PIELAR
(Thecome to power will be the same parties - non-religious
parties - tha
Pakistan Institute of Labor Education and Research) so we have been
able to link up with the trade unions.
So in most of the work that we do, there is very large trade
union support.
Then
there is a committee for solving civic problems in Karachi, which
used to try and solve civic problems through agitation. It never solved
anything, but this is the way it used to try.
Now they have joined a powerful organization supported by a
number of number of small trade unions.
The URC, OPP-RTI and other NGOs are now it's technical advisor.
So we have got an agitational group which can now put forward plans,
rather than just agitate.
There is
the battle against privatization. We
were able to stop the privatization of water, solid waste simply because
we presented alternatives and studies.
The studies are detailed - they're big studies - but we bring out
"City-watch" series, which are synopses of these studies in
Urdu and English, so that people can read them.
The press publishes them.
They are on most subjects, these alternatives have been promoted.
It is
interesting that we have been able to get rid of some very major
projects
and have them replaced by comparatively more modest projects, in which
there were no foreign loans involved:
the Karachi mass transit plan, the sewer plan, the Lyari
expressway, the solid waste management program.
It is actually the work of the professionals working with the URC
that has made that possible.
Government
relations with us have improved at one level, and have become very bad
at another level. The
level at which they have improved is that we are now - many of us - on
boards of government institutions.
For instance Perween is on the board of the National Institute of
Public Administration, where the ... (change tapes)....
Also they are scared - they have this problem of not being
legitimate and of realizing that they are not legitimate, so they are
defensive as well.
(Question
from Andre about work in other cities)
Karachi is the most difficult city to work in.
Because of very big financial interests:
of foreign consultants, foreign companies, local consultants,
local companies, bureaucrats.
It is very easy to work in the smaller towns.
We are now working in 11 towns.
And in each town, we have created a new organization - it's not
the OPP.
The OPP trains them, monitors them and supports them when they
need it.
And they have done much better than we ever did in dealing with
local government.
Simply because these interests are not there.
In two of the towns, they have become officially - advisors to
the local government and in one town unofficially.
And very successful advisors.
So planning and community organization has gone over to them -
we've never been able to do that.
Orangi
has become a town. Karachi has been divided into 18 towns. Orangi is one
of them and is divided into eight Union Councils. The OPP-RTI has
decided to support these local councils in planning and documentation of
their areas. I feel that it is more important to build communities to
put pressure on the local councils. In Karachi (not in other cities),
you have to support the communities to pressurise the local council
because very soon there will be so much money that these local councils
will be thoroughly corrupt.
This is my point of view from my prejudices of sitting on the
other side of the table to government for years. These prejudices are
not shared by my younger colleagues and they should have their way. They
are the future.
There has
been a big controversy in the OPP itself, because Orangi now has become
a town - Karachi
has been divided into 17 towns and one town is Orangi, and it has 8
union councils or subdivisions.
The controversy has been that the OPP - those who control the OPP
now, I don't - they are supporting the local councils in planning, etc.
I am very much against it - in Karachi, not in other places.
In Karachi you have to support the communities to pressurize the
local councils.
Because very soon there will be so much money that these local
councils will be thoroughly corrupt.
So this community building, in the case of Karachi, is more
important than building the local councils.
Through the community you build the local councils.
But this is how they want to do it, and I told them that this was
the twilight of my professional life so I didn't want to pressurize this
issue, then go ahead and do it.
A similar
issue came up with the Lyari expressway.
The Lyari expressway was going to evict a whole lot of people.
That project the city does not need.
But because of pressure from NGOs and the communities and the
presentation of alternatives, etc.
The government has now put a freeze on the project.
A committee has been formed with representatives from the
communities, to look at this project again.
Now the URC and its allies have decided, along with the
communities, that it's all right, the project should go ahead, provided
it does not displace more than a certain small number of people.
So a process of re-designing it with concerned experts is being
undertaken and this redesign aims at not displacing people except for
the river bed.
Now the people in the river bed are very happy to be displaced,
because they've all been promised a damn good resettlement plan.
And they've even identified the land. So now there are two
thinkings:
there is mine (and a few others) that no, we keep opposing the
project, it doesn't matter if there is no resettlement of those in the
river bed, and there are those who want to play the game as it is.
In all these negotiations, one thing comes out: my younger
colleagues have a wonderful rapport with government servants of their
own age. They have no difficulty having a dialogue, coming to an
understanding, talking, discussing.
Whereas my generation would never ever deal with government -
there was always a conflict.
And that is why I am not putting up a fight:
maybe this is the new way of doing things:
of compromising, of negotiating, rather than putting your foot
down on principles.
(Kirtee's question, what are you NOT doing?) I'm
not doing very much at all now.
All I do is write, and I'm forced to meet people and am forced to
attend meetings.
I don't do very much, but I think all of us put together have
created a lot of institutions and brought a lot of institutions
together.
So there is nothing that the government can do unless it consults
us. It
may not do what we ask it to do, but that consultation has to take
place.
The other thing is that the press and the satellite TVs, we are
the only source of information to them, which comes from the other side.
We bring out these things and we give it to them - and they
publish it word for word!
So the control on the press and the press club, so we get the
press club to organize presentations on this.
(Somsook’s
Question:
How is what you are doing relating to the larger direction in
Pakistan?)
To put it in a nutshell, there is a big conflict between a
very fragmented and very fractured political process in Pakistan, and
the Pakistan army.
And it is how his conflict resolves itself, ultimately, will
depend on how much of our work is integrated into the development
paradigm in Pakistan.
At the level of documents: you read the 5th Five-year plan, you
read the annual development plan - it is all in support of our work.
It mentions it:
this model , that model.
But that is as far as it goes, really, except in these three
smaller towns that I mentioned, where local government and these
organizations have come together.
I think our teaching our teaching at the National Institutes of
Public Administration, which has become a regular feature now, has made
a big difference to the mid-level bureaucracy.
Also in their minds here, but practically, there is very little
that they can do.
And now they can do even less, because now they are subservient
to elected mayors, and most of them have political agendas because they
come from political parties.
(Jo
Hann’s question:
I know your work is highly technical; to what extent do you
integrate human rights and gender issues in your work?)
We have no such programs.
The institutions with which OPP and URC, who associate with ACHR
have no such programs. But I am chairman of the Women’s Association!
I am one of the two males on the board!
So we have linked up the work of this women’s organization with
the OPP and the URC.
They support us.
Actually, we support each other.
That aspect is there.
There is also a Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, and one of
our URC members sits on that board.
So there is an attempt to bring this all together.
Our main attempt now is to build this network into something very
solid.
And for that to happen, what we hope to do is to set up an information center, independent of all these organizations.
And all these organizations can feed all the information into
this center. So that would perhaps would make it fairly powerful
institution, I hope.
(Kirtee’s
question comes back again:
What issues are you NOT dealing with, and what are the
instruments of the establishment you would use?) What
we are not dealing with – and I think this is a very big gap – major
structural issues.
We are accepting the structure which exists and we are trying to
influence it, rather than bringing about changes in that structure.
And this is because we lack the confidence.
Although there is no reason to lack the confidence, I think we
are at a stage in Karachi when we can push for these changes.
But it is a lack of confidence.
And the lack of confidence comes from the fact that all these
people, including myself, have always sat on the other side, from the
government.
And that is why when the younger people at the OPP and the URC
want to negotiate with the government, I do not oppose it though my
instinct is against it. At least there is some interaction here that
might lead to something.
This is what we are not doing.
And your second issue was, what we can do.
I think this (?) is what we can do. But I don’t think we’ll
do it for a long time – it’s a lack of confidence, basically (?).
