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Contents
S O U T H A S I A N
EditorImtiaz Alam
Executive Editor Zebunnisa Burki
Consulting Editors
BangladeshEnayetullah Khan
IndiaK. K. Katyal
NepalYubaraj Ghimire
PakistanI. A. Rehman
Sri LankaSharmini Boyle
Publisher Free Media Foundation
FacilitatorSouth Asian Free Media
Association (SAFMA)
Designed byDESIGN 8
PrinterQaumi Press
Editor’s PostE-mail:
Address09-Lower Ground,
Eden Heights, Jail Road, Lahore, Pakistan.
Tel: 92-42-5879251; 5879253 Fax: 92-42-5879254
Email:[email protected]
Website :www.southasianmedia.net
Earthquake in South Asia i
In this Issue iii
Education in India at the Crossroads 6Marie Lall
Education Reform: Beyond the Rhetoric 18Pervez Hoodbhoy
Madrassa: Islamic Rejectionism 34and TerrorismKhaled Ahmed
Madrassa Reforms in Contemporary India 53Yoginder Sikand
Pakistan: Devolution and 65Community Empowerment Dr Paul Oquist
Politics of Indian War Films 85Saba Naqvi Bhaumik
Indian Punjab: Social Regulation 94of Rice Production Rupinder Kaur
EU-India Relations at the WTO 102Shazia Aziz
A Peace Museum on the Wagah Border 116Syed Sikander Mehdi
Electricity Demand in Nepal 127Kamal Raj Dhungel
Earthquake in South Asia
After the Indian Ocean Tsunami struck at the bottom of the sea, killing more than
200,000 people in nine counties, the October 8 earthquake that struck the roof of the
earth on the southern flanks of Himalaya has brought worst ever death and
devastation across the divided Kashmir and northern parts of Pakistan, killing dozens
of thousands, rendering more than four million homeless and over a million people
jobless. Since the epicenter of the earthquake was about 60 miles northeast of
Islamabad, and originated only 6.2 miles deep in the crust, the much greater thrust of
shaking forces at 7.6 Richter scale devastated areas closer to the epicenter four
districts of North Western Frontier Province, three districts of Pakistani-administered
Kashmir and adjoining areas of Indian-administered Kashmir across the Line of
Control (LoC).
Indian subcontinent's tectonic plate's northward movement, as it collides with
Eurasian tectonic plate, produces thrust faults that make earth quake. The same
geological forces that produced Himalaya, and continue to create mountains, have
now put 50 million people living across the subcontinent at the risk of encountering
Himalayan quakes, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Pakistan,
scientists of the University of Colorado after studying the seismic activities of the
region predicted four years ago. They had forewarned of tens of times more powerful
earthquake that could kill a million people on the Ganges plain and southern flanks of
Himalaya. Where have the authorities been sleeping all these years, especially the two
nuclear powers of the subcontinent? They have had spent billions of dollars on the
production of weapons of mass destruction, but had no time and resources to study
the seismological activities and take precautionary measures to save the people from
natural calamities. Their national security establishments have all the contingency
plans how to fight full and limited wars, including the nuclear wars, but no such plan
existed that could have mitigated the sufferings of the millions this time the
unfortunate Kashmiris, over whose territory, controlled by and divided between India
and Pakistan, the two have been ready to risk a nuclear war.
The October earthquake in South Asia has also brought to the fore, as the last
Tsunami, that how unprepared and ill-equipped are Pakistan, India and other sates of
South Asia, even if put together, to meet the colossal challenges of such natural
calamities. Despite their hectic efforts, the authorities in both Pakistan and India
failed to access the far flung villages in a most rugged terrain, termed as logistical
disaster, even two weeks after the quake. The infrastructure was so poor, and built not
in accordance with the seismically sensitive building codes, on both sides that it all
crumbled, leaving no roads, schools, hospitals and administrative blocks on the
ground. It required most modern equipments, machinery, sensors, helicopters,
i ii
mobile hospitals, tents, blankets, medicines, food and in plenty and promptly to
rescue and rehabilitate millions of victims. It left no alternative but to call
international community for rescue, relief and reconstruction. And, on Pakistan's call,
the international community did respond promptly, whereas it was below India's
honor to accept foreign assistance. The past animosity over divided Kashmir has been
such that the two neighbors could not agree even on a limited cooperation across the
LoC. Neither did Pakistan agree to Indian helicopters flying over devastated areas on
its side for relief operations, nor could India allow Pakistani forces to extend helping
hand in areas closer to its side of the LoC. A unique opportunity was missed to add
first chapter of friendship to an otherwise history of conflict since, in the eyes of the
two hostile national security establishments, the people are not important but the
territory.
The first phases of rescue and rehabilitation operations were marked by a race against
time and most who could have been rescued from under the debris could not be
retrieved from the clutches of death. However, with the help of international
community, an unprecedented relief and reconstruction operation in region's history
is underway. But it is not an easy task and requires immense resources and technical
assistance. The initial response of the donors and international community is quite
encouraging, in the case of Pakistan. Against the UN appeal of $ 312 in 'flash funds',
the international pledges made are well over $500. It will require billions of dollars to
reconstruct the whole infrastructure and rebuild safe houses, according to the new
seismic zoning. It may need more funds than what was spent on Tsunami affected
areas ($12 billion) since, in the words of Jan Egeland, UN Undersecretary General for
Humanitarian Affairs, South Asian earthquake calamity, in its peculiarity, is worse
than the destruction caused by the last Tsunami. The international disaster-relief
community is presently over-stretched from New Orleans to Nigeria and Pakistan and
is passing through what is being termed as 'donor fatigue'. The internal rehabilitation
effort will have to be shared nationally and regionally.
There are lessons to be drawn at both national and regional levels. The South Asian
Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) should create most modern seismic
facilities, in collaboration with international agencies, to share data that cannot
otherwise be kept secret from one another, even for typical security reasons, and build
a pool of resources to mitigate sudden natural disasters. Natural calamities don't
recognize national borders, nor do they distinguish among religions, nations,
ethnicities, ages and gender. In their hour of trial, South Asian sates must come
forward to help each other without consideration of interstate politics. Already,
Bangladesh, Maldives and Sri Lanka have sent their relief goods to Pakistan. The good
news is that India offered help to Pakistan that it has accepted on its terms. But, given
the scale of destruction, they could have, and should, do whatever is possible to
overcome the sufferings of the people and set a good example to follow. Pakistan and
India must allow the people on both sides of the LoC to share their grief and
reconstruction by softening the LoC. The people of the affected areas deserve the
compassion and support of their South Asian brethren.
iii
Marie Lall, lecturer at the Institute of Education in
London, gives a broader picture of India's education
system as it has evolved since the Nehruvian period when
there was a greater emphasis on secularism and inclusion
as opposed to the period of the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) government when saffronisation of curricula took
place. The writer evaluates various echelons of education
from higher to primary levels, while critically reflecting
upon the difference between access and quality and an
elitist character of education that benefits the upper
strata of society. Lack of sufficient resources and
facilities, she argues, is not helping to overcome illiteracy
and face the challenges posed to the education system.
Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy, professor of Nuclear Physics at
Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, provides a critical
evaluation of higher education reforms through the prism
of his own and his colleague's experiences at the
campuses that have lost every sense of an academic
environment. Criticising the reforms being undertaken at
the moment, he laments the emphasis on quantity and
draws attention to more fundamental requirements of
scientific inquiry, scholarly standards and knowledge-
based research and production. He proposes an
alternative with dos and don'ts that, by itself, requires a
scientific survey to find out the real reasons behind the
decline of standards in higher education in Pakistan.
Khaled Ahmed, Consulting Editor, Daily Times, traces
the roots of Islamic rejectionism and terrorism in the
indoctrination being imposed by the madrassa
(seminary) and its political amplification through
mosques. Evaluating case studies, he explores the
extremist mind that flourishes along with a literalist
interpretation of Islam and a dogmatic emphasis on
Shariah. He laments a mindset that rejects reality and
takes asylum in denial while sticking to certain tenets
that remain unchanged, even if the changing world
demands otherwise.
In This Issue
Education in
India at the
Crossroads
Education
Reform: Beyond
the Rhetoric
Madrassa:
Islamic
Rejectionism
and Terrorism
(The views expressed in this journal are solely those of the authors)
iv
Yoginder Sikand, an Indian scholar, surveys Muslim
religious schools or madrassas in India with a focus on
the changes being brought in curriculum. The
madrassas being run by Jama'at-i-Islami and Deoband
School, he says, are now increasingly combining modern
and religious education. Aware of the fact that the
Muslims have been left behind in education and the
modern fields, the Muslim organisations are now more
inclined to combine modern sciences with traditional
education. The author, however, warns against
demonisation of madraasas and Muslims and argues to
engage Muslim ulema (scholars) and encourage them to
undertake the reforms they deem necessary.
Dr Paul Oquist, Senior Consultant at UNDP, Islamabad,
explains the local government reforms introduced and
protected by President Pervez Musharraf. While
defining the devaluation plan, he sets the principles for
devaluation to take place and then evaluates the system
that he has helped put together. Sounding sanguine
about the success of the system, based on certain
surveys, he makes a loud claim that Pakistan's future
depends upon this without, however, taking into
account that all local governments installed by military
rulers vanished along with their authors, leaving behind
political culture and political parties in disarray.
Saba Naqvi Bhaumik, Bureau Chief of Outlook, India,
surveys Hindi films, especially those war films that have
been instrumental in fanning jingoism. She critically
evaluates such Bollywood films that have been a vehicle
for communal hate showing good-Hindus and bad-
Muslims, thus becoming a vehicle of Hindu nationalism
or hate-Muslim syndrome. The author reveals how the
film industry in India responds to the ebb and flow of
relations between India and Pakistan as a cultural
instrument of official policy.
Rupinder Kaur, an economist at the National Council of
Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi, looks
at rice production, procurement, processing and
marketing in the Indian Punjab, while focusing on
mechanisms of exploitation of small farmers and
contract labour. She identifies the powerful lobbies that
Madrassa
Reforms in
Contemporary
India
Pakistan:
Devolution and
Community
Empowerment
Politics of
Indian
War Films
Indian Punjab:
Social Regulation
of Rice Production
v
manipulate rules and regulations to their advantage.
While concluding her analysis, she raises certain
questions for social regulation of rice production to
benefit the small farmers and the contract labourers
without, however, elaborating such social regulations.
Shazia Aziz, a doctoral candidate at Sciences Po Paris,
thoroughly analyses the causes behind the tension
between the European Union and India over the issues of
trade, anti-dumping duties and countervailing measures.
In a divide between the developed and 'developing'
countries, at the WTO meetings, India leads the cause of
'developing' countries and, consequently, comes into
conflict with the EU that, in her view, is the main reason
for the lack of progress in EU-India Summits. The author
argues in favour of closer coordination between the two
to allow greater room for cooperation.
Syed Sikander Mehdi, professor of International
Relations at University of Karachi, presents a unique idea
of converting the war post of Wagah/Attari on the Indo-
Pak border into a peace museum to commemorate the
memory of those who fought for freedom and people's
rights. Against the backdrop of the bloody history of
Partition, wars and jingoism, the writer argues for a
peace museum as a path to peace. As opposed to war
museums, he makes a more humane case for peace
reminding both sides to the conflict of their obligation to
future generations.
Kamal Raj Dhungel, senior lecturer at Tribhuvan
University, Nepal, says the hydro-power potential of
Nepal is about 83000 MW, of which 42000 MW is
economically viable. He argues in favour of exploring the
regional market while attracting independent power
producers. Focusing on theory, he questions the
application of OLS method estimating income and price
elasticity in a non-stationary time series data framework,
which results in biased data. He, instead, favours
examining properties of time-series data to determine
the income and price elasticity of demand which
represent the long term equilibrium.
1Education in India at the CrossroadsMarie Lall
Introduction India has always aimed to be a global power and a leader in a multi-polar world. This
goal has not changed from Nehru's time; however, the means to achieve this end have
changed dramatically over the past decades. India's 1991 economic reforms led, after a
few teething problems, to rates of 7 per cent annual economic growth. The fast
economic growth is a pre-requisite for India's ultimate aim of securing its global place.
However in order to maintain such economic growth, India needs to sort out a
number of vital domestic issues. At the forefront of this list is maintaining high
educational standards whilst simultaneously ensuring equitable access for all.
India's education system turns out millions of graduates, many skilled in IT
and engineering, each year. It is these graduates who are the backbone of India's
economic development. However with 35 per cent of the population under the age of
15, India's education system faces numerous challenges not least the proportional
expansion of the system in light of population growth. India is burdened with the
world's largest population of illiterate citizens, an estimated 59 million children in the
six-14 age group out of school, and the number of job-seekers in the registers of 2employment exchanges across the country having increased to 41 million . Successive
governments have pledged to increase spending on education to 6 per cent of GDP but
actual spending has hovered around 4 per cent for the last few years. While, at the
top-end Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institutes of Management
(IIMs) and universities produce globally competitive graduates, primary and
secondary schools, particularly in rural areas, struggle to find staff and to provide
quality education for their pupils.
This article will give a brief historical account of the development of the
Indian education system since independence. It will then discuss some of the major
problems India is facing today including the issues of access, quality and funding, as
well as the legacy of the BJP-led NDA government which tried to reform the education
system in line with Hindu nationalist ideology. The article will end with a brief
description of the current's government's policies in education and evaluation of what
challenges they face.
Indian Education Policy: Historical PerspectiveSince Independence, Indian governments have regarded education policy as a crucial
part of India's development agenda. Emphasis has traditionally been placed on
universality, pluralism and secularism, while over the years excellence has become a
major focus.
6
EU-India
Relations at
the WTO
A Peace
Museum on the
Wagah Border
Electricity
Demand in
Nepal
education in India was increasingly seen as a problem and several initiatives have 7been developed since in an attempt to counter this . Other schemes specifically
targeted at marginalised groups, such as disabled children, and special incentives
targeting the parents within scheduled castes and scheduled tribes were also
introduced.
In 1992, when education policy was re-examined, the NPE was found to be a
sound way forward for India's education system, although some targets were re-cast
and some re-formulations were undertaken in relation to adult and elementary 8education . The new emphasis 1992 was on the expansion of secondary education
while the focus on education for minorities and women continued.
Today's Challenges Today's challenges for India's education system can be grouped under the following
headings: access to education, quality of education services, literacy levels, curricular
and textbook content, and funding of primary, secondary and higher education. Each
issue will be looked at in turn. However, the scope of this article does not allow the
issues to be discussed in any depth.
Access, quality and literacyDespite efforts to incorporate all sections of the population into the Indian education
system, through mechanisms such as reservations, large numbers of young people still
do not have access to schooling. Although enrolment in primary education has
increased, it is estimated that at least 35 million, and possibly as many as 60m,
children aged 6-14 years do not attend school either regularly or at all. Severe gender,
regional, and caste disparities also exist. The main problems are high drop-out rates,
especially after class 10, low levels of learning and achievement, inadequate school
infrastructure, high teacher-absenteeism, large number of teacher vacancies, poor
quality of education and inadequate funds.
Furthermore, there is no common school system instead children are
channelled into private, government-aided and government schools on the basis of
ability to pay and social class. At the top end are English-medium schools affiliated to
the upscale CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education), CISCE (Council for the
Indian Schools Certificates Examination) and IB (International Baccalaureate)
examination boards, offering globally-recognised syllabuses and curricula. Those who
cannot afford to go to private schools attend English-medium government-aided
schools, affiliated to state-level examination boards. And on the bottom rung are
poorly-managed government or municipal schools, which cater for the children of the
poor majority. Therefore, whilst education for all is safeguarded by the constitution
and a majority of people can now access educational resources, the quality of the
education that pupils in India receive varies widely according to their means and
social background.
Literacy has also remained a major issue. India's aim of providing basic
education for all stems from the empowering and redistributive impact of education,
as high levels of literary allow people to participate successfully in the modern
8
At Independence, Nehru envisaged India as a secular democracy with a state-
led command economy. Education for all and industrial development were seen as
crucial tools to unite a country divided on the basis of wealth, caste and religion, and
formed the cornerstones of the anti-imperial struggle. The legacies of this Nehruvian
approach to education are considerable. Subsidised quality higher education through
institutions like the IITs and IIMs formed a major contribution to the Nehruvian
vision of a self-reliant and modern Indian state, which now rank amongst the best
higher education institutions in the world. In addition, policies of positive
discrimination through reservations in education and employment, furthered the case
for access to hitherto unprivileged social groups to quality education.
3Drawing from Nehru's vision the Kothari Commission (1964-66) was set up
to formulate a coherent education policy. According to the commission, education was
intended to increase productivity, develop social and national unity, consolidate
democracy, modernise the country and develop social, moral and spiritual values. To
achieve this, the main pillar of Indian education policy was to be free and compulsory
education for all children up to the age of 14. Other features included the development 4of languages based on the three language formula , equality of educational
opportunities (regional, tribal and gender imbalances to be addressed) and the
development and prioritisation of scientific education and research. The commission
also emphasised the need to eradicate illiteracy and provide adult education. To this
day India's curriculum prioritises the study of mathematics and science rather than
social sciences or arts. The basis for this lay in the Kothari Commission's argument
that India's development needs were better met by engineers and scientists than
historians.
In 1986, Rajiv Gandhi announced a new education policy, the National Policy
on Education (NPE), intended to prepare India for the 21st Century. According to the
new policy, the 1968 policy goals had largely been achieved: more than 90 per cent of
the country's rural population were within a kilometre of schooling facilities and a
common education structure had been adopted by most states. The prioritisation of
science and mathematics had also been effective. However, change was required to
increase financial and organisational support for the education system to tackle
problems of access and quality.
The new policy was intended to raise education standards and increase access
to education. At the same time, it would safeguard the values of secularism, socialism
and equality which had been promoted since independence. To this end, the
government would seek financial support from the private sector to complement
government funds. The central government also declared that it would accept a wider
responsibility to enforce "the national and integrative character of education, to 5maintain quality and standards" . The states, however, would retain a significant role,
particularly in relation to the curriculum. The central government committed itself to
financing a portion of development expenditure and around 10 per cent of primary
education is now funded under a centrally sponsored scheme. The key legacies of the
1986 policy were the promotion of privatisation, and the continued emphasis on 6secularism and science . Another consequence of the NPE was that the quality of
7
9economy and society . However according to Dreze and Sen, the 1991 census indicated
that about half of the adult population were unable to read or write. Unsurprisingly,
report which concluded that 'the textbooks prepared since 2000 are so full of errors 23and sub-standard that we find it impossible to recommend their continuation .' The
panel acknowledged that though there are different interpretations with regard to
historical facts, at school level the history teaching should reflect a consensus. The text
also emphasised that history was not to be used for political purposes:
The past has a value of its own and distinctive fact of its own, not to be
twisted for present purposes, either of the state or regional predilections of that 24element of the past as it was, distinct from the past as we would like it to be today .
The Minister of Human Resource Development made a statement in
Parliament on July 20th 2004 promising to restore the earlier books in the next
academic session. However the exercise has flagged up the flaws in the old textbooks,
which were seen as too dry and lacking narrative and emotion. While the government
will try to address this in the medium term, in the short term it has to focus on 25restoring pedagogy 'which helps raise questions and prevents indoctrination' .
Funding and Issues in Higher EducationUnder the Constitution, responsibility for education is shared between the central and
state governments. The central government sets policy, stimulates innovation and
plans frameworks. The state governments are responsible for running the education
system on the ground. This has exacerbated problems since states have differing
resources to allocate to education. It is the inadequacy of resources which has recently
become the most pressing and central issue. In general southern, richer states do 26better than the poorer, northern states .
According to the Institute of Statistics, UNESCO, India has never spent above
4 per cent, and the average for the past three decades is 3.3 per cent. The world
average is 4.9 per cent in this respect, even above our highest score, even though there
is repeated talk of spending 6 per cent or more on education. The Tapas Muzumdar
committee, in 1999, calculated this cumulative gap between promise and reality, and
estimated that it will require an additional investment of Rs. 13,700 crores per year
for the next ten years to make up the shortfall in budgetary commitments. which 27amounts to about 0.6 per cent of the current GDP (merely 60 paisa of every Rs.100) .
In primary and secondary education, states which are performing better
economically generally provide not only more educational facilities, but offer
education of a higher quality. The number of engineering colleges demonstrates
incredible diversity, and has helped contribute to the concentration of high technology
industry in southern India. But the disparity between these states and northern states
is dramatic; Bihar, for instance, has less than one engineering college for every 10m 28people in the state; Tamil Nadu has almost four colleges for every million people .
The growth of the IT industry and the concomitant spread of computer use and
application in the private sector has had a significant impact on the expansion of the
highly skilled labour market, and thus on higher education. In fact, private sector
education is a growing field in itself, estimated to make up nearly 2 percent of GDP.
Unfortunately, this top quality education is restricted to the ability to pay, as the
9 10
These proposals appear to reflect the need to invest in higher education to
attain the high quality now demanded by the growing economy. The role of the NAAC
is particularly important for achieving increased accountability for publicly-funded
institutions. Clearly, the current government understands the need for university
subsidies, but it remains to be seen if these subsidies will be directed so as to widen
access to those communities traditionally excluded from tertiary education.
The Current UPA GovernmentAs long as the Congress-dominated United Progressive Alliance government remains
in power, Hindutva inspired policies, as were introduced and propagated by the BJP
led NDA alliance will not be implemented. But education will remain a key issue in
Indian politics. The new government has to deal with both the inherent problems in
the education system and, for its own long-term political survival, it needs to reverse
the changes introduced by the NDA. The crucial factor will be to find a balance
between what has been labelled 'detoxification' and addressing the basic structural
issues.
The promise of the Common Minimum Programme of a 2 percent cess on all
central taxes to raise additional resources for elementary education was
institutionalised in the Union budget presented to Parliament on July 8. Moreover in
his budget speech Union finance minister P. Chidambaram committed the 100-days-
old United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre to raising the national
outlay for education from the current 3.5-4 percent of GDP to 6 percent in the near
future. The National Advisory Council (NAC) chaired by Congress Party president
Sonia Gandhi has as its top priority the upgrading of the nation's public education and
healthcare systems. The main issue here remains the timing by when the actual
government investment will reach the promised 6 per cent:
Though the finance minister cites shortage of investible resources for
implementing the 6 per cent proposal immediately, it is common knowledge that
given political will (and sufficient public pressure), additional resources can be
deployed into education by trimming non-merit subsidies (estimated at Rs.330,000
crore per year) to the middle class, and reducing defence expenditure (which requires 34making peace with our neighbours) .
End of August 2004, after around ten years, the Central Advisory Board of
Education was reconstituted to revise the 1986 priorities and update education policy
making. The meeting included participation of thirty two nominated members from
civil society, state level ministers or secretaries connected to education as well as the
Minister of Human Rights and Development, Shri Arjun Singh. The Board felt that
education policies had to be aware of and respond to the challenges of globalisation
and communal tensions.
Further, seven committees were formed each focusing on one issue. Their priorities 35are :
1. To take a look at the Free and Compulsory Education Bill drafted by the NDA
government which is a political declaration of state's retreat from its
12
private sector higher educational institutions are prohibitively priced.
Negotiating the need to share the burden of funding higher education
between the public and private sectors has been a continual problem for the Indian
government. For example, the 1986 reforms reiterated the independent status of
higher education institutions, but led to a gradual decline in government expenditure
on higher education. The government faced a serious resource crunch and decided to
reduce the subsidisation of higher education by around 50 per cent. Two committees
were set up to mobilise additional resources for universities and technical education
institutions. Universities were encouraged to raise fees and to turn to the private 29sector for additional funding . Consequently, the balance between the public and
private sectors becomes almost synonymous with a balance between excellence and
access. While it is important for India to produce top-quality graduates, it is equally
important that the opportunity to gain a degree is not restricted to privileged
communities.
The University Grants Commission holds a large degree of responsibility for
negotiating this excellence/equity dilemma. It does not simply provide grants to
universities and colleges, it also maintains, and tries to raise, academic standards in
higher education, frames policies to this end and advises the Central and state
governments on the subject of expanding and improving higher education. However,
the proportion of the education budget allocated to higher education has gradually
decreased from 24 per cent in the 1970s to around 9 per cent today. This is posing a
problem as Indian universities and colleges are of varying quality. Widening access is
also an issue -- only 6 per cent of those aged between 18 and 23 enter tertiary 30education .
Aside from the saffronisation measures the current government has to roll
back, the expansion of the tertiary education sector also makes it difficult for the new
government to create and implement policy in this area. The number of colleges and
universities across the country has multiplied from 565 and 25 in 1953 to 15,600 and
311 respectively in 2004. Simultaneously the number of students in higher-level
education has risen from 230,000 to 9.28m while the number of faculty employed in
higher education has risen from 15,000 to 462,000. India produces over 2.5m 31university graduates per year .
So far, the commission for the Tenth Plan (2002-7) has set itself the target of
identifying and designating 25 universities 'with potential for excellence' across the
country. These institutions will be 'funded at a higher level to enable them to attain 32excellence in teaching and research', according to the UGC concept paper . Along
with a few hundred colleges, they will be given full academic freedom to experiment
with the curriculum, introduce innovations in teaching, conduct their own 33examinations and award joint degrees with affiliating universities . In addition to the
above, quality control issues have resulted in the creation of the National Assessment
and Accreditation Council of India (NAAC) in 1994 with the objective of assessing and
grading institutions of Higher Education on a scale of 1-5.
11
constitutional obligation towards education. 2. To review of implementation of the common school system. This was
temple commemorating the birthplace of the Hindu god Ram.11. The NCERT, though an autonomous body, draws up the national curriculum framework
and publishes textbooks which are used as models by most state governments.12. This attempt to 'Indianise' at the university level includes introducing courses like Vedic
rituals and Vedic Astrology. Many of the country's scientists and social scientists repudiate
the latter as spurious science, and not particularly Indian. (see Sundar 2002).13. Judgement by Justice M.B. Shah, D.M Dharmadhikari, and H.K. Sema in Writ Petition
(Civil) No. 98 of 2002, Ms. Aruna Roy and others vs. Union of India and others. Indian Express, October 6, 2002.
14. 'Archeological evidence should be considered far more important than long family trees
given in the Puranas. The Puranic tradition could be used to date Rama of Ayodhya around
2000BC but extensive excavations in Ayodhya do not show any settlements around that
date.' (Sharma, p. 198)15. Interview of M.M.Joshi in Sharma, p. 215-21816. Indian Express, 20 December 200117. For a more detailed description of the RSS sponsored Vidya Bharati network see Sharma,
R.N. Indian Education at the Cross road.18. Vidya Bharati institutions function under a variety of names such as: Shishu Vatika, Shishu
Mandir, Vidya Mandir, Sarasvati Vidyalaya etc.19. See 'In Bad Faith? British Charity and Hindu extremism', (2004), Awaaz for a detailed
analysis on how the RSS gets international funds to support its activities, including
education. Most of the 35 States and Union Territories have their own Boards of
Examinations and the textbooks prescribed by these Boards vary from State to State.20. Report of the panel of Historians, MHRD, June 2004, www.ncert.nic.in (Accessed
08.09.04) Learning History without Burden, A Note to School Teachers, www.ncert.nic.in
(Accessed 08.09.04) Italics in the original.21. Learning History without Burden, A Note to School Teachers, www.ncert.nic.in (Accessed
08.09.04)22. For a detailed analysis on the dilemmas of resource allocation and planning see Raghavan,
J.V. Educational Planning in India, , (Tilak, B.G. (ed.) New Delhi, 2003, pp.49-6223. Dighe, S. Divided by - and in class. http://www.indiatogether.org/2005/feb/edu-
newbill.htm (accesses 06.10.05) 24. http://india_resource.tripod.com/higher-education.html (accessed 15.09.04)25. Reforms and innovations in Higher Education (2001) Association of Indian Universities,
Delhi, p.138-13926. http://www.indiatogether.org/2004/may/edu-ugc.htm (accessed 15.09.04)27. http://www.indiatogether.org/2004/may/edu-ugc.htm (accessed 15.09.04)28. Nigavekar (2002) Tenth Five-Year Plan in Higher Education 29. http://www.indiatogether.org/2004/may/edu-ugc.htm (accessed 15.09.04)30. Thakore, D. Vital reform agenda for Indian education
http://www.indiatogether.org/2004/dec/edu-reform.htm (accessed 06.10.05)31. Reconstituted Central Advisory Board meets.
http://www.thesouthasian.org/archives/000154.html (accessed 06.10.05)32. Taneja, N (2004) On History Textbook Review,
http://pd.cpim.org/2004/0620/06202004_nalini.htm (accessed 17.07.04)33. The ministers (from Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Goa)
objected to a statement by the federal education minister, Arjun Singh, that distortions
should be removed from school text books. This followed claims by the governing
Congress-led coalition that the BJP had attempted to introduce a Hindu nationalist agenda
through the books. The BJP ministers also said they would not implement a changed
syllabus in their states. www.bbc.co.uk (accessed on the 11/08/04)
http://www.indiatogether.org/2004/dec/edu-reform.htm (accessed 06.10.05)34. D. Thakore, Vital reform agenda for Indian education
13 14
16
35. Reconstituted Central Advisory Board meets.http://www.thesouthasian.org/archives/000154.html (accessed 06.10.05)
36. N. Taneja,(2004) On History Textbook Review,http://pd.cpim.org/2004/0620/06202004_nalini.htm (accessed 17.07.04)
37. The ministers (from Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Goa) objected to a statement by the federal education minister, Arjun Singh, that distortions should be removed from school text books. This followed claims by the governing Congress-led coalition that the BJP had attempted to introduce a Hindu nationalist agenda through the books. The BJP ministers also said they would not implement a changed syllabus in their states. www.bbc.co.uk (accessed on the 11/08/04)
38. D. Thakore, Vital reform agenda for Indian educationhttp://www.indiatogether.org/2004/dec/edu-reform.htm (accessed 06.10.05)
15
Education Reform: Beyond the RhetoricPervez Hoodbhoy
Universities are key institutions of the modern world and cradles for
knowledge, particularly for modern science, which has produced technology that has
changed the world more in the past two hundred years than the previous two
thousand years. But universities are not magic boxes that just churn out new science
and technology. They are dynamic and complex organisations, whose building blocks
are the faculty, students, administration, and physical infrastructure. The purpose of a
modern university is to effect the transmission of existing knowledge, create new
knowledge, and generate employment skills needed for a modern economy. Its
organising principle is that of a self-governing community of scholars engaged in free
inquiry, discovery, and teaching.
There is no institution yet in Pakistan that comes close to meeting this
requirement. What we have are places called universities that are in fact intellectual
and moral wastelands. There is deep indifference, even antipathy, to scholarship and
knowledge. Anti-intellectualism gags independent thought and action; it mutilates
and mocks the spirit of scientific inquiry. There is an absence of basic academic
values, and casual acceptance of abysmal ethical behaviour from faculty and students.
Incompetence is rife. Resources are wasted at an epic scale.
This crisis of universities and higher education in Pakistan is not new. For
three decades Pakistani education planners have claimed to recognise the need for
reform and have announced grandiose plans that came to naught. In the mid 1980s,
Dr. Mohammed Afzal, General Zia-ul-Haq's education minister, swore that he would
build MITs and Harvards in the country. Nothing materialised, and for the next 20
years university reform went into the doldrums. Then in 2002, a feeble attempt to
formulate a reform plan was made. Known as the Shams Lakha Commission Report,
it mutated into the Model University Ordnance 2003. It was summarily rejected by
university teachers who had become accustomed to a system that makes no demands
upon them. The thought that a university job could be anything less than permanent
successfully united teachers who otherwise feuded bitterly on everything else.
Enter Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, chairman of the newly formed Higher Education
Commission. He was initially welcomed by many. It seemed that education reform
was finally to be seriously taken. Soon he became General Musharaf's wonderman,
armed with an endless list of projects. He flew around the world, eloquently arguing
that the world of higher education would change if he was given the chance.
A massive publicity blitz is underway to announce the 'new era'. Huge
newspaper advertisements and multi-page supplements paid for by the Higher
17 18
20
research. Unimportant work sometimes also achieves publication, but is not (or
rarely) cited.
Economic function: Universities produce a large fraction of the technical knowledge
essential for the production of goods and services. The economies of modern states
are essentially knowledge based. Universities prepare not just philosophers and
mathematicians, but also engineers, doctors, economists, business managers, and
other professionals needed to fulfill the stringent demands of technological
development and management.
Social function: Universities create an informed and knowledgeable citizenry capable
of responsible, reasoned, decision making. Broadly speaking, they help to create
thinking minds, organise and initiate research in subjects that are important but are
not of immediate economic utility, create discourses on social and political issues, and
raise the cultural and aesthetic level of society. Whereas the Soviet and Chinese
models concentrated largely on utilitarian goals, western universities or at least the
better ones among them were able to successfully create a balance between
scholarship and more direct needs.
Whether the subject of study is science, engineering, economics, literature, or
any other discipline, high quality of instruction is crucial. A person in possession of a
good degree is expected to thoroughly understand, and to be able to apply over his or
her lifetime, those principles learned at lower rungs of the educational ladder. Ideally
a graduate should be capable of scientific inquiry, be able to reason mathematically,
should possess the capacity to organise one's thought in a logical way, have some
understanding of culture and history, and be capable of coherent expression in speech
and writing.
The key point that makes a graduate valuable in a modern society is
adaptability. He or she manages to find a niche in academia, industry, or elsewhere,
because of a broad range of interests and knowledge. For example, a recent survey
showed that two-thirds of all U.S. PhDs in physics now work in areas very different
from that in which they did their theses. Fresh PhDs in theoretical physics from
leading US universities are eagerly sought as analysts by firms on Wall Street and
offered starting salaries at par with, or better than, those offered to MBAs. A well-
trained mind in any discipline develops habits and attitudes of critical reasoning.
These habits, learned in one environment, can be equally valuable in another.
Educational quality is the key.
Having defined the criteria by which any higher education system is to be
judged, let us now turn to the state of Pakistani public-sector universities. The
remarks below shall apply to public sector universities only, where about 80 per cent 3of Pakistani university students are enrolled .
Pakistani Universities: Where Lies The Problem?Public sector universities in Pakistan are characterised by extreme poverty of
scholarship, intellectual timidity, irrelevance to societal needs, and physical violence.
19
Education Commission declare that the decades-old decline of Pakistan's universities
has been finally reversed. The speed and scale of change is breathtaking. In 1947,
Pakistan had only one university (Punjab University). Fifty years later, in 1997, it had
24. In just eight years from that time, i.e. in 2005, it had 107 with half of these being
in the private sector. State funding for higher education (at the expense of school
education) increased, between 2002 and 2005, by a factor of twelve probably setting
some kind of world record for the highest rate of budgetary expansion. Yet another
possible world record may lie in the accelerated goal of producing PhD degrees: from 1a yearly graduation rate from Pakistani universities of less than 100 a few years ago ,
the current goal has been set at one thousand per annum.
Banners bearing the pictures of the HEC chairman and executive director can
be found on the streets of Islamabad extolling other achievements: internet
connectivity in universities has been expanded; a digital library is in operation;
foreign faculty have been hired; students are being sent abroad for PhD training; a
massive PhD program at Pakistani universities is under way; links have been forged
with foreign academic institutions; faculty salaries are about to be massively
increased; and money for scientific equipment is available aplenty. A total of 350
university related projects were announced as of April 2005, which amounts to 25 per 2cent of the total number of projects being executed by the Government of Pakistan .
Movement has become confused with progress. Given the dire circumstances
Pakistani education finds itself in, many have welcomed change. Foreign donor
agencies and governments, fearful that an uneducated Pakistan may become an
epicenter of terrorism, are tripping over each other as they rush in massive aid for
education. But are these really indicators of a revolution in the making? Or, at the
least, harbingers of better times to come?
Unfortunately miracle-a-day promises are unlikely to be ever met, billions of
rupees are disappearing without tangible improvements. The present effort at
university reform is rapidly becoming another missed opportunity. In fact, one fears
that things may end up no better when this age of wild experimentation comes to an
end.
What Are Universities For?Broadly speaking, a modern university is its faculty, students, administration, and
physical infrastructure. Its purpose is to effect the transmission of existing knowledge,
create new knowledge, and generate employment skills needed for a modern
economy. In essence, a good university is a self-governing community of scholars
engaged in free inquiry, discovery, and transmission of knowledge.
Let us disaggregate and consider each function of a university in turn.
Research function: Modern universities treasure critical inquiry and regard it as the
basis of all scholarship. The results of research are published in journals that exercise
rigorous standards of scholarship. Citations of published work by other scholars
provide the most important estimation of an individual scholar's achievement in
21 22
The teaching environment is authoritarian and reflects the experience of teachers
when they were students in public schools. Teachers wield enormous power, and the
In Punjab University, which is effectively run by the Jamaat-e-Islami, males
and females must sit in separate sections of the classroom. A male and female student
were once “caught red-handed” while holding hands and severely beaten with wooden
clubs. A fanatical student mob ransacked the Department of Visual Studies of Karachi
University, destroying musical instruments, sculptures and paintings because these
are forbidden by orthodox Islam. Student activists from universities rove the streets in
Peshawar and Lahore, throwing paint on billboards showing women's faces.
With such restrictions, a generation of Pakistanis has been culturally
neutered. Actually the process starts during earlier stages of formal, as well as social
and cultural, education. A kind of lumpen student is abundantly produced in schools
and colleges who then makes his way up to the universities. He or she enters the
university with poor reading and writing skills, is ignorant and uncurious, cannot
coherently articulate an argument, and readily flocks to the call of ethnic and religious
demagogues.
The political environment of Pakistani universities has undergone enormous
changes over three decades. The global intellectual ferment of the late 1960's and 70's
had a stimulating impact on Pakistani campuses. Political consciousness was at its
highest point, with teachers and students participating in intense ideological disputes,
and to explore ways of moving Pakistani society forward. Relatively speaking,
intellectual, scientific, cultural and literary activity also flourished. Young Pakistani
scholars gave up potential careers in the West to come to Pakistani universities. But in
November of 1981, just days after three QAU teachers had been caught with anti-
martial law and pro-democracy pamphlets, General Zia-ul-Haq thundered on
television that he would “purge the country's universities of the cancer of politics”.
General Zia succeeded brilliantly. Today all student unions are gone they
have been outlawed and do not have even an underground existence. Ideological
disputes of the 60's and 70's have evaporated into the thin air, and students have
simply “tuned out” from every kind of social reform issue. Left versus right politics
has been replaced by a simple tribalism. Pakistan's public universities, including the
so-called “big names” -- Punjab, Karachi, QAU -- are ruled by murderous ethnic and
religious thugs who constitute the lumpen element on campus. Now Punjabi students
gang together against Pakhtoon students, Muhajirs versus Sindhis, Shias versus
Sunnis, etc. Some campuses have Rangers with machine guns on continuous patrol.
On occasion, student wolf packs attack each other with sticks, stones, pistols, and
automatic weapons. There are many campus rapes and murders. The tribalism is not
new but it was greatly accentuated by the banning of student unions over 15 years ago
on grounds they brought national politics into educational institutions.
A Comparison with Neighbours
Few Pakistanis get to visit India, the so-called “enemy country”, and fewer still to
independently assess the development of science and education across its hugely
diverse regions. I had the exceptional good fortune to make such a visit recently, made
possible by a UNESCO award that included a 4-week lecture tour which took me
around India: Delhi, Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bhubhaneswar,
24
Misdirected ReformsOases of academic competence, integrity, and freedom have steadily become fewer
and further apart in Pakistan's academia. Nevertheless, for those in authority, the
problem of higher education is simply a quantitative one: they do not tire from
underscoring that there is insufficient student enrollment, far too few PhD degrees are
awarded, the number of research papers published is miniscule for a country the size
of Pakistan, etc. It is, of course, a painful truth that less than 3 per cent of Pakistan's
eligible population has access to a university education. One wishes that this number,
as well as other quantitative indicators, could be improved. A long-term strategy,
beginning with reform at the school and college level, is essential. But to artificially
jack up numbers amounts to printing counterfeit currency that can only have an
overall negative effect.
The problem is a far more serious one than those in authority are willing to
admit, nor are they willing to go beyond the routine calls for jacking up numbers. One
notices the absence of exhortations calling for a more open and liberal campus
environment, to exercise greater rationality and higher standards of academic ethics,
to generate useful knowledge, or to create greater social understanding or awareness.
The decision to concentrate on numbers, has led to the following quick fixes:
Make yet more worthless universities: The HEC's first big idea behind reforming
education in Pakistan was that the country needed more universities. So today all it
takes is a piece of paper from the HEC and some paint. Some colleges have literally
had their signboards taken down for repainting, and been put back up changed into
“universities” the next day.
By such sleight of hand the current tally of public universities, according to
the HEC website, is now officially 47, up from the 23 officially listed in 1996. In
addition, there are eight degree awarding public sector institutes. But this is a sham.
All new public sector universities lack infrastructure, libraries, laboratories, adequate
faculty, or even a pool of students academically prepared to study at the university
level.
The government's “generosity” extends even into largely illiterate tribal areas.
There are so-called universities now in Malakand, Bannu, Kohat, Khuzdar, Gujrat,
Haripur, and in many other places where it is difficult to detect the slightest potential
for successfully establishing modern universities. The absence of vital elements is
complete and total -- these “universities” lack not just libraries and laboratories, but
also students who are academically equipped to study at the university level as well as
teachers.
Be more tolerant of fake universities and fake degrees: Private “universities” have
boomed because of the limited capacity of public sector universities. Although there
are a handful of elite universities, there are many fly-by-night operations where
money spinning is the only concern. These few-room, shoddily equipped,
inadequately staffed, academic non-entities have become part of the urban scenery.
Preston University branches have mushroomed in Pakistani cities. But, according to
23
Cuttack, Calcutta, and then back to Delhi again. I gave several lectures daily at
schools, colleges, universities, and research institutions.
My impression was that many Indian universities have a cosmopolitan
character and are world class. Their social culture is secular, modern, and similar to
that in universities located in free societies across the world. (In Pakistan, Aga Khan
University and the Lahore University of Management Sciences would be the closest
approximations.) Male and female students freely intermingle, library and laboratory
facilities are good, seminars and colloquia are frequent, and the faculty engages in
research. Entrance exams are tough and competition for grades is intense. Some
“deemed universities” and other institutions I visited (TIFR, IISC, IIT's, IMSC, IICT,
IUCAA, JNCASR, IPB, Raman Institute, Swaminathan Institute,…) do research work
at the cutting edge of science. A strong tradition of mathematics and theoretical
science forms a backbone that sustains progress in areas ranging from space
exploration and super-computing to nanotechnology and biotechnology.
As a Pakistani, I could not but help compare Pakistan's premier public sector
university (QAU) with those in its neighbors' capitals.
First to the east: Jawaharlal Nehru University, and the Indian Institute of
Technology, in Delhi. Their facilities are simple and functional, nothing like the air-
conditioned and well-carpeted offices of most professors at QAU. And, more
importantly, every notice board is crammed with notices for seminars and colloquia,
visitors from the very best foreign universities lecture there, research laboratories
hum with activity, and pride and satisfaction are written all around.
Conflict on campuses does exist -- communist and socialist students battle
with Hindutva students over the Gujrat carnage, Iraq, Kashmir, and the BJP
doctoring of history. Angry words are exchanged and polemics are issued against the
other, but no heads are bashed. I was impressed by the fearlessness and the informed,
critical intelligence of the students who questioned and challenged me. I cannot
imagine an Indian professor having a similar reception in Pakistan.
Now to the west: After attending a conference on mathematical physics some years
earlier, I came away with the impression that Teheran's Sharif University of
Technology, and the Institute for Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, are
impressive institutions filled with professional activity, workshops, and seminars. Like
the institutions I had visited in India, they do not represent the entirety of Iranian
universities but do contain something that is common to Iran.
Even as they maintain good academic standards, Iranian university students
are heavily political and today are spearheading the movement for freedom and
democracy. Iranian students make it to the best US graduate schools. Although it is an
Islamic republic, bookshops are more common than mosques in Tehran. Translations
into Farsi (Persian) appear in just weeks or months after a book is published in the
western world.
25 26
the Chronicle of Higher Education, an unaccredited Ph.D. degree can be had for
$7,500 from American Branch of Preston University. Preston is accredited to the
found myself quietly black-listed by the HEC and received no more proposals to
referee. Other colleagues, whose integrity and judgment can be trusted, have also
found themselves similarly sidelined. The HEC authorities apparently had no
difficulty finding more pliable referees to fund the various scientific-sounding junk
projects that are now present on the HEC website, and which the reader may peruse
at leisure.
Turn on the propaganda machine and declare fake successes: An HEC “Best
University Teacher” program has been extensively advertised, and cash awards of Rs
100,000 are handed out yearly to dozens of persons. Excellent, one might say,
because good teaching does need to be recognised and rewarded. But in choosing the
“best teacher”, no student was asked whether a particular teacher knew his or her
subject well, had the necessary communication skills, or could create enthusiasm for
the field. Instead, department chairmen and deans were asked to nominate the best
teachers. Some nominated their favorites. Others were more direct -- they simply
named themselves.
Rewards for research are similarly problematic. The production of knowledge
remains small, and papers published by Pakistanis are rarely cited the only indication
of genuine worth. A poorly thought-out, and dangerous, HEC scheme involves giving
massive cash awards to university teachers for publishing research papers. Although
these stimulants are said to have increased the number of papers published in
international journals by a whopping 44 per cent, there is little evidence that this
increase in volume is the result of an increase in genuine research activity.
The fact is that only a slim minority of Pakistani academics possesses the
ethics, motivation, and capability needed for genuine scientific discovery and
research. For the majority, the HEC incentives are a powerful reason to discover the
art of publishing in research journals without doing research, to find loopholes, and to
learn how to cover up one's tracks. There are locally produced science journals where
the editor will publish gibberish, either to oblige a friend or for payment, without
batting an eye. Often the “journal” will comprise no more than half a dozen issues
before it ceases publication and goes into oblivion, but this may be enough for the
contributors and editor to chalk up enough publications for their promotions. Fraud
in international journals is common: one may choose journals of little repute (mostly
Indian and Polish), resubmit one's previous work in some slightly altered form, cook
up data without having performed any experiment, hide negative results but state
positive ones, plagiarise the work of others and quote without reference, and so on. All
this has increased after the HEC broadcast the message: corruption pays.
How prevalent is academic fraud? Nobody can really know, but several “well-
reputed” Pakistani scientists have been caught red-handed by the international
community. It has had not the slightest effect upon their status and career they
continued to thrive. Society at large does not understand the fine points, and there is
no real academic community in this country that cares. So academic fraud is not
thought of as really wrong; it's just a part of life.
28
At the PhD level, if the HEC is at all serious about standards, it should make
it mandatory for every Pakistani university to require that a PhD candidate achieve a
certain minimum in an international examination such as the GRE. These exams are
used by US universities for admission into PhD programs.
Given the state of student and teacher knowledge, and the quantity and
quality of research in Pakistani universities, selection through GRE subject tests
would have the welcome consequence of cutting down the number enrolled in HEC
indigenous PhD programs from 1,000 per year to a few dozen. The present safeguard
of having “foreign experts” evaluate theses is insufficient for a variety of reasons,
including the manipulations commonly made in the (highly opaque!) process of
referee selection.
Entrance tests for university faculty must be made mandatory. The system
has remained broken for so long that written entrance tests for junior faculty, 13standardised at a central facility, are essential . Without them, universities will
continue to hire teachers who freely convey their confusion and ignorance to students.
Most teachers today never consult a textbook, choosing to dictate from notes they
saved from the time when they were students in the same department. No teacher has
ever been fired for demonstrating incompetence in his/her subject.
Be harsh and uncompromising in matters of academic fraud and corruption:
Academic crime flourishes in Pakistan's universities because it is almost never
punished. Even when media publicity makes action unavoidable, the punishment
amounts to little more than a slap on the wrist.
Better, more transparent, and accountable ways to recruit vice-chancellors
and senior administrators are needed. Pakistan has a patronage system that appoints
unqualified and unsuitable bureaucrats or military men as vice-chancellors, and that
staffs universities with corrupt and incompetent administrators. While a tenure-track
system for faculty is currently under discussion and may allow for breaking with the
system of life-long jobs independent of performance, there is no corresponding
system being contemplated for the top leadership. But without good leadership, and
people who can set an example, no institution can be reformed.
Students must be permitted, even encouraged, to self-organise. It is crucial to
bring back on to the campuses meaningful discussions on social, cultural and political
issues. To create the culture of civilised debate, student unions must be restored, with
elections for student representatives. They will be the next generation of political
leaders.
Such a step will not be free from problems; religious extremists rule many
Pakistani campuses although all unions are banned. They would surely try to take
advantage of the new opportunities offered once the ban is lifted. Political parties have
also been less than responsible. But the reinstatement of unions -- subject to their
elected leaders making a pledge to abjure violence and the disruption of academic
activity -- is the only way forward towards creating a university culture on campus.
27
What Is To Be Done?The government's “reform strategy” offers false remedies by playing the numbers
game and concentrating upon glitzy things like internet access, digital libraries, virtual
learning, etc., while refusing to acknowledge the dreadful diseases that eat into the
fabric of education and Pakistani society.
So what needs to be done? The policy don'ts are clear: stop feeding the ogre
of religious fanaticism; stop the creation of worthless new universities; stop funding
and rewarding research that really isn't research; stop dishing out useless PhDs; and
stop rewarding academic corruption. Of course it is important to increase access to
education, but the increased access carries meaning only if there is a certain minimum
quality as well.
The dos are far more than can be discussed here. Broadly speaking, they can
be divided into two mutually distinct sets. One set must deal with creating a freer
university environment, controlling campus religious vigilantes, and stopping campus
violence. Another set must be aimed at raising the level of general competence of
teachers and students by ensuring that they actually have an understanding of the
subject they teach or study, and with increasing the amount of research in specific
disciplines.
Entrance tests for students are critically important. First, there must be
university entrance examinations at the national level to separate individuals who can
benefit from higher education from those who cannot. No such system exists in
Pakistan. Only local board examinations -- where rote memorisation and massive
cheating are rampant -- are used to select students. Reform of these boards is
essential, but no progress has been made although many grand plans have been in
existence for nearly fifteen years. Instituting such centrally administered entrance
tests everywhere will not be easy. In the NWFP, street demonstrations organised by
the Jamaat-i-Islami demanded scrapping a proposed admissions test for university
admission, arguing that students from tribal areas would suffer a disadvantage if they
had to compete against students from urban areas. Similar protests have taken place
in the interior of Sind.
But, on our borders, both Iran and India have centralised university
admissions systems that work very well. Although corruption in India is perhaps as
pervasive as in Pakistan, admissions to the IITs have nevertheless retained their
integrity and intensely competitive nature over several decades. Honest examinations
are presumably also possible in Pakistan, provided extreme care is taken.
Having such university entrance examinations would be important for
another reason as well -- they would set the goal posts for colleges and high schools all
over Pakistan. In the U.S., the Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT), centrally administered
by the Education Testing Service in Princeton, are extremely useful for deciding
student aptitude for university education. The “A” level examinations in Britain have
similar importance.
29 30
Ultimately, reasonable voices, too, will become heard. As an interim step, the
government should allow and encourage limited activities such as community work,
7. Q. Isa Daudpota, 'Fake Degrees for the Big Boys in Pakistan', www.chowk.com , November
28, 2004 and 'Dubious universities and the future of higher education', The News,
November 03, 2004.8. See A.H. Nayyar, Letter to the Editor, Dawn, 30 March, 2005.9. Technically, Daudpota's contract was not renewed and so he was not literally fired. For
some remarks regarding this incident see, Wajahat Latif, 'A Dime A Dozen', The Nation,
December 10, 2004. Also, Wajahat Latif, 'Seedy Side Of Higher Education', The Nation,
April 29, 2005.10. Presentation by the HEC chairman to the World Bank on April 26, 2005.
w w w . s i t e r e s o u r c e s . w o r l d b a n k . o r g / P A K I S T A N E X T N / R e s o u r c e s / 2 9 3 0 5 1 -
1114424648263/Session-V-Atta-Ur-Rehman.pdf 11. Up to a maximum of 8 students. Supervisors may tap non-HEC sources for numbers in
excess of this. The rules are posted on the HEC website www.hec.gov.pk and have changed
a number of times. 12. Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science Religious Orthodoxy And The Battle For
Rationality, (London: Zed Books, 1991).13. In Italy, passing the centrally administered 'concorso' examinations is necessary for the
appointment of junior faculty. A sample lecture must also be delivered on a topic given to
the candidate a day earlier.
3231
33
Madrassa: Islamic Rejectionism and TerrorismKhaled Ahmed
A federation of religious madrassas in Pakistan, Ittehad Tanzeemat Madaris-
i-Deeniya (ITMD), on 23 September 2005, agreed to register around 9,000
seminaries with the government following an assurance that certain changes would be
made to the Registration of Societies Act, 1860, aimed at bringing the seminaries in
Pakistan out in the open. The madrassas were reluctant to register for fear of being
investigated on terrorism-related charges. Finally, an agreement on the issue of
registration was reached at an hour-long meeting between the ITMD's leadership and
Prime Minister of Pakistan, Mr. Shaukat Aziz. The government is supposed to have
assured the ITMD, an alliance of five organizations overseeing some 13,000
seminaries across the country, that it would take a 'lenient view' on the issue of
foreign students studying in these institutions. Prime Minister Aziz later said that the
government would extend full support to seminaries for their modernisation and
bringing them into the mainstream education system. But he warned that 'the
government would not tolerate it if any seminary violated the law and indulged in
activities other than imparting education'. The process of registration was to be
completed by 31 December 2005. ITMD spokesman Mufti Munibur Rehman said the
alliance had agreed to join the registration process and added that the issue had been
resolved upon the government's assurances that dome of the ITMD 'reservations'
would be removed. The government let it be known that it had agreed to further
amend the Registration of Societies Act to the effect that the comparison between
religions and sects would not be treated as spreading of 'hate material'. The 1government also agreed to introduce 'some other minor changes' to the act .
The above agreement has sought to remove the 'unexpressed' view that the
seminaries even they don't breed terrorists do inculcate a mental discipline based on
isolationism and rejectionism. The fact that the seminarian remains cut off from
society in a residential madrassa for eight years makes it possible for the cleric-
teachers to indoctrinate him against a secular system that is seen to defy the
irreducible mandate of an Islamic state. Although no part of the curriculum of the
madrassa, the process of rejectionism takes place verbally through the role model
available in the personality of the head of the madrassa who is given to issuing
aggressive statements in the national press. It is ultimately the process of rejectionism
that is sought to be removed from the religious schools. The injection of secular
subjects will ultimately lighten the intensity of the recidivist appeal of Dars-e-
Nizamiyya. In the past, the isolationism bred by the madrassa curriculum was
perhaps suited to the apolitical asceticism of the seminarian; today, the same
insulation from society suits only the highly politicised religious organisations and
parties challenging the state. The fact that hundreds of madrassas belonging to such
banned organisations as Lashkar-e-Tayba are functional in Pakistan further
34
Pakistan's Islamist political parties, 'which are seen to be an important part of his
political base'. The truth is that when in July-August 2005 he tried to revive his
campaign against the 'extremist' madrassas, the ruling party Pakistan Muslim League
(Q) publicly opposed the project by declaring that it was not correct to ask the foreign
students taking training in the madrassas in Pakistan to leave the country. Musharraf
however took a firm stand and insisted on the ouster of foreign students from
Pakistan. He also took in hand the task of arresting the banned jihadist organisations
who were still in the field after changing their names. For this he seems to have gone
over the heads of the provinces, addressing the senior police officers personally. The
new campaign was assigned to the federal education minister, ex-ISI chief and retired
General Javed Ashraf Qazi. The subject of education however remained provincial and
no seminaries can be reformed without the cooperation of the provinces, including the
NWFP and Balochistan, where the clerical parties were either ruling or were in ruling
coalition.
Is the 'Madrassa link' to Terrorism Exaggerated?A World Bank report, issued on 1 March 2005, debunked the 'popular' reports in the
Washington press and objected that 'none of the reports and articles reviewed based 3their analysis on publicly available data or established statistical methodologies . The
authors found the existing estimates 'inflated by an order of magnitude'. The report
found that madrassas accounted for less than one per cent of all enrolment in the
country and there was no evidence of a dramatic increase in recent years. The
educational landscape in Pakistan had changed substantially in the last decade, but
this was due to an explosion of private schools, an important fact that had been left
out of the debate on Pakistani education. 'Moreover, when we look at school choice,
we find that no one explanation fits the data. While most existing theories of
madrassa enrolment are based on household attributes -- for instance, a preference
for religious schooling or the household's access to other schooling options -- the data
show that among households with at least one child enrolled in a madrassa, 75 per
cent send their second and/or third child to a public or private school or both. Widely
promoted theories simply do not explain this substantial variation within households'.
The authors of the report also found that the fraction of children enrolled in
madrassas had been overstated by a factor of 10 in The Los Angeles Times (2003), 4and 33 in the report by the International Crisis Group (2002) .
There are no hard statistics available for any 'professional' conclusions drawn
on the contribution of the seminaries to extremism in Pakistan. Peter Bergen and
Swati Pandey have stated that they 'examined the educational backgrounds of 75
terrorists behind some of the most significant recent terrorist attacks against
Westerners. They found that a majority of them were college-educated, often in
technical subjects like engineering. In the four attacks for which the most complete
information about the perpetrators' educational levels was available the World Trade
Centre bombing in 1993, the attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania in 1998, the 9/11 attacks, and the Bali bombings in 2002 53 per cent of the
terrorists had either attended college or had received a college degree. As a point of 5reference, only 52 per cent of Americans had been to college' .
36
underlines the importance of the issue.
According to a report by Islamabad's Institute of Policy Studies, Pakistan has
6,761 religious seminaries where over a million young men are taking religious
training. The Ministry of Religious Affairs has given out similar numbers in its report.
But Herald (November 2001) says: 'According to the Interior Ministry, there are some
20,000 madrassas in the country with nearly 3 million students'. In 1947, West
Pakistan had only 245 seminaries. In 1988, they increased to 2,861. Between 1988 and
2000, this increase comes out to be 136 per cent. The largest number of seminaries
are Deobandi, at 64 per cent, followed by Barelvi, at 25 per cent. Only 6 per cent are
Ahle Hadith. According to a 2002 report of the International Crisis Group, there are
around 1.5 million pupils being trained in 10,000 seminaries in Pakistan. The report
came to the conclusion that the Pakistan government had failed to carry out reform of
its madrassas under the UN Security Council resolution 1373. The Deobandi
dominance of the madrassas is ominous because the Deobandis are traditionally anti-
Shia and their influential Sipah Sahaba party has called for the 'official' reduction of
all Shias to non-Muslims. An offshoot of Sipah Sahaba, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, has been
killing local and foreign Shias in Pakistan.
2A recent report by the US Congressional Research Service pointed out that
'although President Pervez Musharraf had vowed to begin regulating Pakistan's
religious schools, and his government launched a five-year, US$113 million plan to
bring the teaching of “formal” or secular subjects to 8,000 “willing” madrassas, no
concrete action was taken until June of 2002, when 115 madrassas were denied access
to government assistance due to their alleged links to militancy'. The deadline set by
the Musharraf government for the registration of the seminaries came and passed in
December 2002. In November 2003, the government decided to allocate about
US$50 million annually to provide assistance to registered seminaries, especially by
paying the salaries of teachers hired to teach non-religious subjects. In July 2004,
Pakistan's then-education minister announced government agreements with private
companies to provide computer education at all of the country's public schools. She
later declared Islamabad's intention to provide financial grants to madrassas that seek
to 'impart modern-day education'. According to the CRS report, the US Agency for
International Development (USAID) was implementing a five-year, US$100 million
bilateral agreement, signed in August 2002, to increase access to quality education
throughout Pakistan, with an emphasis on the Balochistan and Sindh provinces.
USAID education-related projects in Pakistan included efforts to improve early
education, engender democratic ideals, improve the quality of assessment and testing,
provide training to educators, and construct or refurbish schools in the Federally
Administered Tribal Areas.
By 2005 very little of what Musharraf had promised had been delivered.
There was no crackdown on the more extremist madrassas in the country, and there
was little concrete evidence that he had done so. Most madrassas remained
unregistered, their finances unregulated, and the government had yet to remove the
jihadist and sectarian content of their curricula. Observers thought that Musharraf's
reluctance to enforce reform was because of his desire to remain on good terms with
35
In July 2005, President Musharraf moved against the Lal Masjid seminary in 6Islamabad . The seminary was Deobandi with male and female population of 6,000
Ulum in Karachi was suicide-bombed. On 24 June 2005 Mufti Rehman and Maulana
Irshad leaders of the Deoband-Sunni headquarters, Banuri Mosque madrassa in 11Karachi, were target-killed .
The terrorists who tried to kill President Musharraf in 2003 came from
various backgrounds, including the armed forces. But all of them were connected one
way or another to the madrassa. The armed forces and the police have been
indoctrinated in the past by religious leaders who had graduated to jihad from the
madrassa. In 1995 an unsuccessful military coup was staged in Rawalpindi. The
officers were all Islamists and their co-accused was one Qari Saifullah Akhtar, head of
the largest Pakistani jihadi militia Harkat-e-Jihad-e-Islami. Akhtar was a graduate of
the Banuri Mosque madrassa in Karachi. He was let off in the 1995 unsuccessful
military coup and not punished because of his following in the army. Clearly, the
madrassa was dominant in the rank and file because of him and many like him who
represented the penetration of the madrassa into the army. In 2004, the ISI staged
what has been claimed as a tour de force. It captured from Dubai the same Qari
Saifullah Akhtar for planning and executing the attempt on the life of President
Musharraf. One army man convicted of trying to kill President Musharraf has been 12hanged . Qari Saifullah Akhtar led the Harkat militia from Kandahar and was the
spearhead of the Taliban irredentist sallies into Central Asia and the Caucasus.
Akhtar's militia later merged with Jaish-e-Muhammad, led by another graduate of the
Banuri Mosque Madrassa, Maulana Masood Azhar. The suicide-bomber who nearly
succeeded in killing President Musharraf in 2003, Muhammad Jameel, belonged to
Jaish-e-Muhammad. Similarly the suicide-bomber who tried to kill prime minister
Shaukat Aziz at Attock in 2004, Hafiz Irfan, was a graduate of a madrassa before he
came to the mainstream education. It should, however, be noted that he found no
employment as a B.Com graduate and was leading prayers in a mosque in Lahore.
Personnel from police, air force and the land forces, made contacts with the militias
connected to the madrassas before 'running away' to Afghanistan for 'training' before 139/11 . In the following pages we will examine the dominance of the madrassa
graduates in the terrorist meta-history of Pakistan.
Another example how a terrorist may be related to a madrassa is the case of
Abdullah Mehsud. The man who kidnapped two Chinese engineers at the Gomal Zam
Dam on 11 October 2004 in South Waziristan, was an old Banuri Masjid warrior,
Abdullah Mehsud. After all negotiations failed, the kidnappers were stormed, which
resulted in the death of one Chinese engineer. Abdullah was helped by five
kidnappers, two of them from South Waziristan and three from Afghanistan. Mehsud
who was released from Guantanamo Bay by the Americans in March 2004 after two
and a half years demanded the release of five of his friends from jail in Pakistan as
ransom. Abdullah was born in South Waziristan, was educated to FA but could not
obtain commission in the army like his cousin who retired as major and is now
trading in Wana. After failing to join the army, Abdullah went to Karachi and lived
among the Afghan refugees and also arose to the leadership of the Pushtun transport
mafia. He was taken into Deobandi seminary of Banuri Masjid by its chief Mufti
Shamzai. He stayed there for three years and came under the influence of Mufti
Jameel who taught there. Mufti Jameel was a close adviser of Mufti Shamzai and the
37 38
great spiritual leader Shah Waliullah opposed the sciences and the seminaries were
made purely religious. The famous Nizamiyya syllabus was put together by Mullah
Nizamuddin under Aurangzeb from the Farangi Mahal seminary in Lucknow. Later
the seminary of Deoband made it universally acceptable in South Asia. The great
seminaries that came into being in modern times all died down, leaving the three now
observed in Pakistan: Deobandi, which is followed by the Taliban; Barelvi, which was
assumed to be the dominant strain in Punjab; and Ahle Hadith of the Hanbali school,
which is followed by the Saudis. Deobandi and Barelvi seminaries all follow the
Nizamiyya system but the former have emerged the most disciplined exponents of
religious instruction in Pakistan. By 1988, a Barelvi-dominated Punjab in terms of
population had more Deobandi seminaries (590) than Barelvi seminaries (548). Since
then, the balance has tilted further, which accounts for the generally more puritanical
approach of the judiciary.
The NWFP and Balochistan are almost exclusively Deobandi, but the number
of young men learning the Deobandi dars (course) are more in Punjab than in the
other two provinces put together. The ulema have so far prevented the state from
diversifying the dars to make it more suited to the job market; therefore, the madrassa
graduates can only become clerics. What started as the rising trend during the Afghan
war has now become the dominant trend in education. The 'secular' state-owned
education is heavily Islamised under influence from the madrassa; the madrassa has
accepted little influence from the secular system. The curriculum followed by the
madrassas however is quite uniform, the syllabi having been chosen in light of the fiqh
of the given seminary. The curriculum is described in the following manner.
Yearly Curriculum of a Madrassa; Year 1: Biography of the Prophet (Seerat),
Conjugation-Grammar (Sarf), Syntax (Nahv), Arabic Literature, Chirography, Chant
illation (Tajvid). Year 2: Second Year Conjugation-Grammar (Sarf), Syntax (Nahv),
Arabic Literature, Jurisprudence (Fiqh), Logic, Chirography (Khush-navisi), Chant
illation, (Tajvid). Year 3: Quranic Exegesis, Jurisprudence: (Fiqh), Syntax (Nahv),
Arabic Literature, Hadith, Logic, Islamic Brotherhood, Chant illation: (Tajvid),
External study (Tareekh Millat and Khilafat-e-Rashida these are Indian Islamic
movements). Year 4: Quranic Exegesis, Jurisprudence (Fiqh), Principles of
Jurisprudence, Rhetoric, Hadith, Logic, History, Chant illation, Modern Sciences
(sciences of cities of Arabia, Geography of the Arab Peninsula and other Islamic
countries). Year 5: Quranic Exegesis, Jurisprudence, Principles of Jurisprudence,
Rhetoric, Beliefs (Aqaed), Logic, Arabic Literature, Chant illation, External study
(History of Indian Kings). Year 6: Interpretation of the Quran, Jurisprudence,
Principles of Interpretation & Jurisprudence, Arabic Literature, Philosophy, Chant
illation, Study of Prophet's traditions. Year 7: Sayings of the Prophet, Jurisprudence,
Belief (Aqaed), Responsibility (Faraez), Chant illation, External Study (Urdu texts). 16Year 8 Ten books by various authors focusing on the sayings of the Prophet .
Case Study: Mind of the Madrassa StudentIt is important at this point to look at the mindset of the students that attend
Pakistan's three school systems. This is gleaned from a survey carried out by Pakistani 17scholar, Dr Tariq Rehman . Carried out in December 2002 and January 2003, the
40
two were representatives of the Taliban interest in Pakistan. When in 2001 ISI chief
General Mehmood took a delegation to persuade Mullah Umar to desist from
terrorism Mufti Jameel was also in the delegation. Fifty-two-year old Mufti Jameel
was at that time information secretary of the JUI and was a member of its Shura. He
ran 150 Iqra religious schools where 50,000 took instruction. Abdullah Mehsud after
coming close to Mufti Jameel was given the job of Mullah Umar's personal bodyguard.
Abdullah was already a veteran of the war against the Northern Alliance. In October
2001 when America attacked Afghanistan he was once again at the battlefront, from
where he was captured and sent to Guantanamo Bay. The Americans failed to link
him to Al Qaeda and released him in March 2004. Upon reaching Pakistan he went
straight to Banuri Masjid in Karachi and paid his respects to Mufti Jameel. Wana
Operation was on then. Mufti Shamzai of Banuri Masjid had been murdered. While
Abdullah lay low in South Waziristan, another incident took place. Someone killed
Mufti Jameel on 9 October 2004 along with Khatm-e-Nabuwwat cleric Maulana
Taunsavi. Abdullah struck two days later and kidnapped the Chinese engineers from
the Dam. Abdullah Mehsud got to know Uzbek warrior Qari Tahir Yuldashev, a
madrassa-educated cleric of Uzbekistan, and Ahmadzai Wazir Nek Muhammad
intimately during his training in the Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan.
The Curriculum of the Madrassa InstitutionsPakistan's mainstream education is in an abysmal state. In a survey conducted in
1997, only 57 per cent of the citizens of school-going age were registered, 90 per cent
of whom were in the state-owned schools where 20 per cent of the teachers did not
attend and 60 per cent of the pupils dropped out before completing primary school.
The teachers were not trained and could not use the teaching aids provided to them
with precious state funds. Knowing that the system is dysfunctional the state rightly
does not spend on education, thus making Pakistan more backward in education than
India and Bangladesh, the latter achieving better results while spending less on
education than Pakistan. While budgetary outlays are important, they can be useless if
the state does not want to educate. A comparison between government and private
primary schools in the Punjab districts reveals that the private schools perform better
than their state-owned counterparts, both in teaching and learning. Over 80 per cent
of the schools in Punjab are state-owned, but despite the discovery in the 1990s of
thousands of ghost schools the Punjabi ideologues want the private institutions
equated to government schools, especially in regard to syllabi. Political interference
which destroys merit among pupils and teachers; lack of monitoring of performance
at all levels; abysmal lack of quality of syllabi pushed out by ministries and provincial
textbook boards; total professional incapacity to conduct exams and mark papers, are
so9me of the factors that set the stage for the rise of madrassas in Pakistan.
Prof A.H. Nayyar told the story of the madrassas in pre-1947 India in a paper 15written in 1997 . Baghdad started the seminaries in 1067 which contained the new
sciences as well, like maths, physics, chemistry, medicine, and astronomy along with
Quran, hadith, tafseer, etc. In India the first seminary was set up in 1200 by King
Muhammad Ghori which removed the sciences from the syllabi and remained in force
for 200 years. With Akbar, maths and other science subjects crept back in, but he
rejected the printing press which had come to Goa with the Portuguese in 1576. The
39
survey was based on a sample 488 students of class-10 and 192 teachers of Urdu-
medium, English-medium and religious schools or madrassas. On militancy, the
21Tim McGirk states : 'Islam doesn't get more radical than the version taught
at the Binori town mosque and seminary, which educates more than 9,000 students at
branches across the city. There, in the feverish days after Sept. 11, sermons reviled
President George W. Bush as a decadent Pharaoh and lauded Osama bin Laden as an
Islamist hero. The school counted top Taliban commanders as alumni and served for
years as a favourite rendezvous for al-Qaeda men passing through Pakistan en route
to Afghanistan. In response to 9/11, the U.S. denounced these schools, or madrassas,
as terrorist-training academies and called for strict controls on their incendiary
teachings. The U.S. hoped the newly cooperative regime of President Pervez
Musharraf would rein them in.'
The founder of the Banuri Mosque complex was Maulana Yusuf Banuri
(1908-1977) who was born in Basti Mahabatabad near Peshawar, son of Maulana Syed
Muhammad Zakariya who was in turn the son of a khalifa (pupil-inheritor) of 22Mujaddid Alf-e-Sani . He was educated in Peshawar and Kabul before being sent to
Deoband where he was the pupil of Shabbir Ahmad Usmani. He returned to join the
seminary of Dabheel. In 1920 he passed the Maulvi Fazil exam from Punjab
University. In 1928, he went to attend the Islamic conference in Cairo. He migrated to
Pakistan in 1951 and started teaching at Tando Allahyar. He founded the Jamia
Arabiya Islamiya in Karachi in 1953 while he led the attack against Pakistani Islamic
scholar Dr Fazlur Rehman. He was involved in the aggressive movement of Khatm-e-
Nabuwwat from 1973 onwards and was made member of the Council of Islamic
Ideology (CII) by General Zia on coming to power.
Maulana Mufti Rasheed Ahmad (1928-2002) was a companion of Allama
Banuri and was a co-founder of the Banuri seminary. Rasheed became famous after
his Al Rasheed Trust was banned for being linked to Al Qaeda. He became Sheikhul
Hadith of the seminary and was greatly revered for his fidelity to the original Deoband
seminary in India. He compiled 40,000 fatwas on different issues and authored 60
books. He set up Al Rasheed Trust in 1996, the time of the arrival of Osama bin Laden
back to Afghanistan. Al Rasheed Trust had 40 branches in Pakistan after two years
and collected charity second only to Edhi Foundation. Mufti Rasheed began the
journal Zarb-e-Momin which became the mouthpiece of the most radical jihadi outfits 23including Jaish-e-Muhammad . Al Rasheed spent its funds in Afghanistan, Chechnya,
Kosovo in the west and Arakan in Burma in the east, helping struggling Muslims. The
largest amount of money (Rs 20 million) was given to the Taliban government. The
Trust was banned in 2001.
The most well known head of the Banuri complex was Mufti Nizamuddin
Shamzai who was counted as the most powerful man in Pakistan during the rule of
Mullah Umar in Afghanistan. (He was target-killed in 2004.) Among his 2,000 fatwas
the most well known was the one he gave against America in October 2001declaring
jihad after the Americans decided to attack Afghanistan. He had earlier in 1999
already deemed it within the rights of the Muslims to kill Americans on sight. (The
fatwa was later modified in explanation.) He was the patron of the foremost Deobandi
jihadi outfit Harkatul Mujahideen and was seen as an elder by the two leaders of
Harkat: Fazlur Rehman Khaleel and Masood Azhar. In 1999, after his release from an
41 42
The next renowned graduate of Banuri Mosque is Qari Saifullah Akhtar, born
in 1958 in South Waziristan The leader of Harkat-e-Jihad-e-Islami, Qari Saifullah
Akhtar first came to public view when he was caught in the 1995 unsuccessful army
coup by major-general Zaheerul Islam Abbasi, but saved his skin by turning state
witness. (Some say he was defiant but was still let off.) After that he surfaced in
Kandahar and from 1996 was an adviser to Mullah Umar in the Taliban government.
His fighters were called 'Punjabi' Taliban and were offered employment, something
that other outfits could not get out of Mullah Umar. The outfit had membership
among the Taliban too. Three Taliban ministers and 22 judges belonged to the
Harkat. In difficult times, the Harkat fighters stood together with Mullah Umar.
Approximately 300 of them were killed fighting the Northern Alliance, after which
Mullah Umar was pleased to give Harkat the permission to build six more maskars
(training camps) in Kandahar, Kabul and Khost, where the Taliban army and police
also received military training. From its base in Afghanistan, Harkat launched its
campaigns inside Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Chechnya.
The Harkat called itself 'the second line of defence of all Muslim states' and
was active in Arakan in Burma, and Bangladesh, with well-organised seminaries in
Karachi, and Chechnya, Sinkiang, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Because of their
common origin in the Banuri seminary, Harkat al-Jihad al-Islami and Harkatul
Mujahideen were merged in 1993 for better performance in Kashmir. The new outfit
was called Harkatul Ansar, the first to be declared terrorist by the United States after
one of its commanders, Sikandar, formed an ancillary organisation Al Faran and
kidnapped Western tourists from Kashmir in 1995. Qari Saifullah Akhtar fled from
Kandahar after the fall of the Taliban and hid in South Waziristan for some time
before being reportedly whisked away to some safe place in the Gulf by one of his Arab
friends.
Umar Sheikh, the British national now under death sentence for the murder
of Daniel Pearl, had his beginning in England with the now-banned-in-Pakistan Hizb
al Tahrir. He was caught in India trying to exchange British tourists that he had
kidnapped in New Delhi for Harkatul Ansar terrorists held by India. He was released
together with Masood Azhar in 1999 after the hijack of an Indian plane. Masood
Azhar mentioned the episode in his book Muskuratay Zakhm. After his release, Umar
Sheikh tracked Daniel Pearl and got him kidnapped in Karachi with the help of Jaish
activists. Pearl was later kept by Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the top Al Qaeda fund-
raiser, who is said to have beheaded him. Umar Sheikh was also said to have been
involved in Khalid Sheikh Muhammad's transfer of funds to the terrorists who flew
two aircraft into the World Trade Center buildings in New York on 9/11.
ConclusionAn Islamic state will always be confronted with rejectionism from the clergy. Every
legislation brought in to enforce the shariah will be found lacking in one aspect or the
other. In Pakistan, after shariah was enforced by General Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s,
immediately another bill surfaced in the Senate which in a way rebuked the 'inclusive'
nature of the amended Constitution: this inclusive principle was embodied by the
Federal Shariat Court mandate removing only those laws which were found to be
44
Indian jail, Masood Azhar quarrelled with Khaleel and formed his own Jaish-e-
Muhammad. Shamzai was clearly inclined to favour Masood Azhar and became a
member of the Jaish shura (governing council). He was already a member of the shura
of Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) of Maulana Fazlur Rehman.
The most famous alumnus of the Banuria seminary was Maulana Masood
Azhar, leader of the banned Jaish-e-Muhammad. He is the son of Allah Baksh
Shabbir, a teacher of Islam, of Bahawalpur. He has five brothers and six sisters. The
family background is that of pre-1947 Ahrar. Masood was born in 1968 and completed
his religious training at Banuri Mosque of Karachi and then taught there for two years
till 1989. He was inspired to undertake jihad while at Banuri Mosque. Masood's
brother Ibrahim Masood went to Afghanistan at the age of 19. Later he took along his
father too. A sister Rabiya Bibi has been working for the Taliban government in
Afghanistan. His elder brother is a computer salesman in Bahawalpur but has made
many trips to Afghanistan for jihad. Brother Ibrahim Azhar held the Bahawalpur
office of the banned Harkatul Ansar and is said to have participated in the hijack of
the Indian airplane that sprung Masood Azhar from a jail in India.
Masood is the author of 29 jihadi tracts and was the organisational genius
behind Harkatul Mujahideen, for which he toured abroad and collected funds. He was
caught carrying fake dollars at Jeddah airport during one of these trips. He was
instrumental in getting Harkatul Mujahideen and Harkat-e-Jihad-e-Islami to merge
for some time and was also the man behind creating a collective organisation named
Harkatul Ansar. He was in Somalia in 1993 while Osama bin Laden was based in
Sudan. Masood was caught in Anant Nag in Held Kashmir in 1994 while trying to
coordinate Harkatul Ansar. He went to Saudi Arabia on Pakistani passport, then from
there he went to Dhaka. When he flew to Delhi from Dhaka he was carrying a
Portuguese passport. Masood is said to have met Osama bin Laden in Madina in 1994
when both were disguised. Masood's mission was to bring his jihadi organisation
under the aegis of Al Qaeda. In 2000, after release from jail and returning from
Afghanistan, he immediately announced the foundation of Jaish-e-Muhammad.
Masood Azhar was devoted to Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, the fanatically
anti-Shia and anti-Iran founder of Sipah Sahaba who was murdered in 1990, which in
turn led to the murder of an Iranian diplomat in Lahore, thus starting the great
sectarian war of the decade of the 1900s, attracting Arab funds to Deobandi warriors.
Masood Azhar's Jaish first claimed the attack on Indian parliament in 2001, then
went back on it, but it remained the most aggressive fighting arm of jihad in Pakistan
together with Lashkar-e-Tayba. It is said that his separation from Harkatul
Mujahideen forced his co-leader Fazlur Rehman Khaleel to move close to Osama bin
Laden, but the truth is that Masood Azhar's trail in Somalia in 1993 links him with the
adventure the Harkat recruits participated in from Sudan which resulted in 24
Pakistani troops (as part of a UN peace force) killed in ambush by warlord Eidid that
Osama bin Laden was supporting. Later in 1999, the kidnapper of Daniel Pearl in
Karachi, Umar Sheikh, joined him and confirmed the strong bond between Al Qaeda
and Jamia Banuria. Daniel Pearl's beheaded corpse was found in a property owned by
Al Rasheed Trust.
43
repugnant to the Quran and Sunna. The drive for an 'exclusive' shariah surfaced with
great ferocity in the 1990s when former prime minister Nawaz Sharif had to table his
of modifying one's own behaviour to harmonise oneself with the prevailing
circumstances; there is belief in them that the situation must be changed to suit the
tenets imbibed from shariah.
Some writers have likened Islamism and Al Qaeda to Western anarchism of
the late 19th century which gave rise to political terrorism well into the 20th 28Century . Muslims' faith-based refusal to accept the nation-state may be akin to some
of the 'state-less utopianism' of the anarchists which later became a part of the
Communist theory of the classless state-less society. Many Muslims believe in the
umma, not the nation-state. They tolerate the nation-state as a contingent reality
which must disappear with the victory of a pan-Islamic entity ruled by a caliph. When
President Musharraf began his 'Pakistan first' campaign, the reaction against it came
from intellectuals of all stripes. Former president Rafiq Tarar said in Lahore on 13
Match 2003 that the thinking behind the idea of 'Pakistan first' was opposed to the
basic Islamic tenet of Muslim akhuwat (brotherhood). Pakistan's foremost thinker
Ashfaque Ahmad declared that the slogan of 'Pakistan first' was produced by
inferiority complex and fear. He said Pakistan was a part of the Islamic world and was
a big power. Putting Pakistan first would lead to the putting of the provinces first and
ultimately putting one's town first, which would be destructive of the state. Other
opponents of the 'Pakistan first' slogan interpreted it as a flight from the clash of
civilisations in which the Islamic world was pitted against the West.
The people of Pakistan were told that America would not only grab the Iraqi 29oil, it would also occupy the most sacred city of Islam, Madina in Saudi Arabia . This
'Islam first' view threatens the civilisational nation-state solidarity within the Islamic
world. Its outward focus is not entirely positive as its exponents would have us
believe. It is in fact highly critical and revisionist. Take the Pakistani perception of the
Islamic community state by state. The Pakistani Islamist view of Saudi Arabia is
extremely critical, almost subversive in its intensity. It is considered a monarchy
defying the basic tenets of Islam, which therefore must be overthrown if the umma is
to be saved. The same kind of criticism is applied to the Gulf States too where princely
rulers allegedly look to their own personal interest rather than the Islamic cause. This
view ignores the fact that hundreds of thousands of Pakistani expatriate workers have
found jobs in the region and Pakistan's economy is not a little dependent on their
remittances. The nation-state of Pakistan doesn't tire of expressing its gratitude to
these states, but the common man in Pakistan would rather have the monarchies
removed, which would probably lead to despotic republicanism, in turn leading to the
ouster of all Pakistani workers from there. That is where Islamic anarchism finds its
origin today. The roaming jihadist believes in it and terrorism draws its strength from
it. The Muslim state of mind makes it vulnerable to the teaching and indoctrination of
the madrassa at all times without regard to which stratum of society an individual
may belong.
(Khaled Ahmed is Consulting Editor of Daily Times, Pakistan)
45 46
in France. Hattab had belonged to the GIA till 1997. The literature the salafists read was
Ibn Taymiya, Abdul Wahab, Syed Qutb, Hassan al-Banna and Sheikh Bin Baz. FIS, which
was formed at its base, the Bin Badis mosque in Algiers, was the home of Ali Belhadj who
radicalised the FIS with a salafist leavening and is now in prison in Algeria. Sifaoui
somehow got Karim to say in front of the camera that once the African Arab states succumb
to Islamism they will get together and target Europe, that the Taliban alone followed the
true Islam, and that contrary to the claim in Thiery Meyssan's book debunking the
American version of 9/11, it was Osama bin Laden who had carried out the 9/11 act of
terrorism. 10. Center for Religious Freedom, Freedom House, Washington, January 2005, Saudi
Publications on Hate Ideology fill American Mosques. The booklet covers only Saudi
material. A Boston Pakistani-dominated mosque the writer visited in 2004 had a non-
clerical leader of prayers haranguing the followers on how the Quran had banned
friendship with Christians and Jews. The speech upset many Pakistanis.11. Khaled Ahmed, 'The Trouble in Gilgit', The Friday Times, 8 July 2005, .12. Daily Times, 20 August 2005: 'Muhammad Islam Siddiqui, a member of the Pakistan
Army, will be hanged today (Saturday) in New Central Jail Multan. Siddiqui, who belongs
to a poor Hari family from Jacobabad, was tried in court martial and was sentenced to
death for plotting to kill Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Pervez Musharraf. He made a
mercy petition to the president and the vice chief of army staff, but the petition was turned
down.' 13. Mushtaq Ahmad from the air force, convicted and sentenced to death for trying to kill
President Musharraf was successful in escaping from air force custody in Karachi on 25
December 2005. He had madrassa contacts and escaped after delivering a touching sermon
to his guards.14. Journalist Tanvir Qaiser Shahid in daily Pakistan, 26 October 2004.15. Pervez Hoodbhoy (ed.), Riasat aur Taleem: Pakistan kay Pach-chas Saal, (Lahore:
Mashal, 1997).16. Saleem H. Ali, Islamic Education and Conflict: Understanding the Madrassahs of
Pakistan, Draft report prepared for The United States Institute of Peace (2005). Dr Ali of
University of Vermont and Brown University, confirmed the curriculum with Wifaqul
Madaris in Multan.17. Dawn, Karachi, 23 February 2003, under the title Tolerance and militancy among
schoolchildren.18. This alienation is natural but Dr Rehman did not elaborate if this alienation was based on
the rejection by the English-medium students of the intolerance of the other two systems.
Dr Rehman's other writings tend to denigrate this trend among the English-medium
students.19. Terry McDermott, Perfect Soldiers, (Harper/Collins, 2005). The book explains the secular
origin of Muhammad Atta, then describes the alienation and culture shock he experienced
in Germany while training as an architect. This is what happened to the others of the
Hamburg Cell. The contact with the Moroccan cleric at Al Aqsa mosque in Hamburg was
crucial in their final terrorist orientation. Atta's misogynist last will and testament betrays
indoctrination imparted by the Al Aqsa mosque cleric.20. John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America, and international Terrorism, 21. Time,7 September 2003.22. Daily Jang 14 June 2003.23. Umar Ahmad Sheikh, awarded death sentence the Daniel Pearl murder case, is often held
up as an example of non-madrassa convert to terrorism. The fact is that while in Karachi he
helped publish Zarb-e-Momin the journal linked to Jaish and thus to Banuri madrassa.24. Shariful Mujahid, Ideology of Pakistan, Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic
University Islamabad 2003: 'Maulana Zafar Ahmad Ansari (1908-1991) wrote on the
Islamic concept of sovereignty in his celebrated articles in Dawn in 1955 answering the
48
End Notes1. Daily Times, Lahore, 24 September 2005.2. Khalid Hassan, Daily Times, 3 March 2005: The report produced by the Congressional
Research Service (CRS) and written by its Asian affairs analyst K. Alan Kronstadt, notes
that President Musharraf set a December 31, 2002 deadline for the seminaries to register
with the government or face closure. 3. Khalid Hassan reported in Daily Times Lahore, 2 March 2005. See Omar R Quraishi in
Dawn, 27 March 2005: Titled Religious School Enrolment in Pakistan: A Look at the Data,
the report by Tahir Andrabi of Pomona College, Jishnu Das of the World Bank and
(assistant professor) Asim Ijaz Khwaja and Tristan Zajonc of Harvard University takes a
detailed look at the number of students enrolled in Pakistani madrassas, examines their
accuracy and comes to the conclusion that the data sharply contradicts the figures quoted
in the press on just how many students are enrolled in Pakistan. It says that articles in
various international newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the Washington
Post, have quoted figures for madrassa enrolment in Pakistan that are much higher.4. The disagreement between ICG and the World Bank study authors became particularly
acrimonious in April 2005 when ICG issued a press release from its Islamabad office that
questioned the motivation of the World Bank study since its policy impact had been that
the Pakistani government was perceived to become more complacent about the matter. The
World Bank authors asserted that ICG should at least acknowledge the numerical error and
strongly resented any aspersions cast by ICG. The US government was also rather defensive
about the matter and the 9/11 Commission commented that they had relied on more than
just anecdotal accounts in their findings and the head of ICG, Pakistan, Dr. Samina Ahmed
was asked to testify before the congressional Foreign Relations Committee on April 19,
2005. 5. New York Times, 15 March 2005.6. The News, Lahore, 31 July 2005: 'The killing of 56 civilians in the London blasts has had a
direct bearing on Islamabad's policy statements as well as actions. This has led to detention
of hundreds of suspected militants from banned outfits and raids on seminaries. The more
controversial among them was a raid on the Jamia Hafsa affiliated with Lal Masjid -- a
female madrassa in the heart of Islamabad having an estimated 2,200 female students on
its rolls. What was the specific intelligence on the basis of which the raid was carried out
and what objectionable material was recovered by the police from Jamia Hafsa is not
clearly known. The police did not make public as to who it wanted to arrest and on what
charges. Those arrested were subsequently released and the clergy man the police was
apparently trying to get hold of is perhaps no more required by the security agencies. No
charge sheet against him has been issued and his movement since the incident remains
unrestricted. Maulana Abdur Rashid Ghazi, who heads the network of seminaries attached
with Lal Masjid, was said to be the prime target of the police on Tuesday July 19'.7. Hassan Mansoor, The Friday Times, 10 December 2004.8. Figures obtained by TFT reporter (see above) from the officials of Abu Bakr Islamic
University, located in Karachi's Gulshan-e-Iqbal, showed a total of 142 foreigners, around
15 per cent of the total took admission there. Out of this number, 69 (49 per cent) foreign
students came from Thailand, while 17 each belong to Malaysia and Uganda. Eight pupils
each come from Indonesia and Somalia, five each from the Philippines and Ghana, four
from Cambodia, two each from Djibouti, Nigeria and Maldives and one each from Niger,
Cameroon and Kenya. 9. Mohammad Sifaoui, Inside Al Qaeda: How I infiltrated the World's Deadliest Terrorist
Organisation (Granta Books 2004). 'In Paris, the Omar and Abubakr mosques are in the
use of the Arabs while Ali mosque is where the Pakistani connections to Al Qaeda are
available. Karim represented GSPC, a salafist group, led by a Yemeni, Hassan Hattab, and
controlled by a cleric in Saudi Arabia, Shaikh Salman, who directed the Al Qaeda activities
47
objections of many who thought that sovereignty could only belong to the people and not to
Allah as premised in Islam. Before Ansari became an important factor in the debate on
49 50
5251
53 54
Madrassa Reforms in Contemporary IndiaYoginder Sikand
In recent years, particularly after the demolition of the Babri Mosque in 1992
and the ensuing anti-Muslim pogroms, Muslims in India are increasingly recognising
the need for modern education if they are not to be further marginalised and
effectively consigned to the status of the 'new untouchables'. Today, this urge for
modern education has taken the form of numerous schools set up by Muslims in
various parts of the country that seek to combine religious with secular education. It is
also reflected in the increasing willingness on the part of many traditional madrassas
(religious schools) to widen their curriculum and include the teaching of a range of
modern subjects. This paper provides a broad overview of the pace and pattern of
these reforms in a range of madrassas in contemporary India.
Bridging the Din (faith) and the Duniya (world)Questioning the dualism that has developed between 'religious' and 'worldly'
knowledge, many advocates of madrassa reform see both forms of knowledge as part
of a comprehensive whole. Accordingly, educational institutions run by such activist
groups in India have incorporated a range of modern subjects into their curriculum,
thus helping to bridge the educational dualism that has characterised Muslim
education for almost two centuries. Among the most enthusiastic to embrace modern
subjects and include them in their syllabi are schools associated with the Jama'at-i
Islami Hind.
The Jama'at was founded in 1941 by the scholar-cum-activist Sayyed Abul
'Ala Maududi. Maududi saw the Jama'at as spearheading the struggle for the
establishment of an Islamic state, strictly ruled in accordance with the shari'ah. A
number of Muslims, including both madrassa-trained ulema as well as some who had
received a modicum of modern education, were attracted to the Jama'at in its early
years. One of Maududi's major concerns soon after founding the Jama'at was to
formulate a new system of Islamic education, which he presented as an alternative to
both the traditional madrassas as well as regular schools. In 1944, he organised a
meeting of top Jama'at functionaries at the organisation's headquarters at Pathankot
in Punjab. At the meeting he presented the outlines of an ambitious educational
programme, based on a system of primary, secondary and high schools. Rather than
produce professional ulema, a notion that Maududi seemed to view as un-Islamic for
being akin to a class of priests which Islam condemned, the proposed schools were to
train a new generation of Muslims rooted in their faith but at the same time experts in
various modern disciplines, capable of taking up a range of occupations, and, above
all, leading the movement for the establishment of an Islamic state of Maududi's
dreams. If committed and pious Muslims were to excel in every field of modern
knowledge, Maududi claimed, they would be able to impress people of other faiths
with the 'truth' of Islam. Consequently, the latter would either willingly become 1Muslim or else accept Muslim leadership . This, in turn, Maududi believed, would
help pave the way for the eventual establishment of an 'Islamic state'. Modern
knowledge was thus regarded as indispensable for a very political purpose.
The Partition of India in 1947 led to the division of the Jama'at, with the
majority of its members, including Maududi himself, migrating to Pakistan, although
Maududi had throughout opposed the Muslim League, regarding its agenda of Indian
Muslim nationalism as a gross violation of the principle of universal Muslim
brotherhood. The Jama'at now split into two separate wings, one each in Pakistan and
India. In Pakistan the Jama'at registered itself as a regular political party, while in
India, where Muslims were a beleaguered minority, the re-christened Jama'at-i Islami
Hind functioned as a cultural and religious organisation, keeping aloof from party
politics.
In September 1948 top Indian Jama'at leaders gathered at the movement's
headquarters to discuss the setting up of a system of Muslim primary education. It
was felt that if Muslim children were left to study at government schools they would
slowly, yet inevitably, lose their distinct Muslim identity. Hence, Jama'at leaders
stressed the need for Muslims to set up their own schools, at least at the primary level,
where their children could study modern as well as Islamic subjects in a 'proper'
Islamic environment. At the meeting a provisional syllabus for Muslim school
education was approved. The curriculum for the primary level consisted of general
Islamic studies, nazira (recitation) of the Qur'an, basic Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, English,
mathematics, general knowledge, history and geography. For higher classes the
syllabus included the Qur'an, Hadith, fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), principles of fiqh
and Arabic, along with English, general knowledge, political science and economics.
Shortly after this meeting, the Jama'at set up its own publishing house, the
Markazi Maktaba-i Islami, which was given the task of publishing suitable textbooks
for teaching these various subjects. The books were prepared by a committee of
Jama'at activists and supporters, including ulema who had received a madrassa
education as well as men who had studied at regular schools. Some 75 textbooks -- in
English, Hindi, Urdu and Arabic -- were published in subsequent years, and these 2were regularly revised and updated . In line with Maududi's programme of the
'Islamisation' of knowledge, modern subjects were presented in a suitable 'Islamic'
framework. Thus, for instance, the mathematics texts contained sums related to the
payment of zakat and intricate calculations related to the rules of division of
inheritance according to the shari'ah (Islamic law). The natural science texts
described the laws of nature as God-given, and referred to verses of the Qur'an that
were said to predate significant scientific discoveries by centuries. In this way, the
books sought to legitimise the acquisition of knowledge of modern subjects in Islamic
terms.
In 1949 the Jama'at sought to put its educational programme into action by
setting up the Markazi Darsgah ('Central School') at Rampur. As its name suggests, it
56
these were essential for preparing a class of educated Muslims who could lead the
community in all spheres of life, and not simply as religious specialists as narrowly
construed. It sought to provide its students with a broader outlook, free from the
prejudices of rivalry between the different Muslim malsaks so characteristic of most 9madrassas . Muslims of all sects and schools of thought were eligible for admission,
and the school had a number of teachers from different maslaks, including from the 10Deobandi and Ahl-i Hadith traditions, besides the Jama'at-i Islami's . In contrast to
most other madrassas, it did not promote any particular school of fiqh. Rather, it
sought to cultivate an open attitude on matters of jurisprudence, seeking to take from
each legal school what it thought to be in accordance with the primary sources of
Islamic law, the Qur'an and Hadith, and insisting on the need for ijtihad to cope with 11modern issues and challenges . In another significant departure from traditional
madrassa education, it did not teach any of the medieval Qur'anic commentaries.
Students were encouraged to try to understand the Qur'an on their own, with the help
of dictionaries, although they were free to study the medieval commentaries as well.
Today, Falah is one of the largest and better-organised madrassas in India. In
2003 it had an estimated 5000 students on its rolls, including some 2700 girls, who
study in a separate wing. It had more than 120 teachers, several of whom were
graduates of the madrasa and had then gone on to regular universities for higher
education in a range of disciplines. It has considerably restructured its course of
study, extending it to the graduate and post-graduate levels. Till the junior high school
level it uses the government-prescribed syllabus and textbooks prepared by the
National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), supplemented
with selected books of its own choice. Thereafter, students do a seven-year specialised
course in Islamic studies and Arabic, with English, geography, history, comparative
religions, political science and sociology as additional subjects. The school also offers
a two-year diploma course in Hindi. It has recently started a computer section, and
computers are now a compulsory part of the curriculum.
Falah thus claims to provide a broad-based education, devised in such a way
that its students receive a general grounding in both religious as well as modern
subjects. This, in theory, enables them to choose, once they graduate, either to go on
to regular universities or else to pursue further Islamic education. However, the
quality of teaching of modern subjects leaves much to be desired, because of which the
madrassa's claim of producing ulema well versed in modern disciplines seems
somewhat far-fetched. Yet, the management and teachers at Falah actually welcome
their students going on to enrol at regular universities once they graduate. Dismissing
an oft-heard argument against madrassa students joining universities, a graduate
from Falah, now a teacher in a college in a town in Uttar Pradesh, says:
'Some ulema argue that if madrassa students go to universities they would
lose their Islamic character. They would begin to drink alcohol and smoke and wear
Western clothes. They would stop saying their prayers and keeping the fast in
Ramzan. I don't agree with this argument at all. If madrassa students are given proper
intellectual and spiritual training and their faith is firm and secure, there is no reason
why this should happen. In fact, I know of many madrassa students who are now
55
was envisaged as a regular school (darsgah), in contrast to a traditional madrassa. It
aimed at training activists for the Islamist movement who were rooted in their faith
but were also aware of developments in the world around them. It was seen as an
alternative to state-run schools that were regarded as being opposed to Islamic beliefs 3and as teaching infidelity and irreligiousness . The school functioned under the
auspices of the Jama'at till 1960, when it was closed down due to administrative and
financial problems. In 1986 it was restarted, managed now by a committee of nine
persons, headed by Maulana Yusuf Islahi, senior member of the central committee
(majlis-i shura) of the Jama'at. The Darsgah appears to have inspired the setting up of
several other similar educational institutions in other parts of the country that also
adopted its syllabus. According to a Jama'at source these included 1617 primary, 65 4secondary and 51 high schools, as well as 15 institutes for technical education .
Today, the darsgah provides education till the sixth grade, after which
students generally join regular schools. Plans are being made to extend it to the higher
secondary level in the near future. In line with the Jama'at's vision of Islam, students
at the Darsgah are taught a combination of Islamic and modern subjects. The Islamic
Studies course includes several texts penned by Maududi himself. In contrast to
traditional madrassas, it steers clear of maslak (sect) and fiqh (jurisprudence)
divisions, seeking to promote an understanding of Islam that is based directly on the
Qur'an and the Hadith. It thus stresses the unity of all Muslims, irrespective of fiqh
differences, which, while recognised, are to be tolerated. Hence, admission is open to
students irrespective of mazhab (religion) or maslak, and the school has had some
non-Hanafi teachers on its rolls as well. The darsgah has produced a number of
students who have gone to occupy leading positions in the Jama'at-i Islami and in
various other Islamic organisations and movements. Several other of its graduates
have completed higher education at regular universities, such as the Aligarh Muslim
University and the Jami'a Millia Islamia, and now work as doctors, engineers and 5journalists .
Another interesting Jama'at-sponsored educational initiative is the Jami'at
ul-Falah, located at Bilariyaganj, near the town of Azamgarh in eastern Uttar Pradesh.
It was set up in 1962 by a group of Jama'at activists and sympathisers. It was
structured on the lines of a modern school, with a seven-year primary course and a
higher course of another seven years, including a five-year 'alim degree programme
and a two-year fazil course. The fazil course included a number of optional subjects,
such as journalism, calligraphy, comparative religions, Islamic missionary work,
Hindi and elementary Sanskrit, social welfare and teacher's training.
Falah saw itself as training ulema as social activists to struggle for the cause
of Islam as a 'complete system', as envisioned by Maududi himself, and to combat 'un-6Islamic' ideologies as well as 'wrong' practices followed by many Muslims . In this
way, its students were trained, as its official publicity brochure puts it, to 'present
Islam, with adequate proofs, before the world as the only means for success in the 7Hereafter' . Furthermore, Falah saw as one of its principal tasks the creation of a class
of ulema who, the brochure proudly announces, 'clearly understood the issues of their 8time' . Hence, it included a number of modern subjects in its syllabus, believing that
57 58
studying and even teaching in universities in India and abroad. They are still as good
Muslims as they were when studying in the madrassas. More than that, they are also
setting a good example for the other students in the university, who admire them for
their piety, simplicity, honesty, dedication and discipline. In this way they can play an
important role in communicating the message of Islam to people of other faiths'.
Likewise, a student presently studying at Falah, who hopes to enrol in a
university after he graduates, says:
'One often hears this argument that if madrassa students begin to join universities
and then train to become doctors or lawyers or anything other than a traditional
maulvi, the very purpose of the madrassa system would itself be defeated. This,
however, is completely false, because in Islam there is no contradiction between the
demands of religion and the demands of the world. If a madrassa student becomes a
doctor he can still remain a pious Muslim, and can even help the cause of Islam
through his service to people of other faiths. After all, the Qur'an clearly says that
there is no monasticism in Islam and that one's faith must be expressed in one's
actions in all spheres of life. So, if you are a doctor and serve people in accordance
with the teachings of Islam that is also a form of worship. Unfortunately, however,
some misguided so-called 'ulama make a rigid distinction between religion and the
world and wrongly claim that the two are opposed to each other, and that the only way
one can serve Islam is by sitting in the mosque and counting beads'.
Falah's degrees are now recognised by a growing number of universities in
India and in Saudi Arabia and Egypt. This has allowed for its graduates to seek further
education in regular universities, opening up for them new job opportunities not
available to graduates from traditional madrassas. Today, a growing number of Falah
students, or 'Falahis' as they are called, work as lecturers in colleges, journalists,
translators, and as employees in business firms and Islamic institutions in India and
in the Arab world. It is estimated that more than half of the students who pass the
'alimiyat examination at Falah go on to take admission in regular universities, with
less than a third staying on to complete the fazilat course.
In contrast to many smaller madrassas, Falah provides its students with
facilities for a range of extra-curricular activities. It has a large sports field, and
students are encouraged to play a variety of games after school hours. The Jami'at ul-
Tulaba, Falah's students' organisation, organises regular debates and essay
competitions and brings out a college magazine containing articles written by the
students themselves. The madrassa arranges for professors (almost all Muslim) from
universities to lecture to the students occasionally on subjects of contemporary
concern. Falah boasts of a library containing over 20,000 volumes, housed in a new
three-storeyed building, which also houses a well-equipped computer centre, a large
seminar hall and several reading rooms.
Similar educational experiments inspired by the Jama'at-i-Islami have come
up in various other parts of India. In Kerala there are estimated to be some 40 high
schools associated with the Jama'at, where students train for the 'alim course and
simultaneously prepare for a bachelor's degree from a state university. Likewise, in
other states a number of regular schools, such as the Zikra High School (Hyderabad),
the Millat High School (Jalgaon), the Iqra School (Aurangabad) and the Milli Model
School (New Delhi), have been set up in recent years by members or activists of the
Jama'at. Some of these are English-medium schools and use the regular government
syllabus, with extra classes for Islamic Studies, for which they use textbooks prepared
by the Markazi Maktaba-i Islami.
Although not affiliated to the Jama'at, the Islamic International School in the
crowded Dongri district in Mumbai shares, in many ways, a similar vision of Islamic
education. Founded in 2001, it is run by the Islamic Research Foundation, a
missionary organisation headed by the noted Islamic scholar Zakir Naik. Naik is
India's most well known Muslim polemicist. He specialises in debating with leading
Christian theologians, and his admirers claim that he has worsted them all in
numerous public rallies, in India and abroad.
The International Islamic School is not a traditional madrassa. In fact, it
seeks to distinguish itself from a madrassa in significant ways. Its brightly painted
classrooms are equipped with blackboards, tables and chairs, and colourful posters
decorate their walls. In contrast to the simple classrooms in madrassas, which often
do not even possess fans, all the rooms in the school are air-conditioned, a luxury that
only few schools in India can afford. Monthly fee amounts to 3000 rupees, which is
well beyond the budget of an ordinary Indian Muslim family. Again, unlike most
madrassas, the school is not affiliated to any particular Muslim maslak, being open, in
theory, to Muslims of all sectarian backgrounds. In this way, it seeks to present an
ecumenical image that transcends narrow sectarian barriers that are so deeply
inscribed in the traditional madrassa system.
An employee of the Foundation explains the aims of the school, pointing out
how it differs from traditional madrassas in many ways:
'We want to produce a class of pious Muslims, men as well as women, who will be able
to represent Islam in all domains of life. We want to train good Muslim doctors,
engineers, lawyers and scientists who would be able to show the world what Islam has
to offer in all these spheres. Ours is not a madrassa in the traditional sense of the
term. Unlike many traditional madrassas, where students have little or no
understanding of the complexities of modern life, we want our students to be well
aware of both Islam and the world around them. This is why we are not affiliated to
any particular sect or school of fiqh. Instead, we go straight to the Qur'an and the
Hadith for inspiration, because we see divisions based on fiqh and sect as inimical to
Muslim unity'.
The school aspires, as its name suggests, to 'international' status by providing
English-medium education using modern teaching methods and aids, but in what its
publicity brochure proudly describes as an 'Islamic' environment. The school is geared
to a clientele of rich Muslims who seek a suitably 'Islamic' yet modern education for
their children, for many of whom the education provided in general schools is
60
and translators in Arab countries and in South Africa, which is home to a large and
relatively prosperous Deobandi Muslim community. Two graduates from the centre
manage the Markaz's website and on-line fatwa dispensing unit based in Mumbai.
Several of the centre's graduates are now studying at regular universities, pursuing 14research in Arabic, Urdu and Islamic studies .
A similar experiment is the Dar-ul-'Umoor, based at Srirangapatanam, near
Mysore, in the southern state of Karnataka. Founded as a registered trust in 1998, it is
run under the auspices of the Tipu Sultan Advanced Study and Research Centre, the
brainchild of Ziaullah Sheriff, one of the biggest architects and builders in Bangalore.
It is located in a sprawling 40-acre campus adjacent to the tomb of the eighteenth
century Muslim ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan. It takes its name from a similarly
named institution set up by Tipu Sultan to promote scientific innovations. It sees itself
as imparting what it describes as 'an integrated educational programme both in
Islamic Science and modern science and technology' so as to train a new class of 15socially involved ulema .
In 2002 the Dar-ul-'Umoor launched a one-year course, jointly prepared by
university professors and ulema from the Nadwat-ul-'Ulama, Lucknow. Till date most
of its students have been drawn from the Nadwa itself. Education, boarding and
lodging are provided free of cost, and each student are given a small monthly stipend.
A major focus of the course at the Dar-ul-'Umoor is the learning of English and
computer applications. Other subjects are also taught, by visiting lecturers, including
university professors, scientists, journalists, social activists, ulema, politicians and
retired bureaucrats. Visiting lecturers have spoken on a range of issues at the school,
including inter-faith relations, modern fiqh issues, community development, conflict
resolution, Indian history, personality development, information technology, mass
media, and global politics. In addition, every Thursday the students are expected to
undergo practical training, such as visiting schools, non-governmental agencies,
scientific institutions and museums, as well as churches and temples to interact with
Christian and Hindu priests. Students submit regular reports and articles, some of
which have been published in local Urdu newspapers. All students are also
simultaneously pursuing their master's degree in Urdu from the Karnataka Open
University, Mysore.
'Abdur Rahman Kamaruddin, the amiable chairperson of the Dar ul-'Umoor,
explains how the school seeks to promote a new breed of ulema who are cognizant of
the world around them:
'Through the exposure that the students gain by interacting with experts in different
fields, we want to prepare ulema who can play a constructive role in community
affairs. If they are made aware of the problems and concerns of the world around
them they would be in a better position to interpret Islam in order to meet new
demands and challenges. They might also be able to influence the madrassas once
they finish their studies here. In that way reforms can begin from within the madrassa
system, instead of being imposed from the outside. Some students will return to
madrassas to teach, sharing their knowledge and skills with other ulema. Others
59
culturally inappropriate and alienating. Students learn the usual school subjects in
addition to Islamic studies, which are taught with the help of primers published by
Islamic organisations in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, South
Africa and Saudi Arabia. The school presently promises education upto the second
standard, but soon plans to expand to the high school level.
Alternate Forms of Islamic KnowledgeBesides the new sorts of Muslim schools described above, in India today a growing
number of madrassas are incorporating modern subjects into their curriculum. A
good example of a modernising madrasa is the Markaz ul-Ma'arif Education and
Research Centre, Mumbai. It was established in 1982 by Maulana Badruddin Ajmal, a
graduate of the Deoband madrassa and a member of Deoband's central advisory
committee. Originally from Assam, Ajmal is a prosperous Mumbai-based merchant
and philanthropist. He represents a new, emerging breed of socially engaged ulema,
setting up social work projects and also promoting religious education using
innovative means. The Markaz runs a number of institutions in Assam and some
other states in northeast India. These include, or so its publicity pamphlet claims, 10
English-medium schools, 550 part-time maktabs, three orphanages, a modern
hospital and several vocational training centres. The Markaz claims to fund several
small social work centres that are engaged in various developmental activities. It has a
publishing wing, which has produced a considerable amount of Islamic literature in
various languages, including Assamese, Bengali, Urdu and English. It is also engaged
in a limited form of inter-faith dialogue work, and has liberally contributed to various
'national' causes, making substantial donations to the Prime Minister's Relief Fund
and the Army Central Welfare Fund, with the purpose, as its publicity brochure puts
it, of helping the cause of 'martyrs who laid down their lives for the cause of the 12country' .
In 1994, after consultation with the elders at Deoband, the Markaz decided to
set up a centre in Delhi to train a selected number of madrassa graduates in English,
computer applications and comparative religions. The principal objective of the
programme was, as its publicity leaflet puts it, to enable madrassa graduates 'find a
suitable place in the world' and also to 'reason scientifically and put forward 13convincing arguments before the masses about the positive teachings of Islam' . Till it
was recently closed and shifted to Mumbai, every year the Markaz selected some 20
students, mostly graduates from the Dar ul-'Ulum, Deoband, for a two-year course.
The course involved intensive study of spoken and written English. Students were also
taught various computer application skills, such as desktop publishing and web
designing, expertise they that would need in their future profession as missionaries.
In addition, they also learnt about the basic beliefs of other faiths in order to better
equip them in missionary work.
Several graduates of the Markaz are now employed as English teachers at
various madrassas, including two at the recently launched department of English at
Deoband. A number of them teach Arabic in government schools in Assam, West
Bengal and Bihar. Others work as journalists in Urdu as well as English papers
brought out by different Muslim organisations. Yet others have found jobs as teachers
61 62
might be absorbed by various Muslim social welfare organisations or by Muslim
magazines and newspapers as journalists. Yet others would work as preachers in
mosques, and one of their principal tasks would be to deliver sermons on issues of
contemporary relevance. In this way, we feel that the work that we are engaged in will
have a multiplier effect and lead to a gradual transformation of the madrassa system 16as a whole' .
The Dar-ul-'Umoor has made efforts to popularise its programme in different
madrassas, seeking to make them aware of the need for reforming their syllabus and
methods of teaching. For this purpose, in 2001 it organised its first four-day
orientation programme at the Nadwat ul-'Ulama, attended by a number of leading
ulema and social activists. Speeches were delivered on a variety of issues of
contemporary importance. The students and teachers at Nadwa apparently responded
with enthusiasm, evincing considerable interest in the future programmes of the
centre. The centre has contacted several other madrassas and has offered to conduct
similar workshops with their students.
Another similar experiment, hailed as a unique and pioneering effort to
combine Islamic and modern education, is the Jami'at ul-Hidaya, located in a
Muslim-dominated village on the outskirts of Jaipur. Established in 1986 by the
Naqshbandi Sufi shaikh and 'alim, Maulana 'Abdur Rahim Mujaddidi, it is affiliated to
the Deobandi maslak, although it is open to Sunnis of all schools of thought.
Maulana Mujaddidi is a soft-spoken man, probably in his late sixties or early
seventies. He is one of India's most ardent champions of modern education in the
madrassas. He is initially reluctant, in true Sufi fashion, to speak about the
achievements of his madrassa, but on being prodded he explains:
'Our madrassa provides its estimated 700 students a traditional Islamic education.
This is supplemented with compulsory modern education till the tenth grade level.
For this we use textbooks published by the NCERT. Thereafter, we have a four-year
'alim course, during which students learn a range of subjects, including the Qur'an,
Hadith, tafsir, fiqh, and Arabic literature. Arrangements are also made for lectures by
visiting ulema and university professors to speak on issues of contemporary concern.
Students doing the 'alim course must also learn a skill that would enable them to earn
a gainful livelihood after they graduate. After all, we need to think about their future
employment prospects as well. We don't want them to be a burden on the community.
They need to stand on their own feet. Among the technical trades that we have
arrangements for are computer applications, mechanical and electrical engineering,
electronics and communications'.
Several of the graduates of the madrassa, the Maulana explains, have now set
up small businesses of their own, and some have even got jobs in companies in India
and in Gulf countries. Other students of the madrassa, estimated at half the total
number of graduates, have gone in for higher Islamic education, in India and abroad,
and yet others have joined regular universities for higher studies.
The Maulana 'Abdur Rahim Education Trust, which runs the Jami'at ul-
Hidaya, also manages three English-medium schools in Jaipur city, catering largely to
boys and girls of poor Muslim families. In association with some professors of the
Aligarh Muslim University the Trust recently set up the Al-Hidaya Study Centre at
Aligarh in order to train Muslim students to appear for competitive examinations for
various government services. The Trust has set a list of ambitious plans for itself,
including launching a full-fledged faculty of commerce, as well as starting courses in
refrigeration, air conditioning, pharmacy, automobile engineering and journalism. It
is also in the process of establishing a training centre for madrassa teachers, which
would be the first of its kind in the country.
Reforms in Existing MadrassasBesides relatively recent specialised institutions, such as the above, that combine
Islamic with modern education and are meant for madrassa graduates, recent years
have also witnessed a growing willingness on the part of several traditional madrassas
to incorporate some sort of modern teaching in their curriculum. Although the
standard of teaching of these subjects leaves much to be desired, owing principally to
the lack of funds for employing suitably trained teachers and for acquiring
appropriate teaching aids, this development points to an increasing recognition on the
part of sections of the ulema of the importance of modern forms of knowledge and the
need to integrate them into the madrassa system.
Stirrings of change have not left even madrassas considered as the bastions of
'orthodoxy' unaffected. Recently, as pointed out in the previous chapter, the Dar-ul-
'Ulum Deoband launched two new departments, of English and computer courses.
This was considered a particularly radical move, given the widespread perception of
Deoband's hostility to 'Western' knowledge and culture. More open to change is the
200-year old Jami'at-us-Saifiya at Surat, the principal madrassa for the Bohra Shi'as,
which conducts an eleven-year course for boys and girls, combining religious and
modern subjects, including natural and social sciences. Not all of its students go on to
become professional ulema several of them go on to universities for higher secular
education, while others are now successful traders and industrialists, in India and 17abroad . Numerous madrassas run in Uttar Pradesh by the Dini Ta'limi Council today
teach both religious as well as secular subjects. Students then get a certificate that 18allows them to carry on education in regular schools thereafter . Certain other
madrassas may not be able to afford to arrange for providing modern education to
their students, but, instead, have facilities for training them in some craft or trade.
This is the case, for instance, with the Jami'at-ul-Islamia Khair ul-'Ulum at
Domariaganj, in eastern Uttar Pradesh, which provides Islamic education till the fazil
level, and also has a workshop where students can train to become welders, tailors 19and automobile mechanics . Other madrassas that have few or no arrangements for
modern education have modified their admission policies, timings and the structure
of their courses in such a way that allows their students to study in regular schools
alongside their religious studies. Such is the case of the Jami'a Nazmia in Lucknow,
one of the premier Ithna 'Ashari Shi'a madrassas in the country. It encourages its
students to pursue education in regular universities simultaneously with their
madrassa education. Almost all its students at the final year level have done or are
64
(Yoginder Sikand writes regularly on Islam and Muslims in contemporary India)
End Notes1. For details, see Afzal Husain, Jama'at-i Islami Hind Aur Dini Ta'limi Tehrik, (Delhi:
Markazi Maktaba-i Islami), n.d., pp.1-7.2. Muhammad Ashfaq Ahmad, 'Jama'at-i Islami Ka Ta'limi Nizam', in Mulk-o-Millat Ki
Ta'mir Aur Dini Madaris, (Bilariyaganj: 1994), pp. 137-39.3. Markazi Darsgah-i Islami, Rampur: Ek Ta'aruf, Rampur: Markazi Darsgah-i Islami, n.d.,
p.1.4. Ibid., p.141.5. Interview with Salman Asad, Director, Islamic Studies and Research Academy, New Delhi,
4 January, 2002.6. Jami'at ul-Falah: Ek Ta'aruf, Bilariyaganj: Jami'at ul-Falah, n.d., p.1.7. Jami'at ul-Falah: Aghraz-o-Maqasid, Bilariyaganj: Jami'at ul-Falah, 1997, p.1. 8. Jami'at ul-Falah: An Introduction, Bilariyaganj: Jami'at ul-Falah, n.d., p.1.9. Nisab-i Ta'lim Jami'at ul-Falah, Bilariyaganj: Jami'at ul Falah, 2001, p.3.10. Interestingly, it had no Barelwi 'ulama as teachers, probably because of the Barelwi
insistence that the Jama'at-i Islami was outside the pale of Islam. 11. Interview with Maulana Rahmatullah 'Asri, Principal, Jami'at ul-Falah, Bilariyaganj, 29
March, 2003. 12. Markaz ul-Ma'rif: Report on Activities Till March 2000, Hojai: Markaz ul-Ma'rif, 2000. 13. Ibid., p.11. 14. Interview with Maulana 'Atiq ur-Rahman, Assistant Manager, Markaz ul-Ma'arif, Mumbai,
2 October 2002.15. Dar ul-Umoor Tipu Sultan Advanced Study and Research Centre, Bangalore: Dar ul-
Umoor, n.d.16. Interview with 'Abdur Rahman Kamaruddin, Chairman, Dar ul-'Umoor, Srirangapatanam,
6 October, 2002.17. Maqbool Ahmed Siraj, 'The Best of the Old and the New', Islamic Voice, February 2002.18. H. U. 'Azmi, 'Contribution of Deeni Ta'limi Council to Muslim Education in Uttar Pradesh',
in A.W. B. Qadri, Riaz Shakir Khan and Mohammed Akhtar Siddique, Education and
Muslims in India Since Independence, (New Delhi: Institute of Objective Studies, 1988),
pp.147-50.19. Al-Jami'at ul-Islamia Khair ul-Ulum Educational and Technical Society, Domariaganj: Al-
Jami'at ul-Islamia Khair ul-'Ulum Educational and Technical Society, n.d..20. K. Hamza, 'The Sunni Cultural Centre in Calicut' (www.milligazette.com/Archives/01-5-
2000/the_sunni_cultural_centre.htm). 21. All-India Ta'limi-o-Milli Foundation, (Delhi: All-India Ta'limi-o-Milli Foundation, n.d.)
63
doing a graduation degree course at Lucknow University, mostly in the departments
of Arabic, Urdu, Persian and Islamic Studies. Another Shi'a school in Lucknow, the
Madrasa Imania Khadijat ul-Kubra, runs a two-year course for girls' who are enrolled
in regular colleges or universities. Timings are adjusted in such a way that the girls
can pursue regular studies along with their religious education.
Another way in which growing numbers of ulema are seeking to bridge the
divide between religious and modern education is by setting up modern schools,
where basic Islamic education is also imparted, these being run along with traditional
madrassas under a common management system. The Dar ul-'Ulum Deoband, has
spawned some interesting initiatives in this regard. Recently, one of its senior
management committee members, Maulana 'Asad Madani, considered to be the man
who actually holds the reigns of power at the madrassa, inaugurated a polytechnic for
girls in Deoband. His son runs the Madani Memorial English-medium School, also
located at Deoband. Similarly, the Ahl-i Hadith's Jami'at us-Salafiya madrassa in
Varanasi also runs the Ummahat al-Mu'minin girls' higher secondary school, which it
now plans to upgrade into a regular arts and science college providing education till
the graduation level. In Srinagar, Kashmir, the Sayyed Mirak Shah Educational Trust,
runs a primary madrassa, as well as a chain of regular primary and high schools which
are affiliated to the educational board of the government of Jammu and Kashmir. In
Kerala, the Markaz us-Shaqafat us-Sunniya runs one of the largest shari'ah colleges in
the state, in addition to several modern schools, a technical training centre, a clinic 20and two orphanages . The Delhi-based 'Abdul Kalam Islamic Awakening Centre,
affiliated with the Ahl-i Hadith, runs a number of educational institutions, including
two high schools (one each for girls and boys) and a large madrassa. In Kishanganj,
Bihar, the All-India Ta'limi-o-Milli Foundation, established by a leading Deobandi 21'alim, runs a chain of maktabs, a girls' high school and an engineering college .
Numerous more such examples could be cited. In these diverse ways, a small, yet
growing, number of ulema and ulema-based groups are today making efforts to bridge
the dualism between the madrassa and the modern school system.
As these instances show, madrassas in India today are responding in diverse
ways to the challenges of contemporary life, and cannot be said to be completely
hostile to change. True, change maybe slow in coming, and it may not always occur in
expected or desired ways. Yet, inexorably, the pressure for reform and modernisation
is making its presence felt even in the secluded portals of the most traditional
madrassas. However, the concerted campaign to discredit the madrassas as 'dens of
terror', part of a larger anti-Muslim agenda that is gaining increasing stridency today
in India, has posed major problems for madrassas that seriously wish to reform.
Considering themselves under siege, appeals for reform are seen by many ulema as
representing hidden 'conspiracies' to destroy the religious character of the madrassas
or even to uproot Islam from India. Naturally, this has worked to dampen enthusiasm
for madrassa reform on the part of many ulema. This suggests the urgent need for
sincere dialogue with the ulema of the madrassas, for it is only by working together
with them that any meaningful change in the madrassa system can actually come
about.
Pakistan: Devolution and Community Empowerment
Dr. Paul Oquist
Concept of Devolution Devolution of power leads to a system of co-responsibility between institutions of
governance at the central, regional and local levels according to the principle of
subsidiarity. This consists of elected local authorities having the authority and
responsibility to address all problems that are within their legal mandate and ability
to solve. This increases the overall quality and effectiveness of governance and 1increases power and capacities at sub-national levels , as well as representation and
participation for citizens. Elected local governments accompanied by citizen
participation mechanisms can contribute to community empowerment and political
ownership of devolved local government, a crucial element for democracy.
Fiscal and administrative decentralization consist of the transfer of authority 2 3and resources to local officials . Devolution and decentralization are a global trend .
Most developing countries are embracing them whether in Latin America, Africa or
Asia. Devolution is a worldwide phenomenon for at least three reasons. First, there is
the need for political stability through the transfer of formal state power, authority,
and resources, to elected local officials. This is because of the declining effectiveness
of the power of the centralized state, a phenomenon that has been accelerated by
globalization. Devolution is a strategy to maintain political stability in a world of rapid
and often unpredictable change accompanied by power deflation at the national level
for most developing countries. Increasingly it is only at the local level where citizens,
communities and civil society can still affect policies that affect on the quality of
peoples' lives. Second, there is greater space for citizen participation that can lead to
community empowerment. Third, devolution and decentralization can provide better
protection of rights and services and more effective and efficient service delivery. They
are expected to achieve higher economic efficiency, better accountability, stronger
resource mobilization, lower cost of service provision and higher satisfaction of local 4preferences .
Devolving resource allocation decisions to locally elected leaders can improve
the match between the mix of services produced by the public sector and the
preferences of the local population. Decentralization is particularly beneficial for rural
development in disadvantaged jurisdictions. It usually entails a net transfer of fiscal
resources from richer to poorer areas and leads to an increase in the quantity and
quality of expenditures in these areas. Pakistan's devolution process aims at bringing
the above-mentioned benefits to its population.
Need for Devolution in Pakistan Devolution is long overdue for Pakistani society, especially for the poorer groups.
Many reports, including the government's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP),
point out that Pakistan's social indicators lag behind those of countries with
comparable per capita incomes. Poverty in Pakistan increased from 23 per cent in
1987-88 to 33 per cent in 2001-02 and is continuing to increase. Trickle down of
macroeconomic benefits has had little or no positive effect on the poor. Cross-country
comparisons illustrate that, in Pakistan, growth is associated with fewer
improvements in key health and education outcomes than in comparable developing
countries, (particularly in relation to the widening of male-female literacy gap and 6infant mortality) .
Given the track record of social sector service delivery in Pakistan, it is
tempting to assert that almost any reform in governance arrangements would produce
better results. However, most reforms in government fail. They generally do not fail
because they yield unsatisfactory outcomes. They rather fail because they never get
past the implementation stage at all. They are blocked outright or put into effect only 7in tokenistic, half-hearted fashion .
This tendency to resist change in any shape or form is one of the major
reasons for poor achievements in the social sectors which can also be attributed to the
prevalence of post-colonial institutions and systems. These relics have become
entrenched in national policy mechanisms, further aggravating the breakdown of
basic service delivery mechanisms through corruption, staff absenteeism, and poor
maintenance; lack of accountability, transparency and politicization of personnel
selection and resource allocation; concerns regarding the effectiveness of the legal
system and its ability to provide an enabling environment to promote social and
economic development and public safety; lack of, or selective, enforcement of rules;
poor co-ordination among government departments as well as among donor agencies;
poor morale and work ethic of the civil service. An equally broad range of institutional
issues negatively affect development efforts in natural resource and public
infrastructure management. Army monitors identified 3,600 ghost schools in Punjab
in 1999, 50 per cent of which were inoperative while the remaining 50 per cent were
nonexistent but on the budget. Illiteracy was being reproduced with children aged 5-9 8who did not attend school (female school attendance was at 39 per cent) .
The link between increased funding and better education or health indicators
is equally weak. The Social Action Program had previously been the Government of
Pakistan's most concerted effort at improving its pro-poor social expenditures. During
the two phases of the program (SAP Project 1, 1993/9496/97, and SAP Project 2
1997/9899/00), a total of approximately US$9 billion was spent, with 80 percent
being contributed by the government. The program aimed at increasing the physical
availability and improving the quality and efficiency of services, especially for the poor
and for women, in elementary education, basic health care, family planning and rural
water supply and sanitation. Outcomes were disappointing, particularly in education,
which received roughly two-thirds of the allocations. Overall net enrollment rates
declined from 46 percent in 1991/92 to 42 percent by 2001/02, while net enrollments
65 66
1983, the Local Government Commission observed that “a local government as a third
organ of the state as distinct from the provincial and federal governments should grow
as independent self-reliant institution”. This view was reiterated in the report of the
Sixth National Finance Commission of 1997: “the federal and provincial governments
should make efforts to strengthen local bodies institutions in their respective
jurisdictions by sharing revenues and jurisdiction of functions”.
NRB put forward the Local Government Plan in year 2000. According to this
plan, “in the existing system of governance at the local level, the province governs the
districts and tehsils directly through the bureaucracy at the division, district and tehsil
levels. And the local government for towns and cities exist separately from those of the
rural areas. The provincial bureaucratic set-ups are the designated 'controlling
authorities' of the local governments, and tend to undermine and over-ride them,
which breeds a colonial relationship of 'ruler' and 'subject'. The separate local
government structures engender rural-urban antagonism, while the administration's
role as 'controlling authorities' accentuates the rural-urban divide. These two
structural and systemic disjoints, coupled with the absence of horizontal integration
and the consequent inadequacy of functional coordination between the line
departments at the division, district, and tehsil levels, lead to inefficiency and
corruption, and are the root causes of the crisis of governance at the grass root level.
This crisis appears to have been addressed through over-concentration of authority,
particularly in the office of the Deputy Commissioner, which besides creating the
potential for abuse of authority, diffuses operational focus and results in the expedient
handling of routine functions through crisis management”.
The system described above has been transformed through the Local 16Government Ordinances promulgated by the provincial governments in August 2001
as per the model ordinance drafted by the NRB. They provide the legal framework for
devolution and decentralization of this model. According to the Plan, “the system is
designed to ensure that the genuine interests of the people are served and their rights
safeguarded through an enabling environment, people's participation, clear
administrative responsibilities without political interference and making it
answerable to the elected head of the district. At the same time it promises checks and
balances to safeguard against abuse of authority”.
Devolution ImplementationFollowing are the key changes brought about under the new local government system:
lRemoval of the district administration system, one of the last holdouts of the
colonial order and creation of three countrywide levels of governments i.e.
districts (Zila Councils headed by Zila Nazim), tehsils (taluqa in Sindh and town
in City Governments, headed by Tehsil Nazim), and union councils (headed by
Union Nazim).lPlacing locally elected leaders in charge of local bureaucrats, although until 2005
the provinces remained responsible for their postings, transfers and promotions. lReserving one-third of Council seats for women. lReserving Council seats for other marginalized groups like peasants, workers,
68
10in rural areas (a SAP focus) fell from 41 percent in 1991-92 to 38 percent in 2001/02 .
There was, however, some provincial variation around this declining national trend --
the situation in Sindh, and especially Balochistan, was particularly disturbing, while
NWFP showed some moderate progress. One of the key reasons cited by experts for
this avoidable failure of the SAP programme to deliver, was centralization and lack of 11devolution .
Countries with a high level of patronage politics and patrimonialism in
government need a comprehensive institutional reform programme to 'correct
patrimonial distortions in the institutional environment, the incentives framework, 12and the performance of core government institutions' . In like vein, other theorists
have called for new models of reform such as 'transformational capacity 13development' , which essentially takes in all institutions relevant to governance,
including civil society. The institutional environment of developing countries in
particular calls for a greater degree of decentralization than needed for an 14industrialized country .
The on-going devolution process has also met stiff resistance with numerous
arguments being forwarded to try to thwart of roll back the process. A long-serving
District Management Group officer analyzed this in the following fashion in the 2004
World Bank-Asian Development Bank-DFiD report on devolution in Pakistan:
“Devolution is not opposed because of capacity constraints, shortage of technical
manpower, the quality or awareness of local elected leaders or any such thing. It is
opposed simply because it created such a huge disruption in the political economy of 15corruption” .
Devolution Policy FormulationIn October 1999, the politically elected government was overthrown as the military
took over power in Pakistan. The military government immediately pronounced a
“Seven Point Agenda” to address the institutional crisis and to advance national
reconstruction. It set as objectives: i) rebuilding national confidence & morale; ii)
strengthening the federation while removing inter-provincial disharmony; iii) reviving
and restoring investor confidence; iv) ensuring law and order and dispensing speedy
justice; v) depoliticizing state institutions; vi) devolving power to the grass root level;
vii) ensuring swift and across the board accountability.
Consequently, the National Reconstruction Bureau (NRB) was created with
the task of undertaking the institutional restructuring process. Its first reform was
devolution of power to the local and grassroots levels which has consisted of
devolution of power including empowerment of citizens, decentralization of
administrative authority, de-concentration of functions, and distribution of financial
resources to the provincial and local governments, with checks and balances against
misuse of power and authority through the diffusion of the power-authority nexus.
This policy came to be known as the five “ds” of devolution.
Prior to NRB, there had been official calls for decentralization. In its report of
67
22With regard to citizen satisfaction, the two Social Audit cycles have also
revealed highly positive improvements within a two year window of devolution
implementation. Satisfaction with government sewerage/sanitation services increased
from 13 per cent to 20 per cent, satisfaction with roads increased from 31 per cent to
38 per cent. A composite index of health and education reveals that levels of citizen
satisfaction with these District Social Services rose in 2004 as compared to 2001-232002 . Satisfaction is still less than 50 per cent but the tendency has changed to an
upward slope.
Levels of citizen satisfaction with Tehsil Municipal Services increased in
2004 as compared to 2001-2002. An index of those services (water, sewage, garbage,
and roads) in the 89 districts where comparisons are available reveals that citizen 24satisfaction advanced in 69 districts and declined in 20 . Most importantly, on being
asked “whom they would contact if they needed something done for their
community”, the answer was “the nazim or a councilor” in 47 per cent (n=53,029) of
households in 2004 while the next most frequent responses were community
members (16 per cent), for a combined total of 63 per cent between elected local
government and community delf-development. Local government and community
participation are becoming the preferred channel for addressing community
problems. A total of 7 per cent said that they would take problems to a Member,
National Assembly (MNA), or a Member, Provincial Assembly (MPA). Of those who
have actually contacted a member of Union Council (including the Nazim who is a
member), the figure for males is 25 per cent in 2004 (up from 22 per cent in 2001-
2002), while the figure for females is 13 per cent (up from 10 per cent in 2001-2002).
Thus there is concrete evidence that local government has clearly begun to be
consolidated as an expanding channel for “citizen voice”, but this process is still
incipient.
Community Empowerment Dr. Phil Bartle's concept of community empowerment is well suited for our purposes.
He views it both as a process and as an outcome. According to him: “While increased
democratization may be helped by Government devolving some law making power to
the community, its capacity to make use of its legal decision making depends upon it
having practical capacity, i.e. the ability to make decisions about its own development,
to determine its own future.
The empowerment of a community is an increase in its strength,
improvement in its capacity (ability) to accomplish its goals. The empowerment
methodology, in contrast to the charity approach, aims at strengthening the
community rather than encouraging it to remain dependant upon outside resources.
The empowerment methodology, therefore, does not make everything easy for the
community, because it accepts that struggle and resistance, as in physical exercise,
produce more strength. Community empowerment goes well beyond political or legal
permission to participate in the national political system. It includes capacity to do 25things that community members want to do.” Dr. Bartle views sixteen elements of a
community that change as the community gets stronger:
minorities, etc.lProviding local councils with the right to obtain information on departmental
operations and to sanction non-performance.lThe institution of Citizen Community Boards (CCBs) has been created to enable
the proactive elements of society to participate in community work and
development related activities, thus providing official recognition for community
based organizations. lCitizens organized into Citizen Community Boards (CCBs) to gain direct access to
a proportion of the local councils' development budgets by reserving 25% of all
local development projects for CCB projects.lCreating a 'municipal functions' entity responsible for maintenance and
development of basic municipal services such as water, sanitation, streets,
lighting, parks, and business regulation.lDistribution of financial resources to local governments through formula based
provincial fiscal transfers and decentralization of specified taxation powers to
enable local governments to effect credible development and service delivery.lCreation of city governments in the provincial capitals with the possibility of
allowing others to join later, as has happened beginning in 2005. lThe division as an administrative tier ceased to exist. lThe colonial posts of Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner and Assistant
Commissioner, as well the Executive Magistracy were abolished (the executive
magistracy allowed government executive officials to try and jail people for up to
7 years through 1997 and 3 years thereafter).lElected local governments were created in 97 districts, 350 Tehsils and 6022
Unions.
Devolution Results The impacts of devolution are now clearly apparent, although incipient in several
spheres. There are multiple monitoring and evaluation loops that allow timely
evaluation of progress. They receive data from the following: The National
Reconstruction Information Management System (NARIMS), National Information 18Monitoring and Analysis System (NIMAS) , the Federal Bureau of Statistics, two
Social Audit cycles that have been conducted by CIET Canada (contracted by NRB and
Devolution Trust for Community Empowerment with additional Canadian CIDA
support as well), in 2002 and 2004, which measure citizen satisfaction with
government service delivery mechanisms.
Gross enrollment at primary levels went up from 72 per cent coverage in
2001 to 87 per cent in 2004, while gross enrollment at middle levels went up from 41
per cent to 47 per cent and at the matriculation level from 42 per cent to 57 per cent 19during the same time period . Major sources of drinking water (piped water) have
20increased from 25 per cent coverage to 35 per cent from 2001 to 2004 . In terms of
health services, the utilization rate of First Level Care Facility (FLCS) increased from
113 per cent in 2001 to 120 per cent in 2004, whereas during the same time period the
FLCS not experiencing the 'stock-out' of any one of 5 key supplies increased from 28 21per cent to 35 per cent .
69 70
community? Do outside or internal sources of charity increase the level of dependency
and weaken the community, or do they challenge the community to act and therefore
become stronger? Is the intervention sustainable or does it depend upon decisions by
outside donors who have different goals and agendas than the community itself?
Leadership: Leaders have power, influence, and the ability to move the community.
The more effective its leadership, the more stronger is a community. (Lack of good
leadership weakens it).
Networking: It is not just "what you know," but also "who you know" that can be a
source of strength. What is the extent to which community members, especially
leaders, know persons (and their agencies or organizations) who can provide useful
resources that will strengthen the community as a whole? The useful linkages,
potential and realized, that exist within the community and with others outside it. The
more effective the network, the stronger the community or organization. (Isolation
produces weakness).
Organization: The degree to which different members of the community see
themselves as each having a role in supporting the whole (in contrast to being a mere
collection of separate individuals), including (in the sociological sense) organizational
integrity, structure, procedures, decision making processes, effectiveness, division of
labor and complementarity of roles and functions.
Political Power: The degree to which the community can participate in national and
district decision making. Just as individuals have varying power within a community,
so communities have varying power and influence within the district and nation.
Skills: The ability manifested in individuals that will contribute to the organization of
the community and the ability of it to get things done that it wants to get done,
including technical skills, management skills, organizational skills, mobilization skills.
Trust: The degree to which members of the community trust each other, especially
their leaders and community servants, which in turn is a reflection of the degree of
integrity (honesty, dependability, openness, transparency, trustworthiness) within the
community. (Dishonesty, corruption, embezzlement and diversion of community
resources all contribute to community or organizational weakness).
Unity: A shared sense of belonging to a known entity (i.e. the group composing the
community), although every community has divisions or schisms (religious, class,
status, income, age, gender, ethnicity, clans), i.e. the degree to which community
members are willing to tolerate the differences and variations among each other and
are willing to cooperate and work together.
Citizens must, therefore, be posited as the true custodians rather than merely
the beneficiaries of the devolution reform. There is a large body of research that
suggests that in the absence of an active demand for power and a demonstrable
capacity to use it, supplying power to the grassroots through an exclusively top-down
modality is futile.
72
Altruism: The proportion of, and degree to which, individuals are ready to sacrifice
benefits to themselves for the benefit of the community as a whole (reflected in
degrees of generosity, individual humility, communal pride, mutual supportiveness,
loyalty, concern, camaraderie, sister/brotherhood).
Common Values: The degree to which members of the community share values,
especially the idea that they belong to a common entity that supersedes the interest of
members within it. The more that community members share, or at least understand
and tolerate each others values and attitudes, the stronger their community will be.
(Racism, prejudice and bigotry weaken a community or organization).
Communal Services: Human settlements facilities and services (such as roads,
markets, potable water, access to education, health services), their upkeep
(dependable maintenance and repair), sustainability, and the degree to which all
community members have access to them.
Communications: Within a community, and between itself and the external
environment, communication includes roads, electronic methods (eg telephone, radio,
TV, InterNet), printed media (newspapers, magazines, books), networks, mutually
understandable languages, literacy and the willingness and ability to communicate in
general (which implies tact, diplomacy, willingness to listen as well as to talk).
Confidence: While expressed in individuals, how much confidence is shared among
the community as a whole? i.e. an understanding that the community can achieve
what ever it wishes to do. Positive attitudes, willingness, self motivation, enthusiasm,
optimism, self-reliant rather than dependency attitudes, willingness to fight for its
rights, avoidance of apathy and fatalism, a vision of what is possible. Increased
strength includes increased confidence.
Context (Political and Administrative): A community will be stronger, more able to
get stronger and sustain its strength more, the more it exists in an environment that
supports that strengthening. This environment includes: (1) political (including the
values and attitudes of the national leaders, laws and legislation) and (2)
administrative (attitudes of civil servants and technicians, as well as Governmental
regulations and procedures) elements. When politicians, leaders, technocrats and civil
servants, as well as their laws and regulations, take a provision approach, the
community is weak, while if they take an enabling approach to the community acting
on a self-help basis, the community will be stronger.
Information: More than just having or receiving unprocessed information, the
strength of the community depends upon the ability to process and analyse that
information, the level of awareness, knowledge and wisdom found among key
individuals and within the group as a whole. When information is more effective and
more useful, not just more in volume, the community will have more strength. (Note
that this is related to, but differs from, the communication element)
Intervention: What is the extent and effectiveness of animation (mobilizing,
management training, awareness raising, stimulation) aimed at strengthening the
71
A Citizen Community Board (CCB) therefore, is a voluntary non-profit
organization of at least 25 civic minded, non-elected citizens who seek to energize
their communities for the defense of their rights and for improvements in
infrastructure and service delivery. They simply need to register as a CCB and abide
by a simple set of rules and procedures to undertake voluntary, proactive, self help
initiatives for the development of their communities.
The CCB may also participate in the activities of local council monitoring
committees to improve government performance in their areas. They can also directly
formulate and execute community development initiatives and collect voluntary
contributions for this purpose. They may also present projects to local councils for
support as part of the district-level bottom-up planning process, as Chapter XII
Section 119 describes the bottom-up planning and the ownership incentive system: “A
local government may grant to the Citizen Community Boards within its local areas up
to eighty percent of the budgeted amount of an approved development scheme…”
To ensure ownership a CCB must deposit 20% of the amount required for a
project from its voluntary contribution funds. Upon approval the local council will
finance the remaining 80%. At least 25% of local council development budgets in all
three tiers of local government (union, tehsil, district) must be allocated by law to
community development projects prioritized by CCBs. If these funds are not spent in a
given year(s) they accumulate in cash until they are utilized for their legally intended
purpose, as specified in Chapter XII of the LGO 2001, Sections 109: “…not less than
twenty-five percent of the development budget shall be set apart for utilization in
accordance with the provisions of Section 119…”.
This is the first institutionalized, constitutionalized state/citizen interface
which allows citizen participation, in interaction with elected local government to
generate community empowerment in the history of Pakistan. These provisions are
legally binding and may not be amended without presidential approval till the year
2009, according to the 6th Schedule of the Legal Framework Order (LFO) to which
the LGO 2001 was added through the Constitution (17th Amendment) Act, passed
December 2003. The LFO is a list of: “laws that are not to be altered, repealed or
amended without the previous sanction of the President.” Rather than the archetypal
donor/NGO approach of erecting parallel structures, this system actively involves
government functionaries in what is essentially their job and puts them in touch with
the community they serve and vice versa. This system is therefore a unique, world-
class, cutting-edge, homegrown solution to the lack of bottom-up demand for good
governance.
Community Participation Implementation Inasmuch as the community empowerment elements of the LGO 2001 are not self-
activating, especially where community participation is not a common practice, the
“Devolution Trust for Community Empowerment (DTCE)” was founded as a non-
governmental organization designed to activate the citizen participation potential of
devolution. DTCE aims to create a more proactive citizenry through participation in
community development that can form the foundation for grass roots democracy and
The success of bottom-up pressure is widely recognized. The UK Citizen's
Charter (or Service First) is a prime example of an effort to mobilize bottom up public 26pressure for better services. Similarly, the 'participatory budgeting' approach
adopted by a number of municipalities in Brazil, has also yielded remarkable results
in a relatively short period of time, most notably in Porto Alegre, Río Grande do Sul. 27 28Both Shah and Azfar attach the highest priority to mechanisms for citizen voice
participation and community empowerment as one of the prerequisites rather than 29the precipitants of any devolution reform exercise. A study by UNDP involving nine
countries describes the role of participation in improving service delivery: “Enhanced
community and neighborhood participation, if appropriately structured and
implemented, are often critical in improving successful local government activities.”
Devolution cannot and should not be treated only as increased representation
through politicians and improved administration through the bureaucrats. If
devolution was limited to the interplay between politicians and bureaucrats, certain
aspect of devolution including checks and balances, transparency, accountability,
anti-corruption, and protection of citizen's rights, the assumption of responsibilities,
and improvements in service delivery would be weakened. Moreover, the creation of a
proactive citizenry through participation in community development would not take
place. This would impede the construction of grassroots pluralism, a more satisfactory
state/citizen interface, and the construction of bottom-up democracy. It is therefore
necessary for the achievement of the results and impacts sought by devolution to
combine increased political representation and improved public administration with
expanding community participation that can lead to community empowerment. This
is what has the potential to reduce the deprivation that leads to despair and political
alienation, as well as rekindle hope amongst the poor and other largely excluded
groups such as women.
Community Empowerment Enabling EnvironmentAs far as the State is concerned two key elements among those described by Dr Bartle
hold special relevance i.e. intervention that is based on challenges rather than charity,
and an enabling political and legal context or environment. The Government of
Pakistan recognized that the devolution process will not fulfill its potential without
implementation of the enabling environment for citizen participation and community
empowerment as contemplated in the LGO 2001, Chapter X, Section 98: “In every
local area, groups of non elected citizens may, through voluntary, proactive and self
help initiatives, set up any number of Citizen Community Boards. Such Citizen
Community Boards shall be setup for the purposes of, inter alia, energizing the
community for development and improvement in service delivery, development and
management of a new or existing public facility, identification of development or
municipal needs, mobilization of stakeholders for community involvement in the
improvement and maintenance of facilities, welfare of the handicapped, destitute,
widows and families in extreme poverty, establishment of farming, marketing and
consumer co-operatives, and reinforcing the capacity of a special Monitoring
Committee, at the behest of the concerned Council; provided that grants shall be
available subject to the provisions of section 119.”
73 74
period under consideration. Compared with the national average increase of 232%,
and the aggregate increase of the non-DTCE districts 164%, the 448% increase in the
13 DTCE programme districts is a distinct and outstanding achievement. The value
added of the DTCE social capital building approach is confirmed, and the vast
potential of its expansion to the universe demonstrated. A veritable social movement
of bottom-up demand for greater transparency, accountability and responsiveness to
citizen and community demands is a possibility in Pakistan. It is hard to think of
anything that could advance democracy more effectively in the country. It, however, is
not guaranteed, inasmuch as political uncertainties and lack of donor coordination
present constraints and challenges.
There are now up to 500,000 households with 3,500,000 family members
involved in what is still an incipient CCB movement nationwide. To further investigate
the dynamic behind this success DTCE has conducted 2 research surveys in 2005; the
first covering 150 CCBs in 5 of the 13 districts which have been activated by DTCE;
and the second covering a sample of 297 CCBs in 12 districts with relatively high CCB
growth where DTCE has not yet intervened. This qualitative research involved the
application of questionnaires which were designed to reveal the actual authenticity of
people's participation, level of commitment and activity, and the flow of benefits to
the community. The results have shown that in DTCE programme districts the
indicators of community empowerment, genuine people's involvement, and the status
and number of beneficiaries of development projects is far more positive, as compared
to districts where DTCE is not active. In these latter districts, research findings
highlight issues such as lack of conceptual clarity, elite capture of the CCBs by public
officials, contractor's mafia, and strong patron client relationships. In sum, DTCE
programme districts are superior to the national average not only in terms of the
'quantity' but also the 'quality' of the CCB movement.
Devolution and Community Empowerment Opportunities-2005Devolution in Pakistan has been based on five principles, the 5 “d's”, as previously
described. They are devolution of power, decentralization of administrative authority,
deconcentration of management functions, diffusion of the power-authority nexus
and distribution of resources to the district level.
As with all major reforms that imply changes in power structures devolution
has met with resistance to change on the part of vested interests and entrenched
power structures. The five “ds” of devolution are matched by the 5 'ds' of anti-
devolution. They are delay, dilute, distort, derail, and destroy. The groups opposing
devolution possess important resources and great experience in applying each one of
these “ds” to the fullest. The opponents of devolution propose no alternative other
than a roll back to the status quo ante. History teaches us that major structural,
systemic, and institutional transformations can only take place once in a generation,
and it takes a generation to fully reap their benefits. The status quo ante of perennial
governance crisis, slow economic growth, and increasing poverty is not an option for
Pakistan in a highly competitive 21st century. The future of the country depends on
institutional restructuring to roll back systemic, endemic, syndicated corruption and
to construct more viable political institutions.
76
a moderate, pluralist political culture in Pakistan. The provision of secular solutions to
life's problems vastly improves rights, services and relations between citizens and
government. This involves the move from patronage politics to a right to
development. This is to be accomplished through strengthening community based-
organizations and civil society in general, particularly through the outsourcing of most
of the DTCE awareness raising, capacity building, and project management activities
to Civil Society Organizations (CSOs). These CSOs are in turn involved in public-
private sector partnerships with other elements of civil society, for example, Bar
Associations and Press Clubs and local governments. This web of relations working
for the common objective of a CCB movement builds social capital for development.
Over 20,000 CCBs have now been formed in Pakistan through 2005, and some
networks and associations are beginning to appear, but the concept of a CCB
movement is still incipient. However, it will occur as it forms part of the logic of this
type of social organization everywhere, and Pakistan will not be the exception.
The DTCE vision is of empowered communities of proactive citizens engaged
in self-development with the support of local governments. The DTCE objective is to
create a new relationship between the citizen and the state based on shared rights and
responsibilities for community development, and activate citizen participation and
community empowerment in each of the 6022 unions of Pakistan. The LGO 2001 has
given the community access to 25% of all local council development budgets which
amount to Rs. 16 billion (US$ 266 million) over the last four years. At current
budgeted rates Rs. 4 billion (US$ 66 million) will be added each and every year. This
creates a governmental, renewable source of national financing for community based
organization. It also decreases civil society's high level of dependency on foreign
donor aid.
However, two thirds of these funds are at the district level, and a little less
than one-third at the Tehsil level, with less than 10% at the level of 6022 unions. For
this reason DTCE is priming the community development project pump with grant
seed funds at the grassroots union level. In effect the government, the donors, and
most importantly the people have pooled financial, technical, and human resources
for development that is rights based and people centered. These funds now fuel a
system of bottom-up planning that permits regular, renewable, domestic resources to
incentivize citizen participation and community development, while maintaining
ownership through a democratic approval process.
Community Participation ResultsThe results are clearly apparent on-ground. In the period March, 2004 to June, 2005,
the number of CCBs nationally for all districts of Pakistan, grew from 5,836 to 19395,
an increase of 232%. In the 95 districts where DTCE has not yet intervened, the
number of CCBs rose from 4429 in March 2004 to 11682 as of June 2005 indicating
an increase of 164%. In the 13 districts where DTCE has a direct presence, there are a
total of 7713 CCBs as of June 2005, as compared to 1407 CCBs in March 2004,
indicating an impressive increase of 448%. Additionally, there are 6 districts amongst
these where the increase amounts to well over 1000%, with Swabi ranking the top
performer, registering an increase of 2406% in the number of CCBs over the same
75
33year as compared to the last local body elections of 2001 . After four years of political
training at the local level, the majority of women councilors who have filed their
nomination papers for the two-phased polls are now more politically confident than 34they were 4 years ago . Even in problematic areas such as the North West Frontier
Province (NWFP) where the participation of women has traditionally been weak and
suppressed, empowered women have managed to break free of the prevalent
fundamentalist stranglehold and take charge of their political destinies. Sixty
nomination papers have been filed by women in Timergarah, Lower Dir an area where
in the last local body elections only 18 women had filed papers in 34 local councils in, 35while 196 seats had remained vacant . Mrs. Nilofer Bakhtiar, the Advisor to the Prime
Minister for Social Welfare and Women Development has hailed this achievement as 36“a great breakthrough for women's empowerment in Pakistan” .
A group of more than 100 women from Nowshera district of NWFP
demonstrated on the 22nd of August, 2005 in front of the Election Commission of
Pakistan (ECP) in the capital, Islamabad, demanding a re-election in their district,
where their participation had been effectively banned by powerful local contingents.
Two days later, the acting Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) issued a press release
declaring the elections held on 18th August, 2005, as “null and void at seven polling
stations of Nowshera and Swabi districts where women voters were not allowed to
cast their votes.” He further instructed District Police Officers, Nowshera and Swabi
districts to initiate legal proceedings against the persons involved “in the aforesaid 37illegal act of preventing women to cast their votes .” These developments signal a
major inflection in the social and political trends at the grassroots level, culminating
in a much more powerful role for the civil society as a mechanism for amplifying
citizen voice. As Naeem Mirza, project director with a leading women's rights body,
the Aurat Foundation puts it: "For the first time in the country's history, civil society
groups, rights activists, media and other bodies have come up with a collective 38campaign for women electoral rights .” In today's Pakistan, there is no end to what
can be achieved by civil society coming together in the defense of citizen's rights and
the amplification of citizen's voice.
Civil society facilitation of innovations has also emerged. The Devolution
Trust for Community Empowerment (DTCE) is piloting police-community relations
seminars for all of the police in a given district, barring none; the sharing of Social
Audit feedback information with all of the police; Police-Community Relations
Centers with MIS and GIS systems to make transparent police activities and
encourage police-community dialogues; Khuli Kuchehris open houses in each Union
to give the community the opportunity to raise issues related to the police; and MoUs
between Union Council Public Safety Committees and the police thanna that serves
the Union on community set objectives for the police that will lead to rewards as
performance incentives if they accomplished in a time bound fashion. All these
activities are part of a Police Welfare and Community Relations Initiative that DTCE
is facilitating. Another initiative is a Local Citizen Information Network (LCIN) to
factor into the community empowerment mix the power of information through
community public service media for the first time in Pakistan. This is based on the
DTCE LCIN discovery of a virtual national television network at the Tehsil level
In the four year period 2001-2005, local government in Pakistan was largely
consolidated. Contrary to predictions in 2001 that local governments would be too
weak to operate in the face of bureaucratic and provincial opposition and that service
delivery would collapse the situation in 2004-2005 is quite different.
At the end of the first tenure of local governments, the provincial
governments have not considered that local governments are too weak but rather that
they are too strong with the Chief Ministers seeking more checks and balances over
them. The strength of local governments can also be seen by the fact that numerous
members of the National Assembly and many more Members of the Provincial
Assembly who have aspired to candidacies for Nazim posts at the district level. It is
now generally recognized in political circles that Zila Nazim is a powerful and
politically meaningful post. A total of 2,66,427 nomination papers have been filed to 30date in both Phase I and Phase II of the 2005 elections .
When politically powerful local nazims are elected they will fight for fiscal
decentralisation and other necessary safeguards for the autonomy of local
governments. Already, there are numerous examples of nazims taking initiative, and
displaying creative and innovative problem solving abilities, to strengthen their
resource base by improving the collection of property taxes to boost the revenue
collection of their governments, and reduce their dependence on provincial fiscal
transfers. In Tehsil Jaranwala, District Faisalabad, the Tehsil Nazim in collaboration
with the 'Strengthening Decentralized Local Government Faisalabad' project funded
by DFID, UK, has constructed a comprehensive database of the existing
infrastructure, including, for example, the number of water outlets, pipes, drains,
connections, joints and other details of sewerage, gas and telephone connections. This
database was integrated into a GIS system and used to prepare a master plan of the
town. This technology has dramatically increased TMA Own Source Revenue from Rs.
100 million to approximately Rs. 125 million from 2002/3 to 2003/4. As a proportion
of total revenues own source increased from 35 per cent to 58 per cent in the same 31period . Another example is Tehsil Rawalpindi which increased its revenue
generation from Rs. 216 million in 2001 to well over Rs. 617 million in 2004-05, (an 32increase of almost 186 per cent) .
There are success stories of Nazims leveraging their financial authority to
benefit the CCB movement and firmly establish and concretize the autonomy of their
governments. The Tehsil Nazim of Chiniot increased the CCB quota of the
development budget from the mandatory 25 per cent to 40 per cent, which stimulated
growth and sustainability of the CCB movement in that area. There has been a
marked increase in the resource generation of the Tehsil Municipal Administration
(TMA) in that Tehsil leading to an increase in both the size of the pie and the
percentage available for CCB community development projects.
Additionally, these elections have brought an epochal development for
mainstreaming women participation in the political process throughout Pakistan. As
many as 56,753 nominations have been received by women candidates contesting in
the local body elections, which means that 3,634 more women have contested this
77 78
a union level alternative dispute resolution mechanism; Musalihati Anjuman
(Reconciliatory Body); the creation of a Public Prosecutor's Office separate from the
police, a measure with the potential to greatly enhance respect for human rights; and
multiple auditing mechanisms including Public Accounts Committee at all three levels
of local councils.
In sum, elected local governments will be strengthened by the political
ownership of established political heavyweights and the creation of a district civil
service is the most significant civil service reform in Pakistan's history. However, the
long-term sustainability of devolution and community empowerment after 2009
when LGO 2001 will no longer enjoy the presidential and constitutional protection of
the 6th Schedule and the 17th Amendment will be whether it is politically owned by
the people. This is the only thing that can make it irreversible. That, in turn, will
depend to a large extent on whether the community empowerment potential of
devolution is realized, making local communities largely masters of their own
development destinies. This is what can generate a politically owned institutional
revival, and the future of Pakistan depends on it.
(Dr Paul Oquist is Senior Governance Advisor for Asia, UNDP & Chief Technical
Advisor, Devolution Trust for Community Empowerment (DTCE). The opinions
expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of
UNDP or DTCE).
End Notes
1. UNDP, Decentralization: A sampling of definitions, 1999.2. J. Manor, The Political Economy of Democratic Decentralization, World Bank, 1999.3. World Development Report 1999-20004. Azfar et al. (2001)5. Social Development in Pakistan; Annual Review 2004, SPD6. World Development Indicators, 2004, World Bank7. Caiden 1991; Kiggundu 1998 8. Paul Thornton, The SAP Experience of Pakistan, DFID SAP Coordinator9. Easterly: 2003; Operations Evaluation Department: 200210. Pakistan Integrated Household Survey (PIHS) data11. Social Policy & Development Centre, Review of SAP, 199712. Dia 1994;1913. Kiggindu 199814. Anwar Shah, Balance, accountability and responsiveness: lessons about decentralization,
World Bank, 199815. Manning et al. 'Devolution in Pakistan - preparing for service delivery improvements',
200316. Sindh/Balochistan/North West Frontier/Punjab Local Government Ordinance 200117. NARIMS is a powerful information management system designed and executed by NRB for
collecting, storing, retrieving, transforming, editing and displaying spatial data from real
world for any particular set of purposes. It has to facilitate the Provincial government,
District government, Public representatives and the general public as a whole. The
NARIMS enhances the following functions: Financial management, Planning and
development, Administration, Evaluation, and Performance incentives. 18. NIMAS is a software based system designed by NRB to provide support in monitoring and
80
through local cable television operators with extensive coverage. LCIN Programming
is being shown on a pilot basis, various times a day through this low-cost medium
with locally relevant governance content in the vernacular.
There are also enabling environment opportunities as a result of the 2005
amendments to LGO 2001. The relative autonomy of local governments has been
challenged not only in terms of fiscal issues but also by civil service issues that have
constituted the overwhelming majority of the tensions between the districts and the
provinces. This is because, while the civil servants were placed under the elected local
officials in accordance with LGO 2001, they remained provincial service cadre whose
postings, transfers, and promotions, are decided by provincial departments. This not
only weakened the influence of the nazims but provided a mechanism to disrupt and 39punish nazims not favorably looked upon at provincial levels . In order to tide over
the bottleneck in the smooth functioning of the local governments, the amended
Ordinance, 2005 has given authority to nazims to discipline civil servants and in
Section 140A for the creation of a district service:
“… the government shall, in every district, create a District Service
comprising all posts of local governments grouped into district and Tehsil cadres, for
decentralized local government functions and groups of offices with adequate 40monetary benefits and incentives for promotion and performance , no later than 31st
December, 2005.”
The new district civil services will provide a solution to a good part of the
tensions between the provinces and the districts. It will take two to three years to fully
implement the District Service and Tehsil Municipal Services, but at the end of this
period the local governments should be able to determine for themselves the terms
and conditions of employment including performance contracts and performance pay.
Another element will be the agreement as part of the amendments that there will be a
reorganization of the provincial departments to make them more compatible with the
office groups headed by Executive District Officers (EDOs) at the district level. This
will further facilitate provincial-district relations as the provinces assume their policy,
standard setting and inspection roles and discontinue direct service delivery where it
persists as the result of vertical programs, some of which are donor driven. By
substantively increasing the job satisfaction of the average government functionary,
and bringing it closer to his/her counterparts in the private sector, this also has the
potential to improve the morale, performance and integrity of local civil servants.
This increase will be complimented by an increase in the accountability of their
performance through the activation of Monitoring Committees and other public
accountability mechanisms envisaged LGO2001 but not fully implemented in the first
term of local governments elected under LGO 2001. Monitoring Committees will
allow for continuous feedback from the citizens concerning access and quality issues
related to rights and local service delivery. There are several community participation
aspects of LGO2001 that can also be activated in the second term of local
governments to allow another level of effective check and balance mechanisms that
can add accountability to information and voice as part of the generation of 41community empowerment . These include the District Ombudsman (Zilla Mohtasib),
79
committees, the immense value of the five years of guaranteed follow-up of the social audit
and the taking of the social audit to the tehsil level through intense district social audits
parallel to the national effort which is representative to he district level, as well as the great
significance of Union Public Safety Committee/Kuli Kucheris MoUs with the police as part
of the DTCE promoted Police Welfare and Community Empowerment Initiative. All of
these measures add government accountability to the voice of the citizen. See for example. J. Ackerman, 'Co-Governance for Acountability Beyond Exit and Voice',
World Development., (2004) for Brazil, Mexico, U.S. and India; H. Blair, 'Participation and
Acountability at the Periphery; Democratic Local Governance in Siz Countries', World
Development, (2000) for Bolivia, Honduras, Mali, the Philippines and Ukraine; Richard C.
Crook and James Manor, Democracy and Decentralization in South Asia and West Africa:
Participation, Accountability and Performance (Cambridge University Press, 1998). J.
Fox, 'How Does Civil Society Thicken? The Political Construction of Social Capital in Rural
Mexico', World Development, (1996, 6); A. M. Goetz and J. Gaventa, 'Bringing Citizen
Voice and Client Focus into Service Delivery', Working Paper 138, IDS, U. of Sussex, which
is concerned with identifying means of amplifying citizen voice such at that it is engaged
with the State and moves beyond consultative processes to more direct forms of influence
over policy and spending decisions; P. Heller, 'Moving the State: The Politics and
Democratic Decentralization in Kerala, South Africa, and Porto Alegre', Politics and
Society, (2001) which operationalizes democratic decentralization as 'an increase in the
scope and depth of subordinate group participation in authoritative resource allocation
processes'; C. Johnson, 'Decentralization in India: Poverty, Politics, and Panchayati Raj',
Working Paper 1999, Overseas Development Institute (2003); C. Madon and S. Sahay,
'Democracy and Information. The Case of New Local Government Structures in Bangalore',
Information, Communication, and Society, (2000); R. Micthinson, 'Devolution in Uganda:
An Experiment in Local Service Delivery', Public Administration and Development, (vol.
23) which holds that the rationale for decentralization is that poverty is the overriding
problem and the best way to tackle it is by the empowerment of people to provide the
services they judge necessary and to decide their own local allocation of resources, all of
which depends on the ability and desire of government to provide the local authorities with
at least the same levels of resources as the previous service providers (Ed. IT SHOULD BE
NOTED THAT UGANDA IS THE CLASSICAL CASE OF DONOR VERTICAL PROGRAMS
UNDERCUTTING DEVOLUTION AND COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT DUE TO THE
INABILITY OR UNWILLINGBESS OF KEY DONORS TO FOLLOW GOVERNMENT
POLICY AND DECENTRALIZE THEIR PROGRAMS); N. Sundar, 'Is Devolution
Democratization', World Development, (2001) which argues that what matters is not the
degree of government intervention, more or less devolution, or the degree of social capital
among local communities but state accountability, and this can only be ensured through
addressing questions of political reform; E. Willis, 'The Politics of Decentralization in Latin
America', Latin American Review (1999), that posits that in systems with centralized
political parties the central government exercises greater control over resources and uses
than countries with decentralized parties , in which subnational politicians exercise strong
influence over legislators, and explores this hypothesis through a comparative analysis of
decentralization in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela and Mexico.
BibliographylJ. Ackerman, Co-Governance for Accountability Beyond Exit and Voice, World
Development., 2004, 3).
lDevolution in Pakistan, Annex 1 Recent History, Asian Development Bank, Department
for International Development, World Bank (July 2004)
lOmar Azfar, Conditions for Effective Decentralized Governance: A Synthesis of Research
Findings, Satu Kähkönen and Patrick Meagher, IRIS Center, University of Maryland, 2001.
assessing the state of devolution, by accessing timely relevant data from all possible
sources by employing all available means. The objective of NIMAS is to help eradicate
teething problems faced in the implementation of the devolution process through the
retrieval and analysis of information.19. Federal Bureau of Statistics / Economic Survey Table 4.3, Page 44. 20. Ibid21. Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), Second and Third Quarter Progress Report,
2005 22. 2001/2 baseline included 57,321 households covering 433,147 people, while the 2004/5
follow-up included 53, 485 households and 421, 107 people23. Levels of citizen satisfaction rose in 54 out of 89 districts, while 12 districts had increases in
citizen satisfaction of over 10% and 5 districts had decreases of over 10%. 24. There were 9 districts where it increased by more than 10% and only 1 district where it
decreased by more than 10%.25. Elements of Community Strength by Phil Bartle, PhD,
http://www.scn.org/cmp/modules/mea-ele.htm 26. Participatory Budgeting is a process through which citizens present their demands and
priorities for civic improvement, and influence through discussions and negotiations the
budget allocations made by their municipalities.27. Anwar Shah, Balance, accountability and responsiveness: lessons about decentralization,
World Bank, 199828. J. Manor, The political economy of democratic decentralization, World Bank 199929. UNDP 2002, The Role of Participation and Partnership in Decentralized Governance: A
Brief Synthesis of Policy Lessons and Recommendations of Nine Country Case Studies on
Service Delivery for the Poor30. Election Commission of Pakistan, Press Releases, 21st July and 30th July, 2005. 31. Note: Own source revenues include local taxes, UIPT (Urban Immovable Property Tax, 85
percent), rent, water rates, deposit money, retention money, fines, and user charges, and
exclude opening balances. While UIPT is a shared tax, and not strictly OSR, the tax is
classified as OSR under the LGO 2001. Other examples of increases in own source income
include Mandi Bahaudin 148%, Bhakkar 131%, and Bhawal Nagar 103% and Tehsils the
size of Rawalpindi 80% and Sialkot 64%.Source: ADB/DFID/WB Devolved Service Delivery Report Dataset 2from 2002/03 revised
estimates and 2003/04 budget estimates.32. Daniyal Aziz, Pakistan Development Forum, 2005 33. Election Commission of Pakistan, Press Releases, 21st July and 30th July, 2005. 34. Shehar Bano Khan 'Women councilors in local polls', Dawn, 9th August, 200535. Dawn, 28th July, 2005. 36. 'Women aspirants zeal in LG polls to bolster national development', Pakistan Observer 1st
August, 200537. Election Commission of Pakistan, Press Release: 24th August, 2005. 38. 'Women aspirants zeal in LG polls to bolster national development', Pakistan Observer 1st
August, 200539. Masood H. Kizilbash, Dawn, 25th July, 200540. Emphasis added. 41. For the last 10 years the devolution and community empowerment literature has stressed
that voice by itself falls short of community empowerment and only reaches that threshold
when accompanied by mechanisms that make government accountable to communities for
the rights and services to which they are entitled. This also implies that the citizens much
accept the responsibility of proactive community oversight, thus enhancing citizenship and
enriching democracy. In the case of Pakistan this underscores the revolutionary nature of
giving the community a quarter of the development budget for its own projects, the
importance of the potential role of the CCBs before local government monitoring
81 82
lReduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), Third Quarter Progress Report for the Year 2004-05
lShah, Anwar (1998) Balance, Accountability, and Responsiveness: Lessons about
Decentralization, World Bank
lSocial Policy and Development Centre (SPDC, 2004) Social Development in Pakistan;
Annual Review No. 6
lN. Sundar, 'Is Devolution Democratization', World Development, 2001.
lPaul Thornton, (2000) Social Action Program (SAP) Coordinator from 1996-1999 Review
of the Social Action Program 2000, Department for International Development (DfID)
lUnited Nations Development Programme (UNDP, 2002) The Role of Participation and
Partnership in Decentralized Governance: A Brief Synthesis of Policy Lessons and
Recommendations of Nine Country Case Studies on Service Delivery for the Poor
lE. Willis, 'The Politics of Decentralization in Latin America', Latin American Review ,
1999.
lWorld Bank Group, (1999/2000) Entering the 21st Century, World Development Report
lWorld Bank (2004) World Development Indicators database: Pakistan Data Profile
The author expresses his gratitude to the graduate student Ms. Mehr Latif for her assistance
with this bibliography of the relevant literature.
PRSP Secretariat - Finance Division, Government of Pakistan, (September 2005) Poverty
84
lin Six Countries', World Development, 2000.
lGerald Caiden, Administrative Reform Comes of Age, 1991.
lRichard C. Crook and James Manor, Democracy and Decentralization in South Asia and
West Africa: Participation, Accountability and Performance, 1998.
lDawn newspaper issue, 28th July, 2005.
lMamadou Dia, Civil Service Reform: The African Experience, 1994.
lWilliam Easterly, The Cartel of Good Intentions: The Problem of Bureaucracy in Foreign
Aid, 2003.
lElection Commission of Pakistan (ECP), Press Releases dated 21st July, 30th July, and
24th August, 2005, www.ecp.gov.pk
lFederal Bureau of Statistics, Statistics Division, Government of Pakistan, Basic Education,
Pakistan Integrated Household Survey (PIHS) Round IV: 2001 2002
lJ. Fox, 'How Does Civil Society Thicken? The Political Construction of Social Capital in
Rural Mexico', World Development, 1996.
lA. M. Goetz and J. Gaventa, 'Bringing Citizen Voice and Client Focus into Service Delivery',
Working Paper 138, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 2001.
lP. Heller, 'Moving the State: The Politics and Democratic Decentralization in Kerala, South
Africa, and Porto Alegre', Politics and Society, 2001.
lPedro Jacobi, Challenging Traditional Participation in Brazil: The Goals of Participatory
Budgeting, Woodrow Wilson International Center For Scholars, 1999.
lC. Johnson, 'Decentralization in India: Poverty, Politics, and Panchayati Raj', Working
Paper, Overseas Development Institute, 2003.
lJoint UNDP-Government of Germany Evaluation Working Paper of the UNDP Role in
Decentralization and Local Governance (1999) Decentralization: A sampling of definitions
lShehar Bano Khan, 'Women councilors in local polls', Dawn newspaper, issue 9th August,
2005
lMoses Kiggundu, Civil service reforms: limping into the twenty-first century, 1998.
lC. Madon and S. Sahay, Democracy and Information. The Case of New Local Government
Structures in Bangalore, Information, Communication, and Society, 2000.
lManning et al. (2003) Devolution in Pakistan - preparing for service delivery
improvements, (1) Nick Manning, World Bank (2) Doug Porter - Asian Development, Bank
(3) Jackie Charlton - UK Department for International Development, (4) Musharraf Cyan -
Asian Development Bank, (5) Zahid Hasnain-World Bank (A working paper prepared for
the Forum on Intergovernmental Relations and Service Delivery in Pakistan 27-29 June
2003)
lJames Manor, The Political Economy of Democratic Decentralization, World Bank, 1999.
lR. Mitchinson, 'Devolution in Uganda: An Experiment in Local Service Delivery', Public
Administration and Development, vol. 23.
lNational Reconstruction Bureau (NRB), Government of Pakistan, Devolution Plan 2000,
www.nrb.gov.pk
lNational Reconstruction Bureau (NRB), Government of Pakistan, Local Government
Ordinance 2001, www.nrb.gov.pk
lNational Reconstruction Bureau (NRB), Government of Pakistan, Police Order 2002,
www.nrb.gov.pk
lOperations Evaluation Department, World Bank Group (2002) 2002 Annual Review of
Development Effectiveness (ARDE) - "Achieving Development Outcomes: The Millennium
Challenge”
l'Women aspirants' zeal in LG polls to bolster national development', Pakistan Observer, 1st
August, 2005
lPRSP Secretariat - Finance Division, Government of Pakistan, (June 2005) Poverty
Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), Second Quarter Progress Report for the Year 2004-05
H. Blair, 'Participation and Accountability at the Periphery; Democratic Local Governance
83
Politics of Indian War FilmsSaba Naqvi Bhaumik
The genre of war films has come full circle in India. Between 2000 and 2005,
more war films were released in India than ever before. The unfolding of the peace
process and the defeat of the Hindu nationalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP), in elections in May last year had a profound impact on national cinema. No big
budget war film is currently on the floors in Bollywood (term used for the Mumbai
film industry). Trade analysts now say that Pakistan bashing war films are no longer a
safe proposition for producers. Such films are currently out of favour with film
financers because of the shift in the national mood since the change of environment in
the sub-continent.
In her book 'National Identity in Indian popular Cinema' film historian
Sumita Chakravarty writes: 'Bombay cinema has responded to India's conflicts with
neighbouring states but it has not cashed in on the war genre to the same extent as
Hollywood'. There are good reasons for this. One, India is not as brittle a nation as the
U.S. that has responded to terrorism with hysteria. In spite of the efforts of the
Hindutva brigade to generate nationalist hysterics, India has been able to absorb so
called terrorist strikes with a degree of fortitude. In the US, Rambo is a cult figure who
some commentators say has had a subliminal influence on George W. Bush's foreign
policy. There are no Rambos in India but many Heroes. Indians obviously prefer to
see them singing around trees rather than swinging from them in pursuit of the
enemy ala Sylvester Stallone.
Given the fact that India continues to make the largest number of feature
films in the world, the output of war films is quite small. One reason for this is the
reluctance of Bollywood producers to finance anything but escapist fare. The war
genre requires a gritty realism that Indian film-makers are not comfortable with. How
on earth do you introduce six songs and three comic routines in a battlefield? And it's
not as if Indian directors haven't tried but the end result has been more absurd than
gripping. Frankly, it's just easier to make a romance or comedy with some action
sequences thrown in during the climax.
Some Indian commentators have argued that there is an 'innate secularism'
in the film industry. They cite the huge presence of Muslim actors, directors, writers,
lyricists and choreographers in Bollywood as being an important factor. There is no
doubt that in recent years some individual stars like Shahrukh Khan have publicly
refused to be part of any Pakistan bashing or Muslim bashing project. Yet it cannot be
forgotten that the film industry is there to make money and if there is money to be
made in jingoistic fare, producers would cash in. The Indian film industry is as secular
as money.
The past decade in particular is significant as it successfully explodes the
'secular' myth. The Mumbai film industry produced several films during this era that
openly vilified Muslim and Pakistani characters. These films marked a significant
break from the earlier genre of war films produced in the 1960s and 1970s. That era
saw the release of classics such as Haqeeqat and Hum Dono that carried a message of
peace even though they were gritty depictions of military conflict. But the films of the
last decade sprung from the hyper-jingoistic Hindu-centric ideology of Hindutva.
Some of these films may not actually have been about war but they were about India's
engagement with Pakistan. In the age of some of the worst communal riots in India, it
is no coincidence that Muslim characters were usually traitors and villains in these
films. The juxtaposition of Muslim-terrorist-Pakistanis was crudely done. Since
popular culture is now accepted as an indicator of public mood and Hindi cinema
considered the most powerful vehicle of mass media in India, it is worth
deconstructing some of these films and analysing their success or failure in recent
years.
The mother of war films is undoubtedly Gadar (chaos) released in 2001 soon
after the Kargil war. This was a film that quickly went down in the record books as
one of the biggest hits ever delivered by the Mumbai film industry. The national
mood at the time of its release certainly had a role to play in its success Gadar played
on the subliminal communal emotions and the heightened climate of hate post-Kargil.
This film did not even put up a façade of secularism or tolerance. It did not hesitate to
depict every Muslim character, Indian and Pakistani, as fundamentally flawed. It is no
coincidence that such a film broke all records at a time when the BJP's popularity was
at its height. The Hindu right's ideology was being blatantly propagated, the Kargil
war had taken place a year ago, the media was being encouraged to play up every
terrorist strike, and India-Pakistan relations were completely frozen.
Enter the Sikh hero played by actor Sunny Deol (veteran actor Dharmendra's
son) in Gadar. The tone for the film is set in the opening sequences of the Partition. A
train-load of corpses arrives from Pakistan. On the train it is written in blood:
'Hinduon, hamse kaatna sikho (Hindus learn to kill from us)'. Once it is established
that Muslims are butchers, the plot moves on. A Muslim girl is left behind as her
family flees to Pakistan. The Sikh truck driver protects her, they fall in love, marry,
settle in a village in India's Punjab and have a son. Then some years later the girl gets
news of her family in Pakistan and goes for a visit. Her parents imprison her and try
to get her remarried.
The hero then goes on a mission to destroy the very state of Pakistan. Not
only does he single-handedly take on all Pakistanis--who are all depicted as
caricatures of bearded mullahs, our hero also delivers long lectures on the
fundamental superiority of 'Hindu' India. 'You Pakistanis would have had nothing if
Gandhiji had not insisted that we release your gold reserves,' he thunders at a
thousand Pakistanis who seem unable to stop the rampage of one man. And when the
hero declares: 'Pakistan, Hindustan tera baap hai (Oh Pakistan, India is your father)'
there were catcalls and whistles in cinema halls across India. Every Muslim and
Pakistani character in the film is depicted as evil and treacherous. The sole exception
85 86
Meanwhile, the big message from the film industry last year was that it is
peace not war that is striking a chord with the Indian audience. The last offering from
Bollywood touching the India-Pakistan theme was Veer-Zaara that turned out to be
one of the biggest commercial hits of 2004-2005. Briefly, the plot is about Veer
Pratap Singh, an Indian army man who falls madly in love with Pakistani Zaara Hayat
Khan. Naturally, the cross-border romance is jinxed. It takes 22 years, and 10 songs
for the now middle-aged Veer and Zaara to be united.
What is noteworthy about the film is the depiction of the Pakistani
characters. Director Yash Chopra has steadfastly refused to succumb to the
temptation of stereotyping Pakistanis as the evil 'other'. Embedded in the film are
symbols about the essential unity of people on both sides of the border. At its heart
Veer-Zaara is a film about the unity of the Punjab. And the film would not have been
possible without the commitment of Shahrukh Khan, clearly the biggest star in India
today, and Yash Chopra, the doyen of Bollywood and the grandfather of treacle-sweet
romance. Shahrukh has said in several interviews that he would never be part of a
Pakistan-bashing film. 'We have so many problems in India. Why go bashing someone
else. Inshallah, I want to make films that generate positive emotions -- films that my
children can see when they are older.'
This consciousness was visible in Shahrukh's home production, Main Hoon
Na, another hit film released earlier this year in which he plays Major Ram who lands
up in a college campus to subvert the plans of a band of terrorists. In an unusual twist
the leader of the terrorists is a Hindu named Raghavan whose main aim is to sabotage
Operation Milap, a step of friendship between India-Pakistan, which involves the
exchange of prisoners. Raghavan is shown as an ex-military man who is thrown out of
the Indian army because he massacres innocent Pakistani villagers who stray across
the border.
Yash Chopra, who has lived through the Partition, recently said in an
interview to Outlook magazine: 'There can be no feasible relationship between the two
countries except friendship. We are basically one people. And though cinema cannot
solve political problems it can create a favourable atmosphere.' In 1961 Chopra had
made Dharamputra about a Muslim child raised in a Hindu home. After four decades
he delivered Veer-Zaara, at a time when people in both nations are inclined towards
peace. Film-makers like Yash Chopra are not driven by the need to bring about a
social change but by the very reasonable goal of making lots of money. He remains
one of the top producer-directors in India because of an uncanny knack for sensing
the public mood. With Veer-Zaara he has hit the bulls-eye and also shown other film-
makers that it is eminently possible to make a film about Pakistanis without depicting
them as evil incarnate. Moreover, unlike other peacenik films, there is no effort in
Veer-Zaara to assert any moral superiority of the Indians.
The journey from Gadar to Veer-Zaara is significant. Has India rediscovered
its secular soul in a span of a few years? After a dramatic rise, the forces of Hindutva
are now clearly in decline. Hate, bigotry and war are currently out of fashion. Yet
given the sub-continent's troubled history, the cycle of hate can always be restarted.
88
is the heroine, but then she soon learns to hate Pakistan and love India.
A well-known Indian psychologist has described commercial Bollywood
cinema as 'a collective fantasy' as opposed to an individual fantasy. In a paper titled
'The Ties That Bind', psychologist Sudhir Kakar writes: 'Cinema is a prism that
reflects dominant psychological concerns, especially the hidden unconscious concerns
of millions. Thus I approach Hindi cinema as a collective fantasy, a group daydream
in which the balance between imagination and reality, the inter-mixture of fantasy
and experience, is complex. Popular films address the hidden wishes of a vast number
of people.' In the case of Gadar, the film crudely plays on subliminal communal
stereotypes perpetuated by propagandists of the Hindu right.
After the 2001 success of Gadar, more war films were released in the
following three years than in the entire history of Bombay cinema. The same year saw
the release of Maan Tujhe Salaam (Mother I salute thee) also starring Sunny Deol.
The unabashed Pakistan bashing action film was a flop. In 2003 Hero was released by
the producers of Gadar. Predictably about Pakistan-backed terrorism, the film did
average business as an action flick. Post Gadar, several B-grade production houses
also jumped into the fray making tacky films in which kohl eyed atankwadis
(terrorists) wearing patently false beards always get their comeuppance at the hand of
the Indian. Most such films sank without a trace. But the real shock message was
delivered when the very expensively mounted LOC, with a mile long star cast, did not
even get a decent opening in 2004. The result was that many war films were quickly
shelved by the formula obsessed industry.
The last ditch effort by the Gadar team was Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan
Sathiyon (Now the nation is in your hands, brothers) released in December 2004. The
multi-starreer included the likes of Amitabh Bachchan. Yet it flopped. There is
however an interesting anecdote attached to the film. One of its stars, Akshay Kumar,
threatened to walk out of the film if he was made to mouth strong anti-Pakistan
dialogues. He said publicly: 'I have fans in Pakistan. Why should I incite hatred
against them.' Yet given the response to the film, the audience was clearly bored with
Pakistan-bashing. While nationalism can never really go out of fashion, unbridled
jingoism that targets the 'other' appears to have become passé about a year ago.
The only war film to do average business after the change of regime in New
Delhi last year was Lakshya (Goal). Directed by Farhan Akhtar, the son of script-
writer and lyricist Javed Akhtar, the film is about war but not about the enemy. The
beautifully framed film shot in Ladakh is about the transformation of a young boy
who joins the army on a whim. As war breaks out the care-free youth becomes a
motivated man. The film seems more inspired by Hollywood hits about military
conflict marking the rite of passage from boyhood to manhood. The boy does fight
Pakistani soldiers but the enemy is never denigrated. This film is not about the good
Indians versus the bad Pakistanis. The worst that can be said about the film that did
average business in urban multiplexes is that it did not have the big emotions that are
the necessary ingredients of a successful Bollywood potboiler. It earned a review in
Time magazine but did not really click in the Indian hinterland.
87
As India travelled full circle with Hindu nationalism, other films on war and conflict
were also released. One of the most significant was Border, a paean to the Indian
military that did reasonable business in the late 1990s. But when the same director
returned with the much-hyped LOC a year ago, the mega-starrer sank without a trace.
Hurling abuse at the neighbour is no longer evoking applause; it is often being met
with repulsion.
Indeed the war films that are even today remembered as classics were made
in the 1960s. The most significant is Haqeeqat (Reality) made in 1964, directed by
Chetan Anand with a moving performance by Balraj Sahni, both left leaning and
socially conscious individuals. Haqeeqat explains why India was so unprepared for the
border attack by China in 1962 and why it lost the war. Nehruvian ideals of non-
alignment and pacifism are extolled in the film. Dedicated to Pandit Nehru, the film
depicts the value of humanism and sacrifice in the midst of war. The plot is largely
about a small platoon of Indian soldiers presumed dead but rescued by Kashmiri
gypsies and by Captain Bahadur Singh (a young Dharmendra) and his girlfriend. The
two die keeping the Chinese at bay though their comrades are saved.
The film also deals with political issues, such as the split in the Communist
Party of India, between the Beijing and Moscow aligned groups, after the Chinese
aggression. A soldier is shown spearing Mao's Little Red Book. The commanding
officer (Sahni) denounces the Chinese to documentary footage of Chou En-Lai landing
in Delhi and being given a guard of honour. A beautiful song written by poet Kaifi
Azmi plays over documentary footage of Pandit Nehru addressing troops on the
Republic Day parade, when we honour the acceptance of the Indian Constitution
three years after independence. The words of the song are remembered by most
Indians: 'kar chalen hum fida jaan-o-tan saathiyon/ ab tumhare hawale watan
saathiyon (Now that I have sacrificed my life, brother/ the nation is in your hands,
brothers)'.
Haqeeqat evokes strong nationalistic sentiment among Indians without
inciting hatred for the enemy. It has the innocence and idealism of the Nehruvian era
when it would have been difficult to conceive that a hate-filled film like Gadar could
even be made. Every film historian agrees that Haqeeqat remains the defining war
classic produced by the Hindi film industry.
War is also the stage for another classic from the 1960s, Hum Dono (Two of
Us) made in 1961 starring the evergreen Dev Anand in a double role. The war this
time is the World War II when India as a British colony had to fight with the allies.
Issues of colonialism are not really explored in the film but war is the catalyst for
creating moral and spiritual crisis. War becomes an occasion for performing one's
duty and dharma and in that sense it is about the transformation of a young man. But
Hum Dono is also a classic tale of love in the times of war. The two women cast
opposite the two Dev Anands sing bhajans (devotional songs) while tearfully waiting
for the men to return. It helps that one of these bhajans remains a timeless classic and
a symbol of Hindu-Muslim fusion in popular cinema. Written by Sahir Ludhianvi and
put to music by Jaidev the song is beautifully rendered by Lata Mangeshkar: 'Allah
tero naam/ Ishwar tero naam' (Allah, in your name/ Ishwar, in your name) Indeed
today many remember Hum Dono for its beautiful tunes and lyrics instead of the war
theme.
While Hum Dono remains a loved film even today, Manoj Kumar's Upkar
(Good Deed) made in 1967 is more significant in its treatment of war and the soldier.
Kumar cast himself as Bharat, the good Indian versus the bad westernised brother.
Bharat is a farmer who surrenders all his property to join the army. The setting is the
1965 war with Pakistan but our hero is not under so much threat from the Pakistanis
but from the villainous Indians who follow him to the battlefield to wreak revenge. It
is a composite character named Malang Baba, drawn from the tradition of Bhakti-Sufi
saints, who saves him. Still, there is a great deal of nationalistic fervour in the film -- it
creates the Jai Jawan Jai Kisan (hail the soldier/hail the farmer) slogan. The film's
nationalism is encapsulated in its theme song that remains popular today 'mere desh
ki dharti sona ugle (the earth of my motherland produces gold).
Another film often described as a war classic is Saat Hindustani or Seven
Indians (1969). It is also important in cinema history for being one of the first films in
which Amitabh Bachchan got a significant role. The stage is the Goa liberation
struggle against the Portuguese. Six men from different parts of India join Maria, a
native of Goa to take on the Portuguese colonisers. In the process they forget their
regional and religious differences and find unity in the new nationalistic credo. Saat
Hindustani has been described as a non-violent variation of Hollywood's Dirty Dozen
(1967). Yet it is a very Indian saga, once again a film made by the idealist K.A. Abbas
with lyrics by Kaifi Azmi. There is an innocence in this film whose makers clearly
believe that they must impart some idealism to their work. The moral message is that
Indians must overcome differences of language, region, caste and religion in order to
build the nation.
It is no coincidence that all the films described as war classics were made in
the 1960s. In fact in 1973 came Zanjeer, the first film to cast Amitabh Bachchan as the
angry young man, which changed the language and idiom of mainstream cinema. As
more and more Indians moved from villages to urban slums, the outsider as the angry
young man was born. In subsequent films like Deewar, Muqaddar ka Siqandar, Amar
Akbar Anthony, the character of Bachchan as the angry young man was more finely
honed. He fought his lonely battles against an unjust society, often becoming a
vigilante for justice or else the head of the underworld, the ultimate tough guy. The
old morality and idealism of the 1950s and 1960s were forgotten. Because society
would not give this man his due he would snatch it.
After the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, the war genre soon became passé for
an Indian audience. But there was a war of sorts on celluloid -- it was urban warfare.
The chaos of booming cities, crowded slums was the stage for the Bachchan starrers.
Village life was now rarely depicted except perhaps for a song sequence or a visit to
the all-suffering mother. The battleground was the new emerging urban India. The
exception perhaps is Sholay (1975), Bollywood's most popular film to date, patterned
on a curry western. But the two principal protagonists of the film played by Bachchan
89 90
good intentions. But in his anxiety to show that an Indian Muslim police officer can be
more patriotic than his Hindu counter-part, he loses the plot as far as the complexities
of Kashmir are concerned. Both Sarfarosh and Mission Kashmir simplify issuesthe
baddies are always from 'kareeb ka mulk' (neighbouring country) who have misled
some Indians.
The big movie moguls also responded to the Hindutva era by making many
feel-good 'model Hindu' family dramas. Since the escapist Hindi film industry prefers
to avoid tricky issues, an alternate genre was developed to extol nationalism and
India. This was done through the home-coming of the non-resident Indian (NRI).
Two of the biggest block-busters of the 1990s were Pardes (Foreign lands) and
Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (The big-hearted shall take the Bride), both Shahrukh
Khan starrers about an NRI rediscovering the many splendours of India.
Indeed it is worth listing some of the hit films of the 1990s to drive home the
point about how apolitical the film industry has become -- Kabhi Khushi Khabhi
Gham (Sometimes happy Sometimes sad), a Bachchah-Shahrukh starrer about a
family saga that takes place in both India and the United Kingdom; Devdas, a period
tragedy based on a Bengali novel where the hero Shahrukh literally drinks himself to
death. The biggest hit ever delivered by Salman Khan is Hum Aapke Hain Kaun (Who
am I to you), a song and dance drama about a family wedding. Similarly Aamir Khan's
biggest commercial and artistic success has been Lagaan, (the Tax) a period film
about a group of villagers who learn the game of cricket and defeat their colonial
British masters. An hour long cricket match is the highlight of the film.
Yet in spite of the overall escapist nature of the Indian film industry, issues of
nationhood do get reflected in popular cinema. And the state of relations between
India and Pakistan inevitably impacts mainstream cinema. If the mood is hostile,
films propagating war and denigrating Muslims get made. If the national mood
changes to one of peace, and if people to people contact increases, such films fail to
find receptive audiences and are not produced (current scenario).
(Saba Naqvi Bhaumik is the Bureau Chief of Outlook, one of India's leading weekly
newsmagazines. She has written extensively on the rise of Hindu nationalism,
national politics, and issues of caste and religion in the Hindi heartland).
Bibliographyl
Cinema', India International Centre Quarterly, Special Issue, vol. 8, Number 1, March
1980.
lAshis Nandy, 'The Popular Hindi Film: Ideology and First Principles', Indian Popular
Cinema, Myth Meaning and Metaphor, IIC quarterly 1980.
lSumita S. Chakravarty, National Identity in Indian Popular Cinema, (Oxford University
Press, 1998).
lAshis Nandy, The Secret Politics of our Desires: Innocence, Culpability and Indian
Popular Cinema, (Oxford University Press, 1998).
lFareeduddin Kazmi, How Angry is the Angry Young Man? Published in The Secret Politics
Sudhir Kakar, 'The Ties that Bind: Family Relationships in the Mythology of Hindi
92
and Dharmendra are big city crooks who land in a village to hunt down a dacoit.
The urban jungle and gang wars would be the stuff of Bollywood right though
the 1980s as Bachchan became a colossus who single-handedly insured a film's
success. The new stars like Shahrukh Khan, Salman Khan and Aamir Khan began to
emerge in the 1990s with candy-floss romances devoid of any social context that
appealed to a newly prosperous urban audience after the opening up of the Indian
economy. But this was also the decade when the Babri mosque would be demolished
on December 6, 1992, culminating in horrific communal riots in Mumbai and other
parts of India. The rise of the BJP also placed its own pressures on the film industry.
The pandora's box of caste opened by the release of the Mandal Commission report
and the subsequent rise of low caste politicians and parties was too complex an issue
for the black and white reality depicted in commercial Hindi films.
Bollywood responded to the rise of Hindu nationalism in its own way. There
were some films about the Mumbai riots of 1993. The most popular at the box-office
was Krantiveer (Revolutionary Brother) released the next year in 1994, not a
particularly well made film that was elevated to cult level by the riveting performance
of actor Nana Patekar. The setting is the riots and Nana basically delivers a long and
moving sermon blaming politicians for creating boundaries that lead to so much
bloodshed. I recall audiences standing and clapping at the film's climax. Nana Patekar
deservedly picked up the best actor award for his performance.
Award winning director Mani Ratnam released Bombay in 1995, two years
after the riots. Although technically flawless, the film's treatment of communalism
was controversial. A Muslim girl falls in love with a Hindu, marries him and they
move to Bombay. Then the riots take place and their twin sons are lost. The film was
attacked by some critics for misrepresenting facts to blame Muslims for starting the
riots. (it is a recorded fact that Muslims were systematically targeted by the Shiv
Sena). There was further controversy when Mani Ratnam released the film in
Bombay only after getting a 'clearance' from Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray. Even
more problematic was the fact that at a time when Hindu communalism was on the
rise the film equated the 'voice of reason' with the majority community.
Overtly all such films lay claim to spreading the message of communal
harmony. But often it is the more slickly made films aiming to be consciously secular
that have been problematic in recent years. Take the 1999 release Sarfarosh. On the
surface it is a finely crafted film made by a young director with Amir Khan turning in a
memorable performance as Assistant Commissioner of Police Ajay Singh Rathod who
is fighting domestic terrorism. His most reliable cop is a Muslim who is tormented by
the fact that his patriotism is often questioned. While the Indian Muslim dilemma is
sensitively handled, the villain turns out to be a Pakistani Urdu poet and ghazal singer
played by the award winning actor Naseeruddin Shah. In presenting all Pakistanis as
uniformly bad, the film unfortunately attacks the kind of individual who has become a
symbol of people-to-people contact between the two nations.
Director Vidhu Vinod Chopra also made Mission Kashmir (2000) with all
91
of our Desires, (OUP, 1998).
lAshish Rajadhyaksha and Paul Willemen, Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema, (Oxford
University Press, 1995).
lNamrata Joshi, 'Love Hurts Love Bites: Veer-Zaara and Love in the times of Indo-Pak
Amity', Outlook, December 6, 2004.
Indian Punjab: Social Regulation of Rice Production
Rupinder Kaur
IntroductionChina and India produce about 55 per cent of the total crop. In 1999-2000, nearly 45
million hectares of gross cropped area (GCA) in India was under rice cultivation. This
constitutes more than one-fourth of the total GCA and 36.5 per cent of the GCA under
food-grains. The estimated production of rice in 1999-2000 was around 90 million
tonnes. The area under rice cultivation in India is nearly 29 per cent of the total area
under rice in the world. However, due to its lower yield per hectare, India's share in
world production is around 22 per cent. There has been a sizeable increase in the
proportion of the cultivated area under rice in Punjab during the last three decades --
from little over 6 per cent in 1960s to over 31 per cent in the 1990s.
Rice production in India has increased at the rate of 2.73 per cent per annum
since the early 1950s, which is a little higher than population growth. During the same
period, output in Punjab has been increasing at a much higher rate of around 12 per
cent per annum. A large part of this expansion in the state is due to area increase, but
contribution of yield growth is also substantial; nearly 4 per cent per annum, highest
among the states. However, in the 1990s yields were almost stagnant. With a low
consumption of just 10 Kg per head per annum the state has the largest surplus over
consumption and contributes nearly 40 per cent to the central procurement of rice for
Public Distribution System.
The focus of this paper is on social regulation of production relations in
Indian Punjab where rice production has increased very rapidly during the last three
decades. The sources of data include both primary survey of rice processing units
from Punjab and secondary information available on the subject. Both quantitative
and qualitative information (for the period 2001-02) has been collected from 50
processing units in year 2002-03. This paper also draws upon conversations with
people associated with rice cultivation, processing and trade and with some of the
officials of the government agencies engaged in food-grains trade, processing, storage
and distribution to extract information about the actual working of the system.
Farmers' leaders were also contacted to get information about the working of the
grain markets. Based on these facts, this paper proposes a system of social regulation
in rice cultivation and processing in Punjab.
Conditions of Production and Market AccessIn Punjab, as in other parts of India, land distribution is unequal. However, due to the
higher average size of operational holdings (3.61 hectares in 1990-91 compared to 1.55
for India as a whole) nearly three-quarters of Punjab's farmers cultivate more than 1
93 94
tonnes in 1970-71 to 13 million tonnes in 1999-2000. Rice processing being a weight
losing industry, its location is often determined by the location of paddy production.
Thus it is reasonable to expect that along with fast increase in paddy production the
number of rice mills would also increase rapidly. However, official data about the
number of rice mills has not been published since the early 1960s as rice is classified
under the category 'all food products'. Information compiled from the Directorate of
Industries, Punjab for some years since 1991 shows a steady growth in the number of
rice mills during the period. From 1562 rice mills in 1991 the number has increased to
2130 (as on 31 March 2002) in Punjab, an increase of 36 per cent. In fact, the growth
is higher since the mid-1990s. Comparing the two periods -- 1991-1995 and 1995-
2002 -- the simple average annual growth of 3.05 per cent in the number of mills in
the latter period is higher than the 1.75 per cent in the earlier period.
Trade liberalization measures, including deregulation of inter-state
movement of food grains, abolition of stock holding limit, removal of restrictions on
exports of non-basmati rice and the abolition of minimum export price in case of
basmati rice introduced in the rice sector may be one of the reasons. Along with
permission to export non-basmati rice, high international rice prices, during 1995-98
period, also contributed to this growth. However, earning of super profits by mill
owners in Punjab by manipulating the elaborate system of state regulation of custom
milling to their best advantage using fraudulent practices, seems to be the most
important reason behind growth.
The employers' associations play an important role in fixing of (piece rate)
wages and other contractual terms with workers and transportation charges with the
association of transporters. However, it is widely believed that they are most active in
lobbying for benefits from the state and in putting the system in place to evade rules.
These associations work at three different levels; central, state and district/local level.
Government agencies occupy an important position in the commodity chain (as
purchasers of paddy from farmers and of levy rice from mills, as suppliers of rice to
exporters, and distributors of rice through the Public Distribution System to
consumers) especially in the state of Punjab. Networking with the government brings
significant gains to the members of these associations.
Associations are also active in lobbying on labour related issues: for example,
the need to have greater flexibility in the labour market, easier retrenching,
withdrawal of rice milling industry from the Employees Provident Fund scheme,
exemption from Employees' State Insurance Scheme in the case of casual workers
(e.g., see Rice India, January 1998, October 2001). They have also lobbied on matters
related to the official specifications of rice fixed by the Food Corporation of India
(FCI). A major share of the paddy in Punjab is purchased by the state agencies, which
get it custom milled from the private rice mills. Networking and lobbying thus
becomes crucial at the state and the district level to scuttle rules related to custom
milling compliance which raises costs. At each stage, starting from the allotment of a
mill to a particular agency, to the delivery of rice and receipt of payment, mill owners
bribe the staff of the agencies and in return invariably deliver to the FCI rice of more
inferior quality than specified. The codification of bribe rates for each stage in the
process is an important task performed by these associations.
96
hectare of land. The proportion of farmers cultivating more than 4 hectares is around
30 per cent. Farmers with less than one hectare land cultivate only 4 per cent of the
land area and nearly two-thirds is farmed by those operating above 4 hectares.
Moreover, 96 per cent of the gross cropped area is irrigated. The level of
mechanisation of agriculture is high in the state. With a little over 1 million
operational holdings, there are nearly 0.9 million tube-wells and about 0.4 million
tractors.
Interestingly, inequality in holding size is marked by caste: cultivators from
all size classes largely belong to the one caste, jats. However, nearly half the labour in
crop production in the state is hired. In rice cultivation especially, migrant labour
from Eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which is experienced in rice cultivation, plays
an important role. In fact, the continuous flow of migrant labour in the years of rapid
agricultural growth of the 1970s and early 1980s kept wages in check, thus helping the
rich farmers in their accumulation of agrarian wealth. A study shows that the annual
income of the average cultivator in Punjab has risen from approximately two times to
four times that of casual agricultural labourer between 1970-71 to 1987-88 .
Another important factor contributing to the growth of rice cultivation in the
state is the completion in 1975-76 of rural electrification. This was an effective pre-
condition for the installation of tubewells. Diesel engine tube wells are costlier than
electric motors as prime-movers. Tube wells, in turn, are a necessity for paddy
cultivation in the state, which receives scanty rainfall. Decline in agricultural
electricity charges relative to the average electricity charges from almost equal in
1980-81 to just around 16 per cent of the latter in 1990-91 in the state and since 1997-198 provision of free electricity for tube-wells has further boosted rice cultivation .
More or less assured market for the crop is another incentive for rice
production. Punjab, a relatively small state in the Indian Union with little over 12,000
villages, is well provided with market infrastructure having 663 regular market sites
(Rangi and Sidhu, 1998). In addition, the Punjab Marketing Board establishes
temporary procurement (purchase) centres during the peak marketing season. In
2002, the total number of market places/purchase centres established for paddy 2procurement was 1661. Government procurement agencies operate in these market
places and temporary procurement centres. No farmer needs to travel more than 10
km to sell paddy. Moreover, all-weather metalled roads connect all the villages in the
state.
Since 1973-74, uniform support/procurement prices for paddy have been
announced for the country as a whole, abandoning the earlier practice of fixing
separate prices in each state on the basis of their average farm harvest prices during
peak marketing months. Under that earlier system, prices in each state had reflected
the demand and supply conditions in each state thus benefiting the producers in
deficit states. With the introduction of the practice of uniform support/procurement
prices the highest benefits accrue to the producers of surplus states like Punjab.
Rice Processing, Trade Associations and Food BureaucracyThe production of paddy in Punjab increased ten-fold since 1970-71; from 1.3 million
95
Corruption in such dealings is not a new phenomenon. Nevertheless, its scale
has increased considerably. Recent unearthing of scandals in the industry amounting
When work is available, each worker earn between Rs. 80 and 90 in a typical
working day of 10 to 12 hours. According to the Minimum Wages Act, which is
applicable to casual labour, piece rate payments should be decided in such a way that
a worker should be able to earn at least the minimum wage, presently Rs. 85, with 8
hours of work. Workers are entitled to Provident Fund but do not get this benefit.
(Actually, even those workers employed for a full season are denied this facility
because P.F. account in the bank becomes a proof of employment, which mill owners
try to avoid). These migrant workers work for 6 to 8 months in rice processing units
and after meeting expenses of food etc., each save around Rs. 8 to 9,000. Mill owners
provide first aid in case of small injuries or medical aid for the first few days in the
event of a serious accident. No other protection is available.
Cultural ties among migrant workers results in a strong solidarity and they
help each other, especially in an emergency. But this solidarity does not empower
them for collective bargaining. Lower wages, extreme poverty and deteriorating job
opportunities in their native places makes them wary of any action that might
jeopardize their employment. Political parties are also not interested in helping these
temporary migrants, who are not 'voters'. Labour department officials also find it
more 'lucrative' to align with (local) employers rather than supporting 'outsiders'. In
fact, this availability of migratory labour in abundance increases the bargaining power
of employers' vis-à-vis local labour.
Advocates of flexibilisation of labour, in academia and among policy makers,
in India, are arguing for legalizing this labour flexibility under the pretext of labour
reforms. It is claimed that flexibilisation of labour will lead to economic growth and
creation of more jobs. Labour rigidity in terms of strong unions and protective labour
legislation is blamed for poor economic performance. A Government of India
document on medium term export strategy insists that to give a boost to exports
through foreign investment infusion, labour policies have to be made more flexible. In
fact, world over, the ideology of neo-liberalism, in its drive towards globalisation, has
portrayed its policy of free market as one where capital is no longer restrained by
government. It has sought to free capital from any social and public restraints, while
at the same time removing social protection for labour rights. In the ongoing struggle
between capital and labour, for the division of social product, latter is losing ground to
the former.
ConclusionIt emerges from the above analysis that rich Punjabi farmers have made immense
gains in rice cultivation. Guided by the objective of self-sufficiency in foodgrains, state
support has played an important role in the fast expansion of rice cultivation in
Punjab since the early 1970s. Demand for rice has very little impact on the price of
paddy. The Minimum Support Price (MSP) is fixed through bargaining between
farmers lobbies (supported by the governments of rice-surplus states) and the Central
Government. At times, this process is conducted with little regard for the
recommendations of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP).
Relatively weak coalition governments in the Centre since 1996 have been more
amenable to the pressure for high prices exerted by surplus states. Farmers in Punjab
normally sell paddy at the official MSP and around 40 per cent of the total rice
97 98
(Rupinder Kaur is an Economist, National Council of Applied Economic Research
(NCAER), New Delhi. The responsibility for opinions expressed in the paper rests
solely with the author. The author is extremely grateful to Dr. Barbara Harriss-
White for her very useful comments on an earlier version of the paper).
End Notes1. Since October 2002, some minimal fixed electricity charges have been re-introduced. But
farmers' organizations are resisting this change.2. These include Punjab Food and Supplies Department, Markfed (Punjab State Co-operative
Supply & Marketing Federation), Punsup (Punjab State Civil Supplies Corporation Ltd.),
Punjab State Warehousing Corporation, Punjab Agro Industries Corporation and Food
Corporation of India (FCI).3. See for example Punjabi Tribune, 17 January, 5 February, and 15 August 2003.4. Out of the 2,130 rice mills in Punjab in the year 2002 only 10 were in the co-operative
sector, rest all private.5. There were around 40 basmati rice processing mills in Punjab.
BibliographylG. S. Bhalla and Gurmail Singh, Indian Agriculture, Four Decades of Development, (New
Delhi: Sage Publication, 2001).
lGovt. of India, (1998) Agricultural Statistics at Glance, New Delhi.
lGovt. of Punjab, Statistical Abstract of Punjab, Chandigarh, for the years 1984,1999, 2000
and 2002.
lBarbara Harriss-White, India Working: Essays on Society and Economy, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003).
lR. Munck, Globalisation and Labour; the new 'Great Transformation', (London: Zed
books Ltd, 2002).
lM. Raghavan, 'Some aspects of growth and distribution of rice in India', Social Scientist,
27(5&6), May-June, 1999, pp.62-85.
lP.S. Rangi and M. S. Sidhu, 'Role of Punjab Mandi Board in Marketing Development',
Indian Journal of Agricultural Marketing,12 (3), 1998, pp.1-20.
lA. J. Singh (et.al.), 'A Study into the Economics of farming in the Punjab', Department of
Economics and Sociology, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, 1993.
lA. J. Singh, 'Capital formation in Indian Agriculture with Special Reference to Punjab',
Paper presented in a seminar on Agricultural Policies and Perspectives in the Northwestern
Region of India, held at the Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, 1993.
lH. Singh, Green Revolutions Reconsidered: The Rural World of Contemporary Punjab,
New Delhi: OUP, 2001).
lK. Singh and S. Kalra, 'Rice Production in Punjab: Systems, Varietal Diversity, Growth and
Sustainability', Economic and Political Weekly, 2002 vol.XXXVII, No. 30. pp.3139-3148.
100
procured by the FCI is from the state. Experience of the last couple of years shows that
market prices of paddy in the states where government purchases are negligible are
10-20 per cent lower than the MSP.
The second group, which has gained a great deal, is rice mill owners. The
government, being an important player in the rice chain, is actively lobbied at all
levels by trade associations to secure (undue) advantages. A large part of the paddy,
purchased by government agencies, is custom milled by the private mills. The private
sector rice mills, in collaboration with the food bureaucracy and politicians, are
defrauding the public distribution system.
Workers gain the least in the industry. A large majority of them are employed
in the rice mills processing for the government agencies. A few among them get PF
entitlements but no other service benefits. In fact, some are even denied minimum
wages. Weak bargaining position and vulnerability of the workers restrain them from
forming unions. Casual workers employed through contractors earn daily minimum
wages in 10-12 hours work. But most of these estimated 143 thousand workers
employed in the sector, despite all odds, are able to earn the income, which brings
them out of extreme poverty. This flexible supply of contractual labour absolves the
mill owners from any liability, while they exert strong control over labour.
Lower wages and refusal to give workers' their entitlements are not the result
of competitive pressures because most mill owners in Punjab earn high profits.
Labour is already flexible, long before the introduction of labour reforms permitting
employers to adjust the numbers as per their requirements.
In the mid-1960s, the Food Corporation of India was created to protect the
interests of both farmers and consumers. In a situation of persistent food shortages
and lack of competitive markets private foodgrains traders were fleecing the small
farmers and consumers by lowering the prices during the harvest time and raising
them in the post-harvest period. Food security was another issue. These issues are
important even today. A vast majority of Indian farmers are poor, unable to withhold
supplies, and rural markets in most areas are still manipulated. Widespread poverty
also made it imperative for the state to protect the consumers. Though better
monsoons during the decade of 1990s (along with poverty of the consumers) has
resulted in huge food stocks yet the drastic fall in foodgrains out put last year from
212 million tonnes in 2001-02 to 183 million tonnes in 2002-03 is a reminder that
food security is still a vital issue. However, the unholy alliance of food bureaucracy
with mill owners is swindling the public money. Losses incurred by the government
agencies are discrediting the public distribution system and strengthening the hands
of those favouring privatisation of food-grain trade.
Does the complete privatisation of foodgrains trade a solution? What would
be its implications in terms of distributional consequences? Is it possible to work out
some institutional mechanism to improve the efficiency of public sector agencies?
These are issues not yet settled and belief that market is panacea of all ills is
unfounded.
99
EU-India Relations at the WTOShazia Aziz
IntroductionSummit level talks between the European Union (EU) and India have taken place
every year since 2000 and this Summit is preceded by the EU-India Business Summit.
These developments have given a new impetus to the EU-India relations, which had
first begun in 1963 when India set up diplomatic relations with the then European
Economic Community (EEC).
There are several reasons for EU's interest in India. First, the EU recognises
India's growing economic potential and status not only at the regional but also at the
global level, especially it's influence on WTO issues and at the UN. This is by far the
most important factor which has turned the European Union's attention towards
India. Second, the EU is interested in making its presence felt in South Asia in general
and in India, in particular, and also to some extent with Pakistan, Bangladesh and 1Myanmar . Third, India has a vibrant and growing middle class whose potential the
EU wants to tap through trade. The officials realise that the EU-India trade has not 2exploited its full potential; India ranks as EU's 14th trading partner .
India too can no longer ignore the fact that the EU is today not only the
world's largest exporter of goods but also the second largest importer. EU is India's
biggest trade partner and also its biggest source of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).
India also wanted to engage with the EU to make a point to Washington about India's
ideas of a multipolar world, where India would be one of the strong poles. The need
and will for cooperation is mutual and it was not very difficult at their first Summit for
them to come up with several important and relevant areas where they could
cooperate.
On the 20th of June, 2000 began a new era in EU-India relations. For the
first time an EU-India Summit was held in Lisbon. The European Union has summit
level discussions only with five other countries, China, USA, Russia, Canada and
Japan. The Indians felt that the Europeans were finally recognising the growing power
and status of India. They felt even more elated when the EU proposed to upgrade
their relations to a 'strategic partnership' at the 5th EU-India Summit. The up-
gradation of the relationship to Strategic Partnership is a milestone in the history of
India-EU relations. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, describing India and EU
natural partners, said, 'in recognition of India 's growing stature and influence, the
European Union has proposed a strategic partnership with India. We warmly 3welcome the development .'
101 102
dumping measures and subsidies.
Anti-dumping measures and subsidiesAnti dumping laws, in existence since 1904, are the biggest irritant among trading
countries. These measures are the legal forms of protectionism and the EU as well as 6India use or misuse them to the fullest extent. Prusa , uses an analogy of
'Dumping=Disease' and 'Anti-dumping= Medicine'. Trading partners feel attacked by
this disease 'dumping' and their most trusted medicine 'anti-dumping measures' are
used to fight it. But of course as stressed by Prusa, this analogy cannot justify the
whole truth. While dumping does occur as international trade widens and opens up,
most of the anti-dumping measures are not about measures against 'dumping' but
measures to protect domestic industry from external competition.
When countries join the WTO they are expected to compromise on the
reduction of tariffs. This reduction of tariffs brings the domestic industry to face
international competition and so as a 'legal' protective mechanism, countries use anti-
dumping measures to ward off unwanted competition. They recognise that these tariff
concessions can be easily undone through these fabulously legal mechanisms.
India and the EU are always at loggerheads at the WTO concerning these 7measures. The EU has initiated 26 anti-dumping cases against India and it accuses
India of misusing the anti-dumping laws, of not following the correct procedure while
hearing anti-Dumping allegations from the exporters in the domestic industry and of
not giving enough evidence to the European companies for them to defend
themselves, of levying high tariffs which are not in line with the WTO rules and
regulations. They approach the Dispute Settlement Body of the WTO only when no
solution can be reached through bilateral discussions.
Let's consider the example of the textile sector. Currently, more than half the
anti-dumping measures by India as well as the EU are in this sector alone. Normally
India and the EU are complementary in this respect. India is one of the largest
exporters of raw cotton and the EU is one of the largest exporters of ready-made
garments. But textiles is a sector which is bitterly fought over. The European cotton
producers lobby is extremely active at the European Commission and the Indian
ready-made garment producers are equally active in the Indian context. In 1997 the
European Council decided against using anti-dumping measures on all cotton fabrics
coming from India at the recommendation of the European Commission, which was
strongly lobbied by Eurocoton, the European cotton producers association. In the EU,
France, Spain, Portugal and Italy essentially produce cotton fabrics. A simple majority
is required for a European Commission proposal to be accepted by the European 8Council . And the majority of the European Union countries import a considerable
part of their cotton from India.
Eurocoton tried once again, this time not on all cotton fabrics but only on
unbleached cotton. They got the green signal from the European Commission but
again the European Council decided against the imposition of anti-dumping
measures. The Eurocoton did not stop at that. They went to the European Court of
Justice fighting on the basis that the European Council did not give reasons to the
104
Chris Patten also used the same words, 'natural partners' during his visit to
India in February 2004, declaring: 'if there is a natural partner for Europe in South
Asia, then surely it is India'. On the 13th of July 2005, the, European Parliament
adopted it's own report about strengthening the EU-India strategic partnership. This
shows the EP's engagement to supporting EU-India partnership.
With all these factors working for the EU-India rapprochement, one expects
thriving cooperation for common goals and interests, including booming trade. But
sadly enough, this is far from true. Although EU is India's largest trading partner,
India is the European Union's 14th trading partner, lagging far behind China, South
Korea, Russia, Brazil and South Africa. Trade with the EU represents almost a quarter
of India's exports and imports. But it is just 1.6 per cent of total EU imports of goods
and 0.8 per cent of import of services. EU invests 10 times more in China and its trade
is 5 times larger than India.
Romano Prodi, in his speech in New Delhi at the 4th EU-India summit in
2003 , said: 'No doubt about it: India needs the EU and the EU needs India.' In spite
of several cooperation promoting institutions the European Union and India have
trouble cooperating, which is evident at international forums like the WTO, which
become battling grounds and where all talk of cooperation, negotiation, are forgotten.
There are three bones of contention which hamper EU-India cooperation at the WTO
level: i) Trade Defence Measures, ii) the Pakistan factor and iii) the Indian leadership
coalitions against the EU.
EU-India Discord at the WTOIndia is busy representing the developing world and EU is doing the same for the
developed world. And it was mainly because of these differences in the demands of the
developing and the developed world championed by these two that the Cancun
ministerial meeting in 2003 collapsed. After the Cancun failure, the EU floated the
idea of negotiations on certain thorny issues only on a voluntary basis. It remains to
be seen how this idea is accepted at the upcoming Hong Kong ministerial meeting in 4December .
Trade defence mechanismsOne of the biggest sticking points between the EU and India are the trade defence
measures they use against each other. These trade defence measures can be in the
form of tariff barriers, non-tariff barriers and most importantly in the form of anti-
dumping measures. Although EU and India are now strategic partners, these issues,
when not dealt with urgently, will continue to hamper any real progress in trade and
cooperation. As a result of these trade defence measures, each year, Indian exports to 5the EU are decreasing by 1 per cent . In the year 2004, Indian exports to the EU
amounted to 21 per cent of it's total exports, In the year 2003 it was 22 per cent and in
the year 2002, it was 23 per cent. This implies that slowly and steadily, India is
exporting more and more to the other countries.
The two most important trade defence measures, which spoiled EU-India
relations in general, and EU India relations at the WTO in particular are anti-
103
9European Commission about why it rejected the measures . The biggest casualty of
these measures are not the big companies but the small exporters, a majority of whom
products from India and decided that Indian goods not meeting sanitary standards
would not be destroyed.' But given the social and fiscal policies of the EU member
states, it is highly unlikely that any opening of it's markets will take place sometime 18soon, within the framework of the WTO . Kamal Nath in his speech said, 'India seems
to have borne the brunt of the EU's Trade Defence Actions which affect 3.5 per cent of
Indian exports to the EU, as against the average global incidence in the EU of 0.5 per
cent only. It is rather odd that a developing country like India should be facing nine
out of the 20 Anti-Subsidy actions in force in EU'.
But while these discussions were going on, European shoe manufacturers
were in the process of filing another anti-dumping case against India. It remains to be
seen when a food manufacture lobby decides to take up this issue. The destruction of
entire Indian consignments is another sticking point between the two. Mr. Mandelson
informed that the EC would soon announce its decision not to destroy contaminated
consignments but to return them to the exporting country, thereby resolving a long-
standing issue, which India had been raising with the EU.
Sanitary and phytosanitary measuresThis is the second significant bone of contention, which is posing a threat to India's
exports to the EU. These non-tariff barriers are not just trade restricting but also a
source of great irritation to the Indians since they have no idea how to bypass them.
These are the SPS agreement Sanitary and Phytosanitary measures. Any country can 19put up these measures to protect its plant, animal and human life . These non-tariff
barriers faced by Indian exporters in the EU are in the areas of standards, testing,
labelling and certification. The Indian government is as responsible for them as the
European Union is since both of them do not recognise each other's standard setting
institutions and export inspection agencies. As a result, the EU legislation relating to
sanitary and phytosanitary and food safety are causing enormous concern to the 20Indian exporters of food products .
The Indian exporters accuse the European Union of refusing and on top of
that destroying their consignments from India, if they do not happen to meet the
European sanitary and phytosanitary conditions. According to the Indians, the
European companies conduct minor tests on the products and do not wait for
confirmatory results before rejecting and indeed destroying the whole consignment.
They have started a system of rapid alert whereby they signal the Indian
products not fit enough for consumption. Each month there is an average of 10 red
alerts coming from the EU. And the Indian exporters bear the brunt of this anomaly.
With the lack of any sort of harmonisation of safety standards it is no surprise when a
product, which may be deemed fit for export is not able to pass the tests of the EU
standard setting institutes. There have been several calls by the food exporters to have
their products tested either in India or in the EU but neither of the two have taken any
steps to start such a procedure.
In line with the WTO statutes, India has a standard setting institution, which
informs India's trading partners about the existing Indian standards, and also how
105 106
upset that Pakistan was left off the hook.
Apart from the trade rivalry, India gets wary of Pakistan when it plays the
terrorism card and just how many efforts it is making against it. But India gets even
more wary when the EU plays right into it. As a result India could never have a joint
communiqué with the EU accusing Pakistan of allowing cross-border infiltration. The
press statements of all the summits usually have a small reference to terrorism in
general, and no particular reference to the Pakistani contribution to this terrorism. In
the 6th EU India Summit on the 8th of September 2005, the position remained
unchanged.
Coalitions at the WTO ministerial meetingsAt the WTO, India inevitably finds itself forming coalitions with other developing
countries for a common cause and for fighting a common enemy -- the developed
world. And not surprisingly, these coalitions are almost always pitted against the EU.
India becomes the leader of the developing countries and the EU and the U.S. lead the
developed world on the other side. Although the EU and the U.S. have big trade
disputes but when it comes to making a deal at the WTO the EU and the U.S. usually
find each other in the same camp. India feels the need for this coalition formation
since it realises that it can never face up to the might of the developed world on its
own. The European Union is wary of these coalitions, which comprise 17, 20 or even
77 countries, joined together for the common purpose of showing to the developed
world that they will not agree to propositions or be bullied into accepting unjust trade
practices.
When Pascal Lamy visited India in March 2003 to discuss the Doha round,
he was fully aware of this Indian tendency. He said in his speech that he had come to
India to narrow differences on issues for negotiation in the Cancun ministerial
meeting. He tried awkwardly to woo the Indians by saying that they needed better
coordination to avoid anti-dumping measures, that they needed better marker access
for agriculture. But all this wooing was not successful as Cancun was a failure and
more importantly, it was a failure directly linked to India as the leader of developing
countries and the EU as a representative of the developed world. India led a coalition
of 22 countries, including China and Brazil. This coalition further added other
coalitions making it a group of G90, completely overshadowing the EU and the US 24coalition with Canada and Japan .
Since 1947, India proclaimed to be self-sufficient and was not in favour of
being a part of any regional and economic groupings. It has had a tradition of 25preferring bilateral relations to multilateral arrangements . India has belatedly
realised the importance of these in the past few years and is forging numerous 26alliances . It is looking East towards ASEAN, trying to make SAARC more
27meaningful , forming alliances with Latin American countries, also building relations 28with China, it's long neighbourly enemy . And surprisingly enough at the WTO, India
and China and even Pakistan get together to 'defeat' the developed the world. And the
EU is quite understandably watching in alarm the growing importance of this Asian
elephant that, according to the critics, has now begun to run and gather speed.
108
these standards are different from the other trading countries. This Institution is
called the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS). But the BIS sets standards voluntarily
and these standards may or may not be made obligatory by the government. There is
very little coordination between the BIS and the Ministry of Commerce of India and
even lesser between the BIS and the food exporters. What's painfully lacking is a
national notification system in India. No wonder Indian and European exporters
lobbies are frustrated and the best way to vent this frustration is at International
forums like the WTO.
The Pakistan factorThis factor plays a major role in India's relations with the rest of the world and EU is
no exception. The EU signed a cooperation agreement with Islamabad in November
2001, while India watched on with suspicion.
India usually keeps a close watch on any developments which remotely
concern Pakistan. And they watched with more suspicion than usual this latest
development since it concerned not just Pakistan but also their biggest trading
partner, the EU. And this biggest trading partner did not share India's views of
Pakistan. India would like the EU to declare the Pakistani hand in the terrorism
activities in Kashmir, but the EU has never made such a statement and on the
contrary and to India's chagrin, patted Pakistan for taking action against drug
trafficking, against the Al Qaeda network and the Taliban. Their view is not shared by
India and New Delhi obviously would have liked them to make some strong 21statements against Pakistan .
During the third EU-India Summit in 2002, they could not agree on the right
wording for a statement on Kashmir. Till this time Pakistan was just an irritant
between the two. But the situation took a turn when the EU granted Pakistan its 22Generalised System of Preference (GSP) . This concession to Pakistan directly
affected exports of ready-made garments from India as imports of these items from
India into the EU had to face a duty of 9.6 per cent, while Pakistan enjoys duty free
access. India retaliated immediately by complaining to the Dispute Settlement Body of
the WTO. This case was bitterly fought between the two. India declared having lost
€300 million because of this 'unfair' GSP to Pakistani Textiles exporters. The
European Union stood up to it's claim that it had granted that GSP because Pakistan 23was fighting against Drug trafficking in the country . The timing couldn't have been
worse. The EU granted the GSP during the Doha Round of negotiations when India
and EU were pitted against each other. This coincidental timing politicised the issue
even more. But the issue would anyway not have gone down easily with the Indians,
with or without a Doha round.
The WTO passed a ruling in favour of India agreeing to the Indian claim that
generalised system of preferences have to be non discriminatory, generalised, non-
reciprocal and unconditional for developing countries. But EU appealed and won the
case justifying the concession it made to Pakistan for combating drug trafficking.
India watched with furore when EU applied anti-dumping measures to the Indian bed
linen, and did not do the same to the Pakistani one. The Indians felt targeted and were
107
Reasons for this Discord
www.europa.eu.int/comm/trade/issues/bilateral/countries/india/index_en.htm (last
visited 23rd August 2005)3. On the Deutsche-Welle Website (http://www2.dw-world.de/southasia/eu-southasia/
1.109047.1.html)4. Andrew C., Variable Geometry for the WTO: Concepts and Precedents, UNCTAD, 2004.5. Government of India, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Official Website
http://commerce.nic.in/eidb/ergn.asp6. Thomas J. Prusa, 'Anti-Dumping: A growing problem in International trade', The World
Economy, vol. 28 n° 5 May 2005, p, 683.7. The website of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry of the Government of India gives
full details of these cases. http://commerce.nic.in/dgad/website/chap7.htm8. More on this in Simon J. Evenett and Edwin Vermulst, .The Politicisation of EC Anti-
Dumping Policy: Member States, their Votes and the European Commission., The World
Economy, vol. 28, n°5 May 2005.9. Ibid, 'This motivation requirement arguable makes it more difficult for the European
Council to disagree with a Commission Proposal to adopt definitive measures because f the
European Council does so, it will have to explain why', p, 70510. James Smith, 'Inequality in international trade? Development Countries and Institutional
Change in WTO Settlement', Review of International Political Economy, vol. 11, n° 3
August, 2004, p, 548.11. In Willem van der Geest, 'Anti-Dumping and law', Bulletin of the European Institute for
Asian Studies, vol. 7 n°12, December 2003, p 1612. Prusa, p, 69913. Some of the retaliatory measures used by the states are discussed by Asim Imdad Ali in his
article 'Non- compliance and Ultimate Remedies under the WTO Dispute Settlement
System', Journal of Public and International Affairs, vol. 14 spring 2003, pp, 1-19.14. 'We like India, do believe agriculture is different-intimately tied up with our rural economy,
our rural society, indeed the whole rural landscape- and that therefore there are limits to
the international division of labour in agriculture'.15. He focused on lowering agricultural subsidies and the way forward and asked his
counterpart, 'To what extent can our people compete with high subsidy economies'.16. More on the failure of the Cancun Ministerial in Bert Kerremans, 'What went wrong in
Cancun? A Principal Agent view on the EU's rationale towards the Doha round', European
Foreign Affairs Review, vol. 9 issue 3 Autumn 2004.17. Also called IBSA standing for India, Brazil and South Africa.18. For more on the EU and the WTO, please refer to Richard Senti, 'The Role of the EU as an
economic actor within the WTO', European Foreign Affairs Review, vol. 7 n°1 spring 2002,
pp 111-11719. SPS used by the European against India are very thoroughly studies by Mohammed Saquib
in his article, 'Technical barriers to trade and the Role of Indian Standard Setting
Institutions', Aaditya Mattoo and Robert M. Stern, India and the WTO, (New Delhi: Rawat
Publications, 2005) pp, 269-29820. Mohammed Saqib writes in detail about the problems faced by the Indian exporters
because of these SPS measures.21. Jean Luc Racine, 'Europe and South Asia', South Asian Journal, January-March, 2004. 22. The GSP grants developing countries preferential access to EU markets. It's supposed to be
the main EU instrument to support developing countries.23. R. L. Chawla, 'India and the WTO', India Quarterly, vol. 59, n°3/4, July December 2003,
pp 256-27724. These coalitions were
1. G22 led by India2. Alliance on strategic products and special safeguard mechanisms including Pakistan,
Turkey, Zambia
109 110
2004.
lAnne Sophie Coleman, 'Transparency Trap: Anti-dumping and the pursuit of closer Trade
Cooperation within the EU and the WTO', Collegium, winter, n°29, 2004, pp, 49-77.
lBhagirath Lal Das, The WTO and the Multilateral Trading System: Past, Present and
Future, (London: Zed Books, 2003).
lSimon J. Evenett and Edwin Vermulst, 'The Politicisation of EC Anti-Dumping Policy:
Member States, their Votes and the European Commission', The World Economy, vol 28,
n°5 May 2005, pp 701-717
lDavid Greenway, 'Global Trade Policies', World Economy, vol. 27, n°9, September 2004,
pp, 1321-1498.
lBarundeb Guha-Khasnolis, ed., The WTO, Developing Countries, and the Doha
Development Agenda:! Prospects and Challenges for Trade-led Growth, (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
lAndrew T. Guzman, 'Global Governance and the WTO', Harvard International Law
Journal, vol 45, n°2, summer, 2004, pp, 303-351.
lA. Z. Hilali, 'India's Strategic Thinking and its National Security Policy', Asian Survey, vol
41 n°5 2001, pp, 737-764
lChristophe Jaffrelot, interview titled, 'Quelle nouvelle donne géostratégique en Asie du
Sud', La revue internationale et stratégique, n°51, automne 2003, pp, 11-21
lR.K. Jain, ed., India and the European Union in the 21st Century, (New Delhi: Radiant
Publishers, 2003).
lRob Jenkins, 'How federalism influences India's Domestic Policies of WTO Engagement
and is Itself Affected in the Process', Asian Survey, vol. 43, n° 4 July-August 2003, pp, 598-
621.
lKent Albert Jones, Who's afraid of the WTO, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
lHomi Katrak and Roger Strange, The WTO and Developing Countries (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2003).
lHomi Katrak, 'The Indian Pharmaceutical Industry and Consumer Welfare Prospects under
the TRIPS Regime', Homi Katrak and Roger Strange, The WTO and Developing Countries,
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2003)
lJagjit Kaur and Chris Nyland, 'The WTO and the patenting of Life Forms: Policy Options
for Developing Countries', Third World Quarterly, vol 24, n°1 February 2003, pp 29-45
lBert Kerremans, 'What went wrong in Cancun? A Principal Agent view on the EU's
rationale towards the Doha round', European Foreign Affairs Review, vol. 9 issue 3
autumn 2004, pp 363-393
lMohammed Tanzimuddin Khan, 'WTO Dispute Settlement System and Developing
Countries: A Neo-realist critique', BIISS Papers, n°21 June 2004
lZaki Laidi, 'Après Cancun: L'OMC en danger', Critique Internationale, n°21 octobre 2003,
pp
lAaditya Mattoo and Robert M. Stern, India and the WTO, New Delhi: Rawat Publications,
2005)
lJohn O McGinnis and Mark L. Movsesian, 'Against Global Governance in the WTO',
Harvard International Law Journal, vol. 45, n°2, summer 2004, pp, 352-365.
lAmrita Narilkar, 'Collapse of the WTO: A Cancun Post-Mortem', Third World Quarterly,
vol 25 n°3, 2004
lAmrita Narilkar, 'The G 20 at the Cancun Ministerial: Developing Countries and their
Evolving Coalitions in the WTO', World Economy, vol. 27, n°7, July 2004, pp, 947-966.
lInge Nora Neufeld, 'Anti-dumping and Countervailing Procedures-Use or Abuse:
Implications for Developing Countries', Policy Issues in International Trade and
Commodities, Study Series n°9 Geneva, UNCTAD, 2001.
lColin B. Picker, 'Neither here nor there', The George Washington International Law
Review, vol 36 n°1 2004, pp 147-171
112
3. Group of four western and central African countries. Mali, Benin, Chad and Burkina
Faso4. ACP-African, Caribbean, Pacific5. LDC6. African Group All this combination made a group of G 90 developing countries had
finally put their foot down. G90 brought victory to the developing countries in Cancun.
Amrita Narlikar, 'Collapse of the WTO: A Cancun Post-Mortem', Third World
Quarterly, vol. 25 n°3, 2004.The article is about coalition formation at the WTO at Cancun.
25. A Z Hilali discusses in detail India's foreign policy options in, 'India's Strategic Thinking
and it's National Security Policy', Asian Survey, vol. 41 n°5 2001, pp. 737-76426. Most major economies are a part of some meaningful trade block. India belongs to SAARC
which far from being meaningful.27. India's changing policies and the reasons behind them are critically analysed by Walter
Anderson in, 'Recent Trends in Indian Foreign Policy', Asian Survey, vol. 41 n°5, 2001 pp
765-77628. India's changing policies and the reasons behind them are critically analysed by Walter
Anderson in 'Recent Trends in Indian Foreign Policy', Asian Survey, vol. 41 n°5, 2001 pp
765-77629. Colin B Picker, 'Neither here nor there', The George Washington International Law
Review, vol. 36 n°1 2004.30. Eyal Benveniste and George W Downs, 'Distributive Politics and International Institutions:
The Case of Drugs', The Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, vol. 36, n°1
winter 2004.31. Gajendra Singh in 'India and the European Union : New Strategic Partnership' goes one
step further and says that: 'Former Communist members who used to get orders from
Moscow have little tradition of working in a give and take system of EU'.32. Punjab and Gujarat have set up expert committees whose main task is to assess the impact
of the WTO rules on their economies.33. Rob Jenkins, 'How federalism influences India's Domestic Policies of WTO Engagement
and is Itself Affected in the Process', Asian Survey, vol. 43, n° 4 July-August 2003, pp, 598-
621.34. Christina R Sevilla, 'The WTO's North-South Conflict', National Interest, Winter n°74,
2003/2004, p, 124.
BibliographylAsim Imdad Ali, 'Non-compliance and the ultimate Remedies under the WTO Dispute
Settlement', Journal of Public and International Affairs, vol. 14 spring 2003, pp 1-19.
lWalter Anderson, 'Recent Trends in Indian Foreign Policy', Asian Survey, vol 41 n°5, 2001,
pp 765-776
lEyal Benveniste and George W. Downs, 'Distributive Politics and International Institutions:
The Case of Drugs', The Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law, vol. 36, n°1
winter 2004, pp, 21-51
lChad P. Bown, 'Developing Countries as Plaintiffs and Defendants in GATT/WTO Trade
Disputes', in World Economy, vol 27, n°1, January 2004, pp, 58-80.
lR. L. Chawla, 'India and the WTO', India Quarterly, vol 59, n°3/4, July December 2003, pp
256-277
lH. S. Chopra and Swapan Chattacharya, 'India EU Interface: Changing Perspectives on
Cooperation for Economic Development', India Quarterly, vol. 53, n°3/4 , winter 1997,
pp,101-124
lJennifer Clapp, 'WTO agricultural battles and food aid', Third World Quarterly, vol. 25,
n°8,2004, pp, 1439-1452
lAndrew Crawford, Variable Geometry for the WTO: Concepts and Precedents, UNCTAD,
111
lEuropean Journal of International law, vol. 11, n°3, June 2004, pp, 555-574.
Sebastian Princen, 'EU Compliance with WTO law: The Interplay of Law and Policies',
113 114
A Peace Museum on the Wagah BorderSyed Sikander Mehdi
War museums, in both developed and developing societies, glorify past heroic
war deeds and promote jingoism and militarism. In contrast, peace museums are only
very few in the world and even these were created in the 1980s. In fact, until recently,
museums focusing on issues related to building peace were a few even in the West
(The US got its first peace museum in Chicago in 1981).
Furthermore, even though the movement for establishing peace museums
has gained considerable momentum in recent years and a number of such museums
have already been built in the developed countries, information about peace
museums is not readily available. But clearly the highly unstable, fragmented,
conflictual and violent societies of the East need peace and peace museums no less, if
not more, and perhaps a region which needs both peace and peace museums the most
is South Asia -- still a highly militarised, nuclearised and conflict-torn region.
The concept of peace museum is of recent origin, coming into mainstream
consciousness during the last 25 years. The first known proposal for establishing the
peace museum was made a little over 200 years ago by an eminent physician of
Philadelphia, Dr.Benjamin Rush. In 1798, he proposed the appointment of a
U.S.Secretary of Peace as well as the organisation of exhibits to assist him in his work
for advancing the abolition of war. Rush called for placing exhibits at the lobby of the
war office to depict the horrible and unspeakable evils of war (Dungen, Peter van den
1999: 692). It is generally agreed that the first peace museum was established way
back in 1902 when the Polish- Russian entrepreneur Jean de Bloch founded the
international museum of war and peace in Lucerne, Switzerland. However, the idea
really gained popular attention when peace museums were established in Japan to
highlight the effect of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and, finally, when the
United Nations published a comprehensive guidebook book, Peace Museums
Worldwide in 1995.
The concept of peace museums is still fairly unknown in contemporary South
Asian societies. Peace movements originating from the region or studies on peace in
this region have failed to focus on the feasibility, role and potentials of peace
museums. Some in South Asia may argue that the idea for the establishment of a
peace museum on India-Pakistan border is a little premature. The idea of a peace
museum at Wagah border may also be brushed aside as naïve and it may be argued
that such a museum on a poisoned, heavily garrisoned, and violence-spitting border
is unrealisable -- for a long time to come. But is it really so? Don't the South Asian
societies need peace and peace museum? Don't they know what damage a war can do?
116115
War is not something unknown to the people of India and Pakistan. They
have experienced the wars of 1948, 1965, and 1971 fought between these two former
British colonies. They are also the victims of protracting conflicts over the Siachen
Glacier and Kashmir and are hostage to their nuclear weapons. Nonetheless,
indoctrinated for years by the academic and research institutions teaching hate and
violence, by a mass media promoting conflict and disharmony, by politicians,
military and other hawkish elements and by the militarised societies spitting violence,
the common people have remained hostage to war slogans for a long time.
In India and Pakistan, the concept of a peace museum is alien to the masses.
Some may, of course, argue that peace museums have existed, in one form or the
other, in all the societies and in all eras of human interaction. What else are temples,
mosques, churches, gurdwaras and the worship houses of other religions if not peace
museums? In the Indo-Pakistan context, it may also be asserted that the Ashrams,
Gandhi foundations, Shanti Nikitens , religious seminaries, public charity houses ,
folklore, eternal songs of love and harmony and narratives of peace preserved in the
memory houses of generations are nothing but moving exhibits of peace. However,
a number of temples and mosques and other religious seminaries have been used in
India and Pakistan for hate-preaching, conflict-fuelling and communal and sectarian
killing. Likewise, there are Gandhi museums in India which are less focused on peace
and nonviolence and more on promoting Hindu fundamentalism and militancy.
A peace museum, simply defined, is an anti-war museum. But since peace is
more than absence of war, so a peace museum, as it is understood today, is much
more than a mere anti war museum. For Ikuro Anzai, Director and Professor of Kyoto
Museum for World Peace, peace museums are the 'facilities for social education
functioning to dispatch values of peace to the community'. 'Peace in this definition',
Anzai adds, 'is understood not only as 'absence of war' in its narrow sense of the word
but also as 'absence of structural violence' in its wider sense, including those issues of
starvation, poverty, social discrimination, environmental destruction, poor quality of
education and hygiene that are the fundamental social factors preventing full-scale
development of human ability.”'
Hence there is an element of inclusiveness in the peace museum concept and
peace museums are now increasingly perceived as a phenomenon encompassing a
range of diverse museums and institutions. There are museums that promote the anti-
war drive and document the tragedies of war. In addition to these are the ones that
focus on peace education through visual arts and then there are the issue-based
museums formed in response to specific events like the museum of holocaust and
interpretative centres at the many former concentration camps or those dealing with
nuclear bombing on Hiroshima and Nagssaki or genocide. Then there are those
focusing on the humanitarian nature of individuals or group of individuals or on
nonviolence or human rights.
Irrespective of how it is named, a museum which concentrates on peace
issues has the potential to serve as a museum of peace. The primary objective of
establishing such a museum is to promote the idea of co-existence and togetherness,
harmony and tolerance, happiness and creativity.
While every region of the world needs peace museums, South Asia needs it
most. Almost seven years ago, in 1997, Dr Mahbub ul Haq Human Development
Centre, Islamabad, published its first annual report on human development in South
Asia and made certain startling revelations. Some of these, in brief, are as under:-
While South Asia contains one-fifth of humanity, and the annual increase in its
population exceeds the total population of fifty smaller UN member states, it is the
poorest region in the world. Nearly 40 per cent of the world's poor live in this region.With 46 per cent of the world's total illiterate population, South Asia is the most
illiterate region of the world.This is the most malnourished region. According to a UNICEF report, half the
children in South Asia are underweight compared to 30 per cent in Sub-Sahara Africa,
though it has much higher GNP growth rate.South Asia has the highest human deprivation. About 260 million people lack access
to even elementary health facilities; 337 million lack safe drinking water; 830 million
have no access to basic sanitation facilities; and over 400 million go hungry every day.South Asia is the most militarised region. Two of the largest armies in the world are in
this region and the region spends twice as much each year on the purchase of high-
tech arms as does Saudi Arabia. Again, it is the only region in the world where military
spending (as a proportion of GNP) has gone up since 1987: it has declined
substantially in other parts of the world after the end of the cold war.
Things, for the common people of India and Pakistan, do not seem to have
changed for the better since these observations were made years ago. They have, in
fact, become worse and India and Pakistan, the two dominant member states of the
region, have continued to play havoc with the people and peace. The subsequent
annual reports of the Mahbubal Haq Centre for Human Development, reports of
different UN agencies including UNDP and UNICEF, World Bank, Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch clearly indicate that political, ethnic,
communal and sectarian violence remain rampant in India and Pakistan and both
the countries remain hostage to war thinking and war preparation .
Worse still, both India and Pakistan have gone nuclear. While India had
exploded a nuclear device way back in 1974, it did not acknowledge that its
programme was for military purposes. But when New Delhi exploded a series of
atomic devices during early May 1998, it made it clear that its programme was to
acquire the status of a nuclear-weapon state. Pakistan, on its also exploded a number
of nuclear devices at Chaghi in the province of Baluchistan in the same month of 1998
and called for its recognition as a nuclear-weapon state. These nuclear tests were
welcomed with great fan fare in different parts of the two states and the mass media,
under the patronage and directives of the governments in New Delhi and Islamabad
whipped up mass hysteria in favour of these deadly weapons.
With the testing of the bomb by the two countries, jingoism, militarism and
nuclearisation soared up in India and Pakistan. Bombs in hands, they went for a
bloody war at Kargil in 1999 and then massively deployed their armies on the borders
117 118
achievements of ancient or modern India for the cause of peace. An example would be
King Ashoka (e.273-236 B.C.), the peace King of the Maurya Empire.
More than 2500 years ago -- many years before the advent of Ashoka as the
peace King of India -- Gautama, son of king Shuddhadana of Kapilvastu, left his
palace and all earthly belongings and traveled all over the land, teaching opposition
to the oppressive and suppressive order based on discrimination, injustice and
violence. He developed the concept of Ahimsa (non violence) and Karma and founded
the religion of Buddhism. He was a great apostle of peace from South Asia.
The peace museums of India and Pakistan can display the achievements,
sayings and contributions of Buddha and Ashoka and many other leaders of other
religions, cultures and political thoughts. They can also have works displaying the
lives of hundreds of campaigners who fought against British colonial rule in undivided
India and for the rights of the people.
When the colonialists departed and India and Pakistan emerged as
independent, sovereign states, new goals, tasks and challenges engaged the
visionaries, artists, scholars, social reformers and peace activists. This was in response
to the nature of the evolving peace process. Prominent peace educator and scholar
from Columbia University, USA, Betty Reardon, observes: 'The ways in which peace is
achieved and maintained change with time and circumstance. Peace is not a fixed
goal. It is the challengable, positive social and political circumstances in which goals
can be pursued and differences resolved without harm to others or the environment”.
'It has been said', she adds, 'that 'peace is a process, a way of solving problems', and
that 'there is no way to peace. Peace is the way'.
After August 1947, both Indian and Pakistani societies experienced
tremendous change and the states became more powerful and more oppressive and
repressive. The continued confrontation between the two -- three wars in twenty five
years (1948, 1965 and 1971), bloody battles on the roof tops of Siachen (1984) and at
Kargil (1999), escalation of defense budgets, phenomenal increase in the number of
the forces of the two states, unsatiable lust for weapons, acquisition of nuclear
weapons, considerable increase in the power and number of hawks and
fundamentalists in the corridors of power in both the countries and the temptation
to checkmate each other, settle scores and embarrass each other in international fora
-- have all contributed to the rise of a warrior culture and violence in the sub-
continent.
However, there is also the subsequent rise and expansion of the
constituencies of peace in both India and Pakistan. An ever increasing number of
individuals, NGOs, politicians and professional groups in the two countries challenge
the national security state, call for people to people contact and for peaceful resolution
of all disputes. They also demand for global and regional nuclear disarmament and for
the empowerment of the marginalised sections of the societies -- women, children and
minorities. Demands for a visa-free regime in South Asia and lifting of all restrictions
on travel within the region and on trade relations have also been raised. The emerging
120
soon after the terrorist attack on Indian Parliament in December 2001. The standoff
continued for more than a year and peace remained precariously dependent on
chance alone.
There has been remarkable improvement in Indo-Pakistan relations since the
former Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpaee extended a hand of friendship to
Pakistan during a public address in Indian-administered Kashmir on 18 April 2003
and especially since the 12th SAARC summit held at Islamabad in January 2004. It
seems as if the unthinkable has begun. Infiltration in Kashmir has diminished and
this has been publicly acknowledged by the Indian officials. War hysteria is no more
being whipped up in both the countries and war mongering has almost stopped. High
level government officials are frequently meeting and addressing a wide range of
issues adversely affecting bilateral ties. Delegations of writers, politicians, judges and
lawyers, film makers and film artists, businessmen, women and children, cricketers
and cricket watchers, students, teachers, ,journalists, retired military officials and
bureaucrats and peace activists are frequently crossing the Wagah border (Lahore)
and boldly expressing their views in favour of friendship, harmony and confidence-
building between the two countries .
In this fast changing scenario, the absurdity of religiously clinging to a policy
of non-cooperation toward one another becomes all the more glaring when the
Siachen conflict is discussed in its proper perspective. Since 13 April 1984, Indian and
Pakistani troops have confronted each other, eye ball to eye ball, for the control of
the 76 kilometer long glacier. This is the longest-running armed conflict between two
regular armies. Fighting at an altitude of over 22,000 feet in the minus 60 C
temperatures, both India and Pakistan bear enormous cost for their unwillingness to
take the peace route.
Tragically enough, there is little realisation of the madness and both the
countries have continued to waste their human, material and financial resources on
a senseless conflict without any regret. “This ”, observes Stephen Cohen, a leading
South Asian expert at Brooking Institution, Washington D.C., “ is like a struggle of two
bald men over a comb”. He adds: “Siachen is (the) epitome of the worst aspects of the
relationship. These are two countries that are paired on a road to Oslo or Hiroshima,
and at this point they can go either way”.
Indeed, so comprehensively militarised are the Indian and Pakistani societies
that their citizens -- over a billion people -- have little realisation that much of their
deprivation, marginalisation and powerlessness is because of the prevalence of
militarism and nuclearisation in their countries. In such societies, the need for peace,
human rights and disarmament education, and the need for anti nuclear, anti-war and
anti-militarism movement for political and social change cannot be ignored.
The peace museums in the territories now comprising India and Pakistan
may also project the great nonviolent struggles waged by the people of the two states
for peace, democracy and human rights in both the countries. Any serious study of
nonviolent political action for the millennia cannot afford to ignore the great
119
constituencies of peace and human rights in both the countries include former
ministers, retired military officials, retired bureaucrats, businessmen, judges,
lethal weapons only and societies cannot flourish where a culture of violence is
allowed to flourish. For a long time, they have suffered the consequence of wars,
conflict and war preparation. In this scenario, a peace museum at Wagah should be
established to rekindle their hopes in a peaceful future.
Wagah, one may add, is also a witness to the bloody violence which took
place on the eve of the subcontinent's partition in August 1947. Indeed, among the
four famous 20th Century partitions -- Ireland, India, Palestine and Cyprus, all of
which were accompanied by wholesale violence and large-scale population
displacements -- the partition of India caused the greatest migration in human
memory. Never before or since have had so many people exchanged their homes and
countries so fast? In a span of a few months in 1947, more than 12 million people
moved between India and Pakistan.
By far the largest proportion of these displaced people -- more than ten
million -- crossed the western border, dividing the province of Punjab. Here, Muslims
travelled west to Pakistan and Hindus and Sikhs east to India. On the roads, in the
paddy fields and on the railway tracks awaited violence, rape and death for these
migrant Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. In only three months between August and
October 1947, the entire Punjab was seized by a communal civil war involving some of
the largest ethnic cleansing campaigns in history. Estimates of death caused by
slaughter, malnutrition and contagious diseases vary between the British estimate of
200,000 and the Indian estimate of 2 million. On both sides of the Punjab, houses,
shops, office, schools, and the paddy fields were attacked and torched. Men, women
and children were abducted, raped, gang-raped and often killed. Many buses and
trains carrying families from either direction were attacked by the frenzied and violent
crowds and the caravans of the refugees crossing the Punjab border on foot and bull
carts were frequently subjected to all sorts of acts of violence.
Being a witness to partition violence, Wagah is clearly an appropriate place
where a peace museum may be built up. It can depict the brutalities of mob violence,
and record and portray one of the most ignored aspects of partition history: the life-
saving role of the Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. One may stress here that while the
members of all these three religions communities were involved in partition orgies
and human killings, there were those brave and noble men and women belonging to
all these three communities who did not lose their humanity before, during and after
the partition carnage and helped save the lives, property and honour of persons
belonging to rival religious community. Then there were the artists, writers, poets,
peace activists, social reformers and relief workers who worked for the victims in both
the countries and who condemned violence and risked life for promoting communal
harmony, brotherhood and peace during those weeks, months and years when
partition hatred had poisoned all perspectives and ties. The memory house of the
proposed peace museum at Wagah may preserve the memories of their noble acts to
inspire the succeeding generations living in innocence and ignorance on both sides of
the border.
The galleries of the peace museum at Wagah can display portraits of the
121 122
expect even after the end of World War II that Germany and France would one day be
able to be cooperate this closely? Likewise, not many could visualise only a few
decades ago that a day would come when the Caen Memorial Museum (established
in 1988) and the World Center for Peace, Freedom and Human Rights at Verdun
(1993) would be constructed on the 20th Century battlefields. Again, how many
could think that a Lindau Peace Museum documenting the tragedies of war could be
built-up in 1980 at the meeting point of three countries: Austria, Germany and
Switzerland?
Hence, what has turned out to be possible for other countries cannot be
brushed aside as impossible for India and Pakistan. However, a series of concerted
and sustained efforts would be required to make the proposal for a peace museum at
Wagah realisable. To begin with, a comprehensive study on different aspects of the
proposal is an absolute necessity. Further, interaction between and among the peace
scholars and activists need to be enhanced at international, regional and national level
to exchange ideas and critically examine the feasibility of the proposal. As a matter of
fact, sustained campaigns in support of peace museums in different parts of India and
Pakistan would also be required. And finally, consciousness-raising through
lectures, seminars, media campaigns, music, plays and paintings highlighting the
peace-promoting role of peace museums in the two states are required. Once the
movement gets going in India and Pakistan, a peace museum at Wagah would
become possible and achievable.
(Syed Sikander Mehdi is a Professor of International Relations at the University of
Karachi. His areas of speciality are peace movements and non-violent action in
South Asia, nuclear disarmament, and refugee issues).
Bibliographyl
Dungen and Terence Duffy (eds.), Exhibiting Peace: The Proceedings of the Third
International Conference of Peace Museums, (Kyoto, Japan: Kyoto Museum for World
Peace, Ritsumeikan University, 1999).
lElise Boulding, Building a Global Civic Culture :Education for an Independent World,
(Syracuse , USA: Syracuse University Press, 1990).
lTerence Duffy, 'Museums of War and Peace: Two Recent Japanese Case Studies', http://
soc.nii.ac.ip/psaj/enltxt/duffy.html. Last accessed 03.04.2003.
lTerence Duffy, 'Peace Museums :Creating a Culture of Peace for the Millennium', Peter
van den Dungen & Terence Duffy (eds.), op. cit. 1999.
lPeter van Dungen, 'Peace Education: Peace Museums' Lester Kurtz and Jennifer Turpin
(eds.), Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, Conflict, 3 vols, vol.2, (San Diego, Califorina:
Academic press).
lJohan Galtung, 'The Theory of Peace and the Practice of Peace Museums', Peter van den
Dungen and Terence Duffy(eds.). op .cit, 1999.
lMahbubul Haq, Human development in South Asia, 1997, (Karachi,Pakistan : Oxford
University Press, 1997).
lPaul Holmes, 'Tea and tedium at the Wagah border', www.cgi.rediff.com/cgi-
programs/print/printpag.cgi. (Last accessed 29.04. 2003).
lClaudia Kolker, 'India Pakistan ritual puzzling to outsiders',
Ikuro Anzai, 'Museums for peace in Japan and other Asian countries', in Peter van den
124
various rulers, social and religious reformers, poets, yogis and jogis, leaders of
nonviolence and peace activists from India and Pakistan. In addition, the museum
may introduce those who have worked relentlessly for democracy, freedom, justice,
equality, tolerance and peace in these post-colonial societies. Finally, the peace
museum can catalogue and preserve the record of the great movements for peace and
understanding between India and Pakistan, for communal and sectarian harmony and
for the human rights of the most marginalised in both the states.
Indeed, Wagah is the place where such a museum should be built, because
this is the place where peace is being actively pursued. A lot of cultural activities have
been taking place for over a decade at Wagah and elsewhere to bring the two
countries closer, to diminish militarism and to promote peace and harmony.
Wagah, although a military outpost today, is evolving into a peace signpost, a junction
where all the peace trains coming from different directions may converge one day.
For the past several years, the peace activists, anti-nuclear groups, pro-
democracy groups, human rights activists and women groups from India and Pakistan
have been converging at Wagah on the night of August 14-15 and on the night of 31
December-1 January. Holding lit candles and colourful banners, they greet each other
from both sides of Wagah and recite poems for peace and friendship between the two
states. Again, it is from the city of Lahore that a train travels to New Delhi via
Amritsar. The train has been named Friendship Train. Likewise, a bus service via
Wagah between Lahore and New Delhi was introduced soon after former Prime
Minister Vajpaee's visit to Lahore in February 1999.
Both the bus and train services were suspended after the terrorist attack on
Indian Parliament in December 2001 and large-scale Indian and Pakistani troops
were mobilised on the long borders. However, peace seems to finally be around the
corner, with a newly fuelled initiative taken by both governments to promote peace
and cooperation between the two countries. And this is the time when a peace
museum at Wagah can be created.
Perhaps the governments of both the countries would be reluctant to take on
this project, but a peace museum cannot be built at Wagah without their support.
However, this should not pre-empt the launching of the movement. A peace museum
at Wagah was almost unthinkable a couple of years ago, but it is clearly not so now.
After all, various unthinkables such as: the formation of a South Asian Free Trade
Area, adoption of a common regional currency for South Asia, establishment of a
visa-free region, introduction of bus service between Srinagar in Indian-administered
Kashmir and Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, another bus service
between Lahore and Amritsar, ferry service between Karachi and Mumbai, promotion
of trade between the two countries and enhancement of collaboration in different
fields have also been talked about. Although not all are in place yet, they have entered
the “possible' zone.
Perhaps lessons from history may be instructive. One should appreciate that
times change, and so do the scenarios and the futures. How many, for instance, could
123
www.chron.com/cs/cda/printstory.hts/world/1199614, (Last accessed 29.4.2003).
lSyed Sikander Mehdi, 'Refugee Memory in India and Pakistan' in , Trans Europeannes
125 126
address such issues.
Electricity, as the most versatile form of energy, is the prime driver of an
economy. Healthy economic growth requires a large unit of electricity. A large
proportion of the Nepalese population, estimated at around 75 per cent is still non-
electrified, meaning that the demand for electricity is likely to register high growth in
Nepal in future. Hopes of proper harnessing of such high hydroelectric potentiality of
the country definitely require systematic management of demand. Accurate projection
of electricity demand is the precondition for successful implementation of power
system planning, which will have a significant impact on GDP growth in the future. So
far there has been no empirical test of the aggregate demand of electricity in Nepal.
The current econometric models for forecasting electricity demand on national level
usually include GDP only. Electricity prices and population growth also are the main
variables. Nepal, for the last nine years, is facing an intense civil war. This ongoing
conflict is also a major variable in the model for the reason that the flow of displaced
people from rural to urban areas may significantly change the state of electricity
demand. Therefore, conflict is considered as an independent dummy variable to see
its impact on electricity demand in the long run. Similarly, electricity efficiency,
defined as the ratio of the unit of electricity to produce a certain level of output, is
considered as another major variable. In this connection, this paper attempts to fill
the gap in the estimation of electricity demand by incorporating the impact of
efficiency improvement as well as conflict and political instability on electricity
demand.
However, the non-stationarity of macro variables involved in such
investigations hinder proper estimations of demand for electricity. Moreover, due to
the small sample sizes available for data analysis, estimates are also likely to be
plagued by small sample bias. Such inconsistencies in the time series data involved in
the analysis lead to the violation of classical assumptions of standard regression
methods and most likely to spurious estimates. To work around such problems in
energy demand estimation, this paper uses the most recent advances in modelling
long run or co-integrated relationships.
Factors Affecting Electricity DemandIn general, economic theory proves that two factors -- GDP (as a proxy variable for
income) and tariff -- determine electricity demand in an economy. Electricity acts as
an input in the production process in the industrial sector. It provides energy to the
residential sector for lighting, heating, pumping and other various end-use purposes.
It follows that electricity is bought for the end-use service it provides.
In the Nepalese context, beside income and tariff, electricity demand is
apparently associated with the change in weather. The demand for electricity in
winter is higher than in summer. The incorporation of annual weather changes in the
electricity demand function is rather difficult. Therefore, it is assumed that changes in
weather do not have significant impact on annual electricity demand as it resembles
only the small share of residential electricity demand.
128
Electricity Demand in NepalKamal Raj Dhungel
IntroductionThe concept of energy fuel demand forecasting started in the mid-20th century. Prior
to this, no accurate record of the use of power and other related energy fuel had been
maintained, probably due to the lack of proper scaling technique. The study of
demand forecasting did not keep up with the increasing use of commercial energy
worldwide, and it was not until the 1980s that the theoretical studies of medium to
long-term electricity demand had begun. Since then econometric modelling has been
used to estimate electricity demand. The purpose of estimating electricity and other
energy demand is to provide information on income and price elasticities. Such
estimations are bound to be flawed unless proper account is taken of the time series
properties of the variable used in the investigations. The size and nature of the
samples from which the data is obtained should also be considered in the
investigations. Various studies have addressed the problem of cointegration among
variables primarily by using error correction methods. Some of these studies have
addressed the issue of estimation of demand for energy in developing countries
(Munasinghe 1990, Dahl 1994, Eltony 1995, Lin 2003).
A unique feature of the Nepalese economy is the overwhelming use of
traditional energy (fuelwood, crop residues and animal dung). The share of traditional
energy in the total energy consumption was 87.8 per cent during the fiscal year
2002/03. The consumption of commercial energy was rather disheartening. However,
the use of commercial energy in the nation has increased over time. In the last 20
years, petroleum products have played a significant role in meeting the commercial
energy requirements of the people and it will continue doing so in the years to come.
Of the mere 12.2 per cent contribution of commercial energy, the share of coal,
petroleum and electricity was 13.4, 73.8 and 12.9 per cent respectively.
The theoretical hydropower potential of the country is estimated to be about
83000 MW, out of which about 42,000 MW is said to be economically feasible.
However, in contrast to this potentiality the total installed hydropower capacity in
2003 was only 571.2 MW producing in an average 3100 GWh per annum. Currently,
hydropower represents 86 per cent of the installed capacity in the country. The
average growth rate of electric energy consumption during 1980-2002 is 10.6 per
cent. This reveals that demand for electricity has been increasing more rapidly and is
expected to continue growing. To meet the rising demand, Nepal must address issues
such as how to meet the resulting enormous requirements, how to explore the
regional market for its sale in case of large hydro-projects and how to prevent
environment deterioration. Good understanding of the electricity demand will help to
127
Various factors in an economy affect the demand for electricity. The weather
condition, level of urbanisation, modernisation, industrialisation and structural
changes (liberalisation, privatisation and deregulation etc) are the additional variables
while determining the demand for electricity. It is essential to consider these factors
in a model to determine the electricity demand in an economy. However, this paper
considers the following five factors, which have been identified for their significant
contribution to long-term electricity demand in Nepal.
i. Gross Domestic Product (GDP)GDP is considered as the proxy variable for income. It is one of the major components
that affect the electricity demand because it represents the aggregate national income
of a country. The rise in per capita GDP will raise the electricity demand. In this
context, the correlation between per capita electricity consumption and per capita
GDP will be direct and positive.
ii. Electricity PricesIncome effects in the electricity demand in the household sector and in the industrial
sector may be more responsive. It implies that the small increase in income will lead
to high increase in the electricity consumption. In contrast, price changes will affect
the demand for electricity, in a slow and steady manner. The government administers
the price of electricity as the state exercises monopoly power in the distribution of
power. The price of electricity more or less reflects the true cost of supply, with some
cross subsidy built into the tariff structure for some consumption categories. The
Electricity Tariff Fixation Commission (TEFC), a quasi-independent regulatory body
to regulate the prices of electricity, approves the electricity tariff proposal put forward
by the electric utility. Tariff levels vary significantly from residential sector to
industrial, streetlight, religious and service sector. Beside this, tariff rates differ
significantly according to the end-use of KWh. Therefore; it is not possible to provide
estimated national average. In this study, the fuel, light and water index published by
the Nepal Rastra Bank is used as the proxy of electricity prices. It is expected that
there exists a negative correlation between electricity demand and fuel, light and
water price indices.
iii. Population GrowthIn Nepal, the annual population growth is registered at 2.24 per cent in 2001. This
high growth rate of population and increasing living standard has a significant impact
on electricity consumption. Therefore, higher population growth is expected to
increase electricity consumption and hence, a positive correlation between population
growth and electricity demand is expected. However, this study aims to eliminate the
impact of population growth on electricity demand by undertaking the data of GDP
and electricity consumption in per capita terms.
iv. Efficiency ImprovementAnnual average per capita electricity consumption in Nepal is very low at 0.005
tonnes (t) of oil equivalent (toe) in 2001. The energy efficiency per unit of $1000 in
the industrial output sector is evaluated for determining energy efficiency. Therefore,
energy efficiency improvement, by industry, is considered to be another important
variable that determines electricity consumption. The value added nature by
production of industry is considered as a explanatory variable. A negative correlation
between electricity consumption and efficiency factor is expected.
v. Dummy VariableRecent trend shows that the nation is plagued by conflict. Conflict and political
instability are the central issues in Nepal. It is assumed that the ongoing conflict has a
significant impact on electricity demand as the country faced civil war since 1996.
Thus, the model includes independent dummy variable to see the impact on electricity
demand by representing the level of conflict and political instability in the country.
The Model and DataThe variables selected for analysis are the basis of selecting a model in hand. Based
on the above discussion, four explanatory variables are chosen to assess the electricity
demand in the long run. A long-run electricity demand function for Nepal could be
established as:
EC = f(GDP, P, EF, D) ( 1)
Where, EC = Electricity consumption in per capita terms in thousand tonnes
of oil equivalent (toe), GDP = Gross Domestic Product in per capita terms (1995/96 = 100), P = Electricity price (1995/96 = 100), EF = Efficiency factor, D = Dummy variable for conflict and political instability.
Model (1) can be put into logarithmic form in order to obtain income and price
elasticity directly. Thus,
Where, ln refers to natural logarithm and refers to the parameters to be estimated.i
The data for this study are taken from the statistical year and pocket books
published by Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Economic Survey, various issues
published by Ministry of Finance and yearly reports of Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC),
Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA), etc. Water and fuel indices are used as a proxy for
electricity prices to incorporate the role of price electricity. Water and fuel price
indices are projected on their historical trends.
Specification of the Theory of Johansen's Cointegration MethodsCointegration analysis and error correction models (ECM) have become the standard
technique for the study of electricity demand. Engle and Granger (1989) applied these
techniques to forecast the electricity demand after two years of the formal
development of the cointegration technique by the same authors. Since 1987,
subsequent developments related to this approach have relied on the use of new
techniques to identify cointegrating relationships. As a result of this, Johansen's
method 1988 is the new improvement in the theory of cointegration analysis for
lnEc = á0 + á1 + lnGDP + á2 lnP + á3 lnEF + á4 D + error. (2)
129 130
Where T is the sample size and = , , ……… ën are the estimated n-r smallest i 1 2
eigenvalues.
Where, T is the sample size and r+1 is an estimated eigenvalue.
Graphical View of Stationarity and Non-stationarity of Time Series
DataNon-stationarity occurs when a series exhibits no affinity for a mean value. Many
macroeconomic series exhibit non-stationarity due to an upward drift over time.
When estimating electricity demand it is first necessary to derive a stationary series. If
non-stationarity is existent in the raw series, a technique such as first difference of the
original is employed to obtain a stationary series. ACs and PACs for the sample period
are examined to check whether the series is stationary or non-stationary. Accordingly
the following figures represent the plots of the original and first difference of the raw
data. The plot of the original data reveals the series under consideration to be non-
stationary which is shown in figures 1, 3, 5, and 7. The first difference of the original,
non-stationary data, plotted in figures 2, 4, 6, and 8 is stationary.
l l l
l
132
Figure 1: Real GDP of Nepal (1980-2002)
0
50000
100000
150000
200000
250000
300000
1980 1985 1990 1995 2000
Year
Rea
lGD
P
Figure 2: Real GDP of Nepal (Plots of First Difference)
-2000
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
14000
16000
1980 1985 1990 1995 2000
Year
Real
GDP
analysing time series data in the log-run.
Cointegration is a phenomenon that each component x where i = 1, 2, …..k i,t,
of a vector time series process, x is a unit root process, possibly with drift, but certain t
linear combinations of the x 's are stationary. Consider a vector x of n potentially i,t t
endogenous variables within which specification of data generating process is
possible. Again consider x as an unrestricted vector auto regressive (VAR) model t
involving up to k lags.
X =A X +A X +………………, A X + t 3)t 1 t-1 2 t-2 k t-k
Where X is (n*1) and each of Ai is (n*n) matrix of parameters. This type of t
VAR model has been advocated mostly by Sims (1980) as a way to estimate dynamic
relationships among jointly endogenous variables without imposing strong priori
restrictions. The system is in the reduced form with each variable in X regressing on t
only lagged values of both itself and all the other variables in the system. Thus,
Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) is an efficient way to estimate each equation since the
right-hand side of each equation comprises a common set of (lagged and thus
predetermined) regressors. A vector error correction model (VECM) can be obtained
by reformulating equation (3). Thus,
The Granger representation theorem states that if the coefficient matrix
has reduced rank r<n, then there exists n*r matrices and , each with rank r such
that = and 'X is stationary. r is the number of cointegrating relations (the t
cointegrating rank) and each column of is the cointegrating vector. The elements of
are known as the adjustment parameters in the vector error correct model. The
Johansen method is to estimate the matrix in an unrestricted form, then test
whether we can reject the restrictions implied by the reduced rank of .
The cointegrating vector is solved as the eigevectors associated with the r
largest statistically significant eigenvalues is tested using two test statistics, namely,
“Maximum eigenvalue statistic” ( ) and “trace statistic” ( ) . tests null max trace trace
hypothesis that the number of cointegrating vector is less than or equal to r against an
unspecified alternative. If = 0, when all the = 0, so it is a joint test. In the trace I
similar manner, tests the null hypothesis that the number of cointegrating max
vectors is r against an alternative of r+1. The test statistics for cointegration are as
follows.
l l l
l l
l
131
Unit Root TestsEstimation of demand function without testing stationery of the time series data may
lead to the biased results. The classical theory of econometrics assumes that the data
were stationary time series, containing a constant mean, variance and auto
covariance. However this is not true that in a growing economy OLS estimation might
not satisfy the long-run models. In such a perspective, examination of the properties
of time series data is a necessary part of the demand analysis. In this context,
Figure 3: Electricity consumption in '2000 toe (Plots of First Difference)
Figure 4: Electricity consumption
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
Year
Rle
ctr
icity
Consum
ptio
nin
'000to
e
0.00
20.00
40.00
60.00
80.00
100.00
120.00
140.00
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
Year
Fle
ctr
icity
Consum
ptio
nin
'000
toe
Figure 5: Fuel Light and Water Indices
0.00
100.00
200.00
300.00
400.00
500.00
600.00
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
Year
Cons
um
er
Pric
eIn
de
x
Figure 6: Fuel Light and Water Indices
(Plots of First Difference)
-80
-70
-60
-50
-40
-30
-20
-10
0
10
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
Year
Co
nsum
er
Pri
ce
Index
Figure 7: Electricity Efficiency
0.00
50.00
100.00
150.00
200.00
250.00
300.00
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
Year
Ele
ctr
icity
Effic
iency
Figure 8: Electricity Efficiency (Plots of First Difference)
-80
-70
-60
-50
-40
-30
-20
-10
0
10
20
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
Year
Ele
ctr
icity
Effic
iency
attempts are made to examine the time series data by applying two well known tests-
augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) and Phillips-Perron (PP) unit root tests on the
stationarity of the levels and first differences of the variables. In a nutshell, for any
variable yt, testing the null hypothesis of y ~I(1)is equivalent to testing y being t t
stationary. The ADF unit root test procedure is based on the OLS regression (Lin,
2003).
Where t is a linear time trend and m is chosen to achieve white noise
residuals, . The results of two tests are reported in table 1.t
Table 1: ADF and PP unit root tests for time series period, 1980-2002.
As shown by the ADF and PP tests, it is not justifiable to reject the null
hypothesis that the level series is non-stationary. Further, all the series under
considerations are checked by running on all the variables in their first differences.
Both the tests results under consideration suggest that all the variables are first
difference stationary. It means I(1). This shows that they satisfy the condition to
construct a cointegration system.
The possibility of cointegration between the variables included in model (2) is
examined by estimating the cointegrating regression initially by OLS. The regression
results are reported in Equation 6 and in Table 2.
133 134
The empirical finding of Johansen Cointegration tests (Table 3 and 4) reveals
that both tests indicate there exists a consistently cointegrating vector or long run
equilibrium relation among variables during the sample period of 1980-2002. The
coefficient estimates of the cointegration vector are as follows.
á' = (1.00, -1.004, +0.21, +0.40, -0.04)
The coefficients estimated from cointegration vector are normalised for EC,
GDP, P, EF and D. They reflect long run elasticity coefficients as the variables are in
logarithms. The substitution of these values in equation (2) will provide a long-run
estimation of electricity demand. Thus,
EC = 1.004 GDP 0.21 P 0.40 EF + 0.04 D (7)
Equation (7) reveals the long run elasticity coefficients, which are statistically
significant. The electricity income elasticity is 1.004. It shows that there is a
proportionate change in the electricity demand associated with the proportionate
change in the level of per capita income. The electricity price elasticity is only - 0.21,
however, this coefficient is different from zero. It shows that the demand for
electricity is inelastic. It is convenient to say that a few substitutions are available for
electricity. It follows that consumers are bound to use electric energy in spite of the
increase in price. In an open economy, the substitution for electricity such as gas and
kerosene could not ruled out to consumers' preferences for the reason that electric
energy is in the versatile form and represent a highest ladder. The energy efficiency
coefficient is -0.40 implies that the electric energy conservation measures would make
efficient electricity use by 0.40 percent. An insignificant change in the electricity
demand is perceived due to the change in political instability and conflict. A mere
0.04 percent increase in electricity consumption is explained by this variable.
Policy ImplicationsNepal is endowed with huge potential of water resources from which thousands of
megawatts of electricity can be generated. The exploitation of this vast potentiality of
hydropower has become a necessity of the time as the nation commits to achieve a
certain level of economic development with high growth that supports in reducing
poverty. Additional generation of electricity depends upon its demand pattern and in
turn rising demand pattern depends on the level of urbanization, modernization and
improvement in the living standards of the people concerned. First of all, it is
necessary to overlook at the domestic demand patterns to determine the quantity of
output to be produced in an economy. Thus, in this juncture, a systematic and
comprehensive assessment of the demand patterns of electricity consumption can
provide a basis for the formulation and implementation of systematic power
planning. The hydropower policy (2001) of the government of Nepal emphasised on
to attract the independent power producers (IPPs) from both the domestic and
foreign investors.
Capitalisation of the private sector participation in power generation requires
136
EC = -3.41 + 0.69 GDP - 0.10 P - 0.37 EF + 0.01D (6)
The statistically significant coefficients shows that the long run income
elasticity is 0.69 implied that 1% change in income will change the electricity demand
by 0.69 %. The change in electricity demand is less than proportionately associated
with the change in per capita GDP. The electricity price elasticity is less responsive at
a mere 0.10. It implies that the electricity price changes (increases) by one percent
will decrease the electricity demand by 0.10 %. Given that electricity is such an
important part of daily life and very few substitutes exist often reveals low response in
price changes. Although the coefficient is significantly different from zero, the
magnitude implies very inelastic demand. The coefficient of electricity efficiency
factor is -0.37. It implies that one percent increase in the energy conservation
measures will tend to decrease electricity efficiency by 0.37 percent. And the
coefficient of dummy variable is 0.01 meaning that the change in conflict and political
instability will change in the electricity demand by 0.01 percent.
In a multivariate system the Johansen method of testing for cointegration
between a set of variables is preferred over the Engle-Granger two-step procedure. As
suggested by Bo Q Lin (2003) the Schwarz information criterion is used to determine
the number of cointegrating vectors in the model. The optimal lag orders equal 3. No
deterministic trend in the data is assumed. The results of the Johansen's cointegration
test procedure are reported in Table 3 and 4.
135
systematic and reliable demand estimation which is possible only after examining the
demand patterns that can provide the basis of market possibility in the long-run and
substantial room to assess expected profit margins in their investments. Thus, the
estimation of electricity income and price elasticities helps the policy makers and
planners to prepare guidelines for implementing systematic power planning as it
examines the long-run demand pattern of electricity.
From the above analysis it is found that income elasticity of electricity
demand is unitary elastic (see equation 7). It resembles the equal proportion of the
change in per capita electricity consumption associated with the change in per capita
income of the people. The price elasticity of electricity demand indicates that the
demand for electric energy is highly inelastic. It means the demand for electricity is
not sensitive to the small or large change (increase/decrease) in the price of
electricity. It provides a basis for examining the consumer's willingness and ability to
pay for it that helps to determine the electricity tariff. The tariff rate of electricity
should cover the supply cost of electricity. Actual tariff rate can be determined on the
basis of scrutinizing electricity price elasticity. Thus, accurate estimation of electricity
price elasticity is the prerequisite of the fixation of tariff that resembles the supply
cost covering O&M cost, a certain level of profit margins and recovery cost of the
project.
The estimated demand function of electricity reveals that there is a greater
scope of improving energy efficiency by increasing the price of electricity. Low
electricity tariff may provide room for its misutilization. Consumers' intensity to save
fuel from wastage will tend to low at the low level of energy price. As seen in the
empirical results, any small steps/efforts/measures if taken timely to conserve,
electric energy would increase the electricity efficiency in a considerable manner.
Planners and policy makers need a systematic future demand pattern of
electricity to determine the future growth pattern of GDP, which mainly depends on
the adequate and reliable supply of electricity. The future electricity demand patterns
in order to determine GDP growth is estimated on the basis of the estimated demand
function. In order to forecast the future electricity demand the primary task is to
project the GDP, Consumer Price Index of fuel, light and water and efficiency factor
on their historical trends.
ConclusionEnergy demand forecasting has been popular since 1980's. Econometric models are
employed to estimate the income and price elasticity of the energy forms without
examining the properties of time series data. As seen in the figures (1, 3, 5 and 7)
above the data of variables under consideration have an upward trend over time. It
indicates that the data are non-stationary. If we employ OLS method to estimate the
income and price elasticities, we may arrive at the biased result. Therefore, it is most
essential to examine time series property to arrive at the estimation of coefficients. So,
the most recent method of examining properties of time series data is employed to
estimate the income and price elasticities of demand. The estimated demand function
reflects the long-run equilibrium.
As observed in the empirical results, it is evident that the electricity demand
function is unitary income elastic. It shows that electricity is a versatile form of energy
with few substitutes. Consumers' preferences cannot be ruled out by replacing other
form of energy in its place for the reason that it represents the highest ladder among
the available sources of energy. People use more electric energy because it is
environment friendly and cleaner than other forms of energy as their living standard
rises. Similarly, the electricity demand function is price inelastic. It follows that in
spite of the rise/fall in the price level it does not decrease/increase in the long-run
electricity demand.
(Dr Kamal Raj Dhungel is senior lecturer at the Central Department of Economics,
Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal).
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