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:

journal@southasianmedia.net

Address09-Lower Ground,

Eden Heights, Jail Road, Lahore, Pakistan.

Tel: 92-42-5879251; 5879253 Fax: 92-42-5879254

Email:journalsubscriber@southasianmedia.net

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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