Published in The News International on September 16, 2009: The heartbreaking scene of 18 women succumbing to stampede whilst striving to get a bag of free sugar brings to attention the gravity of the ongoing commodity crisis. Such crises provide an insight into the regulatory capacity of governments and the level of governance effectiveness. Examination of the causes of the present sugar crisis can help in analyzing how that is the case. Even under normal circumstances, sugar is a difficult domain to govern, with frequent tugs of war between the government, the sugar millers and growers. The constituency of growers demands higher price for raw material—their crop. The millers, on the other hand, complain about cost of production, other production related challenges, such as constraints imposed by the recent energy crisis and expect the government to protect them from sugar imports. Depending on who is stronger in the corridors of power—Pakistan’s feudal and elite dominated politics ensures representation of both groups—the decision making equation ends up favouring one, more than the other, but generally benefiting both. In addition to this complex interaction,...
Atun R, Dybul M, Evans T, Kim JY, Moatti JP, Nishtar S, Russell A. Venice Statement on global health initiatives and health systems. Lancet 2009; 374(9692):...
Published in The News International on August 22, 2009: Reaffirming the commitment to national security can be a befitting commemoration of the country’s 62nd Independence Day. National security is defined as “the requirement to maintain the survival of the nation-state through the use of economic, military and political power and the exercise of diplomacy”. Conventional national security measures include maintaining effective armed forces and intelligence services, implementing civil defence and emergency preparedness measures and investments in critical infrastructure—all of them significantly important. However, security also has another dimension centered on human security as defined by the United Nations, according to which security scopes beyond state security to encompass other dimensions such as economic security, food security, environmental security, personal security and health security. Within Pakistan’s context, two other dimensions of security are additionally relevant—energy security and demographic security. Sustainable state security is dependent on human security. A brief analysis of human security challenges in Pakistan’s context can help to underscore the magnitude of the problem and the importance of robust policies and institutions and effective governance in order to deal with these...
Published in The News International on August 15, 2009: The release of Transparency International’s National Corruption Perception Survey, 2009, which assessed citizens’ perceptions as to the level of corruption in the four provinces of Pakistan, has sparked a debate about the prevalence of corruption in the country and the inter-provincial variations in the reported pattern. First of all, it is important to appreciate that corruption assessment is a challenging area in governance diagnostics because of definitional ambiguities, complexities in categorisation, overlap of forms and its linkage with the cultural and social milieu, within which activities are perceived as being corruptive. Most of the commonly used methods for corruption assessment globally—of which perception surveys, expert opinions and measurements of indices of corruption, are the commonest—have their limitations. Perception surveys can be influenced by actual events surrounding data collection, whereas expert evaluations can be biased. There are other more robust methods for corruption assessment such as forensic investigations, economically modelled estimates and expenditure tracking surveys. However, these are usually not regarded appropriate for broad-based countrywide assessments owing to cost and time constraints. Perception surveys...
Published in The News International on August 08, 2009: The fate of the devolution initiative is likely to be decided by the end of this year, regardless of the presidential sanction to the provincial draft proposal—currently in the pipeline—given that the Local Government Ordinance will stand omitted from the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, after six years of passage of the 17th Amendment in December 2009. A turf battle is imminent in the wake of the most likely decision; provincial governments have already stated that they will completely abolish the current system whereas proponents of the devolution initiative, citing 140-A of the Constitution and terming appointment of the administrators, unconstitutional are likely to turn to courts. The beginnings of that scuffle are already evident. The ensuing impasse is likely to have implications for the working of the government, the development of democracy, the mandate of the judicial system and citizen’s empowerment—all at the grass roots level, where government matters to the poor and marginalized. Within this context, this comment is aimed at drawing attention to the need for impartiality and evidence-guided decision...
Published in The News International on July 25, 2009: The Petroleum Development Levy (Amendment) Ordinance, 2009, which offset the Supreme Court’s suspension of the imposition of the carbon surcharge was challenged on the basis of the Constitution’s Articles 2A, 4, 5, 8, 9, 25, 37, 38(d), 77 and 89. The resulting difference of opinion between the three pillars of the state—the executive, the judiciary and the legislature—raises some important issues to be resolved; both with reference to their respective constitutional domains as well as the matter of human rights and their legal enforcement. Many of us perceive human rights as belonging to the narrow domain of civil liberties, political rights, freedom of expression and equality before law. But there is much more in the remit of Rights than there is in these areas. The definition of Rights embodies economic and social rights and the right to life and education; several international treaties and human rights instruments, enacted after 1966 have attempted to further expand this definition. The recent advent of judicial activism in Pakistan in general, and adoption of a progressive interpretation of...
Published in The News International on July 16, 2009: There is hardly any problem in the country, which cannot be tracked back to challenges and weaknesses at the level of governance—the crisis of the internally displaced persons (IDPs) is certainly no exception. Both the technocratic and political aspects of governance, inclusive of policy directions at various levels, to the dynamics and pitfalls of the public management process, have deeply impacted the IDP crisis—right from the manner in which it evolved to the style in which it was managed. Now that the IDPs are reported to be on their way back to being settled in their home communities, it is opportune to analyze impediments to the relief operations. A careful review will draw attention to most as being linked with limitations at the level of governance. These insights would be valuable not just in relation to disaster preparedness for the future, but would also be critical for rehabilitating the IDPs, and shifting the mode of assistance from humanitarian to development, which is the next imminent step. First, a humanitarian crisis was clearly...
Published in The News International on July 06, 2009: The health sector was marked by six policy highlights in the expansionary fiscal policy of the government in the federal budget for 2009/10. These policy dimensions center on the following: scale up of the existing budget; pronouncement of a health insurance scheme; enhanced allocations for the two key national public health programs; a dedicated allocation for an action plan for emergency diseases; changes in tariffs for some essential medicines and increase in the excise tax with regard to tobacco. This comment briefly touches upon the context of each fiscal policy decision. First, there are many caveats to the aggregate increase in allocation, which by itself is a positive step. The writer has raised the questions of quality of expenditure, the issue of the allocation-disbursement-expenditure disconnect and the tendency to scale back initial allocations towards the end of the year in view of fiscal deficit constraints, as potential impediments in this regard, in these columns on June 23rd 2009. In the budget of 2009/10, reliance on foreign assistance to finance much of the...
Published in The News International on June 22, 2009: The Finance Bill 2009, which gives effect to the financial proposals of the federal government for a year, is the government's key instrument of fiscal policy and in many ways, a reflection of its policy stance to achieve stated endpoints in many state domains. Within that remit, the purpose of this comment is to bring to the fore some considerations relevant to equity, social justice and the social sector, with a view to generating a debate on the subject, within the context of the forthcoming parliamentary sessions that will now convene to deliberate on the Finance Bill. Three points are being articulated in this connection. First, it is important to recognise the value of budgetary empirics; within that ambit, a paradox is evident straight away. Last year, we had the largest-ever cuts in public-sector development expenditure (PSDP). This year we have the largest-ever PSDP allocations. From the information in the public domain, it can be deciphered that last year's PSDP scale-back, though partly the result of unforeseen crises could also be attributed...
Published in The News International on June 11, 2009: The government has decided to increase spending in the development sector in the coming year as is evidenced by the expansionary fiscal policy adopted in the forthcoming budget for the year 2009-10. Approval of the highest ever Public Sector Development Program by the National Economic Council comes at a time when many fiscal space constraints are evident—decline in revenues, competing priorities particularly in the wake of the ongoing security situation and efforts to curtail the fiscal deficit in order to keep it within stipulated limits. The rationale for the approach has fueled a debate amongst subject experts—a positive development indeed given the potential within constructive and substantive technical dialogue to shape policy decisions in national interest. The purpose of this comment is not to dwell on that debate but to draw attention to a related issue of strengthening the public-private interface as a policy option to assist the government in achieving the development objectives envisaged in the budget. Two areas appear important in this regard. The first area is infrastructure development. In...
The Holders of Public Offices (Accountability) Act 2009, which currently exists as a Bill and is to be introduced in the National Assembly, will perhaps be one of the most vital instruments of governance in Pakistan, over the coming years; its connotations and covenants defining responsibility for decisions and actions. Given its importance, the relative lack of informed and constructive debate on the subject in civil society, political and analytical circles is indicative of a deep-seated phenomena in the country's societal political culture—we tend to engage in trivialities of governance and remonstrate when the manifestations of poor governance are apparent, but when it comes to substantive structural issues, there is somehow limited proactive engagement to shape governance norms. This comment underscores the importance of seven points in relation to the proposed statue with the hope that the nation will pay greater attention to this subject. First, it must be recognized that accountability as an aspect of governance is central to problems in the public and private worlds. As a result of limited accountability, poor governance, mismanagement, inefficiencies and malpractices have become...