PAKISTAN

Labour cases

Parvez Rahim 

DAWN

Published June 29, 2024 



BEFORE 1972, significant labour litigation did not exist in Pakistan. When the first PPP government assumed charge under the leadership of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, it carried out several amendments in the Industrial Relations Ordinance, 1969, purportedly for the welfare of workers. In this context, two additions were made in the labour judiciary: junior labour courts (JLC) and the National Industrial Relations Commission (NIRC).

Labour courts did exist and disposal of cases was far quicker than it is now, court proceedings began on time and defaulting parties were rarely granted adjournments. All proceedings took place in court and not in judges’ chambers, which is currently practised in some courts, and judges followed all rules faithfully.

For one of our company’s cases in a Lahore labour court, certain attendance and payroll registers were submitted as evidence. Later, the same records were required by the audit department of the company. A company representative approached the court for the material but the request was denied. However, the material could be photocopied within the judicial premises. The judge also ordered the company to make advance payment of electricity charges for the photocopy machine to the court. Although the judge’s order caused hardship for the company, he was correct about not permitting the registers to be taken out of the court premises. It prevented any tampering with the evidence.

For expeditious labour litigation, it was made mandatory for JLCs to decide cases within seven days. In the beginning, these fora adhered to the stipulated timeframe but eventually lethargy crept in, resulting in months of delay. Hence, the primary purpose of JLCs stood thwarted and the previous system was restored. The NIRC, on the other hand, was institted with the mandate to register trade unions and federations.

The labour courts now take years to decide lawsuits.

In the early 1970s, incidents of labour unrest and mob violence, orchestrated by labour unions at industrial sites across the country, became widespread. In fact, in Karachi’s SITE area, Korangi and Landhi, agitating workers manhandled and humiliated many factory owners; unremitting turmoil impacted industrial productivity and led to the closure of small and medium-sized enterprises, with the Federal Security Force, created by the PPP government, being deployed at larger factories. In 1973, the government added two comprehensive sections in the Industrial Relations Ordinance, 1969 to cover “unfair labour practices on the part of employers and the workmen”, and related cases were filed in the NIRC.

In view of the government’s pro-labour policy, NIRC head, retired justice Abdul Hameed, was sympathetic towards workers and, to appease union leaders, he adopted an aggressive stance towards representatives of the employers; he even ordered the imprisonment of a factory manager from Faisalabad. This particular decision sent waves of fear through the factory owners, making them wary of labour unions, and they also began to see the Commission as an intimidating body — an impression that lasted for nearly five years.

As activities of the labour federations and unions fell silent, the NIRC too became dormant. After the devolution of labour laws to the provinces through the 18th Amendment in 2010, a new concept of provincial and trans-provincial companies came into existence. The labour cases of provincial companies would continue to be filed before the labour courts, and those of trans-provincial companies went to the NIRC.

Despite the clear distinction, many lawyers file cases of aggrieved workers from trans-provincial companies in labour courts. When transferred to the NIRC, these cases start afresh, which delays remedy, causes frustration, and drains people of funds. The labour courts now take years to decide law suits pertaining to issues such as reinstatement. But courts alone are not responsible for these pile-ups, some petitioners should also take the blame for wasting the courts’ time with frivolous litigation. For example, when I served as personnel and administration services manager at a British multinational in Sheikhupura, a worker had filed a complaint against me, stating that I had abused and threatened him over his trade union activities and even barred him from entering the plant.

The judge asked me to swear on the Holy Quran to deny the worker’s allegations against me, and when I did so, both the petitioner and his lawyer vanished from the court. This proves that only compliance with specified procedures and fora for the redressal of workers’ woes — along with strict curbs on bogus litigations — ensures accelerated delivery of justice as well as a collective sigh of relief for the tormented.

The writer is a consultant in human resources at the Aga Khan University Hospital and Vital Pakistan Trust.

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2024

More than Biden or Trump?

Ashraf Jehangir Qazi

DAWN

Published June 29, 2024 

WE talk a lot about the state of Pakistan today, and, by and large, it is not encouraging — to put it mildly. We are also part of the larger world and are witnessing the state of ‘the greatest state in the world’, and — to put it mildly — it is not encouraging.

The debate between President Biden and former president Trump was, in the words of one commentator, a match between a derelict and “infirm” Biden and an “unstable” felon, Trump. Accordingly, the world’s mightiest country will be led by someone who is either “not quite there” or someone who is pathologically “reckless”. One can hear the Doomsday Clock tick-tocking towards “midnight”.

The US is politically more polarised than ever. A less polarised and more informed political society might have been expected to moderate the recklessness or compensate for the cluelessness of its leadership. But the American polity is irreconcilably divided between the ‘besotted’ (for Trump) and the ‘haters’ (of Trump) — which renders Biden irrelevant, and yet a possible winner! This is what the US has been reduced to while being the world’s mightiest military and economic power.

Like it or not, the rest of the world has a vital stake in the policies pursued by the US as ‘leader of the free world’. But neither Biden nor Trump measure up to the minimum essentials for such a role. Moreover, the US political process by and large does not take account of the impact of its policies and follies on the rest of the world. This may be true of other countries, but their ability to benefit or harm the rest of the world is relatively limited. So what is to be done if we are to avoid the prospect of the US leading the world over the cliff?

Like it or not, the rest of the world has a vital stake in the policies pursued by the US as ‘leader of the free world’.

Intellectually, answers are available. Instead of the US political process — or rather, its power structure — deciding the fate of the world, the UN Charter and UN decisions should be enabled — with the necessary UN reforms — to play a much greater role in preserving the peace, eliminating poverty and injustice, and combating climate and other challenges to the survival of human civilisation.

However, securing intellectual agreement on such a panacea is far easier than translating it into reality. For a start, this would require democratising the decision-making processes of the UN and its affiliated bodies, which the US and other great powers are anything but willing to contemplate. Nevertheless, the idea of One World, in which we win or lose and live or die together, needs to be promoted with far greater urgency and realism than has been the case.

How might this be possible? Let us resort to childhood imagination and build on old Hollywood movie themes, such as a war of the worlds, etc. Suppose alien intelligent life discovered us and saw our world as an inviting place for conquest and occupation. How would we react to such a palpable threat? Would we, as in the movies, overcome all our divisions and differences to unitedly meet and overcome such a threat? Or would we, in accordance with the prevailing reality, dismiss as juvenile the very idea of making a serious and sincere attempt on a scale and speed that would make a real difference? Can we mimic the movies and bring ourselves to see contemporary existential challenges as we might an alien invasion if it became a reality? If so, we might yet make the right choices in time.

Even so, no one country with all its supposed superlatives is able and wise enough to be the sole leader of such a global undertaking. The current dysfunction of the American political process underscores this fact. It should incentivise the best minds and enablers to come together as never before to meet and overcome these threats. If the US political process can sufficiently buy into this urgent global imperative, it may yet provide a major contribution to such a global endeavour and become worthy of its self-image as a shining City on a Hill.

The price of failure was affordable up until now. This is increasingly no longer the case. One could afford to be sceptical, cynical, lazy, self-centred and self-deluded without having to imminently pay an existential price for such irresponsibility. Accordingly, one could more or less comfortably acknowledge the existential urgency of doing things without bothering to do them — and get away with the hypocrisy. No longer. This insight needs to become an imperative that informs political processes all over the world — and of such processes, arguably none is more important than the dysfunctional one in the US that occupies our screens today. It has facilitated if not promoted the indescribable horrors we are compelled to helplessly bear witness to on a daily basis. Unless such obscenities are immediately and effectively addressed, they will ensure survival imperatives remain helpless cries in the wilderness.

What can Pakistan do? It can be true to itself, which, of course, is easily said but has remained impossible to achieve. Its ‘leaders’ need to do on a national scale what has been suggested is imperative on a global scale. It can try to set an example for the rest of the world as other countries must similarly try to do. Only then will they be able to collectively contain the fatal potential of global realpolitik. Only a realisation that the wolf is at the door can transform counsels of perfection into practical and realistic policies at the national, regional and global levels.

Ironically, the global display of US political dysfunction may yet save the world by highlighting the scale and immediacy of the stakes involved, and thereby compel the country to become something more than Biden or Trump. Otherwise, the rest of the world will have to find ways to survive on their own by cooperatively confronting the US as they would invading aliens.

The writer is a former ambassador to the US, India and China and head of UN missions in Iraq and Sudan.
ashrafjqazi@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2024

PAKISTAN

Pension burden

Editorial 

DAWN

Published June 29, 2024 

AFTER years of bureaucratic resistance, the ECC has finally approved changes to the federal government’s pension system to reduce the rapidly growing burden of pension costs on the budget.

The reforms alter the formula to calculate gross pension, penalise voluntary retirements, change the method for future pension increases, adjust family pension entitlements, eliminate multiple pensions, establish a pension fund, and initiate other measures to introduce savings in the federal pension system.

The introduction of the contributory pension scheme for the new civilian employees and military personnel is perhaps the most significant reform being rolled out. A report suggests that the government has deferred pension cuts for existing pensioners and employees due to questions over its “legal mandate”, which might have resulted in “substantial savings”. The new pension rules will come into force for civilian employees from the next fiscal year and for military personnel the year after.

Many of the changes had already been announced in this year’s budget but remained unimplemented. The draft changes in pension rules are in line with recommendations of the Pay and Pension Commission of 2020 regarding amendments to the pension scheme for existing pensioners and employees to curtail future increases in annual pension costs “without compromising on the government’s pension philosophy”.

Successive governments have been struggling since the 1990s to strike a balance between ensuring financial sustainability of pension liabilities and providing an adequate income in retirement to public sector employees. With the annual pension bill becoming the fourth-largest budget expense following interest payments, defence costs and development spending, reforms are unavoidable, especially with the ongoing economic crisis adding urgency to the need for fiscal consolidation.

The question is whether the measures are enough to slash the annual pension liabilities of existing pensioners, or those who will retire and join the rollover in the next 30-40 years.

As the annual federal pension budget is estimated to rise to more than Rs1tr for both existing military and civilian pensioners next fiscal year, the ‘reforms’ are likely to yield only Rs4bn, or 0.4pc of pension liabilities, in savings in the first year according to some officials quoted in a media report.

Some estimates indicate that the consolidated federal and provincial pension bill would grow at 22-25pc a year for the next 35 years unless serious reforms are implemented. The cost of inaction has been enormous; the national pension bill has risen 50 times during the last 20 years. The liability doubles roughly every four years.

If vested interests continue to stall meaningful changes, the government may not be left with enough money for most pensioners or social and economic development in the next 10 years. One hopes that the issue is revisited and stronger reforms are introduced to reduce burden on the state.

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2024

Istanbul, not…

Türkiye today is where Pakistan should have been.

F.S. Aijazuddin 

DAWN

Published June 27, 2024

TURKISH cuisine is to die for, not from. What seafood is to the Japanese, meat is for the Turks. It promises longevity.

The average lifespan of a Japanese is 84 years, a Turk 71 years. Indulgent Pakistanis last only 66 years.

Türkiye today is where Pakistan should have been, had it been properly husbanded. Pakistan, although a brother in Islam, took instead the path of unbridled procreation. Türkiye’s population (99 per cent Muslim) increased from 21 million in 1950, to 86m in 2023. Over the same period, Pakistan’s population burgeoned from 34m to over 220m. Birth control is spelt differently in Turkish.

Today, while Pakistan is still struggling to emerge out of its ideological sac, Türkiye knows what it is. It is the Türkiye envisaged by its Jinnah; ie, Kemal Atatürk. On Nov 10 each year — Atatürk’s death anniversary — all Türkiye comes to a halt and observes one minute’s silence. Jinnah shares his birthday with Jesus Christ and Nawaz Sharif.

The late president Pervez Musharraf studied in Türkiye until 1956. He spoke Turkish fluently. Unfortunately, that is all he learned. He forgot Türkiye’s seismic shift from a khaki kleptocracy to a democratically elected dictatorship.

Türkiye today is where Pakistan should have been.

Its present ruler, Recep Erdogan, has been in power as prime minister, then president, since 2003. On his way up, he served as Istanbul’s mayor. (In China, being mayor of Shanghai helps in reaching Beijing.)

In 1999, he served four months in jail for making a speech in which he recited Ziya Gökalp’s 1912 poem, Soldier’s Prayer. Erdogan quoted: ‘Minarets are bayonets, domes are helmets, mosques are our barracks, believers are soldiers’.

Is Erdogan a second Atatürk? No. Türkiye’s pantheon has only one place at the top. Is he a Turkish version of the Saudi MBS? Erdogan, even if he had the money, is too canny to waste resources on the folly of a $1.5 trillion Neom city project.

Türkiye — dismissed in the 19th century as the “sick man of Europe”, and, in the 20th century, denied entry into the EU — has decided to steer its own course. It is a vibrant example of a benign Islam — shorn of ritualism and an intrusive clergy.

Its priorities are education, infrastructure and expanding tourism. In 2023, Türkiye’s income from 57m visitors exceeded $54 billion. The largest number — Russians — live within spitting distance across the Black Sea. Pakistan sent 140,388, less than 155,155 Mexicans. The Mongolian hordes have yet to invade Türkiye. A Turkish Chinatown is still decades away.

A 1990 guide book warned travellers that Turks were just “beginning to learn about living on plastic”. Modern Turks are now as addicted to plastic cards as the Americans are to plastic surgery.

Turkey is becoming a preferred destination for medical tourism. Almost half a million foreign visitors come to have their Iooks improved (or damaged) by Botox procedures. Some hospitals have dedicated hotels where patients check in, go next door to have their operation, and return for five-star recuperation.

In Istanbul, stray dogs and cats are tagged at official expense and pampered with free meals and comfortable kennels. The Indian cynophile, Maneka Gandhi, who fought for Delhi’s canines, would have been gratified. After the recent Eidul Azha holidays (known as Kurban Bayrami), bones became hard to come by. A rabies epidemic could force the Turkish administration to rethink its hospitality.

Despite the keenness to encourage tourists, Turks are curiously xenophobic. They insist on speaking only Turkish. This often leads to a dialogue of the deaf between Turks and strangers, until both tap into their mobile phones for translation.

Istanbul’s shopping malls are a treat, even for a tourist tired of London. In them, desi­gner outlets rub che­eks with shops offering every kind of Tur­kish sweetmeats and flavours of honey. Haunches of cured meat compete with Har­ro­­ds’ Food Hall. The generational divide appears in the Food Court, where hamburgers and fried chicken overwhelm traditional adana kebabs and shorba.

Türkiye is now more than a country; it is an experience. To savour its fullness, one needs to immerse oneself in it. Young locals do it by dipping into the Bosphorus, which is remarkably clean considering the armada of tankers, cruise ships, ferries and boats that ply through it.

To spend a few days in a Turkish hotel is to escape from home. To live in a villa in the cool, silent suburb of Zekeriyaköy, high in the green, undulating hills that overlook Istanbul, is to holiday in heaven.

Over Kurban Bayrami, its affluent residents fled to their second seaside homes, leaving streets empty for dogs, their walkers, and for those who prefer their Eid away from an urban abattoir.

Holiday in Türkiye. You will emerge from its hammam physically cleansed, emotionally relaxed, and pummelled free of domestic anxieties.

The writer is an author.
www.fsaijazuddin.pk

Published in Dawn, June 27th, 2024

Defying nature

IT seems that the guardians of our morality believe a major threat to Pakistan’s existence comes from its transgender citizens.

Zubeida Mustafa 

 June 28, 2024  

 A considerable section of religious scholars is unable to explain how a small community of 10,478 (census 2023) vulnerable souls can pose a danger to some 240 million who constitute the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

With their lively imagination, they conjure up all sorts of hypothetical situations that they believe will destroy the moral fibre of the nation. It is strange that those who actually resort to both illegal and immoral actions escape the wrath of our religious scholars. When have they called a conference or uttered a word of condemnation when women are gang-raped, little girls sexually abused and murdered, and thousands of young women trafficked in an illegal multimillion-dollar trade with the connivance of the police? Does their silence on such matters indicate a tacit acceptance of these horrific crimes? But when there is talk of the constitutional rights of the transgender community, it throws them into a state of moral panic. Is this not bizarre?

In a convention held recently in Kara­chi, a section of the clergy lost no time in denouncing some provisions of the Trans­gender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2018, that has been in force for the last six years. To put the record straight, it must be mentioned that this Act has been ap­­proved by the Council of Islamic Ideology, while the Supreme Court accepted the principle of self-determination in matters of gender identity/expression in 2012 and Nadra has been issuing CNICs in accordance with the court’s ruling.

The aim, it seems, is to reverse the few gains the transgender persons had managed to win after a hard struggle. We saw some fundamentalist elements belatedly file a petition in the Federal Shariat Court challenging the 2018 Act and labelling it un-Islamic. In 2023, the court gave a verdict turning down the self-determination clause and requiring a transgender person’s gender to be identified by a medical board. Transgender persons understandably consider this violative of their dignity.


These are trying times for trans persons.

Now, these elements are claiming that they had been ‘deceived’ and that the ‘nation is a victim of a big “fitna”’. These are serious charges against the Supreme Court that had set the ball rolling for the transgender community at a time when internationally the trend had been to reform gender recognition laws. According to TGEU (Transgender Europe), “Self-determination is growing in popularity as a model. Gender self-determination means that a person can change gender marker and name on official documents through an easy administrative process. The change is based on the person’s self-determined gender identity. No third party is required.”

Since the government has mercifully appealed against the FSC verdict, these conservative elements are in a fix. They now want the government to withdraw its appeal. They even speak of launching a movement against the law protecting the rights of the transgender community. According to the participants of the convention, the Act is a guise to encourage homosexuality and obscenity.

These are trying times for the transgender community. A large number of them have been singled out and killed since 2021, when the hate campaign against them reached fever pitch. They feel insecure, and this has hampered their progress. After the passage of the 2018 Act, the rights activists failed to sustain their campaign to create awareness about the transgender community. Social prejudice against them has still to be rooted out. Many religious parties have taken advantage of this situation and are whipping up hatred against non-binary people.

I feel sad and call up Bindiya Rana, the pioneer of the transgender movement in Pak­istan. She is depressed. “Three tran­s-­gender persons have been murdered recently,” she tells me. “And do you know who their killers were? They were her own siblings, who have no love for their sister.” Bindiya feels that the Transgender Persons Act needs to be strengthened and not undermined. It should have a provision for punishing parents who abandon a transgender child before s/he reaches adulthood. But here are some conservative elements trying to make life more difficult for them.

I agree and point out that the real danger comes from bigotry and obscurantism. Those born with birth defects cannot hurt this country.

Bindiya remains calm and has no harsh words for her tormentors, who reject her humanity. After all, she is God’s creation, and what she has been denied is compensated by her generosity of spirit and sagacity. Bindiya reminds me of the words of the transgender protagonist of Arundhati Roy’s book, Ministry of Utmost Happiness: “The word Hijra … meant a Body in which a Holy Soul lives.”

www.zubeida-mustafa.com

Published in Dawn, June 28th, 2024

PAKISTAN

The despotic state

Tariq Khosa

DAWN

 June 27, 2024 



WHAT is a core human value? It’s freedom, says Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, the economist who, in his book The Road to Freedom, pleads for an economic and political system based on equity, justice and well-being.

The concept of freedom articulated by US president Franklin Roosevelt revolved around four pillars: 1) freedom of speech and expression; 2) freedom of belief or faith; 3) freedom from want; and 4) freedom from fear. “A person facing extremes of want and fear is not free,” says Stiglitz, echoing Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who said that “freedom for the wolves has often meant death to the sheep”.

Economic and political freedoms have deep connections. Can a nation have one set of rights without the other? Unfortunately, we in Pakistan have lost the core value of freedom. Extremes of want and fear haunt us daily.

The wolves (the elite corporate sector, real estate tycoons, feudal class) have gained ‘freedom’ at the expense of the sheep (workers, the salaried class and the poverty-stricken masses). Financial debt traps and dependence on foreign loans have created an atmosphere of slavish adherence. The current environment is akin to a jungle in which only power matters, determining ‘who gets what and who does what’. We have been reduced to a nation of bootlickers.

“The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism,” said Hannah Arendt, the German-born American historian, philosopher, political theorist and social critic. The dearth of empathy is evident in our present ruling elite. Subservient to the forces of tyranny, we are treading the path to serfdom. Will we ever get on the road to freedom that leads to the republican values of equity, justice, rule of law, and collective well-being?

The elite’s hegemony must be broken. For that, we must ask what kind of economic, political and social system will contribute to the freedom of most citizens. As Cicero said some 2,000 years ago, “We are slaves of the law so that we may be able to be free.”

Thomas Jefferson, the US founding father who drafted the Declaration of Independence, said: “The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalised version of the first.”

A troika of power brokers has always called the shots by manipulating constitutional provisions.

However, “modern society, governments and freedom need not be at odds,” says Stiglitz, provided the rulers abandon the authoritarian tendencies that breed despotism and persecution in the body politic. This is our key challenge today, as we ask how tolerant we should be of those who are intolerant and tyrannical. One option is extreme, leading to revolt and violence; we must not tread that path. The saner course is for state institutions to admit their mistakes and undertake serious introspection in the larger interest of the nation, and to rise above narrow self-interest for steering the ship of state out of turbulent waters. This involves changing mindsets.

The military establishment has ruled Pakistan directly or indirectly since the abrogation of our first constitution (1956). Four army chiefs ruled directly by either imposing martial law, suspending the constitution, or becoming either president or chief executive. Most other army chiefs have been de facto rulers under the façade of democratic dispensations.

Four political leaders who tried to assert civilian supremacy met with an adverse fate. One was hanged in a murder case. Two other heads of political parties were sacked one after the other without completion of parliament’s tenure in the 1990s. The fourth one, brought to power by the establishment to replace two political dynasties, was shown the door through a vote of no-confidence. The first went to the gallows, the second chose exile over incarceration, the third was assassinated, and the fourth, after surviving an assassination attempt, is in prison under frivolous charges.

A troika of power brokers has always called the shots by manipulating constitutional provisions. Initially, it was the president, prime minister and army chief under Article 58(2)(b) of the 1973 Constitution. Later, the president lost his clout with the repeal of the draconian clause. Then emerged the new troika of prime minister, army chief and chief justice. The shenanigans continue to this day, with the military establishment and deep state involved in political engineering. Political tussles end up in courts and judicial verdicts decide the fate of political leaders.

Such a messy state of affairs cannot be sustained for long. The military is a strong national institution. It comprises mostly disciplined and professional rank and file exuding patriotic fervour, with officers and their men willing to sacrifice their lives for the security and sovereignty of their homeland. They are waging a heroic battle against militants and violent extremists who want to unravel the state. We salute them for their courage and sacrifices.

But when officers of the armed forces and intelligence agencies indulge in political engineering, they lose the public’s respect, and the compact between state and society comes under serious threat. This is where our state and society find themselves currently. The nation looks up to its protectors and defenders, and expects them to abide by their oath, rise above narrow self-interest, and assist in nation-building in these trying times.

The only way forward is to embark upon course correction for the sake of equity, justice and the collective well-being of citizens. Can our leaders ponder over George Washington’s words to Alexander Hamilton: “I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain (what I consider the most enviable of all titles) the character of an honest man”?

We, the people, demand nothing but honesty and fairness from those leading our armed forces, intelligence agencies, judiciary, bureaucracy and police services. Is it asking too much, or shall we echo the Virginian Patrick Henry’s cry, “Give me liberty, or give me death”?

The writer is a former inspector general of police.

Published in Dawn, June 27th, 2024

PAKISTAN

More stakeholders join striking cotton ginners

Amjad Mahmood 

DAWN

 June 29, 2024 

LAHORE: Showing solidarity with the striking cotton ginners, the Karachi Cotton Association (KCA), oilseed mills and arhtis (commission agents) at major markets in Punjab and Sindh have announced halting trading in cotton crop.

The KCA, All Pakistan Oil Mills Association and governing bodies of various mandis (markets) in Punjab and Sindh on Thursday told their members to immediately stop trading in cotton until the government withdrew the tax on the ginning and textile sector.

In Sanghar, arhtis and traders staged a rally to protest the new taxes and some commission agents even threatened to stop trading in other crops as well if the tax was not withdrawn at the earliest.

The reports indicate an emerging crisis in the cotton sector to the disadvantage of growers. The crop is piling up with farmers since ginners have already halted purchases of lint. Under the circumstances, the crop is likely to be damaged as farmers lack arrangements to store it. Rains, expected within the next few days, will ruin the crop if it is not taken care of soon.

It is feared that the stored cotton will deteriorate due to rains and the industry will not get quality lint leading to a decline in the textile exports.

The ginning sector is already paying 72 per cent GST, while a 10pc additional tax has been imposed on the oil cake. Fixed electricity charges for the ginning units have been increased from Rs500 to Rs1000 per kilowatt hour.

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2024

PAKISTAN
Hurtling past 240m

Zeba Sathar 

Published June 29, 2024 

DAWN

IT was futile to expect Pakistan’s phenomenally high population growth rate and staggering population numbers of over 240 million to find mention in any of the budget speeches. The impact of a large population on lowering per capita incomes and forecasted economic growth rates of two to three per cent barely featured in post-budget discussions. Additionally, the glaring link between population numbers and declining per capita income was all but ignored, as was its impact on poverty and the low rate of household investment and savings.

Surprisingly, it did not occur to media pundits or policy advisers to challenge how an economic growth rate as sluggish as 2-3pc could possibly absorb a population growth rate of over 2pc and pull the country out of an economic abyss. In a nutshell, among the numerous remedies for reviving the economy, the strong potential impact of reducing the population growth rate was overlooked.

More than five years have passed since the Supreme Court took notice of the 2017 population census, which reported a growth rate of 2.4pc. Another census was held in 2023, supposedly to validate these results. The latest census ended up recording an even higher five-year intercensal population growth rate, with the latest figure standing at 2.55pc. The population estimate of 241m is unacceptably higher than any projections made for 2023 by international agencies such as the UN Population Division, in addition to national demographers and statisticians.

The political buzz around the 2023 census results resembled an auction, with each province and political group asking for greater allocation of resources, commensurate with their population size.


The prime minister must prioritise the challenge of reducing the population growth rate.

The provinces and parties that gained additional seats and resources were presumed the winners, and those that reduced their share of the pie by declaring smaller numbers, the losers. Amid the enthusiasm for financial resources and political representation, the principle that the census count is meant to calculate the needs of the citizens, according to the Constitution, was forgotten.

Of deep concern is the fact that the exaggerated intercensal population growth rate has gained wide acceptance among officials, including economic policy planners. Up to the 1990s, the Planning Commission, tasked with five-year plans, would have expressed concern over evidently distorted population figures. In that scenario, the contested intercensal growth rate of 2.55pc would have been re-evaluated and verified through consultations at the highest level before it was accepted. The concerned census commissioners would have meticulously weighed and vetted the numbers, even to the point of scrutinising a decimal place of change in population growth because of its multiple implications for economic planning.

Those were the good old days, when the addition of a million or even thousands of citizens to the population was taken seriously and the associated needs duly addressed. Population-related concerns were prioritised in policymaking. The current NFC award, which gives 82pc weightage to population size, is a pernicious incentive to exaggerate population size. To top it all, many view the census as merely an exercise to allocate parliamentary seats and demarcate constituencies.

Realising that lowering fertility rates was conducive to human development, the leadership of many a country formulated and implemented effective population policies. President Suharto of Indonesia in 1967, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of Bangladesh in 1975, and president Khamenei of Iran in the late 1980s took that course of action. Even the Muslim Gulf states have an average total fertility rate of two children per woman. Saudi Arabia now has a fertility rate of 2.4 children per woman, which is one child less than Pakistan.

When the Government of Pakistan declared an educational emergency last month, it raised hopes that a population emergency would follow. There has been a clear neglect of the education sector despite Article 25-A of the Constitution, which makes free primary education mandatory. The failure of not reducing fertility has increased the number of out-of-school children.

If the population policy of 2002 had been successfully implemented, fertility rates would have reached 2.1 children per woman by 2020. Consequently, we would not have a single child out of school based on our existing efforts to raise educational enrolment rates. However, as things stand, there are 23m children who are out of school due to the challenge of accommodating 7m additional children each year. As a result, we are leaving behind a generation of incapacitated children who cannot read or write and are likely to be stunted due to poor nutrition.

We ask the prime minister to prioritise the challenge of reducing the population growth rate for multiple reasons. The most important among them is to protect the fundamental human right of millions of children to basic education. This nation is in dire need of leadership on an important policy matter which impacts the lives of millions.

The oversight of not pursuing the 2002 population policy, or the CCI Plan of Action, 2018, does not implicate the government in power as it spans two decades of negligence. What is available now is an opportunity for the current political leadership to seize the moment and make a difference through appropriate course correction.

It is an opportune time for the prime minister to mobilise all four chief ministers in the next meeting of the Council of Common Interests to renew their pledge to the CCI’s population decisions of 2018. The religious leadership stands united in supporting the new population narrative of tawazzun (balance), which gives individuals the right to balance their family size in accordance with their resources.

Additionally, all major political parties currently in power in the provinces have expressed their support for decisions of the CCI in their respective 2023 manifestos.

Not taking immediate policy action on tackling population growth rates will be a huge blunder, one with a huge cost for the country.

The writer is Country Director, Population Council.

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2024

How a Brooklyn dentist almost formed a Jewish homeland in pre-WW II China

Seeing a land free of antisemitism, Albert Einstein and Chinese leaders pushed plans to settle 100,000 Jews fleeing Nazis in Yunnan, the Himalayan foothills of China’s hinterland

By HARRY SAUNDERS

Today, 


Books about Jews arriving and living in Shanghai in the late 1930s displayed at the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited on May 7, 2013. (Peter Parks/AFP)

FOREIGN POLICY — On March 7, 1939, China’s top legislative official, Sun Ke, filed a dispatch to the government’s Civil Affairs Office. As a member of the Supreme Council for National Defense, he had spent the previous two years searching for ways to give China a fighting chance against the invading Japanese. Now, Sun Ke wanted to brief his colleagues on a seemingly unrelated issue: the plight of the Jewish people.

“These people suffer the most from being without a country, and for more than 2,600 years they have moved about homeless,” Sun Ke wrote, before describing Hitler’s plans for extermination. “The British want to set up a permanent settlement in Palestine,” he continued, “but this has provoked vehement opposition from the Arabs there, and the violence has not yet died down.”

Sun Ke believed that a more suitable refuge could be found in his own country. Not in Shanghai, where 20,000 Jews had already fled, but in the Himalayan foothills of China’s hinterland. With Laos to the south and what was then called Burma to the west, Yunnan was a border province with an unusually temperate climate, staggering natural beauty, and enough uncultivated land to accommodate 100,000 Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. What it lacked in scriptural significance, it made up for with its history free of antisemitic violence.

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To Sun Ke and the unlikely coalition of Kuomintang (KMT) officials and American Jews who rallied behind his plan, Yunnan represented nothing less than the promised land of China.

In the intervening 85 years, the Yunnan settlement plan has been mostly forgotten. But never in that time has China’s position on Zionism mattered as much as it does today. Since October 7, 2023, the Israel-Hamas war has forced Beijing to reckon with its newfound status as an emerging superpower and the expectation that it will play a role in every aspect of world affairs, no matter the region.

To fully understand China’s approach to the Middle East, we must return to the 1930s, when the idea for a Jewish homeland in Yunnan transformed from the parlor room fodder of a Brooklyn dentist into the official policy of the Chinese government.

In January 1934, a dentist from Brooklyn named Maurice William wrote a letter to Albert Einstein to present his idea for Jewish resettlement in China. “During a visit at the summer home of Judge [Louis] Brandeis last September we naturally discussed the plight of German Jews,” William wrote. “He too feels that China is the one great hope for Hitler’s victims.”

Illustrative: Officials open the Jewish Memorial Park at the Fushouyuan cemetery in Shanghai, China, September 6, 2015. (Courtesy of Dong Jun/ShanghaiDaily.com via JTA)

“Your plan,” Einstein responded, “seems to me to be very hopeful and rational and its realization must be pursued energetically.” The more he thought about the plan, the more sense it made. “The Chinese and Jewish peoples,” he told William two months later, “in spite of any apparent differences in their traditions, have this in common: both possess a mentality that is the product of cultures that go back to antiquity.”

A homeland not necessarily in the Holy Land

By the time William wrote to Einstein, Jewish leaders in Europe had long been searching for a homeland outside of Palestine — “Zionism without Zion,” as historian Gur Alroey put it. Russian activist Leon Pinsker crystallized the idea in his 1882 manifesto “Autoemancipation!”, writing that “the goal of our present endeavors must be not the ‘Holy Land,’ but a land of our own.” Territorialists, as his followers came to be known, spent the next four decades trying, and failing, to achieve Pinsker’s goal.

So there was nothing revolutionary about William’s proposed settlement, except for its location. Previous plans, including the 1903 Uganda Scheme and the Zionist project itself, targeted areas within existing colonial territories. William was the first to suggest that China, a young republic still struggling to transform itself into a modern state, might be willing to make room for Jewish settlers.

William was an unlikely champion for the project. He had no pertinent formal education, no previous ties to territorialism, and had never traveled to China. But through a combination of bootstrapping self-promotion and good fortune, William became not only a well-known figure among the KMT elite but also a respected US authority on China.

Chiang Kai-Shek, 37, standing in a formal photograph with Sun Yat-Sen, founder of the Chinese Republican government, at Wampoa Military Academy, China, in 1924. (AP Photo)

In 1923, William’s self-published refutation of Marxism, “The Social Interpretation of History,” found its way into the hands of Nationalist Party Premier Sun Yat-sen (Sun Ke’s father), who was in the process of articulating his economic vision for the country. Sun drew heavily on William’s language in a series of lectures that he delivered the following year. At one point, he mentioned the Social Interpretation by name. When the KMT published a book based on the lectures after Sun Yat-sen’s death a few years later, it catapulted William from unknown foreigner to philosophical luminary.

Americans first learned about William’s achievement from a 1927 article in Asia Magazine, which declared that Sun Yat-sen “bases his anti-Marxian position almost verbatim upon a little-known work from the pen of an American author.” William soon found himself in contact with some of the United States’ leading intellectuals, including not only Einstein and Brandeis, but also John Dewey and the Columbia historian James T. Shotwell, both of whom would later express their support for his Jewish settlement plan.
‘Abnormal influx of Jewish refugees’ in Shanghai

The Chinese government proved less receptive. Before writing to Einstein, William had discussed his plan in depth with Ambassador Alfred Sao-ke Sze, who agreed that importing German Jews could be a boon for the Chinese economy. Sze’s superiors in the KMT valued William’s opinion. But not as much as they valued their relations with Germany, which had stepped up its military and economic aid to China soon after the Nazis took power.

Constructing a settlement for the exact people that Hitler reviled was sure to offend the German government, the KMT leadership figured. Several years would pass before they became desperate enough to reconsider.

On Christmas Eve, 1938, Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC) Secretary G. Godfrey Phillips sent an urgent cable to the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee: “Shanghai is gravely perturbed by [the] abnormal influx of Jewish refugees,” he warned. “Shanghai is already facing the most serious refugee problem due to Sino-Japanese hostilities. It is quite impossible to absorb any large number of foreign refugees.”

An Israeli tour guide showing Zhoushan Road, an alley in a Shanghai neighborhood that was a Jewish ghetto housing thousands of refugees during World War II, in May 2010. (AP Photo)

Shanghai enjoyed an unusual status in the early days of World War II. Japanese forces captured the city in November 1937, but they left control of the International Settlement in the hands of the SMC. Under its multinational leadership, Shanghai remained one of the few ports in the world that would allow stateless persons entry. From 1937 to 1939, more than 20,000 Jewish refugees, mostly from Central Europe, flooded into the city.

Over that same period, China suffered a string of devastating military defeats at the hands of the Japanese. After capturing Shanghai in November, the Imperial Army marched on Nanjing, forcing Chiang Kai-shek and his government to flee. By January 1939, the Japanese controlled nearly the entirety of China’s eastern seaboard. Chiang’s forces had halted the Imperial Army’s advance, but Chinese pleas for US and British military support continued to fall flat.

Soon after Phillips sent his cable, Sun Ke learned that SMC officials planned to restrict the flow of refugees to Shanghai. Resettling Jewish refugees in Yunnan suddenly seemed to him like the perfect solution to the joint crises facing his country. He began drafting his dispatch to the Civil Affairs Office the next month.

Illustrative: Jewish World War II refugees cooking in an open-air kitchen in Shanghai. (Courtesy Above the Drowning Sea/ Time & Rhythm Cinema)

The logic behind Sun Ke’s proposal was simple: If China offered refuge to the persecuted Jews of Europe, then their co-religionists in the United States and Britain might convince those governments to support China against the Japanese. “British economic support was in truth manipulated by these large merchants and bankers,” Sun Ke wrote, “and since many of these large merchants and bankers are Jewish, therefore this proposal would influence the British to have an even more favorable attitude toward us.”

In addition to their propaganda value, Sun Ke believed that Jewish refugees had something to offer a Chinese province lagging in economic development. In the short term, the symbol of Jewish refugees could help China win the war. In the long term, the refugees themselves, with their “strong financial background and many talents,” as he put it, could help China develop into a great nation.

A young Jewish refugee and her Chinese girlfriends in Shanghai during World War II (photo credit: Courtesy Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum)

His reasoning echoed that of Einstein, who told William back in 1934 that his settlement project would “place at the service of China the beneficent aid of Western skill, knowledge and science.” The historical record reveals no direct link between the plan that William presented to Einstein in 1934 and Sun Ke’s proposal in 1939. However, William’s renown in the KMT and his correspondence with Sze, the ambassador, both suggest that the similarities between his idea and Sun Ke’s proposal were the result of influence, not coincidence.

Nativist US atmosphere gives China plan death blow

Some within the Chinese government doubted that engaging with the thorny issue of Jewish refugees would be worth it. The Foreign Ministry warned that governing Jews in China would only be tenable in the short term before their demands for autonomy became too difficult to control. China’s Interior Ministry went further. “The enemy and fascist countries are constantly alleging that we are a communist state,” ministry officials wrote, “and at this time to take in a large number of Jews will make it difficult to avoid giving the enemy a pretext for propaganda. In general, in fascist theory, communism and the Jews are frequently mentioned in the same breath.”

But the promise of potentially attracting Western military assistance proved stronger. In March 1939, the KMT approved Sun Ke’s proposal and began publicizing the Yunnan plan in the Chinese and US press. That they lacked a clear plan of execution made little difference. Since the Jewish settlement’s primary appeal lay in its propaganda value, merely declaring support for it could be enough to win the sympathy of the Americans.

Visitors read a poster with information about Jewish asylum seekers in Shanghai during World War II at the Israel Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo, May 4, 2010, in Shanghai, China. (AP/Eugene Hoshiko)

When William heard about Sun Ke’s proposal, he burst into action. His peers in the United States had given him nothing but positive feedback, and with the KMT on board, it looked like his idea could finally become a reality. But the moment William started to ask for government money, things started to look different.

In response to polls revealing an electorate preoccupied with domestic issues, the Roosevelt administration’s foreign policy took a distinctly anti-immigration turn in the run-up to the 1940 presidential election. After Hitler annexed Austria in March 1938, the State Department maintained its quota of 27,730 visas for Germans, even as applications soared. By June 1939, the waiting list had grown to more than 300,000. That month, an ocean liner called the St. Louis carrying 937 mostly Jewish refugees from Hamburg got within sight of the Miami harbor. US immigration officers sent the ship back to Europe, where hundreds of its passengers were later murdered in the Holocaust.

It was against this nativist backdrop that William began holding meetings with State Department officials in August 1939. They referred him to a committee that advised Roosevelt on refugee affairs, but no records of any further meetings survive. For a project that would involve transporting 100,000 refugees from central Europe to China, the US government’s refusal to provide funding represented a death blow.

Four girls on deck of the MS St. Louis in 1939. (Courtesy of the Arlekin Players)

The exact circumstances in which the KMT abandoned the project are similarly murky. But this much is clear: In the archives of the year 1939, there was a cacophony of discussion surrounding the Yunnan settlement plans. Press conferences in Shanghai, dispatches from Chongqing, and meetings in Washington. Objections, assessments, retorts. By 1940: nothing.

In the end, it was Pearl Harbor, not the sympathy of prominent Jews, that drove the United States and Great Britain to support China. The ensuing Allied-backed counteroffensive vanquished Japan, but it left the KMT severely depleted. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) seized on this weakness to relaunch its campaign to control the country. In 1949, Mao Zedong established a new government in Beijing while Sun Ke and his comrades fled to Taiwan.

They have operated in exile from Taipei ever since.

Little unites today’s CCP with the KMT of the 1930s. Chinese leader Xi Jinping will quote Marx and Lenin a million times before admitting even a nickel of intellectual debt to the KMT. But Beijing’s approach to the Israel-Hamas war, with its faith in the power of messaging, would be all too familiar to Sun Ke and his colleagues.

When Israel first launched its military operation to remove Hamas from power in Gaza and secure the return of the 251 hostages kidnapped on October 7 when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel butchering 1,200 people, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that China would always support “the legitimate aspirations of the Arab and Islamic world.”

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (C) adjusts his kippa, the traditional Jewish skullcap for men, as he visits the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem’s Old City on December 20, 2013. ( Ahmad Gharabli / AFP)

After Iran launched a series of attacks against Israel in April, Wang parroted Tehran’s account, while characterizing the strikes as an act of self-defense.

Beijing’s statements have not labeled Hamas as a terrorist group, an omission that is sure to strain China’s once-blossoming trade relationship with Israel. Yet behind closed doors, Chinese diplomats keep trying to convince their Israeli counterparts that all this is just talk and should not be misconstrued as actual Chinese hostility toward Israel.

If China’s response to the Israel-Hamas war seems passive or incoherent or amateurish, it is helpful to remember how little experience Beijing has engaging with the political thicket that Zionism has always represented. Seldom in its history has China taken a position on the issue of a Jewish state. When it attempted to establish a Jewish settlement in 1939, it acted on the belief that Washington’s loyalty to the Jewish people was an unchanging and exploitable fact.

When China overestimated the influence of Jewish interests in US politics during World War II, it wasted valuable time and a few stacks of paper. But with the Chinese government now trying to position itself as the world’s alternative superpower, misreading the politics of Zionism could be far more costly.

Global powers clash at United Nations over North Korea

A general view shows the inside of the UN headquarters, on the day members of the United Nations Security Council vote on a Gaza resolution that demands an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan leading to a permanent sustainable ceasefire, and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, in New York City, US, March 25, 2024.
PHOTO: Reuters file

PUBLISHED ONJUNE 28, 2024 

UNITED NATIONS — The US, Britain, France confronted Russia at the United Nations Security Council on Friday (June 28) over accusations it is violating an arms embargo on North Korea by using missiles and munitions from Pyongyang in its war against Ukraine.

Russia's UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia rejected the accusations as "completely false". The council meeting came after Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a pact last week with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in which they agreed to provide military assistance if either faces armed aggression.

The US also called out China on Friday, saying it should use its influence with North Korea and Russia to protect regional and global security and end "this increasingly dangerous military co-operation" between the pair



"I appeal to my Chinese colleagues to understand that if indeed the situation on the Korean Peninsula continues on the trajectory it's going, the United States and its allies will have to take steps to defend their security," deputy US Ambassador Robert Wood told the council, without elaborating.

China strongly rejected a US accusation that it was emboldening North Korea by not condemning Russia's actions.

"The current situation on the Korean Peninsula continues to be tense. How did this come about?" said China's deputy UN ambassador, Geng Shuang. "The US should reflect deeply especially on its own actions instead of blaming others and shirking its own responsibility as it habitually does."

The contrail of a North Korean missile is pictured from Yeonpyeong Island, South Korea, on June 26, 2024.

'No reason' for concern

China and Russia say joint military drills by the US and South Korea provoke Pyongyang, while Washington accuses Beijing and Moscow of emboldening North Korea by shielding it from more UN sanctions. Russia, China, the US, Britain and France are permanent veto-wielding council members.

Nebenzia dismissed the council meeting — called by the US, France, Britain, South Korea and Japan — as a bid to "disseminate baseless accusations in order to detract attention from their own destructive actions".


"Our co-operation with Pyongyang is exclusively constructive and legitimate in nature and this is exceptionally important. It does not threaten anybody, unlike the military activity of the United States and their allies," Nebenzia said.

North Korean UN Ambassador Song Kim also sought to give reassurances, adding that unless anyone was planning to invade North Korea or Russia, "there is no reason whatsoever to be concerned about development of their bilateral relations".

"The DPRK, Russia relations are completely peace-loving and defensive in nature as they do not target a third party, but promote progress and well being of the people of the two countries," he told the council.

China reacted guardedly last week to the pact between Moscow and Pyongyang. It made no reference to it during the Security Council meeting on Friday.

'More dangerous' world

UN sanctions monitors said in April, that the debris from a missile that landed in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Jan 2 was from a North Korean Hwasong-11 series ballistic missile. Russia invaded neighbouring Ukraine in February 2022.

Ukrainian state prosecutors said in May they had examined debris from 21 of about 50 North Korean missiles launched by Russia between December last and February this. The US has also accused Russia of firing "a total of four possible North Korean-supplied ballistic missiles toward Ukraine" in mid-June.

"Russia's actions are making the world a more dangerous place for all countries," Britain's UN Ambassador Barbara Woodward told the council.

Formally known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), North Korea has been under UN sanctions since 2006 for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, and those measures have been unanimously strengthened over the years.

"The Russian Federation has opted to prioritise the pursuit of its illegal war of aggression against Ukraine to the detriment of the international non-proliferation regime. It has imperiled regional security and our collective security," said French UN Ambassador Nicolas de Riviere.

For the past several years the Security Council has been divided over how to deal with Pyongyang. Russia and China say more sanctions will not help and want such measures to be eased. They proposed some sanctions be lifted in December 2019 but have never put their draft resolution to a vote as it would fail.