A first Academy Award for an Indian film — and then a second on the same night


'Naatu Naatu' from RRR won the Academy Award for best original song and The Elephant Whisperers won best documentary short film.

Indians erupted in celebration on Monday after ‘Naatu Naatu’, the breakout hit from the action movie RRR, won the Academy Award for best original song, making history as the first movie from the country to win the honour.

The song — a fast-paced number that has found fans all over the world, spawned a TikTok challenge and has millions of views on YouTube — won a standing ovation when it was performed at the 95th Academy Awards on Sunday night.

Indians had won Oscars previously, but no Indian film had won an Academy Award before Sunday night in Los Angles. RRR and The Elephant Whisperers, which won best documentary short film, gave the country two Oscar-winning films in one night.

“No words can describe this surreal moment. Dedicating this to all our amazing fans across the world. THANK YOU!!,” the Twitter account for RRR posted.

Television showed images of people dancing to the song in the streets, minutes after the award was announced, even as #NaatuNaatu was a top trend on Twitter.

“The popularity of ‘Naatu Naatu’ is global. It will be a song that will be remembered for years to come,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi posted on Twitter, congratulating the team behind the song.

“Entire India is proud. They have brought India to the world stage,” singer Prudhvi Chandra, one of the singers of ‘Naatu Naatu’, told the India Today news channel.

In the film, made in the South Indian language of Telugu and directed by S.S. Rajamouli, ‘Naatu Naatu’ begins when the two leads, played by Ram Charan and N.T. Rama Rao Jr., flaunt their dance skills after being bullied as the only Indian people invited to a British party in colonial times.

When a young British man aims racist insults at the leads, they decide to educate him using the song ‘Naatu Naatu’. During the scene, which was filmed at Ukraine’s grand Mariinskyi Palace, everyone at the party, including the scoffing British man, tries to master the moves.

At the Oscars, composer M.M. Keeravani burst into song while accepting the award on stage, along with songwriter Chandrabose. “I feel this is about just the beginning of everything so that the world — particularly the Western world — focuses more on Indian music and Asian music, which is long due,” Keeravani said backstage after winning the award.

The Elephant Whisperers is about a couple in South India who adopt a baby elephant and care for him.

Palestine afire

Editorial 

Published March 13, 2023 

THERE were genuine concerns that Benjamin Netanyahu’s extreme right-wing government, that took power in December 2022, would make life very difficult for the Palestinian people. These concerns have turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the state of Israel, now with xenophobic pro-settler ministers in charge, sits by as extremist Jews unleash havoc upon the Arabs. A particularly appalling incident occurred on Feb 26, when a mob of settlers ransacked the Palestinian village of Huwwara in the occupied West Bank. The raid — reminiscent of the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestinians during the 1948 Nakba — came about after two settler brothers were shot dead by suspected Arab gunmen in the same village. What followed was nothing short of collective punishment, as hundreds of Jewish settlers ransacked the town. What is equally appalling is the response of some Israeli ministers to this outrage. Finance Minister Bezazel Smotrich, one of the most virulently anti-Arab characters in the Netanyahu set-up, called for Huwwara to be “wiped out”, while adding that Israel should attack Palestinian cities “mercilessly”. Predictably, violence has surged with Israeli troops killing a number of Palestinians, including children, while Arab gunmen have also retaliated.

It is easy to see where the situation is headed: towards a third intifada. The Palestinian people apparently have no other option but to resist, as Israel butchers them regularly, while those running Tel Aviv openly talk of genocidal violence against the Arabs. The tragedy is that the inept Palestinian leadership, and the hypocritical self-declared defenders of the international ‘rules-based order’ have all failed the ordinary people in the occupied territories. The silence from the slumbering Muslim world is particularly deafening. Whether it is vicious forays into Gaza, frequent provocations at Al Aqsa by extremist Jews or murderous rampages in the West Bank, Israel’s message is clear: the peace process is dead and buried. What remains for the Palestinians in the holy land is repression and brutal violence.

Published in Dawn, March 13th, 2023

Saudi Arabia-Iran détente: a setback for Israel and wake-up call on relations with US

Reuters Published March 13, 2023

Saudi Minister of State and National Security Adviser Musaed bin Mohammed Al-Aiban, meets the Iranian Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, in Beijing, China, March 10, 2023. — Saudi Press Agency/Handout via Reuters

JERUSALEM: The Saudi-Iran detente sets back Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to isolate Tehran, but time will tell whether it also hinders his outreach to Riyadh or planning for any eventual military strike against Iranian nuclear sites.

The more pressing worry for Israel, some experts argue, is that Friday’s Chinese-brokered deal between the top Muslim powers suggests the United States is giving ground in the region just when the Netanyahu government needs it most.

An Israeli official who requested anonymity described the detente as an unsurprising and preliminary process that should not hinder any parallel progress towards normalisation between Israel and Saudi Arabia. After all, Israel has drawn close to the United Arab Emirates despite Abu Dhabi also engaging Tehran.

Meanwhile, Israel is keeping up a campaign of veiled threats to attack Iran alone if it deems nuclear diplomacy a dead end. But all scenarios still hinge on Washington — a sponsor and sweetener of Israeli-Arab peace accords and guardian ally which, if it red-lights military action, Israel will be loath to cross.

“This is a brilliant stroke by China and Iran to undercut Saudi-American and Saudi-Israeli normalisation. It helps bring Tehran in from the cold and undermines American and Israeli efforts to build a regional coalition to confront Iran as it is on the cusp of developing nuclear weapons,” said Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defence of Democracies in Washington.

There are unrelated strains on the Israeli-US alliance, however. The Democratic administration of President Joe Biden, which has yet to invite Netanyahu to the White House, has voiced unusually strong concern at his religious-nationalist coalition.

Netanyahu is also beset by unprecedented mass demonstrations in Israel against his judicial overhaul push. The protests have included pledges by some air force reservists not to turn up for training, a signal that combat readiness and morale have been shaken.

Amos Yadlin, a former military intelligence chief under Netanyahu, said the Saudi-Iran detente should be a wake-up call.

“The government’s focus on the judicial overhaul, which is tearing the nation apart and weakening Israel in all dimensions, reflects a deep disconnect between Netanyahu and international geopolitical trends,” Yadlin said on Twitter.

Screengrab of Amos Yadlin’s tweet.


Accusing Netanyahu of “generating extraordinary damage to our national security,” Yadlin said he should scrap the reforms — which critics call an attempt to subordinate the courts to the government — and close ranks with Biden on how to forge Israeli-Saudi ties and jointly tackle Iran’s nuclear programme.

That suggested that Yadlin — who was among pilots who bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981 and served as a top general during Israel’s 2007 attack on a suspected reactor in Syria — may not place much store in Israel’s ability to go solo against Iran, whose nuclear sites are distant, dispersed and defended.

Similarly, Ehud Barak, a former Netanyahu defence minister turned political critic, described Iran as “marching confidently towards becoming a de facto nuclear threshold state”. “US-Israeli coordination appears to be strong in the defence sphere but weak and in need of change in the offence sphere,” he wrote in the best-selling Yedioth Ahronoth daily.

Published in Dawn, March 13th, 2023

Beijing breakthrough

Editorial 

Published March 12, 2023

THE Chinese capital is not usually associated with Middle East peacemaking. Yet it was in Beijing on Friday that smiling top officials from the host country, Saudi Arabia and Iran announced to a surprised world that Riyadh and Tehran had decided to re-establish diplomatic relations.

This is no mean achievement, considering the terse ties between the two states, particularly in the decades since 1979’s Islamic Revolution in Iran. The deal, if all goes according to plan, would open up a new vista of cooperation between two of the Muslim world’s most influential states, while the breakthrough also brings to the fore a dominant China’s newfound role as international peacemaker.

Relations have alternated between lukewarm ties and open hostility between Saudi Arabia and Iran ever since the revolution. However, the relationship suffered a severe jolt when Riyadh executed prominent Saudi Shia cleric Sheikh Baqir al-Nimr in 2016. Thereafter, Iranian protesters attacked Saudi missions in Tehran and Mashhad, which led to the rupture in diplomatic ties. During and before this period, both sides have competed for influence in Lebanon, Bahrain, Iraq and most notably Yemen, where the devastating civil war has pitted the pro-Iran Houthi militia against the Saudi-allied government. Therefore, a Saudi-Iranian détente has the potential to bring stability to all these states, particularly Yemen.

Moreover, improved ties between what are seen as the Muslim world’s leading Sunni and Shia powers can also mean better intra-Muslim relations. This is especially true for countries like Pakistan, which have witnessed significant sectarian violence, much of it influenced by the Saudi-Iran rivalry.

Coming to China’s role, the peace deal signals that Beijing is willing to take a more active role in international diplomacy. This may be partly due to the fact that China wants stability in an important market — the Gulf — and maintains good relations with both Riyadh and Tehran. Iraq and Oman have also played quiet, important roles in bringing both sides to the table.

However, the deal has sent alarm bells ringing in important capitals, most significantly Washington. The US has welcomed the move, albeit in a cagey manner. The American establishment seems to be wary of Iran breaking out of isolation — that the US has worked quite hard to maintain — and is also not too happy to see China playing an active role in global diplomacy. Meanwhile, in Tel Aviv, there is disquiet bordering on panic, as senior opposition figures have termed the peace deal a “failure of Israel’s foreign policy”.

The path to peace for the Saudis and Iranians will not be easy, as there remains a wide gulf of mistrust while there are spoilers aplenty who will be seeking to sabotage the deal. But for the sake of their people and the Muslim world, both sides need to make it work.

Published in Dawn, March 12th, 2023

PAKISTAN

Filmmakers disheartened after censor board halts screening of documentary My Mother’s Daughter at local festival

The board claimed the film about child marriage and the forced conversion of a Christian girl goes "against Pakistani culture".



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It’s tough to be a filmmaker in Pakistan — even more so if you’re trying to do some real work and shine a light on stories that go beyond the surface. My Mother’s Daughter, Mariam Khan and Ahmen Khawaja’s short documentary about child marriage and the forced conversion of a Christian girl, has been given the ax by the Central Board of Film Censors. The filmmakers told Images that though they are “disheartened”, they will keep fighting for their film.

Termed “propaganda” by the board, My Mother’s Daughter was stopped from being screened at the Women Through Film festival. On Wednesday, Khan shared a letter from the board on Instagram and wrote, “On International Women’s Day we found out that Pakistan’s Central Board of Film Censors in Islamabad (CBFC) has decided to censor our short documentary My Mother’s Daughter and is not allowing it to screen this weekend at the Women Through Film film festival.”

She explained that the film follows the real story of a minor Christian girl in Faisalabad who was abducted by a middle aged man, forcefully married to him and converted to Islam. “Up to 1,000 young girls are forcefully converted every year and to call this propaganda is a gross injustice to their plight and stories. We spent months verifying the case and going to court hearings with the survivor to ensure the utmost authenticity in the film,” she said.

The directors told Images that they were shocked to hear that their film is being censored at a film festival. “We’re disappointed to hear that though international films from India and Israel have been approved, ours is facing a ban. It isn’t even fiction, it’s non-fiction. A Pakistani film is being stopped from screening at a Pakistani film festival,” said Khawaja.

In the letter, the CBFC claimed that the subject film was examined by a panel of the Board on February 27 and “the members unanimously found the documentary film unsuitable for exhibition for the reasons that the short documentary seems more a propaganda. Unauthenticated judicial procedure shown, wrong values are highlighted which is against the Pakistani culture and society,” it stated.

In response, the filmmakers called for a full board review but it was denied to them. “Upon speaking directly with the chairperson, we were told ‘the full board review can’t be done before the festival because the office is being renovated’.” They suggested an online review but were asked to arrange a hall at Centaurus in Islamabad for the board members to be shown the film.

My Mother’s Daughter has been screened at three Pakistani film festivals in Karachi and Lahore — Prism, Divvy and Women of the World — and there have been no problems. The Women Through Film festival curator told the filmmakers that films are screened every year by the censor board and they have faced this issue before with a different film.

Khawaja said that many international festivals have written to them and said they loved their film. “It is being screened at the Mosaic International South Asian Film Festival in Canada at the end of this month. The film has won seven or eight international awards. It just goes to say that Pakistani films get more appreciation outside rather than inside which is why the industry cannot grow,” she said.

“We are budding filmmakers, we do not need dejection or rejection, we need local support,” she said, adding that the Pakistani filmmaking industry has their backs. “But when the government stops you from even having a conversation, where do you go from there? How do we make an impact?” she questioned.

“A lot of people reached out to us and what they said was this is how you know you have made it, your film has been banned, which will arouse attention and people will want to watch it. That’s sad,” she commented. “This is how people want to see our film, after it has been brandished with the mark of controversy?”

The filmmakers stressed upon how real these cases are and how people are in denial about it. They compared their documentary with news and said, “The news also shows these cases, will we also censor the news? Is the news, then, also propaganda?”

Khan and Khawaja have decided to keep fighting for their film. They have accepted that it is not a possibility for the festival, which is mere days away but they do not intend on letting this slide. “The idea to make this documentary came to us because we wanted to let people know girls like Mehak exist. We’re disheartened, especially as budding female filmmakers, we don’t know where to go from here.”

Khan said, “We can’t continue sweeping issues like this under the rug. By doing that, we are providing a safe space for criminals. How will these things get reduced if we don’t even have these conversations?”

PAKISTAN

Harassment, patriarchy and inflation come under fire in Aurat March

Shazia Hasan 

Published March 13, 2023 

(Clockwise from top) Aurat March participants dance after smearing colours on each others’ faces in a symbolic Holi played at Burns Garden on Sunday; a tableau is under way on the stage; women covering their heads with chadors listen to a speech; and a rally is taken out at the end of the event.—Online/ Shakil Adil / White Star

KARACHI: Raising voice over the many injustices in society, raising awareness on multiple issues, standing up for each other, Hum Aurtein managed to gather, in no particular order, women, men, transgender persons, workers, peasants, members of minority communities, students and children at the sixth Aurat March in all its unapologetic, unabashed brazenness at the Burns Garden here on Sunday.

There were stories to listen to, faces to read along with interesting posters and placards.

There were also taboos to be broken. One placard had the words ‘Sunno, Samjho, Seekho, Badlo [Listen, understand, learn, change], another read ‘We Are Not Ovary-Acting’. Some other interesting messages on placards included ‘I Want To Exist Without Apology’, ‘Abort the patriarchy’, ‘Anti-hero’ and ‘Bachay Paida Kerne Hain Tau Inn Ki Perverish Bhi Kerna Seekh Lo [You want children, then learn to bring them up also].

The stories were all around you, and not just up on the main stage. Rukhsana Paveen Kho­khar had her eight-month-old daughter, Mashal, in her arms who was looking around inquisitively while taking in her surroundings and the happenings. “I have named her ‘Mashal’ because I want her to light up the path for everyone. Similarly, I have named my other daughter, who is six, Mazaib, meaning bea­utiful like the moon. The moon also lights the night sky,” she expla­ined, adding that her mother, Khandul Mai, was also there at the Aurat March with her.

“My mother struggled a lot to get me educated. I’m the first female in my family who studied right up to master’s. I have a master’s in English literature. Throughout my schooling I stood first in class and in intermediate, BA and MA I passed in the first division. And this despite all the men in my family, save my father who was a poor labourer, being dead set against educating girls,” she said.

People from all walks of life pour their heart out as fiery slogans heat up Burns Garden

Meanwhile, up on the stage there were people coming up to tell you about their struggles, their issues. There were performances, singing of songs, acting out skits and tableaux. There were chairs if you would like to sit on them and watch, there were also carpets spread out on the grass if you would like to sit down on the ground. The Net­work of Organisations Working For People With Disabilities Pakistan, or NOWPDP, had arranged for wheelchairs too, for the disabled or the elderly. You could also just roam around and mingle or watch from under the big shady trees of Burns Garden.

There was an air of ease, of freedom to do as you please, women came dressed in pretty cotton saris, ghararas, ghagras, skirts, pants, jeans, plain shalwar kameez, there were several men with long hair who wore their hair in buns or in pony tails, girls had pink, blue and purple streaks in their hair, many of them were smoked, too, filling their lungs with smoke. Why why not? They were their lungs, they could do whatever they jolly well felt like doing with them bringing up the famous, or infamous most misunderstood slogan from the first Aurat March ‘Mera Jism Meri Marzi’! It was repeated several times up on the stage, too, along with Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s inspiring poem ‘Hum Dekhenge’.

Speaking about the Aurat March, economist Dr Kaiser Bengali, who has attended all the six marches, said that it was an opportunity to express themselves, which was an important pillar of our social ideology. “It tells us how society should be organised, pluralised with freedom,” he said.

Architect and town planner Arif Hasan, who was also there, said that he had so far attended five marches and that the Aurat March was a movement.

“Such movements build up slowly but they should happen as they point out the ills in society which people don’t usually talk about,” he said, adding that the media should also write about these ills to spread the word and raise awareness.

Fatima Majeed from the fisherfolk community came up to talk about the hardships fisherfolks face, about pollution in the seas, about dirty fuel for power generation such as coal.

Labourers and workers lamented loudly about inflation and the rising costs of fuel, Pastor Ghazala Shafique spoke about minority rights, sanitation workers, crimes and injustices against minor girls abducted and made to change their faiths.

Radha Bheel spoke about bonded labour and how girls were chained as they worked. How they are also raped as they work like slaves. “We are fighting against child labour, we are fighting for education, for respect,” she said.

Women from Lyari spoke about how the skin of their hands burn and their nails crack while peeling red chillies, tamarind and garlic. Other women spoke about harassment at the workplace.

Laali from Mirpurkhas came up to talk about the difficulties women of the flood-affected areas have been facing.

Transgender community member Bindiya Rana, Shahzadi Rai, Dr Mehrub Moiz Awan and rapper Jaan-e-Hasina brought up the difficulties faced by their community.

Arzoo Raja, Neha Pervaiz and other teenage Christian girls, who have now been recovered after they married Muslim men as old as their fathers, came up to tell their own stories in the form of a tableau. “I have a body, I have a soul and I have my faith,” they sang.

“We don’t speak about any one woman, we raise voices for all women, from all communities, classes, faith and sects. We raise voice for all genders, too,” said social activist and classical dancer Sheema Kermani.

Finally, there was a small celebration of Holi as all the participants of the Aurat March rubbed colour on each other’s cheeks. Many participants, who felt they have been wronged in any way in life, were also invited to dip their palms in red colour and leave their palm impressions on a long white cloth that had inscribed in red the words ‘The injustice done to you will not be forgotten’.

Chanting slogans then and reading out their charter of demands, the Aurat March then moved out of Burns Garden to march to the Fawwara Chowk.

Published in Dawn, March 13th, 2023

The women will march

  

The Aurat March is not a sanitised, polite, controlled version of a narrative of women’s rights. It is organic and therefore, it will always be messy and diverse.

Maria Amir 

Published March 8, 2023

The years following the inaugural Aurat March in 2018 have been met with what is now an alarmingly familiar pattern.

Each year, around February, there is a marked uptick in online vitriol directed at women speaking about their rights on any public forum. Television anchors and guests spin cautionary tales, detailing various themes of behayai [shamelessness] that the Aurat March is exclusively held responsible for. Most of these commentators are men, but there are many women who also buy into this narrative.

As if Pakistan’s greatest problem at present is behayai, and even if that were the case (which it is not — that particular list is unending), the insinuation that our behayai problem stems from the one day a year when women chant slogans and carry placards calling out abusive, neglectful men and patriarchy in general, rather than the slew of rapes, child abuse cases, grave robbing, domestic violence, killing in the name of ‘honour’ and near institutionalised sexual harassment of women in the workplace and in public spaces are apparently the hallmarks of a ‘respectable’ society.

The ‘men are not robots’ debate

This time is marked with men reminding us that women in Pakistan have no real problems because religion affords us rights even if the men interpreting, institutionalising, and preaching that religion markedly do not.

We are told from a young age that we should not go ‘outside’ because ‘it isn’t safe for women’. Pray tell, what is so dangerous outside that women must be so wary of? Is it goblins or ghosts or wolves or djinns?

We are told not to go outside because the danger facing women outside their homes is men. While all men obviously do not abuse women, women are in no position to distinguish between which men are and are not a danger to them — therefore women must be wary of all men.

It is men who taught us this lesson by telling us that they respect us and the only way they have devised to show us this respect is to cage our movement, lock us up, prevent us from working and limit our potential. All because men cannot control themselves in the presence of women, something that they proudly reaffirm for us publicly with comments like “agar aurat aise kapre pehne gi to aadmi kya kare [What can a man do when women wear such clothes?]”, “aurat bahar phire gi to uss ke saath bura hi hoga [Only bad things happen to women who venture outside]” and the now infamous “Mard robot thori hein [Men are not robots]”.

Women are punished for a problem that men have with female bodies. This is a lesson they have taught us by reiterating that a woman’s izzat [honour] is framed through her jism [body] and men’s izzat rests in how they manage ‘their’ women.

‘Not real women’

All the concerns with badgering and intimidation, media harassment and misrepresentation are things the Aurat March and its organisers are deeply familiar with. None of this is new. Every independent minded woman who stands up for herself in our country, in any capacity, is punished for it socially.

The present charge against women participating in the Aurat Marches is that they are not ‘real women’. ‘Ye asli aurtein nahin hein’, a phrase that expands the ‘good woman/bad woman’ binary into new territory, where supposed ‘bad women’ aren’t even women any longer.

This vitriol and baseless propaganda is achingly familiar. The Aurat March is also well acquainted with the charge of being ‘foreign funded’. If only!

Read more: Let me womansplain the Aurat March to you

Aurat March funds are painstakingly collected through bake sales and dholkis, with students and volunteers selling everything from handmade face masks, tote bags and posters to conducting storytelling sessions.

In some ways, the greatest testament to the fact that the Aurat March receives no foreign funds is the treatment it receives. No matter how Pakistanis denigrate western nations at political rallies, no one messes with any group or institution that actually has foreign funds backing it up. Not in this country.

The state’s response

While all these struggles are familiar, 2023 has been the start of something new and ominous in the form of the state’s response to the Aurat March.

For several years, Aurat March chapters in several cities including Islamabad, Karachi, Multan and Lahore have met with intimidation from religious groups and local administrations, and the marches have either been limited or redirected but they have never been stopped altogether.

This has been the first year when the Lahore District Commissioner actively chose to cater to the Haya March over the Aurat March, even though the former arose as a violent response to intimidate Aurat March organisers. The Lahore, Islamabad and Multan chapters all received notices that the march would not go ahead two days before March 8, and it has taken entire days for volunteers, lawyers and organisers camping outside of the courts to finally secure permissions and security protocol for the Aurat March to proceed.

This new form of intimidation implies that the real problem here isn’t about freedom of expression or assembly, not even women’s free expression or assembly, but rather about who the women taking to the streets are, what they are saying and who claims them.

The Aurat March works independently and while women organising under any other banner have the protection of a political party or religious group, someone to ‘claim’ them as ‘their’ women and therefore ensure their safety, the Aurat March rejects this frame. Despite having fathers, brothers, husbands and sons, the women gathering at the Aurat March do so as individuals asserting that they are enough to be regarded as human beings with rights.

By claiming only themselves, they demand the protection of the state from violence, threats and harassment. Denying peaceful protesters this protection while it is extended to violent groups openly making threats, carrying sticks, and throwing bricks, implies that the state endorses institutionalised violence over independent, peaceful citizens, especially when those citizens happen to be women.

Here to stay

The Aurat March is an inclusive, grass roots led movement that welcomes khwaja siras, gender minorities, men, and women from all walks of life to protest for women’s rights on March 8, which is a global event marking International Women’s Day.

The Aurat March begins its organising efforts early on and hosts both private and public events to plan its manifesto, its art and poster campaigns and its fund-raising campaign. Grassroots organising with women’s groups, ranging from farmers and sanitation workers to religious minority communities and domestic workers, continues all year-round, so for all the people accusing the March and its organisers of being elite women who don’t have ‘anything to do with Pakistani women’s struggles’, it would be prudent to visit their vibrant social media pages and see how much effort every chapter of the Aurat March makes to engage with as many women from as many walks of life as possible.

One hopes that more men and women who are genuinely sceptical of the March would engage with them. If you think you and your concerns are not being included by the March, then show up to the one in your city on March 8 carrying a placard that says what you want to say.

Read more: Is Aurat March un-Islamic?

Despite all the intimidation and the last-minute hurdles, harassment and hiccups, rest assured that the Aurat March is here to stay. It is here to stay because it is a movement that showcases something markedly different from all other protests.

The reason so many people fear the Aurat March is because it features scores of women openly embracing two emotions that women are seldom, if ever, allowed to express in our culture — anger and joy.

Protesters sing songs, dance, perform theatrical pieces and feature artwork that epitomises this potent combination of women’s rage coupled with their joy — all in a public space.

The Aurat March is not a sanitised, polite, controlled version of a narrative of women’s rights. It is organic and therefore, it will always be messy and diverse.

These are women who have taken the slurs, insults, and attacks on them and turned them into art and laughed at the men trying to terrify them. Nothing destroys insecure men more than such brazen defiance.

The Aurat March features women speaking simultaneously for themselves and for each other. It shows their collective power — their joy and their rage, proudly on display for all to see without apology and without fear.

I get why some of you are terrified in the face of such uncontrollable, beautiful, and raw honesty but that is your cross to bear.

Because the women will march.


Maria Amir is a former journalist and Fulbright Fellow. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Global Gender Studies at SUNY, Buffalo. Her research interests include South Asian feminist folklore and Women’s Movements.

PAKISTAN

The cost of the shadow economy

Dr Abdul Wahid

Published March 13, 2023 


The informal sector’s contribution to Pakistan’s economy is remarkable as it adds a handsome volume of approximately $661 billion, tantamount to 35.6 per cent of GDP. According to the International Labour Organisation, it constitutes 75pc and 68pc of jobs in rural and urban areas; however, it is pregnant with issues like child and bonded labour, gender-based discrimination, and insecurities in the workplace.

Moreover, it embodies small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that are populated by self-employed entrepreneurs, small businesses, informal associations, and street vendors in agriculture and micro-enterprise setups, and thus, they tend to be more resilient to economic downturns. Despite its volume and contribution to the economy, the informal sector creates financial vulnerabilities for formal setups.

Let’s consider the formal market. The Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) board of the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) is a sub-market for SMEs and high-growth companies looking to go public. The GEM board was established following Alternative Investment Market in London, which itself was established in 1995 by the London Stock Exchange as a sub-market to provide a market for SMEs, business startups, and incubates to raise capital and provide a platform for investors to access returns from small businesses.

It has become one of the world’s leading growth markets in the UK for smaller companies, with over 3,000 listed companies from over 70 countries. Though companies listed on the GEM board in Pakistan are subject to less stringent listing criteria and regulations as compared to the ones listed on the main board of the PSX, to the present date, only three SMEs made it to the GEM board, i.e. Pak Agro Packaging Ltd, Supernet Ltd and Universal Network Systems.

Informal setups are backed by special interest groups through a complex mix of tax laws and regulatory compliances for the formal sector

This anomaly has a handful of reasons, like investor participation seems minuscule as only 0.3 million accounts are registered with the National Clearing Company of Pakistan Limited out of around 57.5m bank accounts. This indicates less than 0.5pc of investor participation at the PSX forum.

Investor participation, driven by incentivisation and a less stringent regulatory burden to the informal sector, is visible in real estate property pricing bubbles, higher forex trading returns, and inflationary pressure. These avenues produce ample easy money with the least risk and low regularity compliances under state patronage.

The Imran Khan-led government launched a construction amnesty scheme to promote housing to generate jobs and fill the gap of millions of housing unit shortages. According to Zameen.com, since 2018, the average per square feet price has increased from Rs3,300 to 7,000, which is 26pc returns per annum in open plots investment in Islamabad.

It not only doubled the real estate prices in other cities such as Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Faisalabad but also shifted the investment chunk toward the real estate sector. Many industrialists shifted their attention to the real estate sector.

Similarly, the gold price in December 2017 was Rs56,200 per tola, but now it is Rs201,000 per tola, which is more than 50pc return per annum in gold investment. Likewise, on 14 Jan 2018, the exchange rate of rupees to the dollar was Rs110 to a dollar, and now it is Rs278 — an average of 30-35pc returns per annum.

On the flip side, KSE-100 Index provided compounded annual returns of 14.55pc, and industrial profit was recorded at less than 15pc per annum. The inflation rate in 2018 was 5.08pc, and now it is above 30pc. If the inflation-adjusted returns per annum are calculated, it can be said that the real return an investor receives in the formal market and industrial setup is negative.

Pakistan already has one of the highest income tax rates in the world as far as corporations are concerned, which further depicts a decrease in the wealth of formal sector investors. Consequently, since 2013, more than 200 companies have been delisted from PSX. Only 526 companies are listed on the main board, and just three SMEs are listed on the GEM board; however, the total number of registered companies with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan now stands at 176,000.

The prominent explanation for delisting is a cost-benefit trade-off. If a listed firm’s marginal benefit/cost ratio is less than shedding avoidable costs, this may lead to de-capitalisation.

Nevertheless, investor participation is more in informal sectors in which most of the businesses are unregistered. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) confirms that more than 90pc of the SMEs that operate in the informal sector are set up with the help of family members and friends.

These businesses generally operate in agri-business, food chain, agri-machinery, and textile sectors. Some of these raise money for seasonal products and services and wind up their business when the season ends. These setups are more visible during harvest in rural areas and in food chain industries in urban areas. They earn money by stocking up on necessities like sugar, flour, wheat, grains, oils etc.

They employ the staff on a seasonal or contractual basis and then lay them off. Furthermore, fewer salaries are paid to them compared to minimum wages in cash form without any social security i.e. health insurance and accommodation. Consequently, social and financial vulnerabilities for unemployed youth are increasing drastically, resulting in modern slavery.

Informalisation is proliferated to avoid income tax, intense documentation and regulation, which further fuels decapitalisation and insecurities in the labour market. These informal setups are backed by special interest groups of local politicians, families of bureaucrats, and land elites through a complex mix of tax laws and regulatory compliances for the formal sector.

The writer is an Assistant Professor (PhD Financial Economics) at the National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad. He can be reached at (abwahid.fms@gmail.com)

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, March 13th, 2023

Pace of reforms for women’s equal rights falls to 20-year low: World Bank

Amin Ahmed 

ISLAMABAD: The global pace of reforms towards equal treatment of women under the law has slumped to a 20-year low, constituting a potential impediment to economic growth at a critical time for the global economy, a new World Bank report shows.

In 2022, the global average score on the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law index rose just half a point to 77.1, indicating women, on average, enjoy barely 77 per cent of the legal rights that men do. At the current pace of reform, in many countries a woman entering the workforce today will retire before she will be able to gain the same rights as men, the report notes.

“At a time when global economic growth is slowing, all countries need to mobilise their full productive capacity to confront the confluence of crises besetting them,” said Indermit Gill, Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics.

“Governments can’t afford to sideline as much as half of their population. Denying equal rights to women across much of the world is not just unfair to women; it is a barrier to countries’ ability to promote green, resilient, and inclusive development,” he said.



The Women, Business and the Law 2023 report released on Thursday assesses 190 countries’ laws and regulations in eight areas related to women’s economic participation — mobility, workplace, pay, marriage, parenthood, entrepreneurship, assets, and pensions. The data — which are current through Oct 1, 2022 — offer objective and measurable benchmarks for global progress toward legal gender equality. Today, just 14 countries — all high-income economies — have laws that give women the same rights as men.

Report assesses 190 countries’ laws, regulations related to women’s economic participation

Worldwide, nearly 2.4 billion women of working age still do not have the same rights as men. Closing the gender employment gap could raise long-term GDP per capita by nearly 20pc on average across countries. Studies estimate global economic gains of $5-6 trillion if women started and scaled new businesses at the same rate as men do.

In 2022, only 34 gender-related legal reforms were recorded across 18 countries — the lowest number since 2001. Most reforms focused on increasing paid leave for parents and fathers, removing restrictions to women’s work, and mandating equal pay. It will take another 1,549 reforms to reach substantial legal gender equality everywhere in the areas measured by the report. At the current pace, the report, notes, it would take at least 50 years on average to reach that target.

The latest Women, Business and the Law report provides a comprehensive assessment of global progress toward gender equality in the law over the past 50 years. Since 1970, the global average Women, Business and the Law score has improved by about 2/3, rising from 45.8 to 77.1 points.

The first decade of this century saw strong gains towards legal gender equality. Between 2000 and 2009, over 600 reforms were introduced, with a peak of 73 annual reforms in 2002 and 2008. Since then, reform fatigue seems to have set in — particularly in areas that involve long-established norms, such as the rights of women to inherit and own property. A new analysis of the data shows that economies with historically larger legal gender gaps have been catching up, especially since 2000.

Currently, equality of economic opportunity for women is highest in OECD high-income economies but important reforms have continued in developing economies. Sub-Saharan Africa made significant progress last year.

Published in Dawn, March 4th, 2023

The spectre of inequality

Dr Amir Rafique 

 University of Alberta 

Published March 13, 2023 

The World Inequality Report 2022 shows a very dark picture of inequality around the world. The report discusses four types of inequalities: income inequality, wealth inequality, gender inequality, and carbon inequality.

The world wealth and income data show a very high level of inequality around the world, where the share of the bottom 50 per cent of the world population in total global wealth is just 2pc, while the share of the top 10pc is 76pc.

The global income is also not evenly distributed, where the bottom 50pc of the poorest global population earn just 8.5pc of the total global income, whereas the richest top 10pc earn 52pc of the global income. This shows that global wealth appears to be more unequally distributed than global income.

The bottom half of the world’s population is almost entirely deprived of the capital. The judicious distribution of fruits of development is not possible in this high level of inequality. Though we see the economic growth figures published by all the governments, how equally the growth is distributed matters the most. GDP (the proxy of economic growth) does not capture the variations in human well-being and ignores inequality.

The bottom 50pc of the poorest global population earn just 8.5pc of the total global income, whereas the richest top 10pc earn 52pc

Gender inequality is also very high; women make up only 35pc of the global labour income, whereas men make up the remaining 65pc. Gender parity is also a major issue around the globe.

The same is the case with the fourth type of inequality discussed in the report, carbon inequality, where the top 10pc contribute 48pc to carbon emissions (personal carbon footprint). The historical evidence shows that this extreme level of inequality is not only high but is also persistent.

The report analyses 200 years of data from 1820 to 2020 and concludes that global inequality increased from 1820 to 1920 due to colonialism. The colonial domination of the world played a central role during that period. The data from 1910 to 1980 show a reduction in inequality due to increased social spending and progressive taxation. This period is considered the golden period for the social welfare states.

This trend changed between 1980 to 2020, when the inequality level again started to increase due to the neo-liberal policies enforced by global financial institutions like International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Due to this, the level of inequality in 2020 is the same as in 1910 (at the peak of colonialism). This neo-colonialism is also behaving in the same manner as classic colonialism did.

Women make up only 35pc of the global labour income, whereas men make up the remaining 65pc

Deregulation, privatisation, liberalisation and lower progressive taxation contributed to this extreme inequality. This has increased the economic polarisation around the world because the rise of social spending and redistribution was relatively slow over the last four decades due to the flawed trickle-down economics mantra.

The argument of trickle-down economics, adopted in the late 70s and early 80s, has not worked and is not working at all because global tax revenues and global social expenditures have decreased since 1980. This has resulted in an extreme level of inequality within countries. Concerning wealth inequality, North America is the unequal region of the world, whereas Europe is the equal region.

The world economic system has become extremely hierarchical both between countries and within countries. This shows that economic growth is not distributed fairly and the social safety nets are not wide and deep enough.

The trend indicates that the net private wealth is much higher than the net public wealth, which means there are fewer resources/revenues available to the governments to go for social spending.

The data shows a decrease in the level of net public wealth around the world, where China has the most net-public wealth, which is around 30pc of the total wealth and most developed countries even have negative net public wealth, i.e. the USA, the UK, and Japan.

This means that individuals and corporations have become richer, but governments have become poorer. Without major economic policy changes, the future is bright for the global elite due to the existing system, which is highly archaic and supports the status quo.

This high level of income and wealth inequality leads to extreme concentration of economic power in a tiny segment of society. The report argues that inequality within a society is fundamentally a result of political choices rather than an inevitable phenomenon.

This depends on how society decides to organise its economy, which means the rights given to and constraints imposed on different stakeholders and economic actors. Only public deliberation and political institutions can address all these problems.

Several policy options are suggested in the report to reduce this high level of inequality: progressive wealth and income tax, adoption of inheritance tax, increase in corporate taxes, ending tax evasion by multinational corporations and wealthy individuals, increase in public spending in education, health, and ecological transition (redistribution and socialisation of income and wealth), fairer economic policies and fairer development pathways.

To make the tax system progressive and to achieve tax justice, it is a must to have more taxes on income and wealth and fewer taxes on consumption. All these measures need a political choice to reduce inequality. This requires a new form of internationalist, egalitarian political mobilisation around an alternative global economic model because the old one has failed drastically.

The writer is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Alberta and Associate Professor at COMSATS University Islamabad

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, March 13th, 2023